Psalms 50:5

Gather My saints together unto Me.

The doctrine of a general judgment and of a final retribution is a doctrine of pure revelation, and is found both in the Old Testament and in the New. But before this judgment shall be issued the command given in our text.

I. The characters here described--“My saints.” How we become saints.

1. By Divine choice.

2. By a Divine change which is the necessary consequence of this choice.

3. Their character is evidenced by their Divine conduct, and--

4. By Divine consecration.

II. The command issued. “Gather,” etc. Now, God does this--

1. In their conversion.

2. In public worship.

3. “In times of danger.

4. In the service of His Church, and--

5. In death and at the Resurrection. (J. Sibree.)

“Gather My saints together unto Me”

1. What an expressive word--“My saints!” How the Lord appropriates them as His own! (Malachi 3:17).

2. “Gather My saints.” “He shall gather the lambs in His arms.” He shall “gather” them as a shepherd his sheep in the hour of weakness and danger. They shall not be weak or nervous then. The frail body shall be dropped for ever.

3. “Gather My saints together.” It is the family meeting; it is the grand reunion; it is the glad assembly. We shall not rise to meet the Lord individually--in isolation; we shall be gathered together. What heart does not bound at the thought!

4. “Unto Me.” What would that meeting be without Jesus? What is any meeting without Him? (F. Whitfield, M. A.)

The gathering of Christ’s saints

It is the Son of God who is the speaker in this psalm, which tells of His first advent at Jerusalem, and then of His second coming to take vengeance on the disobedient. In that second coming we all shall be deeply interested. Let us think how it will fare with us on that day. Our text refers to it. Consider--

I. The characters described.

1. They are Christ’s saints. We are to be a holy people, “without blame before Him in love.” How is it with us?

2. They have entered into covenant with God. Abraham (Genesis 15:9, etc.; Jeremiah 34:18). See also Noah’s sacrifice. And so God’s saints now covenant with God through the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ.

II. The command respecting them.

1. They will be gathered together. They are not so now.

2. They will be gathered unto Christ. “Gather. .. unto Me.” How blessed this prospect.

III. Inferences.

1. The duty of Christ’s ministers--to gather together saints, from sin and the world, by the preaching of the Gospel. Nothing compensates if this be left undone.

2. The privileges of Christ’s people. Eternal life in heaven is yours. (C. Clayton, M. A.)

Christ’s order for the gathering of His saints

This psalm certainly relates to the coming of Christ for judgment (Psalms 50:8). “Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence; a fire shall devour before Him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about Him.” But whether to His first coming, to abolish the ceremonial law, set up the simple Gospel-worship, and to judge, condemn, and take vengeance on the formal, superstitious Jews, destroying their temple, and ruining their kingdom; or to His second coming to judge the world, is a question. I think it is plain it relates to both, the former as an emblem, pledge and type of the other; and thus we find them stated by our Saviour Himself (Matthew 24:1.).

1. We have the party in whose name the court is called and held. It is in the name of the Holy Trinity, Hebrews “God! God! Jehovah; He hath spoken,” etc. God will judge the world by the man Christ.

2. The issuing out of the summons to the whole world, called the earth from the rising of the sun, unto the going down thereof; from east to west, from the one end to the other.

3. From whence the Judge sets forth, making His glorious appearance. At the giving of the law He came from Sinai with terrible majesty (Deuteronomy 33:2). At this His appearance He will come from Zion, the city of the living God, namely, from heaven, the Church being so called as a heaven on earth.

4. His awful coming to the judgment. He is God, as well as man. Devouring fire shall be his harbinger (2 Thessalonians 1:8). But will any then bid Him welcome? Yes, His people will.

5. Whither the summons shall be directed. To the heavens, where the souls of the blessed are that are dead; to the earth, where the living are, good and bad, and where the bodies of the dead are (Revelation 20:13).

6. A special gracious order in favour of His people. See text. Now comes the time of setting all to rights with them. And they are further characterized as “those that have made a covenant,” etc.

From all which we gather these doctrines--

1. When Christ comes again to put an end to this world, and complete the state of the other world, He will publicly own the saints as His own, and they shall be honourably gathered to Him by His order.

2. When Christ comes again, this earth will be very throng, and a wonderful mixture will be in it more than ever at any time before; He having called to heaven, and the other receptacle of departed souls, and brought them all back to their bodies which are in the earth.

3. When Christ comes again He will put an end to this world ere He go. His very first appearance will put an end to the business of it. All trades, employments, and diversions in this world will end for ever. And, ere He leave it, He will put an end to itself by setting it on fire; so that it shall no more be capable of affording a habitation to man or beast; while withal the heavens that cover it shall pass away (2 Peter 3:10).

4. Saintship will be the only mark of distinction among men then. (T. Boston, D. D.)

The final saintly gathering

I. Here is the character of good men.

1. They are saints. By this expression, “My saints,” God claims a property in them, and expresseth His care of them and love to them.

2. They have made a covenant with Him by sacrifice. They have taken Him to be their God, their ruler and portion; and given up all dependence upon other objects.

II. The command. “Let it be thy care, O my soul! I have the honour and happiness to be gathered with His people; and to have fellowship with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. This is the main thing; the source of my chief joy. I bless God that I am gathered with His saints, and united to His Church; and that I do not live in the total or general neglect of this sacred institution. I am willing and thankful to be laid under the most solemn engagements to be the Lord’s, and often to recollect and renew them. I know that my treacherous heart needs every tie, to bind it more closely to God and its duty. I would come, deeply humbled for past violations of my engagements, and with the renewed exercises of repentance and faith. Lord, I come, to join myself to Thee in a perpetual covenant, never to be forgotten; with a believing regard to Jesus Christ, the great sacrifice, here set forth, as crucified before my eyes.” Let us remember what is said of this gathering. They shall all be gathered from all places, the most obscure and the most remote; and brought to the presence of their covenant-God and Father, who will applaud and reward their fidelity. (Job Orton, D. D.)

A covenant with God

The psalmist’s idea of God, as herein expressed, is broad and spiritual, and indicates high spiritual development. It is an ennobling one for man. To have a covenant with God, to be partner with Him in a bond, is to make us, to a certain extent, equal with Him. Covenant-making is one of the earliest instincts in man, and intrinsically one of the noblest. The bargain-making spirit is not necessarily a low one, nor a selfish one, nor a worldly one. We have degraded it by our use of it, by our desire to over-reach, to get the better of our neighbours in our bargains. The first condition of existence is the establishing of relationship between self, and that which is outside self. During the early years of our life we are largely dependent on others for the fulfilling of that condition for us. When we grow older we realize that for a rich and full and strong life we still are dependent on others, but as they in their turn are also dependent on us, we make covenants with them to fix and regulate the mutual help which we are prepared to render and receive. This covenant-making denotes the recognition, conscious or unconscious, of the incapacity of our own resources to satisfy our own needs and desires. But it indicates also that the true nature of man is not that little portion which he has within himself, but is that great nature, of which each one of us has in himself but a little share. And such is the nature of man, that with all his own resources, and all he can draw from others, he is left still unsatisfied. He craves for a yet fuller life, to be filled out of the infinite nature. This leads us to think of the nature of the covenant between God and man, involving the duty of man. Our part of the agreement is that we sacrifice to God. The only true sacrifice is the one which is prompted by love. Love and sacrifice are a twin growth, and each loses its purity when severed from the other. The act of sacrifice is contemplated oftentimes when we are still in the enjoyment of comfort and peace and light, but the sacrifice itself is carried out when all our comfort has declined, when our peace has been turned into maddest strife, and when the light by which we entered the narrow path of self-surrender has been turned into a darkness deep as death. If we love God, we shall delight in every sacrifice which is a manifestation of love, and we shall rejoice to offer our dearest and best gifts to Him. In poverty and weakness we may now make such offering, but it will continue to complete itself. “And, at last, as the righteous will of man gains the final victory, as it unites itself in entire acquiescence with the all-righteous will of God, sacrifice will at once be perfected and abolished, immersed in one infinite ocean of joy and love.” What we are vitally concerned to know about God is that He is perfectly just, and true, and loving. And this we can never learn from any revelation to our outward senses, but by quick prophetic insight, by the intuition of the Spirit. When we realize that God and man are one in a covenant of eternal life, we shall have incentive sufficient and worthy for all noble effort; for we ourselves shall have then become “sons of God.” (A. H. Moncur Syme.)

The necessity of sacrifice

The history of sacrifice is as old as the history of sin; the idea of sacrifice much older. It is part of the inmost counsels of God. It finds its corresponding utterance, with differing degrees of clearness and truth, through all that is holiest, noblest, and most personal of all God’s creation. Time, study, thought, enter into every work of art that earns any real fame and perhaps it is not too much to say that no painter’s creation, no sculptor’s reproduction of all but life, no burning words of eloquence, no minstrel’s strain, no poet’s dream, no work of art, ever really touches the heart, kindles deep feeling, directs motives, or influences conduct, if it does not bear on or below its surface the evidence of labour, of travail, of self-devotion, of self-dedication, self-absorption in the object of beauty or of power. And only in proportion as those who look, or admire, or criticize, or are captivated, know the real principles of what they gaze upon, or estimate the suffering they cost, does the popular opinion approximate the true. And hence it is that God’s judgment, and God’s opinion of people and acts, differ so often and so terribly from ours. He knows on what grounds His professing servants claim to have a covenant with Him: in what manner they act up to their claim. But God is gathering together those with whom He has made a covenant by sacrifice. And why? For judgment. “God is judge Himself.” He has a heavy charge against them. They are His. They have made a covenant with Him. But herein is their sin. The first awful charge against them is opened thus: “I am God, even thy God.” The only sacrifice they had made had cost them nothing. And this day again God speaks. Again “out of Zion bath God appeared in perfect beauty”; but it is not the beauty of the world; it is “in the beauty of holiness” expressed in sacrifice. He gathers His saints together unto Him; “lifted up” from the earth upon the Cross, He “draws all men unto Him.” Standing before the Cross, gathered before God, can we compare our lives with that life of sacrifice? Can we say that we have really rendered to Him that which He knows it is a sacrifice to us to give? (G. C. Harris, M. A.)