The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; You have made my lot secure. Sermons
I. WE HAVE HERE THE SONG OF A SAINT INSPIRED BY REVELATION. In this light the contents of the psalm are very varied. We number them, not as re]lowing in exact logical or culminative order, but that we may call the student's and preacher's attention thereto, one by one; observing that we follow the Revised Version, which is most excellent. Here is: 1. A prayer and a plea. (Ver. 1.) Apparently he is in peril; what, we do not know; but, as is his wont, he makes his hiding-place in God; and very touching is the plea he puts in: "for in thee do I put my trust." Our God loves to be trusted. The confidence which his people repose in him is in his sight of great price; and he will hot - cannot disappoint them. 2. The psalmist has taken Jehovah to be his own God. Jehovah - the eternal God - the God of Israel, was his own sovereign Lord. And as he confided to him all his cares, so he yielded to him his entire homage. 3. He finds in God his supreme joy. "I have no good beyond thee" (cf. Psalm 63:25). All the largest desires of the soul have their perfect satisfaction in God. 4. In his fellow-saints, he finds a holy brotherhood. In them is his delight (Psalm 42:4; Malachi 3:16). The closest and dearest bond of permanent friendship is found in the fellowship of holy life and love in God. 5. He shuns the ungodly. In blended pity and anger he looks on those of his nation who have lapsed into idolatry, and exchanged the worship of Jehovah for the service of idols (cf. Jeremiah 2:13; Romans 1:25, Revised Version). 6. The portion which he has in God is secured to him. (Ver. 5.) It cannot slip from his grasp, nor be snatched out of his hand, nor can he in any way be despoiled thereof. God will uphold him in possession, and will give him timely counsel and assistance (ver. 7). 7. God is ever before him, as a constantly present Friend. He is no abstraction. But one ever at his right hand, to guard, guide, advise, gladden, and strengthen. Yea, to give him a steadfast, unconquerable firmness in the midst of numerous foes. 8. Consequently, he has a heritage of wealth with which he is well pleased. (Ver. 6.) The inheritance assigned to him as it were by lot, and marked out as it were by line, was one which gave him a plenitude of delight. 9. For he knows that the near and dear relationship between himself and God is one which not even death itself can disturb. David caught a glimpse of the sublime truth of how much God had meant when he told Moses, "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" (cf. Matthew 22:31, 32). We have almost the truth which is expressed in 1 Thessalonians 5:10. "My flesh," he says, "shall rest in hope." Yea, more; David even peers beyond the unseen state (Sheol); he beholds it conquered, and the one whose God is the Lord delivered for ever from the hold of death. And even this is not all; but he sees far, far beyond, awaiting the believer, fulness of joy and eternal delights in the immediate presence of the great eternal God. So that the burden of the song may be summed up in our final thought on this aspect of the psalm, that: 10. Once God's, he was his for ever! "Thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol" (cf. Psalm 48:14; Psalm 73:26). Is it any wonder that, with such a heritage in Divine love, the psalmist should find his heart glow with joy, and that his tongue should break out into shouts of praise? Surely if such a God is ours, and ours for ever, we are well provided for, and shall be well guarded, throughout eternity. II. WE HAVE HERE ALSO THE VISION OF A SEER WHO WAS INSPIRED FOR A REVELATION. We have in that memorable sermon on the Day of Pentecost, when Peter opened up the kingdom to Israel, a remarkable reference to this very psalm (cf. Acts 2:25-31). In which the apostle declares that what David said respecting the Holy One, he spoke as a prophet, seeing far ahead the fulfilment of the covenant God had made with him. And in Acts 13:34-37 the Apostle Paul makes an equally distinct reference to this psalm, while he even more emphatically declares this prophetic utterance to be a Divine declaration. And we get a plain and distinct account of such far distant scriptural forecasts in 2 Peter 1:21. Thus we can clearly trace a second significance in the latter half of Psalm 16., as it recounts "the sure mercies of David." For, indeed, if it had not been for the Divine promise and oath made to him - a promise and an oath the fulfilment of which could never be disturbed by the vicissitudes of time, there might not and probably would not have been the like joyful repose of the saint in God, in the prospect of death and of eternity. So that, although the vision of the prophet comes second in our consideration, it was really the first in importance, and the foundation of all the rest. And all this may be brought home in fruitful teaching, in four or five progressive steps. 1. David had had a direct revelation that his throne should be established for ever. (2 Samuel 23:3-5; 2 Samuel 7:12-16; Psalm 72; Psalm 89:20-37.) And to his dying day, amid all the disturbances of his house, this covenant, "ordered in all things and sure," was all his salvation, and all his desire. 2. In the foreglancings of prophetic vision he saw the Holy One in the coming age as its Ruler and its Head. 3. He beheld also the Holy One going down into the tomb. To Sheol; not hell, but Hades, the invisible realm of the departed. 4. He beheld the Holy One rising again. As the Lord and Conqueror of death; as the Head of the redeemed, he beheld him leaving the grave, and going forward and upward as their Forerunner. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus carries along with it that of all his followers. 5. It was on this sublime Messianic hope that the psalmist built his own. And, indeed, it was on this that such as Abraham fixed their gaze, with leaping gladness and thankful joy "That which is true of the members is true, in its highest sense, of the Head, and is only true of the members because they are joined to the Head" (Perowne); 1 Thessalonians 5:10. III. IN COMBINING THE SONG OF THE SAINT AND THE VISION OF THE SEER, WE HAVE MOST ELEVATED AND ELEVATING TEACHING FOR OURSELVES. 1. Here is the great secret of life made known to and by the holy prophets. As one expositor remarks, the antithesis in the psalm is not between life here and life there, but between a life in God and a life apart from him. 2. That God should have disclosed this great secret by his Spirit can bring no difficulty whatever to those who understand communion with God. 3. The grand redemption of God's grace is realized in a fellowship of holy souls in blest and everlasting relation to God as their Portion, their endless Heritage of infinite purity and delight. 4. This fellowship of life centres round him whom no death can retain in its hold, even round him who is the Resurrection and the Life. Believers are one in God because one in Christ. 5. His triumph over the tomb is the pledge of theirs. He has gone ahead as their Forerunner, and has in their name taken his place in the Father's house, preparing theirs likewise. 6. Hence the entire blessing of God's great salvation is summed up in the words, "Thou wilt show me the path of life." In which phrase, as Austin finely says, "we have a guide, Thou; a traveller, me; a way, the path; the end, life. Happy are they who choose this Guide, who follow this way, who inherit such a life! How the troubles and perils of this life seem to dwindle away when we can realize that such a God and such a home are ours! and not ours only, but also of all those who have said to Jehovah, Thou art my Lord"! - C.
The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup. I. ALL TRUE RELIGION CONSISTS IN DELIBERATELY CHOOSING GOD AS MY SUPREME GOOD. Now, how do we possess God? We possess things in one fashion and persons in another. The lowest and most imperfect form of possession is that by which a man simply keeps other people off material good, and asserts the right of disposal of it as he thinks proper. A blind man may have the finest picture that ever was painted; he may call it his, that is to say, nobody else can sell it, but what good is it to him? A lunatic may own a library as big as a Bodleian, but what use is it to him? Does the man that draws the rents of a mountain side, or the poet or painter to whom its cliffs and heather speak far-reaching thoughts, most truly possess it? The highest form of possession, even of creatures, is when they minister to our thought, to our emotion, to our moral and intellectual growth. We possess even things, really, according as we know them and hold communion with them. And when we get up into the region of persons we possess people in the measure in which we understand them, and sympathise with them, and love them. A man that gets the thoughts of a great teacher into his mind, and has his whole being saturated by them, may be said to have made the teacher his own. A friend or a lover owns the heart that he or she loves, and which loves back again; and not otherwise do we possess God. And the ownership must be, from its very nature, reciprocal. And so we read in the Bible, with equal frequency: the Lord is the "inheritance of His people, and the people are the inheritance of the Lord." He possesses me, and I possess Him, with reverence be it spoken, by the very same tenure, for whoso loves God has Him, and whom He loves He owns. We have God for ours in the measure in which our minds are actively occupied with thoughts of Him. We know Him. There is a real, adequate knowledge of Him in Jesus Christ; we know God, His character, His heart, His relations to us, His thoughts of good concerning us sufficiently for all intellectual and for all practical purposes. I wish to ask you a plain question. Do you ever think about Him? There is only one way of getting God for yours, and that is by the road of bringing Him into your life by frequent meditation upon His sweetness, and upon the truths that you know about Him. There is no other way by which a spirit can possess a spirit that is not cognisable by sense, except only by the way of thinking about Him to begin with. All else follows that. That is how you hold your dear ones when they go to the other side of the world.II. THIS POSSESSION IS MADE AS SURE AS GOD CAN MAKE IT. "Thou maintainest my lot." The land, the partition of which amongst the tribes lies at the bottom of the illusive metaphor of my text, was given to them under the sanction of a supernatural defence; and the law of their continuance in it was that they should trust and serve the unseen King. It Was He, according to the theocratic theory of the Old Testament, and not chariots and horses, their own arm and their own sword, that kept them safe, though the enemies on the north and the enemies on the south were big enough to swallow up the little kingdom at a mouthful. And so, says the Psalmist allusively, in a similar manner the Divine Power surrounds the man who takes God for his heritage, and nothing shall take that heritage from him. The lower forms of possession, by which men are called the owners of material possessions, are imperfect, because they are all precarious and temporary. Nothing really belongs to a man if it can be taken from him. What we may lose we can scarcely be said to have. They are mine, they were yours, they will be somebody's else tomorrow. Whilst we have them we do not have them in any deep sense; we cannot retain them, they are not really ours at all. The only thing that is worth calling mine is something that so passes into and saturates the very substance of my soul, that, like a piece of cloth dyed in the grain, as long as two threads hold together the tint will be there. That is how God gives us Himself, and nothing can take that out of a man's soul. He, in the sweetness of His grace, bestows Himself upon man, and guards His own gift, which is Himself, in the heart. He who dwells in God and God in him lives as in the inmost keep and citadel. The noise of battle may rage around the walls, but deep silence and peace are within. The storm may rage round the coasts, but he who has God for his portion dwells in a quiet inland valley where the tempests never come. No outer changes can touch our possession of God. They belong to another region altogether. Other goods may go, but this is held by different tenure. Root yourselves in God, making Him your truest treasure, and nothing can rob you of your wealth. We here in this commercial community see plenty of examples of great fortunes and great businesses melting away like yesterday's snow. Then, too, there is the other thought. He will help us so that no temptations shall have power to make us rob ourselves of our treasure. None can take it from us but ourselves, but we are so weak and surrounded by temptations so strong that we need Him to aid us if we are not to be beguiled by our own treacherous hearts into parting with our treasure. A handful of feeble Jews were nothing against the gigantic might of Assyria, or against the compacted strength of civilised Egypt, but there they stood, on their rocky mountains, defended not by their own strength but by the might of a present God. And so, unfit to cope with the temptations that are round about us as we are, if we cast ourselves upon His power and make Him our supreme delight, nothing shall be able to rob us of that possession and that sweetness. III. HE WHO THUS ELECTS TO FIND HIS TREASURE AND DELIGHT IN GOD IS SATISFIED WITH HIS CHOICE. "The lines" — the measuring cords by which the estate was parted off and determined — "the lines are fallen," because they would be thrown, "in pleasant places; yea!" not as our Bible has it, merely, "I have a goodly heritage," putting emphasis on the fact of possession, but "the heritage is goodly to me," putting emphasis on the fact of subjective satisfaction with the inheritance that he is to receive. No man that makes the worse choice of earth instead of God ever, in the retrospect, said, "I have a goodly heritage." One of the later Roman emperors, who was one of the best of them, said, when he was dying, "I have been everything, and it profits me nothing." No creature can satisfy your whole nature. Portions of it may be fed with their appropriate satisfaction, but as long as we feed on the things of earth there will always be part of our nature, like an unfed tiger in a menagerie, growling and grumbling for its prey, whilst its fellows are satisfied for the moment. No man that takes the world for his portion ever said, "The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places." For the make of your soul as plainly cries out "God!" as a fish's fins declare that the sea is its element, or a bird's wings mark it out as meant to soar. Man and God fit each other like the two halves of a tally. You will never get rest nor satisfaction, and you will never be able to look to the past with thankfulness, nor into the present with repose, nor into the future with hope, unless you can say, "God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever." But oh! if you do, then you have a goodly heritage, a heritage of quiet repose, a heritage of still satisfaction, a heritage which suits, and gratifies, and expands all the powers of a man's nature, and makes him ever capable of larger and larger possessions, of a God who ever gives more than we can receive, that the overplus may draw us to further desire, and the further desire may more fully be satisfied. The one true, pure, abiding joy is to hold fellowship with God and to live in His love. The secret of all our unrest is the going out of our desires after earthly things. They fly forth from our hearts like Noah's dove, and nowhere amid all the weltering flood can find a resting place. The secret of satisfied repose is to set our affections thoroughly on God. Then our wearied hearts, like Noah's dove, will fold their wings and build, and nestle fast by the throne of God. "All the happiness of this life," said William Law, "is but trying to quench thirst out of golden empty cups." But if we will take the Lord for the "portion of our cup" we shall never thirst. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) I. THE CHARACTER HERE DESCRIBED. 1. To such a man God is recognised in His real character, sovereign and supreme, the Source of all that is enjoyed here or expected hereafter. Here is the difference between those who serve the Lord and those who serve Him not. There is nothing of good in this world which is not open to the believer as much as to anyone else; all instruments and appliances of happiness are bestowed on him as well as on them. But besides all this he can say, "The Lord is the portion," etc. How wretched they who have only this world. 2, But is God your portion? that is the great question. Do you know of any sinking into the grave without God, who have turned away from opportunities which will never return? Think of them, and resolve never to be as they. II. THE DISTINCTIVE FEATURE OF THE BLESSING, — PERPETUITY. The "lot" of the believer is to be "maintained," no matter how terrible and distressing his circumstances may be. And it is so, But this cannot be said of any worldly lot. Solomon had the world's best, yet his heart took no rest. "Vanity and vexation of spirit" is his verdict upon it all. But the wisdom and the power of God uphold the "lot" in which the believer rejoices. And this is not all a matter of opinion and faith. For the life of the godless will not bear reflection. Hence they hate solitude. But the believer when alone can say, "I am not alone, for the Father is with me." And death has lost its sting, and the future brings no fear, for he knows that God will ever maintain his "lot." (T. Dale, M. A.) 1. God is the true portion of the soul. The inheritance is ours by gift. The sun gives itself to the flower to nourish it, and paint it, and feed it; and so the great God, in all the extent of His infinite nature, gives Himself to every soul of man, to become his portion, his inheritance. He gives Himself, but the gift is through birth. When you are regenerate, when you are born again, by the very fact of that supernatural act which has been wrought within your soul you become an heir of God and a joint heir with His Son. But it is not only yours by gift and by birth, it is yours through Christ. And it is by the Holy Ghost. Notice how goodly a heritage it is. Because it is so perfectly adapted to us. Have you ever thought of the perfect adaptation of this earth to man? The macrocosm tallies with the microcosm, the outward with the inward. As the whole nature of man is fitted to the world where God has put him, so is the spirit of man fitted for God, and God for it. Even if there were no revelation of God, by a study of the yearnings of the heart of man, as the heart cries for God, you might formulate the essential features of the being of God: there is such a perfect adaptation between nature and the external world, and there is such a perfect adaptation between the soul and God. It is a goodly portion, because it satisfies us. The unrest of life comes in because you let your desires wander hither and thither like bees over a flower garden. If you would only let God be your portion you would find that rest would hush your soul, and the peace that passeth understanding would settle down upon your life. And it is inexhaustible. There shall never come a time when you and I shall have reached the limit of the fulness of God. And it is secure. The soul that has made God its portion can look upon the unrest of the political world, the strife of man about money, the shattering of colossal fortunes, and the breaking up of great societies secure, because it has found its pasture land, its harvest, its vintage, its ore, in God's nature, friendship, and presence. 2. How to use it — (1) (2) (3) (4) (F. B. Meyer, B. A.) (George Swinnock.) (R. A. Torrey, D. D.) God with Us, and we with God Messiah Rising from the Dead Smith -- Assurance in God India as Carey Found It Source of My Life's Refreshing Springs, Though Some Good Things of Lower Worth Eleventh Sunday after Trinity. In Thy Presence is Fulness of Joy; at Thy Right Hand There are Pleasures for Evermore. But Whilst the King Has not that Most Blessed Light... Israel the Beloved One Saying from Three Men The Psalmist --Setting the Lord The Joy of the Lord. But Concerning True Patience, Worthy of the Name of this virtue... The Joint Heirs and their Divine Portion Period iv. The Age of the Consolidation of the Church: 200 to 324 A. D. The Wrath of God The Early Life of Malachy. Having Been Admitted to Holy Orders He Associates with Malchus Notes on the First Century: Out of the Deep of Suffering and Sorrow. Angels Announce the Resurrection to Certain Women. Peter and John Enter The Malachy's Pity for his Deceased Sister. He Restores the Monastery of Bangor. His First Miracles. The Creation Religion Pleasant to the Religious. |
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