You have removed my beloved and my friend; darkness is my closest companion. Sermons
I. GOD'S HIDINGS ARE NEVER MERE ACTS OF SOVEREIGNTY. A thoughtful writer says, "I know that some have maintained that God sometimes forsakes his people in the exercise of his sovereignty. I confess I do not understand this. It appears to me that undue and unwarrantable liberties are often used with the sovereignty of God, and that many things are laid to its account with which it is not chargeable. We speak of the Divine sovereignty. But sovereignty is not an arbitrary, capricious thing; it is a righteous and holy thing; and God must ever act in conformity with the unalterable principles of his character. Believe it, there is no such mystery as some would make us think in those temporary desertions with which God sometimes visits his own people. The reason of them is to be found in themselves - in their sinfulness, in their unsteadfastness, in their unfaithfulness." II. GOD'S HIDINGS ARE ALWAYS EXPRESSIONS OF DIVINE WISDOM. They are special modes of dealing, arranged in precise adaptation to particular persons, at particular times, and under particular circumstances. Comfort lies in clearly seeing that God's hidings are not common and usual dealings, and therefore if God deals thus with us, it must be in wise and gracious adaptation just to us. III. GOD'S HIDINGS ARE THE BEGINNINGS OF HIS ANSWERS TO US. This may be effectively illustrated by our Lord's treatment of the Syro-phoenician woman. He began his answer by seeming indifference, and even seeming refusal, which drew forth her noble intensity. - R.T.
Lover and friend hast Thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness. I. THE SORROW WHICH WE NATURALLY FEEL WHEN WE ARE BEREAVED OF DEAR AND WORTHY FRIENDS, AND THE BOUNDS WITHIN WHICH IT OUGHT TO BE RESTRAINED. If Christianity pronounces it the height of profligacy to be without natural affections, the tears which flow from such affections, Christianity cannot forbid. What nature hath implanted the religion of Jesus means not to extirpate, but to moderate and direct. Shall it not calm the soul tossed with tempests, and if not dry up, at least diminish, the flowing tears, that a voice from heaven, the voice of the spirit of truth, declares: "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord"? They see God as He is. They are satisfied with His likeness.II. THE PRACTICAL LESSONS WHICH WE OUGHT TO RECEIVE FROM THE DEATH OF OUR CHRISTIAN FRIENDS. 1. It should impress on our minds a deep and lasting sense of our own mortality. 2. It should teach us the vanity and nothingness of this world. 3. It demonstrates the worth and excellency of religion. 4. It teaches us how important it is to discharge our duty to friends who yet survive. 5. It should kindle Within us a longing desire for a blessed eternity. We naturally wish to be with those whom we love. When Jacob hears that his son Joseph is yet alive, and advanced to great honour in Egypt, he cannot rest till he goes down there to see him. And when our friends have left that land in which we are yet strangers and pilgrims, our affections should be more weaned from it, and our desires inflamed to get to that better land, whither they have gone before us. (John Erskine, D. D.) 1. Their company. 2. Their counsel and advice. 3. The sight of their good works and examples. 4. Their prayers. II. THE PSALMIST'S DEVOUT ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE HAND OF GOD IN THIS AFFLICTION. 1. He removeth our friends, who hath a right to do it.(1) They were our friends, but they are His creatures; and may He not do what He will with His own?(2) They were our friends; but do we not hope and believe that, by repentance, faith in Christ, and sanctifying grace, they were become His friends too? dear to Him by many indissoluble ties? Hath He not then a superior claim to them, and a greater interest in them? Is it not fit that He should be served first? His knowledge is perfect and unerring: His goodness boundless and never-failing. Application 1. The cause here described is a very pitiable one. Let us weep with them that weep, and pray for them. 2. Let us bless God for the friends we have had, and all the comfort we enjoyed in them. 3. Let us humbly submit to the will of God when He putteth our friends far from us. 4. Let us be careful and diligent to make a due improvement of such afflictions.(1) Let our departed friends still live in our memory, honour and affection.(2) Let us carefully recollect and consider what was excellent and praiseworthy in them, as every good man hath some peculiar, distinguishing excellencies, and let us imitate them.(3) Let us follow them in the path of Christian duty, obedience and zeal; endeavour to supply their lack of service, and be quickened to do so much the more good, because their time and opportunity are ended.(4) Let us particularly learn from their removal to be dead to this world. 5. Let us be thankful for our friends yet living, and faithfully perform our duty to them. 6. Let us make sure of a friend who will never leave us: even the almighty and everlasting God. (Job Orton, D. D.) 1. "Lover." As this is distinguished from friend and acquaintance, it stands for the tender relative. The husband, the wife, the father, the mother, the child, the brother, the sister, and other dear ties of flesh and blood. 2. "Friend." This is a sacred name, which many usurp, and few deserve. It cannot be applied to the confederate in sin; or to the mercenary, selfish wretch, that loves you because he wants to make use of you, as a builder values a ladder, or a passenger a boat. Friendship is founded in a community of heart. It supposes some strong congeniality, yet admits of great diversity. 3. "Acquaintances" are distinguished from friends. The former may be numerous; the latter must be limited. The one is for the parlour, the other is for the closet. We give the hand to the one, we reserve the bosom for the other. II. TWO WAYS BY WHICH WE MAY BE DEPRIVED OF OUR CONNECTIONS. 1. By desertion. The highest degree of this crime is the want of natural affection. Perfidy is a vile thing, but not a very rare one. How many kiss in order to betray; and gain your confidence, to sting when you are lulled to sleep. 2. By bereavement. This is principally, if not exclusively here intended. Several things add poignancy to the loss. (1) (2) (3) (4) III. THE AGENCY OF GOD IN THEIR REMOVAL. He has done it — 1. Who is almighty and irresistible (Job 9:12). 2. Who had a right to do it. If they were your friends, they were His creatures and servants; and was He obliged to ask your permission to do what He would with His own? 3. Who was too wise to err, and too kind to injure in doing it. IV. APPLICATION. Improve such dispensations in a way of — 1. Sympathy. 2. Gratitude. 3. Precaution. 4. Resignation. (W. Jay.) I. THE THREEFOLD LOSS. 1. There are, or ought to be, three circles round every man like the belts or rings round a planet, — love, friendship, and acquaintanceship.(1) Love is the nearest, while, at the same time, it lends its value to the other two. Friendship and acquaintanceship have no real pith, or substance, or value in them, except as they are permeated by the spirit of the nearest circle. It is love that receives and nurtures us; it is love that knits the closest and tenderest bonds; it is love that is the sunshine and the strength of life; it is love by which we do good, by which we get good. Men learn to love by loving intensely a few. The heart is not a vessel of quantity which has only a certain amount to give. The more it gives, the more it has to give. It is filled by the effort to empty itself.(2) Friendship comes next, and implies certain sympathies. Happy is the man who has right true-hearted friends to sustain him in good principles, to reflect and stimulate noble feelings, and to cheer him in sorrow. Many are the blessings of friendship, but the chief is a genial brotherliness, a certain unexplained understanding, an undefined sympathy, an easy, unconstrained, general harmony.(3) Outside the circle of friendship is the larger but vague circle of acquaintance shading and thinning gradually off into the general world of humanity. Acquaintanceship broadens a man. It is some sort of bond between those who can have no close relation. It tends to cement and sweeten human society. 2. There is a period in life when ties are formed, but there comes a time when the breaking of ties is more frequent. That is a great part of the sadness of life, that, as one wears on in his journey, the friends of his early days drop off. Oh, strange life! It is a contradiction to our nature and to right, an enigma insoluble but for the light of another world, that we should be encouraged and impelled to throw our affections round men only to have the ties rudely snapt. Oh, strange; if there is nothing beyond this, that it should be our duty, our elevation, and our noblest impulse, to love strongly, to love as if we were never to part, all the while that parting lies but a little way before us. II. REFLECTIONS. 1. Thinking of departed friends will help us to realize our own death. We need to realize death in order to be sober, in order to intensify all that is good, and to drive off vain thoughts. Yea, we need to realize death in order to conquer death, and live while we live. 2. Thinking of our departed will help to take away the bitterness of death. Death gets identified with the thought of father, or mother, or sister, or brother, or husband, or wife, or child, or friend, and we feel that we dare not, and cannot, shrink from going to them. 3. Thinking of the departed will enable us to realize immortality. Can you think of that friend, knowing all that was in him; and entertain the thought, even for a moment, that he has ceased to be? Is it not treachery and insult to his memory? 4. Thinking of the departed cannot but fill us with regret and penitence. To remember angry words or selfishness towards the departed is a bitter thing. It is good to be ashamed and blush before God for hardness, meanness, or selfishness. It is good to be brought to this lowly, contrite mood, though it be over the grave of the departed. That place of death may be the birthplace of eternal life. (J. Leckie, D. D.) 2. Friend how much nearer is this! Here is trust; here is fellowship; here is love. His claim is admitted and is responded to, and His company is welcomed with delight. 3. But there is another relationship, infinitely more tender and more complete, which we may venture to claim as ours — lover: to love Him with a love that possesses us, that masters us, that subdues and compels all that we are and all that we have for His service and pleasure: a love which finds its highest heaven in His joy, its deepest hell in His grief: a love which has and holds Him for its own, for ever and for ever. This He seeks as His solace; this He offers to us as our high privilege and joy. (M. G. Pearse.). I. THE ETERNAL BUILDER, AND HIS WONDERFUL WORK (ver. 2). I can see a vast mass of ruins. Heaps upon heaps they lie around me. A stately edifice has tottered to the ground. Some terrible disaster has occurred. There it lies — cornice, pillar, pinnacle, everything of ornament and of utility, broken, scattered, dislocated. The world is strewn with the debris. Journey where you will the desolation is before your eyes. Who has done this? Who has cast down this temple? What hand has ruined this magnificent structure? Manhood, manhood it is which has been destroyed, and sin was the agent that effected the fall. Alas for manhood that it should be thus fallen and destroyed! But what else do I see? I behold the great original Builder coming forth from the ivory palaces to undo this mischief; and He cometh not with implements of destruction, that He may cast down and destroy every vestige, but I see Him advancing with plummet and line, that He may rear, set up, and establish on a sure foundation a noble pile that shall not crumble with time, but endure throughout all ages. He cometh forth with mercy. So "I said" as I saw the vision, "Mercy shall be built up for ever." The psalmist has the idea of God's mercy being manifest in building, because a great breach has to be repaired, and the ruins of mankind are to be restored. As for building, it is a very substantial operation. A building is something which is palpable and tangible to our senses. We may have plans and schemes which are only visionary, but when it comes to building there is something real being done, something more than surveying the ground and drawing the model. And oh, what real work God has done for men! What real work in the gift of His dear Son! The product of His infinite purpose now becomes evident. He is working out His great designs after the counsel of His own will. A building is an orderly thing as well as a fixed thing. There is a scheme and design about it. Mercy shall be built. I see that it shall. This is no load of bricks shot out. It is polished stones builded one upon another. God's grace and goodness toward me have not come to me by chance, or as the blind distribution of a God who cared for all alike, and for none with any special purpose. No, but there has been as much a specialty of purpose to me as if I were the only one He loved, though, praised be His name, He has blessed and is blessing multitudes of others beside me. Now, think upon these words — "built up." It is not merely a long, low wall of mercy that is formed, to make an inclosure or to define a boundary, but it is a magnificent pile of mercy, whose lofty heights shall draw admiring gaze, that is being built up. God puts mercy on the top of mercy, and He gives us one favour that we may be ready to receive another. Once again would I read this verse with very great emphasis, and ask you to notice how it rebukes the proud and the haughty, and how it encourages the meek and lowly in spirit. "I have said mercy shall be built up for ever." In the edification of the saints there is nothing else but mercy. I wish I had an imagination bold and clear, uncramped by all ideas of the masonry of men, free to expand, and still to cry, "Excelsior." Palaces, methinks, are paltry, and castles and cathedrals are only grand in comparison with the little cots that nestle on the plain. Even mountains, high as the Himalaya range or broad as the Andes, though their peaks be so lofty to our reckoning, are mere specks on the surface of the great globe itself, and our earth is small among the celestial orbs, a little sister of the larger planets. Figures fail me quite: my description must take another turn. I try, and try again, to realize the gradual rising of this temple of mercy which shall be built up for ever. Within the bounds of my feeble vision I can discern that it has risen above death, above sin, above fear, above all danger; it has risen above the terrors of the judgment day; it has outsoared the "wreck of matter and the crash of worlds"; it towers above all our thoughts. Our bliss ascends above an angel's enjoyments, and he has pleasures that were never checked by a pang; but he does not know the ineffable delight of free grace and dying love. The building-up will go on throughout eternity. II. AN EVERLASTING SINGER (ver. 1). Here is a good and godly resolution: "I will sing." The singing of the heart is intended, and the singing of the voice is expressed, for he mentions his mouth; and equally true is it that the singing of his pen is implied, since the psalms that he wrote were for others to sing in generations that should follow. "I will sing." We cannot impart anything to the great temple which He is building; yet we can sit down and sing. This singing praise to God is a spiritual passion. The saved soul delights itself in the Lord, and sings on, and on, and on unwearily. "I will sing for ever," saith he. Not, "I will get others to perform, and then I will retire from the service"; but rather, "I will myself sing: my own tongue shall take the solo, whoever may refuse to join in the chorus. I will sing, and with my mouth will I make known Thy faithfulness." Now, note his subject. "I will sing of the mercies of the Lord." What, not of anything else? Are the mercies of the Lord his exclusive theme? "Arma virumque cano" — "Arms and the man, I sing," says the Latin poet. "Mercies and my God, I sing," says the Hebrew seer. "I will sing of mercies," says the devout Christian. This is the fount of mercy, whereof if a man doth drink he shall sing far better than he that drinketh of the Castalian fount, and on Parnassus begins to tune his harp. This singing of Ethan was intended to be instructive. How large a class did he want to teach? He intended to make known God's mercy to all generations. Modern thought does not adventure beyond the tithe of a century, and it gets tame and tasteless before half that tiny span of sensationalism has given it time to evaporate. But the echoes of truth are not so transient; they endure, and by means of the printing press we can teach generation after generation, leaving books behind us as this good man has bequeathed this psalm, which is teaching us to-night, perhaps more largely than it taught any generation nearer to him. Will you transmit blessed testimonies to your children's children? It should be your desire to do something in the present life that will live after you are gone. We instinctively long for a sort of immortality here. Let us strive to get it, not by carving our names on some stone, or writing our epitaphs upon a pillar, as Absalom did when he had nothing else by which to commemorate himself; but get to work to do something which shall be a testimony to the mercy of God, that others shall see when you are gone. ( C. H. Spurgeon.) (Samuel Cox, D.D.) 5689 friendlessness 5831 depression How to Make Use of Christ as the Truth, that we May Get Our Case and Condition Cleared up to Us. How a Desolate Man Ought to Commit Himself into the Hands of God Our Status. His Past Work. How is Christ, as the Life, to be Applied by a Soul that Misseth God's Favour and Countenance. Letter xvi to Rainald, Abbot of Foigny Letter xxiv (Circa A. D. 1126) to Oger, Regular Canon The Wrath of God Period ii. The Church from the Permanent Division of the Empire Until the Collapse of the Western Empire and the First Schism Between the East and the West, or Until About A. D. 500 Sense in Which, and End for which all Things were Delivered to the Incarnate Son. Of Faith. The Definition of It. Its Peculiar Properties. Psalms |
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