Psalms 143:12

Psalms 143:12

I. What goes to make that Christlike title a "servant" a servant of God and a servant of man for His sake? It was promised in your first and great covenant in life that you would be always a servant of God; but before you really take your place in God's household, there must be a special voluntary act on your part, which is your engagement. The first question then is, Have you, by a definite act of your own will, given yourself to God, to be His servant?

II. This done, the next question is, What marks a servant? The proper word would be "slave." It is the part of a true servant to do anything which his master wishes him to do. He is ready for everything. The reason is that he works from love; and therefore all he does he does with a will, pleasantly, lovingly, faithfully.

III. Does God give His servants wages for what they do? Yes, always. Salvation is not wages; heaven is not wages. Where then are the wages of good works? (1) Very often providences, sometimes happy ones, sometimes bitter ones, but both wages; (2) conscience a good conscience; (3) growth: more grace, more light, more peace, more faith, and more of the presence of Christ; (4) and in heaven the degrees, higher measures and capacities of glory awarded according to the service done.

J. Vaughan, Sermons,12th series, p. 61.

Psalms 143:12

I. We have nothing to do with the historical sense of these and other like passages; it is not, and cannot be, in their historical and human meaning that the Psalms are the perpetual storehouse of prayer and thanksgiving for the people of God in every age. But the spiritual meaning of these words expresses an eternal truth which we should do ill not to remember. We have enemies; we have those that vex our soul; the Psalmist spoke a language which every one of God's servants may echo; and these enemies are bringing our soul every day nigh unto hell.

II. These words are of importance, because we see that if we are indolent or slumbering, we have an enemy who is wakeful; that as we hope for the help of God's Spirit, so we have against us the power of the spirit of evil; that, with a working mysterious indeed and incomprehensible, as is the working of God's Spirit, no less, yet with a fruit clearly manifest, there is an influence busy in undoing every work of grace in our souls, in driving away every thought of penitence or of love, in instigating every evil desire, in deepening every fit of spiritual slumber. The need which we have of this prayer makes it no less needful that our labour and our watchfulness should be in proportion to it.

T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. v., p. 331.