1. I will praise thee, O Lord. With a holy resolution the songster begins his hymn. It
sometimes needs all our determination to face the foe, and bless the Lord in
the teeth of his enemies; vowing that whoever else may be silent we will
bless his name; here, however, the overthrow of the foe is viewed as complete,
and the song flows with sacred fullness of delight. It is our duty to praise
the Lord; let us perform it as a privilege. Observe that David’s praise is all
given to the Lord. We may be grateful to the intermediate agent, but our thanks
must have long wings and mount aloft to heaven. With my whole heart.
Half heart is no heart. I will show forth. There is true praise in the
thankful telling forth to others of our Heavenly Father’s dealings with us;
this is one of the themes upon which the godly should speak often to one
another, and it will not be casting pearls before swine if we make even the
ungodly hear of the lovingkindness of the Lord to us. All thy marvelous
works. Gratitude for one mercy refreshes the memory as to thousands of
others. One silver link in the chain draws up a long series of tender
remembrances. Here is eternal work for us, for there can be no end to the
showing forth of all his deeds of love. If we consider our own
sinfulness and nothingness, we must feel that every work of preservation,
forgiveness, conversion, deliverance, sanctification, etc. which the Lord has
wrought for us, or in us, is a marvelous work. Even in heaven, divine
lovingkindness will doubtless be as much a theme of surprise as of rapture.
2. Moloch
may be worshiped with shrieks of pain, and Juggernaut may be honored by dying
groans and inhuman yells, but he whose name is Love is best pleased with the
holy mirth, and sanctified gladness of his people. Daily rejoicing is an
ornament to the Christian character. God loves a cheerful giver, whether
it be the gold of his purse or the gold of his mouth. I will sing praise.
Songs are the fitting expressions of inward thankfulness, and it were well if
we indulged ourselves and honored our Lord with more of them.
3. God’s
presence is evermore sufficient to work the defeat of our most furious foes,
and their ruin is so complete when the Lord takes them in hand that even flight
cannot save them. We must be careful, like David, to give all the glory to him
whose presence gives the victory. Let us rejoice with him at the total
discomfiture of our foes.
4. One of
our nobility has for his motto, “I will maintain it”; but the Christian has a
better and more humble one: “Thou hast maintained it.” “God and my
right” are united by my faith: while God lives, my right shall never be taken
from me. If we seek to maintain the cause and honor of our Lord we may suffer
reproach and misrepresentation, but it is a rich comfort to remember that he
who sits in the throne knows our hearts, and will not leave us to the ignorant
and ungenerous judgment of erring man.
5. God
rebukes before he destroys, but when he once comes to blows with the wicked he
ceases not until he has dashed them in pieces so small that their very name is
forgotten. How often the word thou occurs in this and the former verse,
to show us that the grateful strain mounts up directly to the Lord.
6. Here the
psalmist exults over the fallen foe. He bends as it were over his prostrate
form and insults his once vaunted strength. He plucks the boaster’s song out of
his mouth and sings it for him in derision. After this fashion our glorious
Redeemer asks of death, “Where is thy sting?” and of the grave, “Where is
thy victory?”
7–12. In the
light of the past the future is not doubtful. Since the same almighty God fills
the throne of power, we can with unhesitating confidence exult in our security
for all time to come.
7. The
enduring existence and unchanging dominion of our Jehovah are the firm foundations
of our joy. The enemy and his destructions will come to a perpetual end, but
God and his throne shall endure forever. Prepared … for judgment.
Here we see the swiftness of divine justice: in heaven’s court suitors are not
worn out with long delays. Thousands may come at once to the throne of the
Judge of all the earth, but neither plaintiff nor defendant shall have to
complain that he is not prepared to give their cause a fair hearing.
8. Whatever
earthly courts may do, heaven’s throne ministers judgment in uprightness.
Partiality and respect of persons are things unknown in the dealings of the
Holy One of Israel. How the prospect of appearing before the impartial tribunal
of the great King should act as a check to us when tempted to sin, and as a comfort
when we are slandered or oppressed!
9. He who
gives no quarter to the wicked in the day of judgment is the defense and refuge
of his saints in the day of trouble. There were cities of refuge under the law;
God is our refuge-city under the Gospel.
10. Ignorance
is worst when it amounts to ignorance of God, and knowledge is best when it
exercises itself upon the name of God. This most excellent knowledge
leads to the most excellent grace of faith. By knowing his name is also meant
an experimental acquaintance with the attributes of God, which are anchors to
hold the soul from drifting. The Lord may hide his face for a season from his
people, but he never has utterly, finally, really, or angrily forsaken them
that seek him. What must be the Lord’s faithfulness to those who find if he
is so gracious to those who seek.
11. Being
full of gratitude himself, our inspired author is eager to excite others to
join the strain. Singing and preaching, as means of glorifying God, are here
joined together; connected with all revivals of Gospel ministry there has been
a sudden outburst of the spirit of song. Luther’s psalms and hymns were in
everyone’s mouths, and under Wesley and Whitefield the strains of Charles
Wesley, Cennick, Berridge, Toplady, Hart, Newton, and many others were the
outgrowth of restored piety. Sing on, brethren, and preach on, and these shall
both be a token that the Lord still dwelleth in Zion. It will be well
for us when coming up to Zion to remember that the Lord dwells among his
saints, and is to be had in peculiar reverence of all those that are about him.
12. When an
inquest is held concerning the blood of the oppressed, the martyred saints will
have the first remembrance; he will avenge his own elect. Those saints who are
living shall also be heard; they shall be exonerated from blame, and kept from
destruction, even when the Lord’s most terrible work is going on. The humble
cry of the poorest saints shall neither be drowned by the voice of thundering
justice nor by the shrieks of the condemned.
13–14. Memories
of the past and confidences concerning the future conducted the man of God to
the mercy-seat to plead for the needs of the present. His first prayer is one
suitable for all persons and occasions; it breathes a humble spirit, indicates
self-knowledge, appeals to the proper attributes, and to the fitting person.
13. Have mercy upon me, O Lord. Just as Luther used to call some texts little Bibles, so we
may call this sentence a little prayer-book; for it has in it the soul and
marrow of prayer. The ladder looks short, but it reaches from earth to heaven. Thou
that liftest me up from the gates of death. What a noble title is here
given to the Most High. In sickness, in sin, in despair, in temptation, we have
been brought very low, and the gloomy portal has seemed as if it would open to
imprison us, but underneath us were the everlasting arms, and, therefore, we
have been uplifted to the gates of heaven.
14. We must
not overlook David’s object in desiring God’s mercy: it is God’s glory. Saints
are not so selfish as to look only to self; they admire mercy’s diamond that
they may let others see it flash and sparkle. The contrast between the gates of
death and the gates of the New Jerusalem is very striking; let our songs
be excited to the highest and most rapturous pitch by the double consideration
of whence we are taken, and to what we have been advanced, and let our prayers
for mercy be made more energetic by a sense of the grace which such a salvation
implies. When David speaks of his showing forth all God’s praise, he
means that, in his deliverance, grace in all its heights and depths would be
magnified.
15–16. In
considering this terrible picture of the Lord’s overwhelming judgments of his
enemies, we are called upon to ponder it with deep seriousness by the two
untranslated words Higgaion and Selah. Notice, first, that the
character of God requires the punishment of sin. His holiness and abhorrence of
sin is thus displayed. So long as our God is God, he will not, he cannot spare
the guilty, except through that one glorious way in which he is just, and yet the
justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. We must notice, secondly, that the
manner of his judgment is singularly wise, and indisputably just. He makes the
wicked become their own executioners: the heathen are sunk down in the pit
that they made. Like cunning hunters they prepared a pitfall for the godly
and fell into it themselves. Persecutors are often ruined by their own
malicious projects.
17. The
justice which has punished the wicked, and preserved the righteous, remains the
same, and therefore in days to come retribution will surely be meted out. The
forgetters of God are far more numerous than the profane or profligate, and
according to the very forceful expression of the Hebrew, the nethermost hell
will be the place into which all of them shall be hurled.
18. Mercy is
as ready to her work as ever justice can be. Needy souls fear that they are
forgotten; well, if it be so, let them rejoice that they shall not always
be so. Satan tells poor tremblers that their hope shall perish, but they have
here the divine assurance that their expectation…shall not perish forever.
They may have to wait, but they shall find that they do not wait in vain.
19. Prayers
are the believer’s weapons of war. When the battle is too hard for us, we call
in our great ally, who, as it were, lies in ambush until faith gives the signal
by crying out, Arise, O Lord.
In the very sight of God the wicked will be punished, and he who is now all
tenderness will have no compassion for them, since they had no tears of
repentance while their day of grace endured.
20. One would
think that men would not grow so vain as to deny themselves to be but men, but
it appears to be a lesson which only a divine schoolmaster can teach to some
proud spirits. All the wealth of Croesus, the wisdom of Solon, the power of
Alexander, the eloquence of Demosthenes, if added together, would leave the
possessor but a man. May we ever remember this, lest like those in the text we
should be put in fear.
Before leaving this psalm, peruse it again as the triumphal
hymn of the Redeemer, as he devoutly brings the glory of his victories and lays
it down at his Father’s feet.
Excerpt from:
The Treasury of David
By Charles H Spurgeon
