Sermon Bible Commentary
Psalms 17:15
Notice:
I. The date of the satisfaction. "When I awake." The intermediate state is often in the Bible called sleep. It is a metaphor, chosen not to describe a state of unconsciousness, but to illustrate the peace and the calm of that blessed interval in which the soul and the body, separated for a while from each other, await their final summons. By-and-bye the dews of the morning begin to fall. The quickening Spirit the same that raised Jesus from the grave begins to do His resuscitating work. The Sun of righteousness rises high in the heavens in His perfect beauty. By His attracting influence every body and every soul, reknit, are drawn up to meet Him in the air. The date of which David speaks is the Easter morning of the first resurrection.
II. The nature of the satisfaction. "Thy likeness." (1) Take it, first, with the body. Like the body of Jesus we are to believe our new resurrection body will be. Only it will have passed through a great change: no longer carnal, but spiritual; not dull, but glorious; not a hinderer, but a helper, of the soul; framed and moulded in exquisite adaptation, first to hold a perfected spirit, and then to be as wings to execute all the pure and unlimited desires of the soul for the glory of God. (2) And as with the corporeal, so with the spiritual, nature of man. "We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." Everything assimilates to what it is conversant with. If a man dwells on any sin, he will grow to the type of the sin he broods upon; and if a man have his eye to Jesus, he will infallibly grow Christlike.
J. Vaughan, Sermons,7th series, p. 127.
I. In our study of the Psalmist's words the first thing in question is the awakening that he teaches us to anticipate. (1) The expression "when I awake" may apply to the waking of the soul out of this life. (a) Our natural powers will then awake. (b) Our spiritual life will then awake. (c) We shall awake from all that is dreamy and unsubstantial. (2) While the term will apply to the waking of the soul out of this life in the hour of dissolution, it will also apply to the waking of the body out of the grave in the hour of resurrection. Sure as the fair colours of spring and the rich sweeps of autumnal corn sleep in shrivelled seeds that long lie buried underground, so does the glory of the resurrection lie latent in the graves of the saints; and sure as their Forerunner woke will they wake to see Him and serve Him for ever.
II. The next thing to be considered is the great sight which on awaking we shall certainly behold. (1) We shall behold the face of the Lord. That face will be seen in the mystic moment of our wakening. For what was the first sight that met the eye of Peter when he woke out of sleep in the prison? The illumined face of the angel who, with gentle violence, smote him on the side, and summoned him to rise. What sight first met the waking eye of Lazarus when, with deep sob, heaving breast, disparted lip, and soul all dazzled with wonder, he stood up in his shroud at the gate of his grave? The face of Him who had just sounded the awakening mandate, "Lazarus, come forth." The first sight that greets the waking life must be the face of the wakener. The soul's Wakener is always Christ. (2) We shall behold this vision in a state of righteousness. It is not of the abstract quality of righteousness that the holy poet is speaking, but of a righteous or justified state. (3) We shall behold this vision of the Lord "in His likeness." The unveiled soul will look upon the unveiled Saviour; and the reflection, like the glory which casts it, will be perfect for ever. (4) We shall behold this vision and be satisfied. It suits our nature; it fills our growing capacities; it meets the hunger of every faculty and every affection; it is holy; it is eternal.
Stanford, Symbols of Christ,p. 322.
The period to which both David and Asaph look in these two verses is the end of life. The words of both, taken in combination, open out a series of weighty lessons.
I. The first of these is that to all men the end of life is an awaking. The representation of death most widely diffused among all nations is that it is a sleep. The recoil of men's heart from the thing is testified by the aversion of the languages to the bald name "death." And the employment of this special euphemism of sleep is a wonderful witness to our weariness of life and to its endless toil and trouble. But the emblem of sleep, true and sweet as it is, is but half the truth. We shall sleep. Yes; but we shall wake too. We shall wake just because we sleep. The spirit, because emancipated from the body, shall spring into greater intensity of action, shall put forth powers that have been held down here, and shall come into contact with an order of things which here it has but indirectly known. To our true selves and to God we shall wake.
II. The second principle contained in our text is that death is to some men the awaking of God. "When Thou awakest, Thou shalt despise their image." God "awakes" when He ends an epoch of probation and longsuffering mercy by an act or period of judgment. So far then as the mere expression is concerned, there may be nothing more meant here than the termination by a judicial act in this life of the transient "prosperity of the wicked." But the emphatic context seems to require that it should be referred to that final crash which irrevocably separates him who has "his portion in this life" from all which he calls his "goods." The whole period of earthly existence is regarded as the time of God's gracious forbearance and mercy, and the time of death is set forth as the instant when sterner elements of the Divine dealing start into prominence.
III. Death is the annihilation of the vain show of worldly life. The word rendered "image" is properly "shadow." "Thou shalt despise their shadow." The men are shadows, and all their goods are not what they are called, their "substance," but their shadow, a mere appearance, not a reality. That show of good is withered up by the light of the awaking God. What He despises cannot live. "When he dieth, he shall carry nothing away." Let us see to it that not in utter nakedness do we go hence, but clothed with that immortal robe and rich in those possessions which cannot be taken away from us, which they have who have lived on earth as heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.
IV. Death is for some men the annihilation of the vain shows in order to reveal the great reality. "I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness." "Likeness" is properly "form," and is the same word which is employed in reference to Moses, who saw "the similitude of the Lord." If there be, as is most probable, an allusion to that ancient vision in these words, then the "likeness" is not that conformity to the Divine character which it is the goal of our hopes to possess, but the beholding of His self-manifestation. These dim hopes suggest to us some presentiment of the full Christian truth of assimilation dependent on vision, and of vision reciprocally dependent on likeness. "I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness," cries the prophet Psalmist. "It is enough for the disciple that he be as his Master," responds the Christian hope.
A. Maclaren, Sermons Preached in Manchester,2nd series, p. 1.
References: Psalms 17:15. A. Raleigh, The Little Sanctuary,p. 257; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. i., No. 25; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iii., p. 277; Homiletic Magazine,vol. xiv., p. 233, and vol. xv., p. 47; Preacher's Monthly,vol. v., p. 180; G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount,p. 39; J. Irons, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. vi., p. 137; T. Binney, Christian World Pulpit, vol.i., p. 120. Psalms 17 I. Williams, The Psalms Interpreted of Christ,p. 296. Psalms 18:9. J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes,4th series, p. 10. Psalms 18:16. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiv., No. 1432.Psalms 18:19. W. Wilkinson, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. vii., p. 80. Psalms 18:25; Psalms 18:26. J. Service, Salvation Here and Hereafter,p. 156.