continued, and ended in God. A man who knew that God was about his path, and about his bed, and spying out all his ways. A man whose one fixed idea was, that God was leading and guiding him through life. That idea, “The Lord leads me,” is the key-note of David’s psalms, and makes them what they are, an inspired revelation of Almighty God.
But is that idea true? Of course, you answer, it is true, because it is in the Bible. But that is not the question. That is rather putting the question aside, which is, Do we believe it to be true, and find it to be true? We believe that God was leading David because we read it in the Bible. But do we believe that God is leading us? If not, what is the use of our reading David’s psalms, either in private or publicly in church every Sunday? You all know how largely we use them, but why? If we are not in the same case as David was, what right have we to take David’s words into our mouths? We do not fancy that there is any magical virtue in repeating the same words, as foolish people used to repeat charms and spells. Our only right, our only excuse for saying or singing David’s psalms in public or in private, must be, that as David was, so are we in this world, under the continual guidance of God.
And therefore it is that the Church bids us to use these psalms in our devotions, day by day, all the year round—that we may know that our God is David’s God, our temptations David’s temptations, our fears David’s fears, our hopes David’s hopes, our struggles and triumphs over what is wrong in our hearts and in the world around us, are the same as David’s. That we are not to fancy, because David was an inspired prophet, that therefore he was in a different case from us, of different
passions from ours, or that his words are too sacred and holy for us to use. Not so, we are to believe the very contrary. We are to believe that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation—that is—has not merely to do with the man who spoke it first—but that because David spoke by the Spirit of God, who is no respecter of persons, therefore his words apply to you, and to me, and to every human being—that David is revealing to us the everlasting laws of God’s Spirit, and of God’s providence, whereby He works alike in every Christian soul, and then, therefore, whatever our sin may be, whatever our sorrows may be, whatever our station in life may be, we have a right to offer up to God our repentance, our doubts, our fears, our hopes, our thanksgivings, in the very words which David used two thousand years and more ago, certain that they are the right words, better words than we can find for ourselves, exactly fitting our own souls, and fitting too the mind and will of Almighty God, because they are inspired by the same Spirit of God who descended on us, when we were baptized unto Christ’s Church.
And for that, my friends, we have an example—as we have for everything else—in our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. For He, in the hour of His darkest agony, when He hung upon the cross for our sins, and the sin of all mankind, and when (worse than all other agony, or shame), there came over Him the deepest horror of all—the feeling, but for a moment, that God had forsaken Him—even then, He who spake as never man spake, did not disdain to use the words of David, and cry, in the opening verse of that 22d psalm, every line of which applies so strangely to Him himself,
“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” So did our Lord bequeath, as it were, with His dying breath, to all Christians for ever, as the fit and true expression of all that they should ever experience, the psalms of His great earthly ancestor, David, the sweet singer of Israel.
My friends, neglect not that precious bequest of your dying Lord. Read those psalms, study them, tune your hearts and minds to them more and more; and you will find in them an inexhaustible treasury of wisdom, and comfort, and of the knowledge of God, wherein standeth your eternal life.
XVI. AHAB AND MICAIAH—THE CHRISTIAN DEAD ALIVE FOE EVERMORE.
“And the King of Israel said to Jehosaphat, There is yet one man, Micaiah the son of Imlah, by whom we may enquire of the Lord: but I hate him; for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil.” . . .—1 Kings xxii. 8.
If you read the story of Micaiah the Prophet, and King Ahab in the 22d chapter of the 1st Book of Kings, you will, I think, agree that Ahab showed himself as foolish as he was wicked. He hated Micaiah for telling him the truth. And when he heard the truth and was warned of his coming end, he went stupidly to meet it, and died as the fool dies. Foolishness and wickedness often go hand in hand. Certainly they did in that miserable king’s case.