|
Unless otherwise noted, the following quotations are from Charles Spurgeon. |
"The law of the Lord is the daily bread of the true believer. And yet, in David's day, how small was the volume of inspiration, for they had scarcely anything save the first five books of Moses! How much more, then, should we prize the whole written Word which it is our privilege to have in all our houses! But, alas, what ill-treatment is given to this angel from heaven!... Is your delight in the law of God? Do you study God's Word? Do you make it the man of your right hand -- your best companion and hourly guide? If not, this blessing belongeth not to you." Psalm I |
"The dragon lost his sting when he dashed it into the soul of Jesus." Psalm III |
"Search the Scripture through, and you must, if you read it with candid mind, be persuaded that the doctrine of salvation by grace alone is the great doctrine of the Word of God... We hold and teach that salvation from first to last, in every iota of it, belongs to the Most High God. It is God that chooses his people. He calls them by his grace: he quickens them by his Spirit, and keeps them by his power. It is not of man, neither by man, 'not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.' May we all learn this truth experimentally, for our proud flesh and blood will never permit us to learn it in any other way." Psalm III |
"O sinners, flee ye to the sacrifices of Calvary, and there put your whole confidence and trust, for he who died for men is the Lord Jehovah." Psalm IV |
"When the wolf licks the lamb, he is preparing to wet his teeth in its blood." Psalm V |
"God's people may groan, but they may not grumble." Psalm VI |
"The best remedy for us against an evil man is a long space between us both." Psalm VI |
"We should never think our prayers complete until we ask for preservation from ALL sin, and ALL enemies." Psalm VII |
"Turn or burn is the sinner's only alternative... The Greek proverb saith, 'The mill of God grinds late, but grinds to powder.'" Psalm VII |
"None but the Lord himself can fully know his own glory. The believing heart is ravished with what it sees, but God only knows the glory of God." Psalm VII |
"What God's words are, the words of his children should be." Psalm XII |
"The moral who are not devout, the honest who are not prayerful, the benevolent who are not believing, the amiable who are not converted, these must all have their portion with the openly wicked in the hell which is prepared for the devil and his angels... the forgetters of God are far more numerous than the profane or profligate... the nethermost hell will be the place into which all of them shall be hurled headlong. Forgetfulness seems a small sin, but it brings eternal wrath upon the man who lives and dies in it." Psalm IX |
"God bares the back that the blow may be felt; for it is only FELT affliction which can become BLEST affliction." Psalm X |
"The refiner is never far from the mouth of the furnace when his gold is in the fire, and the Son of God is always walking in the midst of the flames when his holy children are cast into them." Psalm X |
"Proud hearts breed proud looks and stiff knees." Psalm X |
"None but the silliest of geese would go the fox's sermon." Psalm X |
"It is well for us that our salvation and God's honour are so intimately connected, that they stand of fall together." Psalm XIII |
"God's house is a hive for workers, not a nest for drones." Psalm XV |
"Saints not only desire to love and speak truth with their lips, but they seek to be true within; they will not lie even in the closet of their hearts, for God is there to listen; they scorn double meanings, evasions, equivocations, white lies, flatteries, and deceptions." Psalm XV |
"He who bridles his tongue will not give a license to his hand." Psalm XV |
"In slander as well as robbery, the receiver is as bad as the thief." Psalm XV |
"Jesus instead of taking reward against the innocent died for the guilty." Psalm XV |
"If the Church would enjoy union with Christ, she must break all the bonds of impiety, and keep herself pure from all the pollutions of carnal will-worship, which now pollute the service of God." Psalm XVI |
"Some professors are guilty of great sin in remaining in the communion of Popish churches, where God is as much dishonoured as in Rome herself, only in a more crafty manner." Psalm XVI |
"The lowest heathen are without excuse, if they do not discover the invisible things of God in the works which he has made. Sun, moon, and stars are God's traveling preachers; they are apostles upon their journey confirming those who regard the Lord, and judges on circuit condemning those who worship idols." Psalm XIX |
"God the Holy Ghost must illuminate us, or all the suns in the milky way never will." Psalm XIX |
"There are no redundancies and no omissions in the Word of God, and in the plan of grace; why then do men try to paint this lily and gild this refined gold? The gospel is perfect in all its parts, and perfect as a whole: it is a crime to add to it, treason to alter it, and felony to take from it." Psalm XIX |
"The great means of the conversion of sinners is the Word of God, and the more closely we keep to it in our ministry the more likely we are to be successful. It is God's Word rather than man's comment on God's Word which is made mighty with souls... Try men's depraved nature with philosophy and reasoning, and it laughs your efforts to scorn, but the Word of God soon works a transformation." Psalm XIX |
"The revealed will of God is never changed; even Jesus came not to destroy but to fulfill, and even the ceremonial law was only changed as to its shadow, the substance intended by it is eternal." Psalm XIX |
"He best knows himself who best knows the Word." Psalm XIX |
"Why, if we could receive pardon for all our sins by telling every sin we have committed in one hour, there is not one of us who would be able to enter heaven, since, besides the sins that are known to us and that we may be able to confess, there are a vast mass of sins, which are as truly sins as those which we lament, but which are secret, and come not beneath our eyes." Psalm XIX |
"We ought to trust in God for the promotion of the Redeemer's kingdom, for in Jehovah the King himself trusts: all unbelieving methods of action, and especially all reliance upon mere human ability, should be for ever discarded from a kingdom where the monarch sets the example of walking by faith in God." Psalm XXI |
"Never tolerate slight thoughts of hell, or you will soon have low thoughts of sin." Psalm XXI |
"God wrought our deliverance alone, and he alone shall have the praise." Psalm XXI |
"For as we can only appropriate the word through the Spirit, so we shall ordinarily receive the Spirit through the Word; not indeed only by hearing it, not only by reading it, not only by reflecting upon it. The Spirit of God, who is a most free agent, and who is himself the source of liberty, will come into the heart of the believer when he will, and how he will, and as he will. But the effect of his coming will ever be the realization of some promise, the recognition of some principle, the attainment of some grace, the understanding of some mystery, which is already in the word, and which we shall thus find, with a deeper impression, and with a fuller development, brought home with power to the heart." Psalm XXIII, Thomas Dale, M.A., in "The Good Shepherd", 1847 |
"Do you find in the Father's election, in the Son's atonement, and in the Spirit's quickening all the grounds of your eternal hopes?... Those do us but sorry service who try to dissuade us from meditating upon election and its kindred topics." Psalm XXV |
"Gospel privileges are not for every pretender. Art thou of the seed royal or no?" Psalm XXV |
"It is no less true than wonderful that through the atonement the justice of God pleads as strongly as his grace for the salvation of the sinners whom Jesus died to save." Psalm XXV |
"He who fears God has nothing else to fear." Psalm XXV |
"Saints have the key of heaven's hieroglyphics; they can unriddle celestial enigmas. They are initiated into the fellowship of the skies; they have heard words which it is not possible for them to repeat to their fellows." Psalm XXV |
"The designs of love which the Lord has to his people in the covenant of grace, he has been pleased to show to believers in the Book of Inspiration, and by his Spirit he leads us into the mystery, even the hidden mystery of redemption." Psalm XXV |
"There is no less a secret of godliness, than there is of any other trade or profession. Many profess an art or a trade, but thrive not by it, because they have not the secret and mystery of it; and many profess godliness, but are little the better for it, because they have not the true secret of it: he hath that, with whom God is in secret in his heart; and he that is righteous in secret, where no man sees him, he is the righteous man with whom the secret of the Lord is." Psalm XXV, Michael Jermin, DD, 1591-1659 |
"Those who would be transfigured with Jesus must not be disfigured by conformity to the world." Psalm XXVI |
"A man who does not hate evil terribly, does not love good heartily... What God hates we must hate." Psalm XXVI |
"We are never in greater danger than in the sunshine of prosperity. To be always indulged of God, and never to taste of trouble, is rather a token of God's neglect than of his tender love." Psalm XXX, William Strather |
"The cause of God is never in danger: infernal craft is outwitted by infinite wisdom, and Satanic malice held in check by boundless power. He changes not his purpose, his decree is not frustrated, his designs are accomplished. God has a predestination according to the counsel of his will, and none of the devices of his foes can thwart his decree for a moment." Psalm XXXIII |
"Election is at the bottom of it all. The divine choice rules the day; none take Jehovah to be their God till he takes them to be his people." Psalm XXXIII |
"Consider thy ways, O man, for God considers them!" Psalm XXXIII |
"To Jehovah, and not to second causes our gratitude is to be rendered. The Lord hath by right a monopoly in his creatures' praise." Psalm XXXIV |
"He who praises God for mercies shall never want a mercy for which to praise. To bless the Lord is never unseasonable." Psalm XXXIV |
"No really good thing shall be denied to those whose first and main end in life is to seek the Lord. Men may call them fools, but the Lord will prove them wise. They shall win where the world's wiseacres lose their all, and God shall have the glory of it." Psalm XXXIV |
"Want sanctified is a notable means to bring to repentance, to work in us amendment of life, it stirs up prayer, it weans from the love of the world, it keeps us always prepared for the spiritual combat, discovers whether we be true believers or hypocrites, prevents greater evils of sin and punishment to come; it makes us humble, conformable to Christ our Head, increaseth our faith, our joy, and thankfulness, our spiritual wisdom, and likewise our patience." Psalm XXXIV, Richard Young |
"Were we more hopeless, helpless, and fatherless, we should find more mercy from the hand of Jesus Christ. O that God would awaken and shake some sin sleeping soul this day! O that this doctrine thus opened might be as a thunderbolt to let some of you see the inside of yourselves! O poor sinner, thou hast an unsupportable burden of sin and guilt lying on thy soul, ready to press thee down to hell, and yet you feel it not; thou hast the wrath of God hanging over thy head by the twined thread of a short life, which it may be thou mayest not be free from one year, nay, perhaps not one month, but thou seest it not; if thou didst but see it, then thou wouldest cry out as he did in Bosworth field, A horse! a horse! a kingdom for a horse! So thou wouldest cry out, None but Christ! nothing but Christ! ten thousand worlds for Christ!" Psalm XXXIV, James Nallon |
"Christ's bones were in themselves breakable, but could not actually be broken by all the violence in the world, because God had fore decreed, a bone of him shall not be broken. So we confess God's children mortal; but all the power of devil or man may not, must not, cannot, kill them before their conversion, according to God's election of them to life, which must be fully accomplished." Psalm XXXIV, Thomas Fuller |
"Every saint of God shall have this privilege: the accuser of the brethren shall be met by the Advocate of the saints... Let us not fail to leave our case into the Lord's hand. Vain is the help of man, but ever effectual is the interposition of heaven... in judgment they shall have a divine advocate, in warfare a divine protection." Psalm XXXV |
"Woe, woe, woe, unto those who touch the people of God; their destruction is both swift and sure." Psalm XXXV |
"There are only such limits to human malice as God himself may see fit to place." Psalm XXXV |
"There cannot be a greater evidence of a wicked heart, than for a man to be merry because others are in misery." Psalm XXXV, Thomas Brooks |
"I will suggest a remedy whereby thou mayest praise God all the day long if thou wilt. Whatever thou dost, do well, and thou hast praised God... In the innocency of thy works prepare thyself to praise God all the day long." Psalm XXXV, Augustine |
"Those eyes which have no fear of God before them now, shall have the terrors of hell before them for ever." Psalm XXXVI |
"Not even to save his elect would the Lord suffer his righteousness to be set aside. No awe inspired by mountain scenery can equal that which fills the soul when it beholds the Son of God slain as a victim to vindicate the justice of the Inflexible Lawgiver. Right across the path of every unholy man who dreams of heaven stand the towering Andes of divine righteousness, which no unregenerate sinner can ever climb. Among great mountains lie slumbering avalanches, and there the young lightnings try their callow wings until the storm rushes down amain from the awful peaks; so against the great day of the Lord's wrath the Lord has laid up in the mountains of his righteousness dreadful ammunition of war with which to overwhelm his adversaries." Psalm XXXVI |
"God's dealings with men are not to be fathomed by every boaster who demands to see a why for every wherefore. The Lord is not to be questioned by us as to why this and why that. He has reasons, but he does not choose to submit them to our foolish consideration... Yet as the deep mirrors the sky, so the mercy of the Lord is to be seen reflected in all the arrangements of his government on earth, and over the profound depth the covenant rainbow casts its arch of comfort, for the Lord is faithful in all that he doeth." Psalm XXXVI |
"No inward intelligence of ours leads us to receive the Spirit's light... Vain are they who look to learning and human wit, one ray from the throne of God is better than the noonday splendour of created wisdom." Psalm XXXVI |
"It is well when the petition is but the reflection of the promise... although a continuance of mercy is guaranteed in the covenant, we are yet to make it a matter of prayer. For this good thing will the Lord be enquired of." Psalm XXXVI |
"The defeat of the ungodly and of the powers of evil is final, total, irretrievable. Glory be to God, however high the powers of darkness may carry it at this present, the time hastens on when God shall defend the right, and give to evil such a fall as shall for ever crush the hopes of hell; while those who trust in the Lord shall eternally praise him and rejoice in his holy name." Psalm XXXVI |
"Evil men instead of being envied, are to be viewed with horror and aversion; yet their loaded tables, and gilded trappings, are too apt to fascinate our poor half opened eyes. Who envies the fat bullock the ribbons and garlands which decorate him as he is led to the shambles? Yet the case is a parallel one; for ungodly rich men are but as beasts fattened for the slaughter." Psalm XXXVII |
"The restoration of the Jews will be one of the first things at the season of the second advent." Psalm XLVI, Samuel Horsley |
"Sound doctrine praises God." Psalm XLVII |
"It may be thou art godly and poor. Tis well: but canst thou tell whether, if thou wert not poor, thou wouldst be godly? Surely God knows us better than we ourselves do, and therefore can best fit the estate to the person." Psalm XLVII, Giles Fletcher |
"It is God in our nature that is gone up to heaven: whatever God acted on the person of Christ, that he did as in thy behalf, and he means to act the very same on thee. Christ as a public person ascended up to heaven; thy interest is in this very ascension of Jesus Christ; and therefore dost thou consider thy Head as soaring up?" Psalm XLVII, Isaac Ambrose |
"In a word, we must sing as we pray." Psalm XLVII, John Wells - Morning Exercises |
"Silence gives consent. He who refrains from defending the right is himself an accomplice in the wrong." Psalm LVIII |
"To be untruthful is one of the surest proofs of a fallen state." Psalm LVIII |
"All the privileges of all the saints are also the privilege of each one." Psalm LXI |
"If to wait on God be worship, to wait on the creature is idolatry; if to wait on God alone be true faith, to associate an arm of flesh with him is audacious unbelief." Psalm LXII |
"Happy is the man who feels that all he has, all he wants, and all he expects are to be found in his God... The more we rely upon God, the more shall we perceive the utter hallowness of every other confidence." Psalm LXII |
"Only God himself can satisfy the craving of a soul really aroused by the Holy Spirit." Psalm LXIII |
"A liar is a human devil, he is the curse of men, and accursed of God." Psalm LXIII |
"We cannot take a more efficient method for benefiting others than by being earnestly prayerful for ourselves that we may be preserved from sin." Psalm LXIV |
"We are chosen of God, according to the good pleasure of his will, and this alone is blessedness. Then, since we cannot and will not come to God of ourselves, he works graciously in us, and attracts us powerfully; he subdues our unwillingness, and removes our inability by the almighty workings of his transforming grace." Psalm LXV |
"God does not make a temporary choice, or give and take; his gifts and calling are without repentance. He who is once admitted to God's courts shall inhabit them for ever." Psalm LXV |
"Philosophers of the forget God school are too much engrossed with their laws of upheaval to think of the Upheaver. Their theories of volcanic action and glacier action, etc., etc., are frequently used as bolts and bars to shut the Lord out of his own world... Let me for ever be just such an unphilosophical simpleton as David was, for he was nearer akin to Solomon than any of our modern theorists." Psalm LXV |
"An absolute God thundereth on sinners from Sinai, there can be no comfortable intercourse betwixt God and them, by the law: but in Zion, from the mercy seat, in Christ, he is the hearer of prayer; they give in their supplications, and he graciously hears them." Psalm LXV, Thomas Boston |
"All the saints must go to the proving house; God had one Son without sin, but he never had a son without trial." Psalm LXVI |
"The path of sorrow and that path alone, leads to the land where sorrow is unknown." Psalm LXVI |
"Our Saviour Christ never expostulated for himself; never said, Why scourge you me? why spit you upon me? why crucify you me? As long as their rage determined in his person, he opened not his mouth; when Saul extended the violence to the church, to his servants, then Christ came to that, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" ...Here is a holy league, defensive and offensive; God shall not only protect us from others, but he shall fight for us against them; our enemies are his enemies." Psalm LXVI, John Donne |
"If any, therefore, are unwilling to be tried, if they are backward to self-examination, it is an evidence of a STRONG AND POWERFUL ATTACHMENT TO SIN. It can proceed from nothing but a secret dread of some disagreeable discovery, or the detection of some lust which they cannot consent to forsake." Psalm LXVI, John Witherspoon |
"God's will is revealed in his word, and his word is his way wherein we must walk, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left." Psalm LXVII, John Boys |
"The more vapours go up, the more showers come down; as the rivers receive, so they pour out, and all run into the sea again. There is a constant circular course and recourse from the sea, unto the sea; so there is between God and us; the more we praise him, the more our blessings come down; and the more his blessings come down, the more we praise him again; so that we do not so much bless God as bless ourselves. When the springs lie low, we pour a little water into the pump, not to enrich the fountain, but to bring up more for ourselves." Psalm LXVII, Thomas Manton |
"All such as have known the ways of the Lord, and rejoice in the strength of his salvation, all such as have the pardon of their sins assured and sealed, fear not that dreadful assize, because they know the judge is their advocate." Psalm LXVII, John Boys |
"The great inventions and discoveries of science, by which toil is lessened and comfort enhanced, are all the products of Christian minds." Psalm LXVII, William Reid |
"Whatever the details and steps of the work of redemption, all must be traced up to this original fountain, the sovereign grace and mercy of our God... The eternal, free, unchangeable, inexhaustible mercy of our God revealed through his dear Son Jesus Christ." Psalm LXVII, Edward Bickersteth |
"It is the divine plan first to choose his people and bless them, and then to make them a blessing, as we see in Abraham, the father of the faithful. It is through his church that God blesses the world." Psalm LXVII, Edward Bickersteth |
"But all this order of divine mercy has yet to be more fully seen in what is before us; in the restoration of Israel, and in its effect upon the world at large." Psalm LXVII, Edward Bickersteth - This statement was made in 1848 |
"Note, how joy in God, and fear of God, are combined. By joy the sadness and anxiety of diffidence are excluded, but by fear contempt and false security are banished." Psalm LXVII, Wolfgang Musculus |
"Rome, like the candles on her altars, shall dissolve, and with equal certainty shall infidelity disappear." Psalm LXVIII |
"The ascension of Jesus is the reason for the descent of the Lord God, the Holy Spirit. Because Jesus dwells with God, God dwells with men. Christ on high is the reason for the Spirit below. It was expedient that the Redeemer should rise, that the Comforter should come down." Psalm LXVIII |
"Albeit the Lord be infinite and uncomprehended by any place, yet hath he appointed a trysting place where his people shall find him by his own ordinance, to wit, the assembly of his saints, his holy temple shadowing forth Christ to be incarnate, who now is in heaven, now is incarnate, and sitting at the right hand of God, in whom dwells the Godhead; here, here is God to be found." Psalm LXVIII, David Dickson |
"God so loved the world, that he gave his Son; and Christ so loved the world, that he gave his Spirit." Psalm LXVIII, Isaac Ambrose |
"The believer is a riddle, an enigma puzzling the unspiritual; he is a monster warring with those delights of the flesh, which are the all in all of other men; he is a prodigy, unaccountable to the judgments of ungodly men; a wonder gazed at, feared, and, by and by, contemptuously derided. Few understand us, many are surprised at us." Psalm LXXI |
"In a spiritual sense, peace is given to the heart by the righteousness of Christ; and all the powers and passions of the soul are filled with a holy calm, when the way of salvation, by a divine righteousness, is revealed." Psalm LXXII |
"Philosophic preaching mocks men as with a dust shower, but the gospel meets the case of fallen humanity, and happiness flourishes beneath its genial power." Psalm LXXII |
"This free-will offering is all Christ and his church desire; they want no forced levies and distraints, let all men give of their own free will, kings as well as commoners; alas! the rule has been for kings to give their subjects' property to the church, and a wretched church has received this robbery for a burnt offering; it shall not be thus when Jesus more openly assumes the throne." Psalm LXXII |
"It is, and ever will be, the acme of our desires and the climax of our prayers, to behold Jesus exalted King of kings and Lord of Lords." Psalm LXXII |
"All things considered, Dives had more cause to envy Lazarus than Lazarus to be envious of Dives... If earthly good were of much value, the Lord would not give so large a measure of it to those who have least of his love." Psalm LXXIII |
"God's people are driven to fly to his throne for shelter; the doggish tongues fetch home the sheep to the Shepherd. The saints come again, and again, to their Lord, laden with complaints on account of the persecutions which they endure from these proud and graceless men. Though beloved of God, they have to drain the bitter cup; their sorrows are as full as the wicked man's prosperity. It grieves them greatly to see the enemies of God so high, and themselves so low, yet the Lord does not alter his dispensations, but continues still to chasten his children, and indulge his foes. The medicine cup is not for rebels, but for those whom Jehovah Rophi loves." Psalm LXXIII |
"To grieve the children of God by appearing to act perfidiously and betray the truth, is a sin so heinous, that if the consciences of heresy-mongers were not seared as with a hot iron, they would not be so glib as they are to publish abroad their novelties." Psalm LXXIII |
"The Psalmist's sorrow had culminated, not in the fact that the ungodly prospered, but that God had arranged it so... Here, to meet the case, he sees that the divine hand purposely placed these men in prosperous and eminent circumstances, not with the intent to bless them but the very reverse... They were but elevated by judicial arrangement for the fuller execution of their doom. Eternal punishment will be all the more terrible in contrast with the former prosperity of those who are ripening for it. Taken as a whole, the case of the ungodly is horrible throughout; and their worldly joy instead of diminishing the horror, actually renders the effect the more awful." Psalm LXXIII |
"The wisest of men have enough folly in them to ruin them unless grace prevents." Psalm LXXIII |
"Sin may distress us, and yet we may be in communion with God. It is sin beloved and delighted in which separates us from the Lord, but when we bewail it heartily, the Lord will not withdraw from us." Psalm LXXIII |
"The end of our own wisdom is the beginning of our being wise." Psalm LXXIII |
"There is nothing desirable save God; let us, then, desire only him. All other things must pass away; let our hearts abide in him, who alone abideth for ever." Psalm LXXIII |
"If we pretend to be the Lord's servants, we must remember that he is a jealous God, and requires spiritual chastity from all his people." Psalm LXXIII |
"The greater our nearness to God, the less we are affected by the attractions and distractions of earth. Access into the most holy place is a great privilege, and a cure for a multitude of ills." Psalm LXXIII |
"Faith is wisdom; it is the key of enigmas, the clue of mazes, and the pole star of pathless seas. Trust and you will know." Psalm LXXIII |
"Men may not disbelieve a Godhead; nay, they may believe there is a God, and yet question the truth of his threatenings. Those conceits that men have of God, whereby they mould and frame him in their fancies, suitable to their humours, which is a thinking that he is such a one as ourselves (Psa_1:1-6.), are streams and vapours from this pit, and the “hearts of the sons of men are desperately set within them to do evil” upon these grounds; much more when they arise so high as in some who say: “How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the most High?” If men give way to this, what reason can be imagined to stand before them? All the comminations of Scripture are derided as so many theological scarecrows, and undervalued as so many pitiful contrivances to keep men in awe." Psalm LXXIII, Richard Gilpin |
"The Lord knows our frame, and sees what is usually needful for every temper; and when he afflicts most frequently, he does no more than he sees requisite." Psalm LXXIII, David Clarkson |
"If a man be watchful over his own ways, and the dealings of God with him, there is seldom a day but he may find some rod of affliction upon him; but, as through want of care and watchfulness, we lose the sight of many mercies, so we do of many afflictions. Though God doth not every day bring a man to his bed, and break his bones, yet we seldom, if at all, pass a day without some rebuke and chastening. “I have been chastened every morning,” saith the Psalmist ... As sure, or as soon, as I rise I have a whipping, and my breakfast is bread of sorrow and the water of adversity. Our lives are full of afflictions; and it is as great a part of a Christian's skill to know afflictions as to know mercies; to know when God smites, as to know when he girds us; and it is our sin to overlook afflictions as well as to overlook mercies." Psalm LXXIII, Joseph Caryl |
"The way to heaven is an afflicted way, a perplexed, persecuted way, crushed close together with crosses, as was the Israelites' way in the wilderness... sic potitur cselum, so heaven is caught by pains, by patience, by violence, affliction being our inseparable companion... They that will to heaven, must sail by hell-gates; they that will have knighthood, must kneel for it; and they that will get in at the strait gate, must crowd for it... Heaven is compared to a hill; hell to a hole. To hell a man may go without a staff, as we say; the way thereto is easy, steep, strawed with roses; 'tis but a yielding to Satan, a passing from sin to sin, from evil purposes to evil practices, from practice to custom, etc. Sed revocare gradum, but to turn short again, and make straight steps to our feet, that we may force through the strait gate, hic labor, hoc opus est, opus non pulvinaris sed pulveris; this is a work of great pains, a duty of no small difficulty." Psalm LXXIII, John Trapp |
"Notwithstanding all afflictions, it is certain that thou art a Father to the Church only; which is sufficient to make me judge well of these afflictions; I have done ill, and confess I have erred in this my rash judgment." Psalm LXXIII, John Diodati |
"As if David had said, This was a painful thing in my sight, until I came to acknowledge in good earnest that men are not created to flourish for a short time in this world, and to luxuriate in pleasures while in it, but that there condition here is that of pilgrims, whose aspirations, during their earthly pilgrimage, should be towards heaven... Until God become my schoolmaster, and until I learn by his word what otherwise my mind, when I come to consider the government of the world, cannot comprehend, I stop short all at once, and understand nothing about the subject. When, therefore, we are here told that men are unfit for contemplating the arrangements of divine providence, until they obtain wisdom elsewhere than from themselves, how can we attain to wisdom but by submissively receiving what God teaches us, both by his word and by his Holy Spirit?" Psalm LXXIII, John Calvin |
"Among the many arguments to prove the penman of the Scripture inspired by the Spirit of God, this is not the last and least--that the penmen of holy writ do record their own faults and the faults of their dearest and nearest relatives... This is not usual in the writings of human authors, who praise themselves to the utmost of what they could, and rather than lose a drop of applause they will lick it up with their own tongues. Tully writes very copiously in setting forth the good service which he did the Roman state, but not a word of his covetousness, of his affecting popular applause, of his pride and vain glory, of his mean extraction and the like. Whereas, clean contrary, Moses sets down the sin and punishment of his own sister, the idolatry and superstition of Aaron his brother, and his own fault in his preposterous striking the rock, for which he was excluded the land of Canaan." Psalm LXXIII, Thomas Fuller |
"It pleased David, and it pleases all the saints, more that God is their salvation, whether temporal or eternal, than that he saves them. The saints look more at God than at all that is God's... What have we in heaven but God? What's joy without God? What's glory without God? What's all the furniture and riches, all the delicacies, yea, all the diadems of heaven, without the God of heaven?... Heaven is not heaven unless we enjoy God. It is the presence of God which makes heaven: glory is but our nearest being unto God... So if God should say to the saints, Take heaven amongst you, and withdraw himself, they would even say, Nay, let the world take heaven, if they will, if we may not have thee in heaven, heaven will but be an earth, or rather but a hell to us. That which saints rejoice in, is that they may be in the presence of God, that they may sit at his table, and eat bread with him; that is, that they may be near him continually, which was Mephibosheth's privilege with David. That's the thing which they desire and which their souls thirst after; that's the wine they would drink." Psalm LXXIII, Joseph Caryl |
"Observe, that Christians' experiences of God's all sufficiency are then fullest and highest when created comforts fail them." Psalm LXXIII, Samuel Blackerby |
"It is more than good for us to draw nigh to God at all times, it is best for us to do so, and it is at our utmost peril not to do so... He is the best friend at all times, and the only friend at sometimes." Psalm LXXIII, Joseph Caryl |
"A man should make his peace with God, in and through the Mediator Jesus Christ; for, until once that be done, a man must be said to be far from God, and there is a partition wall standing betwixt God and him... Be friends with God and all shall be well with you." Psalm LXXIII, William Guthrie |
"In a word, to draw near unto God, is to make our peace with him, and to secure and confirm that peace with him, and to study a conformity unto him, and to be near unto him in our walk and conversation; in our fellowship, and whole carriage, and deportment, to be always near unto him." Psalm LXXIII, William Guthrie |
"The woes of Calvary, and the covenant of which they are the seal, are the security of the saints." Psalm LXXIV |
"Papists, Arians, and the modern school of Neologians, have, in their day, set up their ensigns for signs. Superstition, unbelief, and carnal wisdom have endeavoured to usurp the place of Christ crucified, to the grief of the church of God. The enemies without do us small damage, but those within the church cause her serious harm; by supplanting the truth and placing error in its stead, they deceive the people, and lead multitudes to destruction." Psalm LXXIV |
"In these days men are using axes and sledgehammers against the gospel and the church. Glorious truths, far more exquisite than the goodliest carving, are cavilled over and smashed by the blows of modern criticism. Truths which have upheld the afflicted and cheered the dying are smitten by pretentious Goths, who would be accounted learned, but know not the first principals of the truth. With sharp ridicule, and heavy blows of sophistry, they break the faith of some: and would, if it were possible, destroy the confidence of the elect themselves. Assyrians, Babylonians, and Romans are but types of spiritual foes who labour to crush the truth and the people of God." Psalm LXXIV |
"Pharaoh's policy to stamp out the nation has been a precedent for others, yet the Jews survive, and will: the bush though burning has not been consumed." Psalm LXXIV |
"It is ill with the people of God when the voice of the preacher of the gospel fails, and a famine of the word of life falls on the people. God sent ministers are as needful to the saints as their daily bread, and it is a great sorrow when a congregation is destitute of a faithful pastor. It is to be feared, that with all the ministers now existing, there is yet a dearth of men whose hearts and tongues are touched with the celestial fire." Psalm LXXIV |
"It will be well when all our "ologies" are tinctured with "theology, "and the Creator is seen at work amid his universe." Psalm LXXIV |
"The God of nature is the God of grace; and we may argue from the revolving seasons that sorrow is not meant to rule the year, the flowers of hope will blossom, and ruddy fruits of joy will ripen yet." Psalm LXXIV |
"Should the sinner live for ever, he would sin for ever; and, therefore, it is a righteous thing with God to punish him for ever in hellish torments. Every impenitent sinner would sin to the days of eternity, if he might live to the days of eternity." Psalm LXXIV, Thomas Brooks |
"There is a God, and a providence, and things happen not by chance. Though deliverance be hopeless from all points of the compass, yet God can work it for his people; and though judgment come neither from the rising or the setting of the sun, nor from the wilderness of mountains, yet come it will, for the Lord reigneth. Men forget that all things are ordained in heaven; they see but the human force, and the carnal passion, but the unseen Lord is more real far than these. He is at work behind and within the cloud." Psalm LXXV |
"Oh happy they who drink the cup of godly sorrow, and the cup of salvation: these, though now despised, will then be envied by the very men who trod them under foot." Psalm LXXV |
"What are the honours of war but the brags of murder? What the fame of conquerors but the reek of manslaughter?" Psalm LXXVI |
"God is to be feared profoundly, continually, and alone." Psalm LXXVI |
"The devil blows the fire and melts the iron, and then the Lord fashions it for his own purposes. Let men and devils rage as they may, they cannot do otherwise than subserve the divine purposes." Psalm LXXVI |
"Words are but the body, the garment, the outside of prayer; sighs are nearer the heart work. A dumb beggar getteth an alms at Christ's gates, even by making signs, when his tongue cannot plead for him; and the rather, because he is dumb. Objection. I have not so much as a voice to utter to God; and Christ saith, "Cause me to hear thy voice" (Song of Solomon 2:14). Answer. Yea, but some other thing hath a voice beside the tongue: "The Lord has heard the voice of my weeping" (Psalm 6:8). Tears have a tongue, and grammar, and language, that our Father knoweth. Babes have no prayer for the breast, but weeping: the mother can read hunger in weeping." Psalm LXXVII, Samuel Rutherford |
"The psalmist does not mean to draw a distinction between the works and the wonders of God; but, rather, to state that all God's works are wonders... All, whether in providence or grace--all God's works are wonderful. If we take the individual experience of the Christian, of what is that experience made up? Of wonders. The work of his conversion, wonderful! --arrested in a course of thoughtlessness and impiety; graciously sought and gently compelled to be at peace with God, whose wrath he had provoked. The communication of knowledge, wonderful! --Deity and eternity gradually piled up; the Bible taken page by page, and each page made a volume which no searching can exhaust. The assistance in warfare, wonderful! --himself a child of corruption, yet enabled to grapple with the world, the flesh, and the devil, and often to trample them under foot. The solaces in affliction, wonderful!--sorrow sanctified so as to minister to joy, and a harvest of gladness reaped from a field which has been watered with tears. The foretastes of heaven, wonderful! --angels bringing down the clusters of the land, and the spirit walking with lightsome tread the crystal river and the streets of gold. All wonderful! Wonderful that the Spirit should strive with man; wonderful that God should bear with his backslidings; wonderful that God should love him notwithstanding his pollution; wonderful that God should persist in saving him, in spite, as it were, of himself. Oh! those amongst you who know anything, experimentally, of salvation through Christ, well know that the work is wonderful in its commencement, wonderful in its continuance, and they will need no argument to vindicate the transition from works to wonders. It will be the transition of your own thoughts and your own feelings, and you will never give in the record of God's dealings with yourselves without passing, as the psalmist passed, from mentioning to ascription. Ye may set yourselves to commemorate God's works, ye will find yourselves extolling God's wonders. Ye may begin with saying, I will remember the works of the Lord; but ye will conclude by exclaiming, Surely I will remember thy wonders of old." Psalm LXXVII, Henry Melvill |
"From this verse the afflicted may learn many consolations. First, that the best people that be are no better able to resist temptation, than the simple sheep is able to withstand the brier that catcheth him. The next, that man is of no more ability to beware of temptations, than the poor sheep is to avoid the brier, being preserved only by the diligence of the shepherd. The third, that as the shepherd is careful of his entangled and briard sheep, so is God of his afflicted faithful. And the fourth is, that the people of Israel could take no harm of the water, because they entered the sea at God's commandment." Psalm LXXVII, John Hooper |
"We are at this day, as readers of the sacred records, bound to study them deeply, exploring their meaning, and labouring to practice their teaching." Psalm LXXVIII |
"The more of parental teaching the better; ministers andS abbath school teachers were never meant to be substitutes for mother's tears and father's prayers." Psalm LXXVIII |
"The best education is education in the best things. The first lesson for a child should be concerning his mother's God. Teach him what you will, if he learn not the fear of the Lord, he will perish for lack of knowledge. Grammar is poor food for the soul if it be not flavoured with grace. Every satchel should have a Bible in it." Psalm LXXVIII |
"The narratives, commands, and doctrines of the word of God are not worn out; they are calculated to exert an influence as long as our race shall exist." Psalm LXXVIII |
"We must never dare to judge men's happiness by their tables, the heart is the place to look at. The poorest starveling believer is more to be envied than the most full fleshed of the favourites of the world. Better be God's dog than the devil's darling." Psalm LXXVIII |
"Apart from faith life is vanity." Psalm LXXVIII |
"To chalk out a path for God is arrogant impiety. The Holy One must do right, the covenant God of Israel must be true, it is profanity itself to say unto him thou shalt do this or that, or otherwise I will not worship thee. Not thus is the Eternal God to be led by a string by his impotent creature. He is the Lord and he will do as seemeth him good." Psalm LXXVIII |
"Sin perverts man's powers, makes them forceful only in wrong directions, and practically dead for righteous ends." Psalm LXXVIII |
"Disciples in youth will prove angels in age." Psalm LXXVIII - George Swinnock |
"Oh, do not fail, therefore, to acquaint thy children with the nature of God, the natures and offices of Christ, their own natural sinfulness and misery, the way and means of their recovery, the end and errand for which they were sent into the world, the necessity of regeneration and a holy life, if ever they would escape eternal death!" Psalm LXXVIII - George Swinnock |
"The apostate drops as a windfall into the devil's mouth." Psalm LXXVIII - Thomas Watson |
"It is a heathenish delusion and false confidence to suppose that God is bound to any place or spot, as the Trojans thought because they had the temple of Pallas in their city it could not be taken, and in the present day the manner of the Papists is to bind Christ to Rome and the chair of Peter, and then defiantly maintain "I shall never be moved" Psalm 10:6." Psalm LXXVIII - Johann Andreas Cramer |
"Sometimes providence appears to deal much more severely with the righteous than with the wicked." Psalm LXXIX |
"Faith grows while it prays." Psalm LXXIX |
"God is free to choose what suits his own heart best, and most conduceth to the exalting of his great name: and he delights more in the mercy shown to one than in the blood of all the damned, that are made a sacrifice to his justice." Psalm LXXIX - William Gurnall |
"Such as have laid hold on God for salvation promised in the covenant may also look for particular deliveries out of particular troubles, as appendices of the main benefit of salvation." Psalm LXXIX - David Dickson |
"The best turn is not that of circumstances but of character." Psalm LXXX |
"Conversion is as divine a work as creation." Psalm LXXX |
"The more we approach the Lord in prayer and contemplation the higher will our ideas of him become." Psalm LXXX |
"With God no enemy can harm us, without him none are so weak as to be unable to do us danger." Psalm LXXX |
"Him and then the sinner see, Look through Jesus' wounds on me." Psalm LXXX |
"No extremity is too great for the power of God. He is able to save at the last point, and that too by simply turning his smiling face upon his afflicted." Psalm LXXX |
"Unless we realise the presence of God we have done nothing; the mere gathering together is nothing worth." Psalm LXXXIV |
"To feel his love, to rejoice in the person of the anointed Saviour, to survey the promises and feel the power of the Holy Ghost in applying precious truth to the soul, is a joy which worldlings cannot understand, but which true believers are ravished with. Even a glimpse at the love of God is better than ages spent in the pleasures of sense." Psalm LXXXIV |
"God has all good, there is no good apart from him, and there is no good which he either needs to keep back or will on any account refuse us, if we are but ready to receive it. We must be upright and neither lean to this or that form of evil: and this uprightness must be practical, —we must walk in truth and holiness, then shall we be heirs of all things, and as we come of age all things shall be in our actual possession; and meanwhile, according to our capacity for receiving shall be the measure of the divine bestowal. This is true, not of a favoured few, but of all the saints for evermore." Psalm LXXXIV |
"Probably the greatest practical heresy of each age is a low idea of our undone condition under the guilt and dominion of sin. While this prevails we shall be slow to cry for reviving or quickening. What sinners and churches need is a quickening by the Holy Ghost." Psalm LXXXV - William S. Plumer |
"Our God is not to be worshipped as one among many good and true beings, but as God alone; and his gospel is not to be preached as one of several systems, but as the one sole way of salvation." Psalm LXXXVI |
"Not my way give me, but thy way teache me. I would follow thee and not be wilfull." Psalm LXXXVI |
"The true servant of God regulates his walk by his master's will, and hence he never walks deceitfully, for God's way is ever truth. Providence has a way for us, and it is our wisdom to keep in it." Psalm LXXXVI |
"The mercy of God is a ready mercy, and his pardons are ready for his people; his pardons and mercies are not to seek, he hath them at hand, he is good and ready to forgive. Whereas most men, though they will forgive, yet they are not ready to forgive, they are hardly brought to it, though they do it at last. But God is "ready to forgive"; he hath, as it were, pardons ready drawn (as a man who would be ready to do a business, he will have such writings as concern the passing of it ready); there is nothing to do but to put in the date and the name; yea indeed, the date and the name are put in from all eternity. Thus the Scripture speaks to show how forward God is to do good; he needs not set his heart to it; his heart is ever in the exactest fitness." Psalm LXXXVI - Joseph Caryl |
"The people of the world do not care for enlightenment; they feel no pressing need for it; in all probability they have an instinctive feeling that if enlightened they would know a little more than they wish to know, that their newly acquired knowledge would interfere with their old habits and ways, and this is one reason why all spiritual teaching which goes beneath the surface is distasteful to the majority of men. They cannot bear to be brought into contact with God, in anything but a general way; the particulars of his character may not agree over well with the particulars of their lives! It is the fashion in the present day to talk of man's enlightenment, and to represent human nature as upheaving under its load, as straining towards a knowledge of truth; such is not in reality the case, and whenever there is an effort in the mind untaught of the Spirit, it is directed towards God as the great moral and not as the great spiritual Being. A man untaught of the Holy Ghost may long to know a moral, he can never desire to know a spiritual Being." Psalm LXXXVI - John Hyatt |
"Do what the Word commands. Obedience is an excellent way of commenting upon the Bible." Psalm LXXXVI - Thomas Watson |
"Jehovah's census of his chosen will differ much from ours; he will count many whom we should have disowned, and he will leave out many whom we should have reckoned. His registration is infallible." Psalm LXXXVII |
"When events shall be traced to their principles at the last day, many a scene will come forth into prominence, which now is of little regard. Humble churches will then prove to have been the birthplace, and stately palaces the graves of many an immortal soul, while every saved soul will ascribe its springs of glory to its Redeemer, through the instrumentality of that church, which he has ordained." Psalm LXXXVII - Edward Garrard Marsh |
"Evil is transformed to good when it drives us to prayer." Psalm LXXXVIII |
"By the Lord's righteous dealings the saints are uplifted in due time, however great may have been the oppression and the depression from which they may have suffered." Psalm LXXXIX |
"Worldly men need outward prosperity to make them lift up their heads, but the saints find more than enough encouragement in the secret love of God." Psalm LXXXIX |
"Who among the saints will not rejoice in the God of election?" Psalm LXXXIX |
"The great lack of the church at this time is power." Psalm LXXXIX |
"God had one Son without sin, but he never had a son who lived without prayer." Psalm LXXXIX |
"If we think that God has made men in vain, because the most of men neither serve him nor enjoy him, it is true, that as to themselves, they were made in vain, better for them they had not been born, than not be "born again"; but it was not owing to God, that they were made in vain, it was owing to themselves; nor are they made in vain as to him; for he has "made all things for himself, even the wicked for the day of evil", and those whom he is not glorified by he will be glorified upon." Psalm LXXXIX - Matthew Henry |
"What an unworthy thing will it be to offer the prime of our time to the world, the flesh, and the devil, and the dregs of it to God." Psalm XC - Thomas Washbourne |