Psalms 71:6

By Thee have I been holden up from the womb.

God the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of the world

I. Our birth and being are owing to God, as the original cause of them.

II. It is His providence which sustains, preserves, and holds up our goings in life. Even if the materials of our being had, in themselves, a self-subsisting power, yet the form of them by which we are men, by which we are creatures of such a species, this, we know, is liable to various contingencies, and obnoxious to many fatal alterations. Wherefore, as we derive our birth and being from the wisdom and power of our great Creator, so, if we were not nursed up by the care and goodness of His paternal providence, the brittle and tender threads of life had probably long since been broken in us, and we had consequently returned to the dust from whence we were taken.

III. There is a providential direction and disposal of such events as concern us. If we would attend to God’s dealings with us, every man, I doubt not, might find his own experience attesting the truth and fact of this directing, overruling, superintending providence. Conclusion.

1. If God be our Creator, Preserver, and Governor, then we can nowhere fix our dependence so properly, nowhere with such security and safety, as upon His infinite goodness, wisdom, and power.

2. To render this persuasion of our dependence on God more practical, we are not only to recognize His majesty and power in thought and in word, but in deed and in truth.

3. If we owe our life and being to God, as the original cause and donor of them, let His demands upon us to resign them find us in the posture of a ready obedience. (N. Marshall, D. D.)