Spiritual Delight, and Confiding Trust

Next Part Spiritual Delight, and Confiding Trust 2

"Delight yourself also in the Lord; and he shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass. And he shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your judgment as the noon-day." Psalm 37:4-6

To search and to know the heart of man is God's special prerogative. He claims it as such; for, when speaking of man's heart, he says, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked—who can know it?" he adds, "I, the Lord, search the heart; I try the thoughts." (Jer. 17:9, 10.) We find the Psalmist using similar language, "O Lord, you have searched me, and known me—you know my downsitting and mine uprising; you understand my thought afar off; you compass my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways—for there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord, you know it altogether." (Psalm 139:1-4.)

The deepest traces of this knowledge which God has of the heart of man are to be found scattered up and down the Scriptures of truth. Psalm 73 for instance, contains the deepest knowledge of the heart of man; and not merely the most intimate acquaintance with all its secret movements, but also with the remedy which God himself has provided to meet the malady. It is a grand spiritual armory out of which heavenly weapons to fight against the peculiar besetments of God's people are to be brought to the end of time. It is a repository of healing medicines to be applied from time to time to the rankling wounds that these peculiar besetments continually make in the conscience. One of these peculiar besetments is the fretting and envying that there is in a gracious man's heart against the prosperity of the ungodly. Asaph deeply felt this; no, so deeply that his feet had well-near slipped altogether through the force of the temptation. Job felt this, as we read in the 21st chapter, when he was so stumbled at the prosperity of the wicked. And all God's people, one in a greater and another in a less degree, feel from time to time the workings of this spirit of envying and fretful murmuring, when things go against them, and in favor of those whom they know to be ungodly.

The Lord in this Psalm meets this case, and provides remedies for it; and these remedies he not merely provides for his people in the letter of truth, but he also, in his own time and way, graciously applies them to their soul.

You will observe, that in the text there is a very close and intimate connection between the precept and the promise. The Lord lays down two precepts, and he connects with them two promises. And it will be my endeavor and aim this evening, if God gives me power and ability, to show not only what the precept and the promise are, but also the spiritual and experimental connection between them. So that, if we are enabled (and God alone can enable us) to perform the precept, we are sure of having the promise fulfilled in our heart's experience.

The text consists, therefore, as I have just observed, of two distinct branches. There is a precept in each, and a promise in each, and these two are intimately connected.

The first PRECEPT runs thus, "Delight yourself in the Lord;" and the promise connected with that precept is, "And he shall give you the desires of your heart."

"Delight yourself in the Lord." There is a close and intimate connection between the humbling teachings of God in the heart, and our delighting ourselves in him. What was the frame and mind, and what was the peculiar besetment that God the Spirit met in this Psalm? It was the envy and fretfulness which often work in a good man's bosom against the prosperity of the wicked. In other words, the character pointed out in this Psalm was one walking in a path of peculiar trial, temptation, and perplexity; and one of his peculiar trials, perplexities, and temptations was, that all things went contrary to him, while all things went on favorably with the ungodly. Now I do not say that this was absolutely necessary to make him delight in the Lord. But I say this, that we cannot delight ourselves in the Lord until we have ceased to delight in other things; and therefore we need to be led in a path of trial, temptation, perplexity, conflict, and sometimes to experience great distress of soul on account of sin laid upon our conscience, in order to be brought to fulfill this precept spiritually.

The precept is not laid down here as though man were able in his own strength and wisdom to take it up and obey it. There is a preparatory teaching of the blessed Spirit before a man can enjoy in his own soul a living experience of the precept. And the very way whereby God brings him to perform it is, by first leading him into those paths of trial, perplexity, and sorrow which stir up the enmity, peevishness, and fretfulness of his rebellious heart. For instance

1. By nature we delight in the WORLD. It is our element, our home, and what our carnal hearts are intimately blended with. We need to be divorced from this carnal union; we need to have the world embittered to us. Now the very means that God employs to embitter the world to us are cutting and grievous dispensations as unexpected reverses in fortune, afflictions of body, of family, or of soul. But these very means that the Lord employs to divorce our carnal union from the world, act upon the peevishness and fretfulness of our depraved nature. So that we think we are being very harshly dealt with in being compelled to walk in this trying path, while the ungodly are prospering. And yet by these cutting dispensations we are eventually brought to delight ourselves in him, who will give us the desires of our heart.

2. Again. We cleave close to a covenant of WORKS. Our naturally religious heart is continually aiming to do something whereby we think we can gain the favor of God. Now when every exertion to set up our righteousness is completely baffled, when our resolutions are proved to be weak as water, when all our endeavor to do something that we think God can accept prove entirely baseless, and the corruption of our heart becomes more and more manifest in every attempt to carry out what we think will please God—this stirs up the self-pity, the murmuring, the peevishness, and the rebelliousness of our nature.

3. Again. We delight in SIN. It is the very element of our nature; and even after the Lord has called us by his grace and quickened us by his Spirit, there is the same love to sin in the carnal heart as there was before. We delight in it; we would wallow in it, take our full enjoyment of it, and swim in it as a whale swims in the waters of the sea. But the Lord will never allow us to do the evils that we would—he prevents us from walking in these things, by laying the guilt of them upon the conscience, by producing cutting convictions in our soul, by making us at times loathe ourselves in dust and ashes on account of our own sinfulness and folly, by making us feel ashamed of ourselves, and covering us with confusion of face because our carnal heart so delights in wickedness.

4. We by nature are prone to IDOLATRY. Self is the grand object of all our sensual and carnal worship. Our own exaltation, our own amusement, our own pleasure, and our own gratification, or something whereby self may be flattered, admired, adored, and delighted, is the grand end and aim of man's natural worship.

From all these things, then, which are intrinsically evil, which a pure and holy God must hate with absolute abhorrence, we must be weaned and effectually divorced. This we cannot learn from reading the Scriptures, or by hearing the experience of others. We may have the theory correct; but the experience of it must be wrought by God's own hand in our conscience. But all the time we are doing homage and worship to self; all the time we are loving the world; all the time we delight in sin; all the time we are setting up idols in the secret chambers of imagery, there is no delighting ourselves in the Lord. There cannot be. We cannot delight ourselves in the Lord until we are purged of creature love, until the idolatry of our hearts is not merely manifested, but hated and abhorred, until by cutting temptations, sharp exercises, painful perplexities, and various sorrows we are brought to this state—to be sick of sin, sick of self, and sick of the world. Until we are brought to loathe ourselves, we are not brought to that spot where none but God himself can comfort, please, or make the soul really happy.

How long you shall be walking in this painful path, how heavy your trials, or what their duration shall be, how deep you may have to sink, or how cutting your afflictions may be in body or soul, God has not defined, and we cannot. But they must work until they have produced this result—weaned, divorced, and completely separated us from all that we naturally love, all that we idolatrously cleave unto, and all that we adulterously roam after. If they have not done this, they must go on until they produce that effect. The burden must be laid upon the back, affliction must try the mind, perplexities must encumber the feet, until we are brought to this point—that none but the Lord himself, with a taste of his dying love, can comfort our hearts, or give us that inward peace and joy which our soul is taught to crave after.

See, then, the connection between the workings of fretfulness, rebelliousness, and peevishness in the heart of the saint, and the precept, "Delight yourself in the Lord." 'What?' it may be said, 'here is a man full of peevishness, rebellion, enmity, and fretfulness, and God tells him to "delight himself in the Lord."' He gladly would do it, but cannot. This is the state and case of many of the Lord's people; they have enough religion to make them miserable, but not enough to make them happy; enough grace to make the world distasteful, but not enough to make the Lord of life and glory precious; enough religion to keep them from falling into sin, but not enough to break down the hankering idolatry of the carnal heart.

The Lord, then, who sees all their trials, raises up in their hearts the power to perform the precept—to delight themselves in the Lord. But how does the Lord do this? We are completely powerless, thoroughly unable to delight ourselves in the Lord. It is as impossible for a fallen sinner to delight himself in the perfections of Jehovah, as it is for him to create a new sun, and plant it in the sky. It ever is, and ever must be, a special act of grace, and of the operation of God the Spirit in the heart and conscience of the elect sinner. But there is a time and season when the Lord does enable his dear family to fulfill this precept, "Delight yourself in the Lord."

HOW then does he bring about the fulfillment of this precept? By manifesting himself, with more or less clearness and power to their souls. There are infinite treasures of loveliness and beauty in the Lord of life and glory; and when these are manifested to the soul, then delight in these glorious perfections instantaneously springs up in the heart. Sometimes the Lord is pleased to enlighten the eyes of our understanding, and then we have a view of his matchless perfection, beauty, and loveliness by the eye of living faith. We see an indescribable glory in his eternal Godhead; we see an indescribable loveliness in his pure and spotless humanity; and we see an indescribable beauty in the union of the Godhead and the manhood in one glorious Immanuel.

I have seen, I believe, with the eye of faith, that "perfection of beauty," which the tongue of man can never express—the beauty, loveliness, grace, and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. When there is any discovery of his beauty and glory to the eyes of the understanding, and any reception of it by living faith in the heart, it is utterly beyond the tongue of men or angels to describe.

But when we have a view by faith of the matchless perfection, glory, beauty, and loveliness of the Lord Jesus Christ, it is then, and then only we are enabled to delight ourselves in him. There is in the soul a solemn delight in the beauty of the Lord of life and glory; there is a going forth of the tender affections of the heart unto him as the "altogether lovely one," and there is a flowing forth of the secret desires of the soul towards him as he sits enthroned in glory, power, and majesty at the right hand of the Father. Now if ever we have seen this, we have fulfilled the precept, "Delight yourself in the Lord." But this delight is not in your religion, not in your own acts, no, nor in your own experience either, but "in the Lord"—your thoughts, your desires, your meditations, your affections, all fixed in, all fixed upon, the Lord of life and glory.

Now, when we are enabled to delight ourselves thus in the Lord, it is sometimes in the way of meditation. There is a sweet meditation of the soul upon his glorious attributes. Every divine character that shines forth in the Person of Immanuel is received by faith; and no sooner does faith receive it, than hope in the soul anchors in it, and love in the heart flows out towards it.

Sometimes in reading the Scriptures, they are opened up to us with sweetness and savor. We see and feel an indescribable beauty in those passages which speak of the Lord of life and glory. Faith is kindled; the soul believes, simply and with a child-like spirit, what it reads; and the affections flow forth to that which is so sweetly and solemnly made known.

Sometimes, in secret prayer, there is a drawing near to the Lord—a delighting ourselves in him as altogether beautiful, and altogether glorious and lovely.

And sometimes, without any special means, before the heart is aware it is made like the chariots of Amminadab, caught up in believing admiration and adoration of the Lord of life and glory.

Now, when this is felt in the soul, it is a fulfillment of the promises—"Your eyes shall see the King in his beauty—they shall behold the land that is very far off" (Isa. 33:1)—"In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and lovely for them that are escaped of Israel." (Isa. 4:2.) Then the soul can enter, in some measure, into the language of the Bride, when she said, "My Beloved is white and ruddy, the chief among ten thousand—yes, he is altogether lovely."

The first PROMISE– But I pass on to consider the connection of the promise with the PRECEPT. You will observe, the Lord has given a precept—"Delight yourself in the Lord;" and he has closely connected a promise with it—"And he shall give you the desires of your heart." Now, if we are enabled (and only God can enable us) to delight ourselves in the Lord with child-like simplicity and affection—the Lord, for his own name's sake, for his own mercy's sake, will fulfill the promise so closely connected with the precept. And not only so. They are not merely connected by the solemn declaration of Jehovah, but also by a link in time. I will explain my meaning.

If we are enabled to delight ourselves in the Lord, he gives us then and there the desires of our heart. The precept and the promise are so closely allied, there is such an intimate connection between the two, that they are linked together in time in enjoyment at seasons, as closely as they are linked together in the word of truth. When we are enabled to delight ourselves in the Lord, the desire of the heart flows out instantaneously unto him in whom we are enabled to delight. There are times, many times (O how numerous are they?), when we have no delight in the Lord—when we can scarcely recall any delight we have ever experienced—when our heart is a desolate wilderness, where nothing grows but thorns and briars; and when we have no desires after him.

But when we are enabled to delight ourselves in the Lord, immediately desires spring up. The very same Spirit that raises up the power and gives the feeling to delight ourselves in the Lord, enables us, at the same moment, and by the same operation, to feel desires—no more, to give those desires utterance, to pour them forth, to spread them out, to lay them, with all humility and simplicity, at the divine footstool. And what are these desires? Let us endeavor to mention a few of them.

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