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1. Our Lord graciously purposes for each of His children perfect health. He would have every power and faculty in our being working in holy vigour. Our health is our only safety.

(1) To be in any way sickly or weak is to offer welcome hospitality to the evil one. He seeks out our weak points, and at the undefended place he makes his entrance. Fulness of health is fulness of resistance. The healthy soul by its very vigour is fortified against the invasions of evil and night. Indifferent spiritual health is exposed to incessant peril. The city of Corinth abounded in evil. Epidemics of worldliness and vice pervaded every grade of social life. The Christian needed to be in perfect health if he were not to be smitten by the ill contagion. Men of weakly wills and indifferent consciences and lukewarm affections fell before the invader, and became the victims of the prevalent vanity or lust. And you will remember that the Apostle Paul, looking at the little Corinthian Church, was filled with anxiety concerning some of its members. "Some are sickly!" He felt that their silliness was a friendly condition to the worldliness that besieged the gates of the Church. Their weakness exposed them to its attacks. Now, the Lord purposes that we should be in perfect health. He yearns to destroy our easy susceptibility to sin, and to place the whole bias of our life in the direction of holiness. When all our powers are perfectly healthy, our very health will be our resistance to the encroachments of the devil.

(2) But spiritual health is more than self-protective; it is contagious. Common thought and common speech have made us familiar with the contagion of vice. I wish that we were equally familiar with the conception of the contagion of virtue. An evil effluence proceeds from the life of the sin-possessed; an invigorating and purifying effluence proceeds from the life of the sanctified. "Out of Him shall flow rivers of living water." We impress and influence one another not only by what we say and what we do, but even more deeply still by what we are. Our presence itself is vitalizing if we are possessed by vigorous moral and spiritual health. In the home, in the workshop, in society, in the place of worship, our presence counts for something, counts for much, and "virtue" is going out of us as a river of operative energy in all the many relationships of our varied life. Our health is not only self-protective, it acts as a saving ministry in the lives of others.

(3) But spiritual health is not only self-protective and contagious, it is actively aggressive. "Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with him." The God-possessed exercise a repressive influence over the vices and passions of men. Everybody knows that we can create conditions that incite another man's temper and lust, and we can create conditions by which these fires and cravings can be suppressed and destroyed. Our medical men sometimes provide medicated atmospheres to help to heal the ailments of their patients. They can soften and moisten the air, and so give comfort to the struggling and help to regain them to health. The Christian man supplies a medicated atmosphere to his brother. His very presence helps in the creation of conditions which are unfavourable to vice and friendly to virtue.

2. As for the secret of this "saving health," it is to be found in the first verse of this psalm. The psalmist is a suppliant; he is kneeling in the presence chamber of the King. "God be merciful unto us, and bless us!" He is pleading with the good Lord to stoop in pity, and to lay upon him the forgiving and liberating hand. "Cause Thy face to shine upon us!" But that means that the suppliant's face is turned towards the face of the Maker! We are renewed into the same image. Our countenances catch the light and life that we contemplate. He is the "health of my countenance." We become possessed of the saving health of God.

(J. H. Jowett, M. A.)

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KJV: {To the chief Musician on Neginoth, A Psalm or Song.} God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause his face to shine upon us; Selah.

WEB: May God be merciful to us, bless us, and cause his face to shine on us. Selah.