Psalm 3:5

I. In this text, if we will consider it well, we find a clear token of the mysteries of this solemn time of Easter: our Lord dying and rising again. If the person who speaks is Jesus Christ, no doubt His lying down is His death upon the Cross; His sleep is the rest which He took in Joseph's sepulchre; His rising up again is that glorious awaking and bursting of the bonds of death, which makes the Church joyful this day and every Sunday in the year.

II. And surely we do well to connect that mystery with our own lying down and rising up, as often as night and morning return; but daily lying down and rising up is given us for a sacramental sign and pledge of Christ's death and resurrection and of our own.

III. Christ is in the meanest, the least, of His people as a life-giving Spirit, a fountain of eternal life; and if it be life eternal, will it leave a man when his time comes to die and be turned again to his dust? No, it will not leave him. To God he will still live if he die in faith; even in the grave he will abide a member of Christ. He may lie down and sleep, and seem alone and helpless, but he has within him that which sustains him, still keeps him in true communion with God. Christ, even now abiding in His people, makes them already in this world partakers of a heavenly and Divine life. He sustains them both sleeping and waking, in life and in death, in their beds and in their graves, for in both conditions they are alike members of Him. Dying, they partake of His Cross and Passion, and they are to rise again and live for ever in virtue of His glorious and happy resurrection.

Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. vi., p. 92.

References: Psalm 3:8.—J. Wells, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. v., p. 145. Psalm 3—A. Maclaren, Life of David, p. 246; Parker, The Ark of God, p. 122; I. Williams, The Psalms Interpreted of Christ, p. 100; S. Cox, Expositor, 2nd series, vol. iii., p. 94. Psalm 4:2.—Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 98.