Spurgeon PS1016
EXPOSITION.
The Psalm ends with a song of thanksgiving to the great and everlasting King, because he has granted the desire of his humble and oppressed people, has defended the fatherless, and punished the heathen who trampled upon his poor and afflicted children. Let us learn that we are sure to speed well, if we carry our complaint to the King of kings. Rights will be vindicated, and wrongs redressed, at his throne. His government neglects not the interests of the needy, nor does it tolerate oppression in the mighty. Great God, we leave ourselves in thine hand; to thee we commit thy church afresh. Arise, O God, and let the man of the earth–the creature of a day–be broken before the majesty of thy power. Come, Lord Jesus, and glorify thy people. Amen and Amen.
EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS.
Verse 16.–“_The Lord is King for ever and ever: the heathen are perished out of his land_.” Such confidence and faith must appear to the world strange and unaccountable. It is like what his fellow citizens may be supposed to have felt (if the story be true) toward that man of whom it is recorded, that his powers of vision were so extraordinary, that he could distinctly see the fleet of the Carthaginians entering the harbour of Carthage, while he stood himself at Lilyboeum, in Sicily. A man seeing across an ocean, and able to tell of objects so far off! he could feast his vision on what others saw not. Even thus does faith now stand at its Lilyboeum, and see the long tossed fleet entering safely the desired haven, enjoying the bliss of that still distant day, as if it was already come.–^Andrew A. Bonar.
Verse 17.–There is a humbling act of faith put forth in prayer. Others style it praying in humility; give me leave to style it praying in faith. In faith which sets the soul in the presence of that mighty God, and by the sight of him, which faith gives us, it is that we see our own vileness, sinfulness, and abhor ourselves, and profess ourselves unworthy of any, much less of those mercies we are to seek for. Thus the sight of God had wrought in the prophet (#Isa 6:5|), “Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” And holy Job speaks thus (#Job 42:5,6|), “Now mine eye seeth thee: wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” This is as great a requisite to prayer as any other act; I may say of it alone, as the apostle (#Jas 1:7|), that without it we shall receive nothing at the hands of God! God loves to fill empty vessels, he looks to broken hearts. In the Psalms how often do we read that God hears the prayers of the humble; which always involves and includes faith in it. #Ps 9:12|, “He forgetteth not the cry of the humble,” and #Ps 10:17|, “_Lord thou hast heard the desire of the humble: thou wilt prepare their heart, thou wilt cause thine ear to hear_.” To be deeply humbled is to have the heart prepared and fitted for God to hear the prayer; and therefore you find the Psalmist pleading _sub forma pauperis_, often repeating, “I am poor and needy.” And this prevents our thinking much if God do not grant the particular thing we do desire. Thus also Christ himself in his great distress (#Ps 22|), doth treat God (verse #Ps 22:2|), “O my God, I cry in the day-time, but thou hearest not; and in the night season am not silent. Our fathers trusted in thee. They cried unto thee, and were delivered. But I am a worm, and no man; reproached of men, and despised of the people;” (verse #Ps 22:6|) “and he was heard in the end in what he feared.” And these deep humblings of ourselves, being joined with vehement implorations upon the mercy of God to obtain, is reckoned into the account of praying by faith, both by God and Christ. #Mt 8|.–^Thomas Goodwin.
Verse 17.–“_Lord, thou hast heard the desire of the humble_.” A spiritual prayer is a _humble_ prayer. Prayer is the asking of an alms, which requires humility. “The publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, Saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.” #Lu 18:13|. God’s incomprehensible glory may even amaze us and strike a holy consternation into us when we approach nigh unto him: “O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee.” #Ezr 9:6|. It is comely to see a poor nothing lie prostrate at the feet of its Maker. “Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes.” #Ge 18:27|. The lower the heart descends, the higher the prayer ascends.–^Thomas Watson.
Verse 17.–“_Lord, thou hast heard the desire of the humble_,” etc. How pleasant is it, that these benefits, which are of so great a value both on their own account, and that of the divine benignity from whence they come, should be delivered into our hands, marked, as it were, with this grateful inscription, _that they have been obtained by prayer_!–^Robert Leighton.
Verse 17.–“_The desire of the humble_.” Prayer is the offering up of our desires to God in the name of Christ, for such things as are agreeable to his will. It is an offering of our desires. Desires are the soul and life of prayer; words are but the body; now as the body without the soul is dead, so are prayers unless they are animated with our desires: “_Lord, thou hast heard the desire of the humble_.” God heareth not words, but _desires_.–^Thomas Watson.
Verse 17.–God’s choice acquaintances are humble men.–^Robert Leighton.
Verse 17.–He that sits nearest the dust, sits nearest heaven.–^Andrew Gray, of Glasgow, 1616.
Verse 17.–There is a kind of omnipotency in prayer, as having an interest and prevalency with God’s omnipotency. It hath loosed iron chains (#Ac 16:25,26|); it hath opened iron gates, (#Ac 12:5-10|); it hath unlocked the windows of heaven (#1Ki 18:41|); it hath broken the bars of death (#Joh 11:40,43|). Satan hath three titles given in the Scriptures, setting forth his malignity against the church of God: a dragon, to note his malice; a serpent, to note his subtlety; and a lion, to note his strength. But none of all these can stand before prayer. The greatest malice of Haman sinks under the prayer of Esther; the deepest policy, the counsel of Ahithophel, withers before the prayer of David; the largest army, a host of a thousand Ethiopians, run away like cowards before the prayer of Asa.–^Edward Reynolds, 1599-1676.
Verse 18.–“_To judge the fatherless and the oppressed_,” etc. The tears of the poor fall down upon their cheeks, _et ascendunt ad coelum_, and go up to heaven and cry for vengeance before God, the judge of widows, the father of widows and orphans. Poor people be oppressed even by laws. Woe worth to them that make evil laws against the poor, what shall be to them that hinder and mar good laws? What will ye do in the day of great vengeance when God shall visit you? he saith he will hear the tears of the poor woman, when he goeth on visitation. For their sake he will hurt the judge, be he never so high, he will for widows’ sakes change realms, bring them into temptation, pluck his judges’ skins over their heads. Cambyses was a great emperor, such another as our master is, he had many lord deputies, lord presidents, and lieutenants under him. It is a great while ago since I read the history. It chanced he had under him in one of his dominions a briber, a gift-taker, a gratifier of rich men; he followed gifts as fast as he that followed the pudding; a handmaker in his office, to make his son a great man, as the old saying is “Happy is the child whose father goeth to the devil.” The cry of the poor widow came to the emperor’s ear, and caused him to slay the judge quick, and laid his skin in his chair of judgment, that all judges that should give judgment afterward, should sit in the same skin. Surely it was a goodly sign, a goodly monument, the sign of the judge’s skin. I pray God we may once see the sign of the skin in England. Ye will say, peradventure, that this is cruelly and uncharitably spoken. No, no; I do it charitably, for a love I bear to my country. God saith, “I will visit.” God hath two visitations; the first is when he revealeth his word by preachers; and where the first is accepted, the second cometh not. The second visitation is vengeance. He went to visitation when he brought the judge’s skin over his ears. If this word be despised, he cometh with the second visitation with vengeance.–^Hugh Latimer, 1480-1555.
Verse 18.–“_Man of the earth_,” etc. In the eighth Psalm (which is a circular Psalm ending as it did begin, “O Lord our God, how excellent is thy name in all the world!” That whithersoever we turn our eyes, upwards or downwards, we may see ourselves beset with his glory round about), how doth the prophet base and discountenance the nature and whole race of man; as may appear by his disdainful and derogatory interrogation, “What is man that thou art mindful of him; and the Son of Man, that thou regardest him?” In the ninth Psalm, “Rise, Lord; let not man have the upper hand; let the nations be judged in thy sight. Put them in fear, O Lord, that the heathen may know themselves to be but men.” Further, in the tenth Psalm, “Thou judgest the fatherless and the poor, that the man of the earth do no more violence.”
The Psalms, as they go in order, so, methinks they grow in strength, and each hath a weightier force to throw down our presumption. 1. We are “men,” and the “sons of men,” to show our descent and propagation. 2. “Men in our own knowledge,” to show that conscience and experience of infirmity doth convict us. 3. “Men of the earth,” to show our orginal matter whereof we are framed. in the twenty-second Psalm, he addeth more disgrace; for either in his own name, regarding the misery and contempt wherein he was held, or in the person of Christ, whose figure he was, as if it were a robbery for him to take upon him the nature of man, he falleth to a lower style, _at ego sum vermis et non vir_; but I am a worm, and no man. For as corruption is the father of all flesh, so are the worms his brethren and sisters, according to the old verse– “First man, next worms, then stench and loathsomeness, Thus man to no man alters by changes.” Abraham, the father of the faithful (#Ge 18|), sifteth
himself into the coarsest man that can be, and resolveth his nature into the elements whereof it first rose. “Behold I have begun to speak to my Lord, being dust and ashes.” And if any of the children of Abraham, who succeed him in the faith, or any of the children of Adam, who succeed him in the flesh, thinketh otherwise, let him know that there is a threefold cord twisted by the finger of God, that shall tie him to his first original, though he contend till his heart break. “O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord” (#Jer 22|); that is, earth by creation, earth by continuance, earth by resolution. Thou camest earth, thou remainest earth, and to earth thou must return.–^John King.
Verse 18.–“_The man of the earth_.” Man dwelling in the earth, and made of earth.–^Thomas Wilcocks.
HINTS TO PREACHERS.
Verse 16.–The Eternal Kingship of Jehovah.
Verse 17 (first clause).–I. The Christian’s character–“_humble_.” II. An attribute of the Christian’s whole life–“_desire_:” he desires more holiness, communion, knowledge, grace, and usefulness; and then he desires glory. III. The Christian’s great blessedness–“_Lord, thou hast heard the desire of the humble_.”
Verse 17 (whole verse).–I. Consider the _nature_ of gracious desires. II. Their origin. III. Their _result_. The three sentences readily suggest these divisions, and the subject may be very profitable.