The Biblical Illustrator
Psalms 88:18
Lover and friend hast Thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness.
On sorrow for the death of friends
I. The sorrow which we naturally feel when we are bereaved of dear and worthy friends, and the bounds within which it ought to be restrained. If Christianity pronounces it the height of profligacy to be without natural affections, the tears which flow from such affections, Christianity cannot forbid. What nature hath implanted the religion of Jesus means not to extirpate, but to moderate and direct. Shall it not calm the soul tossed with tempests, and if not dry up, at least diminish, the flowing tears, that a voice from heaven, the voice of the spirit of truth, declares: “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord”? They see God as He is. They are satisfied with His likeness.
II. The practical lessons which we ought to receive from the death of our Christian friends.
1. It should impress on our minds a deep and lasting sense of our own mortality.
2. It should teach us the vanity and nothingness of this world.
3. It demonstrates the worth and excellency of religion.
4. It teaches us how important it is to discharge our duty to friends who yet survive.
5. It should kindle Within us a longing desire for a blessed eternity. We naturally wish to be with those whom we love. When Jacob hears that his son Joseph is yet alive, and advanced to great honour in Egypt, he cannot rest till he goes down there to see him. And when our friends have left that land in which we are yet strangers and pilgrims, our affections should be more weaned from it, and our desires inflamed to get to that better land, whither they have gone before us. (John Erskine, D. D.)
The hand of God in removing our friends and acquaintances far from us
I. The heavy affliction with which the psalmist was visited. In the removal of his friends and relatives he had lost--
1. Their company.
2. Their counsel and advice.
3. The sight of their good works and examples.
4. Their prayers.
II. The psalmist’s devout acknowledgment of the hand of God in this affliction.
1. He removeth our friends, who hath a right to do it.
(1) They were our friends, but they are His creatures; and may He not do what He will with His own?
(2) They were our friends; but do we not hope and believe that, by repentance, faith in Christ, and sanctifying grace, they were become His friends too? dear to Him by many indissoluble ties? Hath He not then a superior claim to them, and a greater interest in them? Is it not fit that He should be served first? His knowledge is perfect and unerring: His goodness boundless and never-failing. Application
1. The cause here described is a very pitiable one. Let us weep with them that weep, and pray for them.
2. Let us bless God for the friends we have had, and all the comfort we enjoyed in them.
3. Let us humbly submit to the will of God when He putteth our friends far from us.
4. Let us be careful and diligent to make a due improvement of such afflictions.
(1) Let our departed friends still live in our memory, honour and affection.
(2) Let us carefully recollect and consider what was excellent and praiseworthy in them, as every good man hath some peculiar, distinguishing excellencies, and let us imitate them.
(3) Let us follow them in the path of Christian duty, obedience and zeal; endeavour to supply their lack of service, and be quickened to do so much the more good, because their time and opportunity are ended.
(4) Let us particularly learn from their removal to be dead to this world.
5. Let us be thankful for our friends yet living, and faithfully perform our duty to them.
6. Let us make sure of a friend who will never leave us: even the almighty and everlasting God. (Job Orton, D. D.)
The loss of connections deplored and improved
I. The connections which give a charm to life.
1. “Lover.” As this is distinguished from friend and acquaintance, it stands for the tender relative. The husband, the wife, the father, the mother, the child, the brother, the sister, and other dear ties of flesh and blood.
2. “Friend.” This is a sacred name, which many usurp, and few deserve. It cannot be applied to the confederate in sin; or to the mercenary, selfish wretch, that loves you because he wants to make use of you, as a builder values a ladder, or a passenger a boat. Friendship is founded in a community of heart. It supposes some strong congeniality, yet admits of great diversity.
3. “Acquaintances” are distinguished from friends. The former may be numerous; the latter must be limited. The one is for the parlour, the other is for the closet. We give the hand to the one, we reserve the bosom for the other.
II. Two ways by which we may be deprived of our connections.
1. By desertion. The highest degree of this crime is the want of natural affection. Perfidy is a vile thing, but not a very rare one. How many kiss in order to betray; and gain your confidence, to sting when you are lulled to sleep.
2. By bereavement. This is principally, if not exclusively here intended. Several things add poignancy to the loss.
(1) In some cases the bereaved are deprived of worldly support.
(2) We are deprived of their company.
(3) We can have no intercourse or correspondence with them.
(4) They cannot promote our welfare where they now are.
III. The agency of God in their removal. He has done it--
1. Who is almighty and irresistible (Job 9:12).
2. Who had a right to do it. If they were your friends, they were His creatures and servants; and was He obliged to ask your permission to do what He would with His own?
3. Who was too wise to err, and too kind to injure in doing it.
IV. Application. Improve such dispensations in a way of--
1. Sympathy.
2. Gratitude.
3. Precaution.
4. Resignation. (W. Jay.)
A loss bewailed
It is an extreme distress that is portrayed in this psalm.
I. The threefold loss.
1. There are, or ought to be, three circles round every man like the belts or rings round a planet,--love, friendship, and acquaintanceship.
(1) Love is the nearest, while, at the same time, it lends its value to the other two. Friendship and acquaintanceship have no real pith, or substance, or value in them, except as they are permeated by the spirit of the nearest circle. It is love that receives and nurtures us; it is love that knits the closest and tenderest bonds; it is love that is the sunshine and the strength of life; it is love by which we do good, by which we get good. Men learn to love by loving intensely a few. The heart is not a vessel of quantity which has only a certain amount to give. The more it gives, the more it has to give. It is filled by the effort to empty itself.
(2) Friendship comes next, and implies certain sympathies. Happy is the man who has right true-hearted friends to sustain him in good principles, to reflect and stimulate noble feelings, and to cheer him in sorrow. Many are the blessings of friendship, but the chief is a genial brotherliness, a certain unexplained understanding, an undefined sympathy, an easy, unconstrained, general harmony.
(3) Outside the circle of friendship is the larger but vague circle of acquaintance shading and thinning gradually off into the general world of humanity. Acquaintanceship broadens a man. It is some sort of bond between those who can have no close relation. It tends to cement and sweeten human society.
2. There is a period in life when ties are formed, but there comes a time when the breaking of ties is more frequent. That is a great part of the sadness of life, that, as one wears on in his journey, the friends of his early days drop off. Oh, strange life! It is a contradiction to our nature and to right, an enigma insoluble but for the light of another world, that we should be encouraged and impelled to throw our affections round men only to have the ties rudely snapt. Oh, strange; if there is nothing beyond this, that it should be our duty, our elevation, and our noblest impulse, to love strongly, to love as if we were never to part, all the while that parting lies but a little way before us.
II. Reflections.
1. Thinking of departed friends will help us to realize our own death. We need to realize death in order to be sober, in order to intensify all that is good, and to drive off vain thoughts. Yea, we need to realize death in order to conquer death, and live while we live.
2. Thinking of our departed will help to take away the bitterness of death. Death gets identified with the thought of father, or mother, or sister, or brother, or husband, or wife, or child, or friend, and we feel that we dare not, and cannot, shrink from going to them.
3. Thinking of the departed will enable us to realize immortality. Can you think of that friend, knowing all that was in him; and entertain the thought, even for a moment, that he has ceased to be? Is it not treachery and insult to his memory?
4. Thinking of the departed cannot but fill us with regret and penitence. To remember angry words or selfishness towards the departed is a bitter thing. It is good to be ashamed and blush before God for hardness, meanness, or selfishness. It is good to be brought to this lowly, contrite mood, though it be over the grave of the departed. That place of death may be the birthplace of eternal life. (J. Leckie, D. D.)
Our threefold relationship to Christ
1. Acquaintance--knowing about Him only;--His birth, His life, His words familiar, but Himself unknown. Familiar with His circumstances, but ignorant of His true life--that heart of love.
2. Friend how much nearer is this! Here is trust; here is fellowship; here is love. His claim is admitted and is responded to, and His company is welcomed with delight.
3. But there is another relationship, infinitely more tender and more complete, which we may venture to claim as ours--lover: to love Him with a love that possesses us, that masters us, that subdues and compels all that we are and all that we have for His service and pleasure: a love which finds its highest heaven in His joy, its deepest hell in His grief: a love which has and holds Him for its own, for ever and for ever. This He seeks as His solace; this He offers to us as our high privilege and joy. (M. G. Pearse.).