Psalms 111:5

He hath given meat unto them that fear Him.

The Lord’s faithfulness in providing food for His people

Consider the text--

I. In its literal sense.

1. The work, on account of which the psalmist here calls upon us to praise God, is the supply of food; the furnishing us with those provisions which are necessary for the support and comfort of our bodies.

(1) They are the Lord’s gifts.

(2) They are special marks of the Lord’s favour to His people.

(3) They are proofs of the Lord’s faithfulness and truth.

2. Let us beseech Him to give us His grace, that we may receive with thankfulness, and enjoy with moderation, and use to His glory, those gifts of His providence, which He has been pleased to bestow on us; and that we may show forth His praise not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to His service, and by walking before Him in holiness and righteousness all our days.

3. And let us learn to confide in Him for blessings to come.

II. In its figurative or spiritual meaning.

1. In this sense, the meat mentioned in the text signifies that meat of which our Saviour speaks when He directs us to labour for the meat which “endureth unto everlasting life”; namely, spiritual food, that food by which the soul is supported, strengthened, and refreshed.

2. And what, in this view of the text, is the covenant of which “He will ever be mindful,” but the covenant of grace: that spiritual covenant, “well ordered in all things and sure,” which God has made with every believer in Christ? The terms of this covenant are, “Repent ye and believe the Gospel.” “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.” And the promises of it are, “Thou shalt be saved.” “Thou shalt have everlasting life.” (E. Cooper, M.A.)

He will over be mindful of His covenant.--

The covenant

I. What is this covenant? If you go to a lawyer, and inquire how a deed runs, he may reply, “I can give you an abstract, but I had better read it to you.” He can tell you the sum and substance of it; but if you want to be very accurate, and it is a very important business, you will say, “I should like to hear it read.” We will now read certain passages of Scripture which contain the covenant of grace, or an abstract of it (Jeremiah 31:31; Ezekiel 11:19; Ezekiel 36:25, etc.). Let us just go a little into detail about this. God has made a covenant with certain people that He will do all this for them, and in each case it is of pure grace. He will take away their stony hearts: it is clear from this promise that when He began with them they had stony hearts. He will forgive their iniquities: when He began with them they had many iniquities. He will give them a heart of flesh: when He began with them they had not a heart of flesh. He will turn them to keep His statutes: when He began with them they did not keep His statutes. They were a sinful, wilful, wicked, degenerate people, and He called to them many times to come to Him and repent, but they would not. Here He speaks like a king, and no longer pleads, but decrees. He says, I will do this and that to you, and you shall be this and that in return. Oh, blessed covenant! Oh, mighty, sovereign grace!

II. Have i any portion in it?

1. Are you in Christ? If so, you are saved in Him.

2. Have you faith? This is the mark, the seal, the badge of His chosen.

3. Have you been born again? Is the life that is in you a life given by God? The true life is not of the will of man, nor of blood, nor of natural excellence; but it comes by the working of the eternal Spirit, and is of God. If you have this life you are in the covenant, for it is written, “In Isaac shall thy seed be called.” The children of the promise, these are counted for the seed.

III. If indeed we can believe upon the good evidence of God’s Word that we are of the seed with whom the covenant was made in Christ Jesus, then every blessing of the covenant will come to us. I will put it a little more personally--every blessing of the covenant will come to you.

1. God cannot lie, cannot deny Himself.

2. God made the covenant freely. If He had not meant to keep it, He would not have made it.

3. On the covenant document there is a seal--the blood of the Son of God.

4. God delights in the covenant, so we are sure He will not run back from it.

5. God has sealed the covenant with an oath (Hebrews 6:18). (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Covenant blessings

I. The gift: “He hath given meat.” We are to understand this expression, of course in a twofold sense, of our necessities; the first, temporal, the other, spiritual.

II. The covenant. The covenant of grace is a covenant without any conditions on our part whatever, of any sort, in any form, or any fashion. The covenant, in fact, is not made between us and God; it is made between God and Christ, our Representative. All the conditions of that covenant are fulfilled, so that there are none left for us to fulfil. The conditions were that Christ should suffer, and He has suffered; that Christ should obey, and He has obeyed. God will not suffer one single promise of the covenant to be unfulfilled, nor one single blessing of the covenant to be kept back.

III. The character of the persons here referred to: “them that fear Him.” Those who fear the Lord are in the covenant of His grace. If we fear Him, we may believe that He will ever give meat unto us, and that He will always keep His covenant towards us which He has made for us in Christ Jesus our Lord. (C. H. Spurgeon.)