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We remark upon the prayer contained in this verse -

I. THAT SUCH PRAYER MAY BE AN IMPROPER ONE. Our Lord said to the people of his day, "Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe." And how many today are like these people! Now, such request for tokens is wrong:

1. When we presume to select tokens for ourselves. God may allow this, as he did to Gideon in connection with the fleece of wool; but it is very improper for us to be stipulating for specific signs. With how many their religion is one dependent on their feelings, and varies as they do! Naaman "turned, and went away in a rage" (2 Kings 5.), because God's prophet did not fulfil his idea as to the way in which be should be healed.

2. When we trust to a token more than we do to the Word of testimony. St. Peter, though he had seen the glorious vision on the Transfiguration mount - a token for good, if ever there was one - is yet careful to add, "But we have the more sure word of prophecy." And of all our tokens, as well as all our opinions, we are bound to bring them "to the Law, and to the testimony," and there test them; for "if they be not according to this word, it is because there is no truth in them." And not a few of men's fancied tokens have turned out to have no truth in them.

3. When we withhold faith till we have some token which we think will justify it. (See Luke 1:18.) And when the Jews demanded a sign from heaven, as they were perpetually doing, it was refused them, as such requests ever will be (cf. Luke 1:18).

II. SUCH PRAYER IS NEVER ONE WHOSE ANSWER IS ESSENTIAL. For without any such special tokens as we might wish for, there is no child of God but has tokens for good in abundance.

1. There is the Lord Jesus Christ. Is he not God's great and eternal token for good to us?

2. And the fact that God has created us, brought us into being. Would he have done that had he meant evil to us? "Known unto God are all his works."

3. And the further fact that we have come to Christ, are trusting him now, and the Holy Spirit is doing his blessed work in us still.

4. All the promises of God, so exceeding great and precious, - are not all these tokens for good? Assuredly they are.

III. BUT IT IS, AT TIMES, A PERMISSIBLE ONE. It was so in the case of the psalmist. For in spite of all difficulties he looked to God; his troubles drove him to God, and to God only, and not to the help of men. Such a man was not one who would arbitrarily select some given token, or who would trust it more than the Word of God, or who would withhold his belief until it was given. But he desired it for the convincement and discomfiture of his enemies, as well as for the confirmation of his own faith.

IV. AND GOD HAS OFTEN GIVEN SUCH TOKENS. Moses and the rod; Gideon with the fleece; Hezekiah with his dial. And he gives the like still, in answers to prayer, in providential help, in support under trial, in unlooked for events.

V. THE RESULTS WHICH HAVE FOLLOWED. God's enemies have been ashamed. See in, Israel's history when. God gave them such tokens, how we read of their enemies having "no more spirit in them." And still, when God visibly sustains his people, unbelievers look on and are silent, in fear, because conscious of the presence of God. But let us remember that we are never without tokens for good. - S.C.

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KJV: Shew me a token for good; that they which hate me may see it, and be ashamed: because thou, LORD, hast holpen me, and comforted me.

WEB: Show me a sign of your goodness, that those who hate me may see it, and be shamed, because you, Yahweh, have helped me, and comforted me. A Psalm by the sons of Korah; a Song.