The Biblical Illustrator
Psalms 50:23
Whoso offereth praise glorifieth Me.
Songs of the Bible
I. The song of the new birth. Every believer has learned some of the notes of this song, for we enter the kingdom singing it. When in the world, the world’s songs--songs of merriment and glee--were in our esteem the richest and best; but when we saw Jesus, and heard the music of His grace, then the world’s songs could no longer express our joy. In all the miracles of Christ the first act of the healed one was to begin to praise. The leper, the paralytic, Bartimaeus, and all the others. And so with those whom Christ has saved.
II. The song of thanksgiving. How many of them we have in these psalms, but from some men you never hear them--they are always discontented and complaining. But think of our temporal mercies--our faculties of mind and body are daily mercies. Some never see them because they keep their eyes so fastened on the dark specks of disappointment and trial, and, seeing these only, they fancy these cover the whole of the sky. But it is not so. If God take from us one mercy, think how many we have left. Oliver Wendell Holmes has beautifully said, “If one should give me a dish of sand, and tell me that there were particles of iron in it, I might search for them with my clumsy fingers and be unable to detect them; but take a magnet and swing through it, and the magnet will draw to it the particles of iron immediately. So let the thankful heart sweep through the day, and, as the magnet finds the iron, it will find in every hour some heavenly blessings: only the iron in God’s sand is always gold.”
III. The song of victory. Listen to that song as it rises from Israel’s redeemed hosts on the bank of the Red Sea. No wonder that they felt like singing, for all the fears of yesterday had been buried in that sea. They did not sing thus in Egypt, for there they were slaves. And in the captivity, when a song was required of them by their captors, they said, “We cannot sing the Lord’s song in a strange land.” There are many psalms of David which are like a full orchestra of praise; but the majority of them are penitential cries, a singing as by the waters of Marah. And so it was with Israel of old, and it is so with the Church of to-day: the lamentations outnumber the praises; the defeats are more than the victories. And yet, though here they cannot be complete, we have our victories, and we ought even now to render praise for them.
IV. Songs in the night. See Paul and Silas in the prison at Philippi. But when we are free from the bondage of the world, we shall be as they, who at midnight sang praises. Let us also sing, so that the prisoners around may hear us.
V. The song before the throne--the heavenly song. What an immense company join in it. And it is a song without tears. Ours here are never that, But there they are tearless and eternal. (A. E. Kittridge, D. D.)
Glorifying God
I. We should re concerned to glorify God. This is the great end of our existence. Even inanimate beings do this (Psalms 19:1.). And even wicked men may glorify God, for “the wrath of man shall praise Him.” But especially does He look for this from His own people. Now, one of the ways in which we do this is by offering praise. For in true praise exalted sentiments concerning Him fill the mind: there is a lively sense of His presence, and they speak well of His name. See the twelve exhortations to praise in the last of the psalms.
II. Our offering of praise will not be accepted unless it be accompanied with a conversation ordered aright. “Praise-giving is good, but praise-living is better.” But for this the grace of God is necessary.
III. Such conduct as this attracts God’s notice and regard. See text. To such persons God will show His salvation--temporal, spiritual, eternal. Have we interest in this salvation? (W. Jay.)
Praise
A subject, the importance of which it is not possible to overestimate, is here presented for our consideration--the offering of praise, connected more especially with the public service of the Church. Self-seeking in religion is far from being uncommon. It is chargeable upon numbers who may not be selfish in the grosser and more glaring forms of the commission of that sin. The almost exclusive consideration with such as are self-seekers in religion, is personal spiritual comfort. An essayist who wrote years ago, upon various forms of selfishness manifested in the conduct of professors of religion, has left on record this forcible description of those who make personal comfort in their religion not a means but an end. “Epicures in religious comfort, they grow impatient if the cup of consolation be, for a moment, removed from their own lips.” “The amplitude of the Divine love seeks to comprehend the universe in its large and life-giving embrace and calls on our affections to arise and follow it in its vast diffusion, but this selfishness stays at home, builds itself in, and sees no glory in that love, but as it embraces a single point, and that point itself.” To protect the spiritual system from so deleterious an influence, to prevent devotional exercises, whether public or private, from contracting the taint of selfishness, and to impart to them a healthy tone, it is expedient that there should be blended with them not only intercessory prayer but the homage of praise. As a faithful remembrancer, the Church ever puts us in mind of the fact that we are bound to praise Him for what He is in Himself, for the glory of His perfections, independent of what He is to us. Without the “right ordering of the conversation”--without practical evidence of sincere endeavour to “walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing,” no praise whatever can be offered to Him. The ever-living Intercessor, who has been exalted to the “right hand of the Majesty in the heavens,” imparts to praise as well as to supplication and giving of thanks and all other offerings the requisite value. “By Him let us offer the sacrifice of praise continually,” etc. Consolatory as sublime is the contemplation of the power and willingness of the ascended Christ to constitute our imperfect offerings worthy of presentation because of the infinite merit of His precious death and passion. There never rises within the breast of the sincere worshipper an aspiration of which He is unmindful, never is there formed a purpose of amendment of life, never is there heaved a sigh of the “sorrow that worketh repentance,” which is not observed by Him amidst the glories of that exalted estate in which He reigns as “Head over all things to the Church.” it is through Him that the adoration of the militant Church is united with that of those “powers and principalities in heavenly places “upon the purity of whose nature there never did, never shall pass a shadow of blemish. (C. E. Tisdall, D. D.)
To him that ordereth his conversation aright will I show the salvation of God.
Ordering the conversation aright
I. A man cannot order his conversation aright who does not seek and wait for the salvation of God. By the salvation of God we understand man’s deliverance from sin and death and condemnation, through the great work of the atonement wrought by the Lord Jesus Christ.
II. The man does not seek the salvation of God aright who does not seek it in ordering his conversation aright (Psalms 25:14; Hosea 6:3). A man who sets about it earnestly, doing the will of God as far as he sees it, does not rest in that; he still looks to Christ, he still looks for God’s quickening Spirit to give life to his obedience, and that man is ordering his conversation aright. The Word of God warrants us, and the experience of God’s children in all ages warrants us, in saying that as He has not said “Seek ye his” in vain, so no man that seeks honestly to order his conversation aright shall fail to have shown to him, sooner or later, the salvation of God. (Hugh Stowell, M. A.)
The necessity of revelation, and a holy life
I. It is most worthy of the salvation of God, that it be understood of the general redemption of mankind by Jesus Christ. Both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and man. And there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we may be saved, neither is there salvation in any other. This knowledge was confined to very narrow limits; to a nation exceedingly small in proportion to the inhabitants of all the earth. The Revelation, besides, was dark, even where it was best known; particularly as to the resurrection of the dead, which is the anchor of our hope after this life, as also by reason of the ambiguity of the law under types and shadows of things to come; which represented a salvation to be given many ages after by this general Redeemer, who was not commonly believed in by the Jews before His coming, nor known by them when He appeared.
II. The knowledge of this salvation is above the reach of natural reason, and not to be attained but by revelation from God. In this assurance we stand unmoved against all vain suggestions of the impossibility of there being any such mysteries in the Christian religion, and of our own incapacity to believe things which our understanding cannot comprehend. Which assertions proceed from a bold but mistaken philosophy; ignorant of the great power of God; and not rightly distinguishing between the measure of knowledge, sufficient for faith and for demonstration; nor knowing that where the veracity of the affirmer, and the power of the author of any miracle are unquestionable, there we have a good authority to believe His relation of anything, though it shall be wonderful, and far above our capacity to comprehend.
III. It is a holy life which will render us the most capable of receiving this knowledge.
IV. Concluding observations.
1. If we are firmly secure of our true knowledge of the salvation of God, in the faith of that Church which we do profess, let us then keep this faith in purity of heart and true holiness of life, without which no man shall ever see the Lord.
2. If any man is serious in his inquiries after that knowledge which is to lead him to eternal life, let him then in the sincerity of his heart make this trial; and, from a good life, begin his searches after the knowledge of the salvation of God.
3. Wickedness of life is the most fatal step to infidelity, and sets us at the greatest distance from this knowledge of the salvation of God. (W. Whitfeld.)
The first step towards salvation
If these words mean anything, they must mean that the man who wishes to save his soul ought to endeavour, at least, to cast out directly whatever may be wrong in his practice. The text may be read also thus, “Him who disposes or regulates his conduct, I will cause to enjoy the salvation of God.” Then the words prescribe something preparatory, something to be done by any one and every one who honestly desires the being converted and saved. He is not to sit still, as one who waits for irresistible grace: let him forthwith observe what is wrong in his “conversation”--that is, in his manner of living and conduct--and let him at once set about correcting it. Now, thus did Christ’s forerunner, John the Baptist, in his preparatory ministry. He bade men cease from dishonest and evil conduct. Men asked him what they were to do, and he plainly told them. You must see at once, that nothing could be further removed than this proceeding of the Baptist from what is mystical and unintelligible; neither publicans nor soldiers could plead that there was nothing definite in the answers which they received--nothing on which they were unable to take hold, and forthwith to act. By going straightway into the business of everyday life, giving men something to do, and something, moreover, which it were idle to dispute that they had power to do, St. John impressed on his exhortations a practical and a tangible character. All that we have to ask you, at this stage of our inquiry, is, whether you do not perceive how exactly the exhortation of the Baptist bears out the promise of the psalmist in our text--how the one is based on the other; for in prescribing as preparatory to repentance, that the publican should cease from his extortion, and the soldier from his violence, was not St. John proceeding altogether upon the principle, that “to him that ordereth his conversation aright shall be shown the salvation of God”? Now, then, suppose we pass from the days of the Baptist to our own, and see whether, in our dealings with unconverted men, we ought not similarly to insist on a right ordering of the conversation, as preparatory to genuine religion. In place of contenting ourselves with a general exhortation to repentance, ought we not to descend into particulars--or rather, urge men to the correction of open faults, if they have any wish to be brought to genuine repentance? It is not on repentance, strictly speaking, that we should settle, but on something preliminary to repentance, and the passing over which, so as always to begin with repentance, is what (as we believe) makes our sermons go beyond the mass of unconverted hearers. It is God’s rule to give more to him who improves what he has. He therefore who strives to obey conscience may humbly hope for the higher aid of the Spirit of God. And if all of you who have yet the great work of repentance to effect will thus immediately commence the reforming what is guilty and prominently wrong in your conduct, indeed we dare promise that you shall see “the salvation of God”--see it here in the sacrifice of Christ--see it hereafter in the glories of heaven. Thus “ordering your conversation aright”--going, like the publican to the receipt of custom, and banishing thence extortion, or like the soldier to the ranks, and there extinguishing violence, ye will stand ready, by God’s help, to the being made truly contrite. In real contrition ye will hasten to Christ, as alone able to deliver; and through Christ ye shall take possession of the kingdom of heaven. (Henry Melvill, B. D.)
Asaph’s theology
For Asaph, see 1 Chronicles 6:39. He was a prophet, a musician, a poet. The main function of the prophet was to teach, illustrate and enforce the great moral and spiritual truths which lie at the foundation of all true religion. The main office of the Hebrew prophets was to preserve and enlarge that Gospel which, Paul says, was “before the law.” It is because this prophetic, this spiritual element pervades most of the psalms that the Psalter has become the hymn-book of the Church in all ages and in all lands. This is specially noticeable in Asaph’s three psalms, which treat of the spirituality of all true worship, and of the mystery of the Divine providence--themes which have always had a singular attraction for all deeply religious and prophetic souls.
1. The fiftieth psalm has for its theme the spirituality of all true worship. Asaph suffers his imagination to play round this great theme. Asaph reaches his fine catholic conclusion, that none but those who sacrifice thanksgiving, and dispose their ways aright, can truly serve and please the Lord. This prophetic truth is the common property of the human race.
2. In Psalms 77:1. Asaph, from slightly “different points of view, deals with a problem interesting to all thoughtful minds. The root of his sorrow is, that “the hand of the Most High doth change,” that it moves uncertainly, inexplicably, as if it had no set purpose, and were working for no definite end. Apparently, the blessings promised to the righteous fell to the wicked, while the threatenings addressed to the wicked were fulfilled on the righteous.
Asaph offers us one or two calming and helpful thoughts which any of us to whom this problem is alive and pressing will acknowledge to be of unspeakable value.
1. He holds fast his faith, let facts say what they will, in the law of retribution. He is sure that “punishment is the other half of sin,” that the two cannot be divorced for long.
2. Then he discovers that as sin is its own punishment, so also piety is its own reward, but a reward in a far higher sense than that in which sin is its own punishment. For here ha does not dwell on and apply the law of retribution. No; God Himself is to be his reward.
3. He looks, and bids us look, for an everlasting reward, an immortality of service and joy. “Afterwards receive me to glory.” Asaph’s two main contributions to the theology of his time, and of all time, were this doctrine of worship and this vindication of the ways of God with men. Neither of them was new. But they came with special force from the lips of one who was a minister of the altar, and who had himself passed through the agonies of doubt. They were not new then; they are not obsolete now. (Samuel Cox, D. D.)
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