Psalms 4:8

Psalms 4:8

The entire rest and tranquillity of God's faithful servants, when they lay them down on their bed at night, is beautifully expressed in the words of the text. "I will lay me down," says David, " all together"all my powers of mind and body agreeing, as it were, one with another, not torn by violent passions, by desire on the one hand and remorse on the other. But as sleep is the image of death, and as the slumber of every night, rightly understood, is to a Christian a kind of sacramental token of that last long sleep, so these words may well be used by, and always have been understood by devout persons as most proper for, a dyingChristian also. As Christ said on the Cross, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit," so may Christians every night of their lives, and still more when the night of death draws on, gather and compose all their thoughts and affections into that one most exalting and soothing thought of all that they are about to fall asleep in His arms who long ago, when they were little children, took them up, marked them for His own, and blessed them. How is it that in sleep, and still more in death, Christian men may humbly depend on a peculiar presence of our Lord Jesus Christ to guard them?

I. Because He is that King who has promised to His people Israel, "He will not suffer thy foot to be moved, and He that keepeth thee will not sleep." We are the Israel to whom the promise is made.

II. In this, as in every other part of our life, comes in the remembrance and power of our Lord's sacrifice. That deep sleep of His has sanctified and blessed the sleep of all penitent Christians for all time to come.

III. We are taught in Scripture to regard the holy Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ as one very especial safeguard for the sleeping until they wake, and for the dead until they rise again.

Plain Sermons by Contributors to" Tracts for the Times"vol. vi., p. 84 (see also J. Keble, Sermons for Holy Week,p. 230).

References: Psalms 4:8. Expositor,3rd series, vol. v., p. 306; C. J. Vaughan, Voices of the Prophets,p. 75.Psalms 4:1. Sermons for Boys and Girls,p. 69.