THE LIFE OF DAVID AS REFLECTED IN HIS PSALMS

THE LIFE OF DAVID AS REFLECTED IN HIS PSALMS BY ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D.

Hi there, this lesson will not be as long as the last one. It is an opportunity for us to learn in depth about David and also strengthen our own relationship with Christ.

I hope you will keep coming back - We are Pilgrims on our way to the celestial city. Let's encourage each other and grow spiritually along the way. 

INTRODUCTION

Perhaps the most striking characteristic of the life of David is its romantic variety of circumstances. What a many-coloured career that was which began amidst the pastoral solitudes of Bethlehem, and ended in the chamber where the dying ears heard the blare of the trumpets that announced the accession of Bathsheba's son! He passes through the most sharply contrasted conditions, and from each gathers some fresh fitness for his great work of giving voice and form to all the phases of devout feeling. The early shepherd life deeply influenced his character, and has left its traces on many a line of his psalms.

"Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;

His daily teachers had been woods and rills;

The silence that is in the starry sky,

The sleep that is among the lonely hills."

And then, in strange contrast with the meditative quiet and lowly duties of these first years, came the crowded vicissitudes of the tempestuous course through which he reached his throne—court minstrel, companion and friend of a king, idol of the people, champion of the armies of God—and in his sudden elevation keeping the gracious sweetness of his lowlier, and perhaps happier days. The scene changes with startling suddenness to the desert. He is "hunted like a partridge upon the mountains," a fugitive and half a freebooter, taking service at foreign courts, and lurking on the frontiers with a band of outlaws recruited from the "dangerous classes" of Israel. Like Dante and many more, he has to learn the weariness of the exile's lot—how hard his fare, how homeless his heart, how cold the courtesies of aliens, how unslumbering the suspicions which watch the refugee who fights on the side of his "natural enemies." One more swift transition and he is on the throne, for long years victorious, prosperous, and beloved.

"Nor did he change; but kept in lofty place

The wisdom which adversity had bred,"

till suddenly he is plunged into the mire, and falsifies all his past, and ruins for ever, by the sin of his mature age, his peace of heart and the prosperity of his kingdom. Thenceforward trouble is never far away; and his later years are shaded with the saddening consciousness of his great fault, as well as by hatred and rebellion and murder in his family, and discontent and alienation in his kingdom.

None of the great men of Scripture pass through a course of so many changes; none of them touched human life at so many points; none of them were so tempered and polished by swift alternation of heat and cold, by such heavy blows and the friction of such rapid revolutions. Like his great Son and Lord, though in a lower sense, he, too, must be "in all points tempted like as we are," that his words may be fitted for the solace and strength of the whole world. Poets "learn in suffering what they teach in song." These quick transitions of fortune, and this wide experience, are the many-coloured threads from which the rich web of his psalms is woven.

And while the life is singularly varied, the character is also singularly full and versatile. In this respect, too, he is most unlike the other leading figures of Old Testament history. Contrast him, for example, with the stern majesty of Moses, austere and simple as the tables of stone; or with the unvarying tone in the gaunt strength of Elijah. These and the other mighty men in Israel are like the ruder instruments of music—the trumpet of Sinai, with its one prolonged note. David is like his own harp of many chords, through which the breath of God murmured, drawing forth wailing and rejoicing, the clear ring of triumphant trust, the low plaint of penitence, the blended harmonies of all devout emotions.

The man had his faults—grave enough. Let it be remembered that no one has judged them more rigorously than himself. The critics who have delighted to point at them have been anticipated by the penitent; and their indictment has been little more than the quotation of his own confession. His tremulously susceptible nature, especially assailable by the delights of sense, led him astray. There are traces in his life of occasional craft and untruthfulness which even the exigencies of exile and war do not wholly palliate. Flashes of fierce vengeance at times break from the clear sky of his generous nature. His strong affection became, in at least one case, weak and foolish fondness for an unworthy son.

But when all this is admitted, there remains a wonderfully rich, lovable character. He is the very ideal of a minstrel hero, such as the legends of the East especially love to paint. The shepherd's staff or sling, the sword, the sceptre, and the lyre are equally familiar to his hands. That union of the soldier and the poet gives the life a peculiar charm, and is very strikingly brought out in that chapter of the book of Samuel (2 Sam. xxiii.) which begins, "These be the last words of David," and after giving the swan-song of him whom it calls "the sweet psalmist of Israel," passes immediately to the other side of the dual character, with, "These be the names of the mighty men whom David had."

Thus, on the one side, we see the true poetic temperament, with all its capacities for keenest delight and sharpest agony, with its tremulous mobility, its openness to every impression, its gaze of child-like wonder, and eager welcome to whatsoever things are lovely, its simplicity and self-forgetfulness, its yearnings "after worlds half realized," its hunger for love, its pity, and its tears. He was made to be the inspired poet of the religious affections.

And, on the other side, we see the greatest qualities of a military leader of the antique type, in which personal daring and a strong arm count for more than strategic skill. He dashes at Goliath with an enthusiasm of youthful courage and faith. While still in the earliest bloom of his manhood, at the head of his wild band of outlaws, he shows himself sagacious, full of resource, prudent in counsel, and swift as lightning in act; frank and generous, bold and gentle, cheery in defeat, calm in peril, patient in privations and ready to share them with his men, modest and self-restrained in victory, chivalrous to his foes, ever watchful, ever hopeful—a born leader and king of men.

The basis of all was a profound, joyous trust in his Shepherd God, an ardour of personal love to Him, such as had never before been expressed, if it had ever found place, in Israel. That trust "opened his mouth to show forth" God's praise, and strengthened his "fingers to fight." He has told us himself what was his habitual temper, and how it was sustained: "I have set the Lord always before me. Because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth." (Psa. xvi. 8, 9.)

Thus endowed, he moved among men with that irresistible fascination which only the greatest exercise. From the day when he stole like a sunbeam into the darkened chamber where Saul wrestled with the evil spirit, he bows all hearts that come under his spell. The women of Israel chant his name with song and timbrel, the daughter of Saul confesses her love unasked, the noble soul of Jonathan cleaves to him, the rude outlaws in his little army peril their lives to gratify his longing for a draught from the well where he had watered his father's flocks; the priests let him take the consecrated bread, and trust him with Goliath's sword, from behind the altar; his lofty courtesy wins the heart of Abigail; the very king of the Philistines tells him that he is "good in his sight as an angel of God;" the unhappy Saul's last word to him is a blessing; six hundred men of Gath forsake home and country to follow his fortunes when he returns from exile; and even in the dark close of his reign, though sin and self-indulgence, and neglect of his kingly duties, had weakened his subjects' loyalty, his flight before Absalom is brightened by instances of passionate devotion which no common character could have evoked; and even then his people are ready to die for him, and in their affectionate pride call him "the light of Israel." It was a prophetic instinct which made Jesse call his youngest boy by a name apparently before unused—David, "Beloved."

The Spirit of God, acting through these great natural gifts, and using this diversified experience of life, originated in him a new form of inspiration. The Law was the revelation of the mind, and, in some measure, of the heart, of God to man. The Psalm is the echo of the law, the return current set in motion by the outflow of the Divine will, the response of the heart of man to the manifested God. There had, indeed, been traces of hymns before David. There were the burst of triumph which the daughters of Israel sang, with timbrel and dance, over Pharaoh and his host; the prayer of Moses the man of God (Psa. xc.), so archaic in its tone, bearing in every line the impress of the weary wilderness and the law of death; the song of the dying lawgiver (Deut. xxxii.); the passionate pæan of Deborah; and some few briefer fragments. But, practically, the Psalm began with David; and though many hands struck the harp after him, even down at least to the return from exile, he remains emphatically "the sweet psalmist of Israel."

The psalms which are attributed to him have, on the whole, a marked similarity of manner. Their characteristics have been well summed up as "creative originality, predominantly elegiac tone, graceful form and movement, antique but lucid style;" to which may be added the intensity of their devotion, the passion of Divine love that glows in them all. They correspond, too, with the circumstances of his life as given in the historical books. The early shepherd days, the manifold sorrows, the hunted wanderings, the royal authority, the wars, the triumphs, the sin, the remorse, which are woven together so strikingly in the latter, all reappear in the psalms. The illusions, indeed, are for the most part general rather than special, as is natural. His words are thereby the better fitted for ready application to the trials of other lives. But it has been perhaps too hastily assumed that the allusions are so general as to make it impossible to connect them with any precise events, or to make the psalms and the history mutually illustrative. Much, no doubt, must be conjectured rather than affirmed, and much must be left undetermined; but when all deductions on that score have been made, it still appears possible to carry the process sufficiently far to gain fresh insight into the force and definiteness of many of David's words, and to use them with tolerable confidence as throwing light upon the narrative of his career. The attempt is made in some degree in this volume.

[A]Delitzsch, Kommentar. u. d. Psalter II. 376.

It will be necessary to prefix a few further remarks on the Davidic psalms in general. Can we tell which are David's? The Psalter, as is generally known, is divided into five books or parts, probably from some idea that it corresponded with the Pentateuch. These five books are marked by a doxology at the close of each, except the last. The first portion consists of Psa. i.-xli.; the second of Psa. xlii.-lxxii; the third of Psa. lxxiii.-lxxxix; the fourth of Psa. xc.-cvi.; and the fifth of Psa. cvii.-cl. The psalms attributed to David are unequally distributed through these five books. There are seventy-three in all, and they run thus:—In the first book there are thirty-seven; so that if we regard psalms i. and ii. as a kind of double introduction, a frontispiece and vignette title-page to the whole collection, the first book proper only two which are not regarded as David's. The second book has a much smaller proportion, only eighteen out of thirty-one. The third book has but one, the fourth two; while the fifth has fifteen, eight of which (cxxxviii.-cxlv.) occur almost at the close. The intention is obvious—to throw the Davidic psalms as much as possible together in the first two books. And the inference is not unnatural that these may have formed an earlier collection, to which were afterwards added the remaining three, with a considerable body of alleged psalms of David, which had subsequently come to light, placed side by side at the end, so as to round off the whole.

Be that as it may, one thing is clear from the arrangement of the Psalter, namely, that the superscriptions which give the authors' names are at least as old as the collection itself; for they have guided the order of the collection in the grouping not only of Davidic psalms, but also of those attributed to the sons of Korah (xlii.-xlix.) and to Asaph (lxxiii.-lxxxiii.)

The question of the reliableness of these superscriptions is hotly debated. The balance of modern opinion is decidedly against their genuineness. As in greater matters, so here "the higher criticism" comes to the consideration of their claims with a prejudice against them, and on very arbitrary grounds determines for itself, quite irrespective of these ancient voices, the date and authorship of the psalms. The extreme form of this tendency is to be found in the masterly work of Ewald, who has devoted all his vast power of criticism (and eked it out with all his equally great power of confident assertion) to the book, and has come to the conclusion that we have but eleven of David's psalms,—which is surely a result that may lead to questionings as to the method which has attained it.

These editorial notes are proved to be of extreme antiquity by such considerations as these: The Septuagint translators found them, and did not understand them; the synagogue preserves no traditions to explain them; the Book of Chronicles throws no light upon them; they are very rare in the two last books of the Psalter (Delitzsch, ii. 393). In some cases they are obviously erroneous, but in the greater number there is nothing inconsistent with their correctness in the psalms to which they are appended; while very frequently they throw a flood of light upon these, and all but prove their trustworthiness by their appropriateness. They are not authoritative, but they merit respectful consideration, and, as Dr. Perowne puts it in his valuable work on the Psalms, stand on a par with the subscriptions to the Epistles in the New Testament. Regarding them thus, and yet examining the psalms to which they are prefixed, there seem to be about forty-five which we may attribute with some confidence to David, and with these we shall be concerned in this book

Five observables touched upon, from Paul’s being in bonds 3/3

THIS IS THE LAST POST FOR "THE WHOLE ARMOUR OF GOD"

3.  To engage their prayers for him.  Suffering saints have ever been very covetous of prayers.  Paul acts all the churches at work for him.  ‘Pray, pray, pray,’ was the usual close to Mr. Bradford’s letters out of prison.  And great reason for it; for a suffering condition is full of temptations.  When man plays the persecutor, the devil forgets not to be a tempter.  He that followed Christ into the wilderness will ever find a way to get to his saints in the prison.  Sometimes he will try whether he can soften them for impressions of fear, or make them pity themselves; and he shall not want them that will lend their tears to melt their courage and weaken their resolu­tion—may be wife and children, or friends and neighbours, who wish them well, but are abused by Satan to lay a snare be­forethem, while they express their affection to them. No doubt those good people meant well to Paul, who, with tears and passionate entreaties, endeavoured to keep him from Jerusalem—where it was foretold he should come into trouble—but Satan had a design against Paul therein, who hoped they might not only break his heart, but weaken his courage, with their tears.  When he cannot make a coward of the saint, to run from the cross; then he will try to sour and swell his spirit with some secret anger against those that laid it on.  O it is no easy matter to receive evil, and wish none to him from whose hands we have it.  To reserve love for him that shows wrath and hatred to us is a glorious but a difficult work.  If he cannot leaven him with wrath against his persecutor, then he will try to blow him up with a high conceit of himself, who dares suffer for Christ, while others shrink in their heads, and seek to keep themselves safe within their own shell.  O this pride is a salamander, that can live in the fire of suffering!  If any one saint needs the humility of many saints, it is he that is called to suffer.  To glory in his sufferings for Christ becomes him well, II Cor. 12:9; Gal. 6:14; but to glory in himself for them is hateful and odious.  Needs not he a quick eye, and a steady hand, that is to drive his chariot on the brow of so dangerous a precipice?

           In a word, a suffering condition is full of temp­tations, so the saint’s strength to carry him safely through them is not in his own keeping.  God must help, or the stoutest champion’s spirit will soon quail. ‘In all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need,’ Php. 4:12. This was a hard lesson indeed to learn .  Who was his master?  See, ‘I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me,’ ver. 13.  Now, as the saints’ strength to suffer is not in themselves, but Christ, so prayer is the best means to fetch it in for their help; for by it they confess their own weakness, and so God is secured from having a co-rival in the praise.  Which Paul is here free to do, and more than so; for, as he confesseth he can do nothing without Christ’s strength to enable and embolden him, so he dares not rely on his own solitary single prayers for the obtain­ing it, but calls in the auxiliary forces of his fellow-saints to besiege heaven for him; that, while he is in the valley suffering for the gospel, they might be lifting up their hands and hearts in the mount of prayer for him

Five observables touched upon, from Paul’s being in bonds 2/3

    Third Observable. Observe how close Paul sticks to the truth.  He will not part with it, though it brings him to trouble. He had rather the persecutor should imprison him for preaching the gospel, than he im­prison it by a cowardly silence.  He hath cast up his accounts, and is resolved to stand to his profession whatever it may cost him.  The truth is, that religion is not worth embracing that cannot bear one’s charges in suffering for it; and none but the Christian’s is able to do this.  Neither is he worth the name of a Chris­tian that dares not take Christ’s bill of exchange, to receive in heaven what he is sent out in suffering for his sake on earth.  And yet, alas! how hard is it to get faith enough to do this!  It is easier to bow at the name, than to stoop to the cross of Jesus.  Many like religion for a summer-house, when all is fair and warm abroad in the world; but, when winter comes, doors are shut up, and nobody to be seen in or about it.

           Fourth Observable. Observe the publication Paul makes of his sufferings to the church.  He, being now a prisoner, sends his despatches to this and other churches, to let them know his condition.  From whence,

           Note. That sufferings for the gospel are no mat­ter of shame.  Paul doth not blush to tell it is for the gospel he is ‘in bonds.’  The shame belonged to them that clapped on the chain, not to him that wore it.  The thief, the murderer, may justly blush to tell wherefore they suffer, not the Christian for well-doing.  ‘If any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf,’ I Peter 4:16. Christ himself counted it no dishonour to have the print of his wounds seen after his resurrec­tion.  Babylas, a Christian martyr, would have his chains buried with him.  The apostles ‘rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name,’ Acts 5:41.  And if it be no shame to suffer for the gospel, then surely it is none to profess it, and live up to its holy rules.  Shall the wicked ‘glory in their shame,’ and thou be ashamed of thy glory?  Shall they do the devil’s work at noonday light, and thou afraid to be seen with the good?  Yet Salvian tells us, in his days—so wicked they were, and such a scorn was cast upon holiness—that many carried Christ’s col­ours in their pocket, and concealed their piety, ne viles hab­erentur—lest they should be counted vile and base.

           Fifth Observable. Observe the end why he makes known his sufferings.

1. That they may know the true cause wherefore he suffered.  Paul’s enemies laid heavy things to his charge, and these might haply fly as far as Ephesus. When the saints’ are in a suffering condition, Satan is very industrious to defame them, and misrepresent the cause of their troubles to the world, as if it were for no good.  Now, though Paul regarded little what the wicked world said of him, yet he desired to stand right in the thoughts of the churches, and therefore acquaints them with the cause of his imprisonment.
2. To strengthen their faith and comfort their hearts.  No doubt but Paul’s chain entered their souls, and his suffering was their sorrow.  This he knew, and therefore sends them word by Tychicus—the bearer of this epistle—how it fared with him in his bonds, that they might not spend too many tears for him who had a heart so merry and cheerful in his sufferings: ‘That ye might know our affairs, and that he comfort your hearts,’ Eph. 6:22.  Thus have we seen sometimes a tender-hearted, father on his sick-bed, not so much troubled with his own pains, or thoughts of his ap­proaching death, as to see his children take them so much to heart; and therefore, forgetting his own mis­eries, address himself with a smiling countenance to comfort them.  O it is an excellent sight to behold the saints that are at liberty mourning over their afflicted brethren, and those that are the sufferers become comforters to them that are at liberty!  Never doth re­ligion appear more glorious than when they commend it who are suffering for it. And no way can they com­mend it higher than by a holy humble cheerfulness of spirit in their sufferings.  The comfortable which the martyrs in queen Mary’s days sent out of prison, did wonderfully strengthen their brethren throughout the kingdom, and fit them for the prison.  Sufferers preach with great advantage above others.  They do not speak by hearsay, but what they experiment {verified} in themselves.

Five observables touched upon, from Paul’s being in bonds 1/3

First Observable. Observe the usage which this blessed apostle finds from an ungrateful world.  A chain is clapped upon him, as if he were some rogue or thief.  He preacheth liberty to poor sinners, and is deprived of his own for his pains; he proclaims deliv­erance to the captives, and is used like a slave for his labour.  One would wonder what they could find against so holy and innocent a person to accuse him for, who made it his daily exercise to live without of­fence to God and man; yet see what an indictment Tertullus prefers against him, Acts 24, as if there had not been such a pestilent fellow in the whole country as he!  And Paul himself tells us he ‘suffered trouble, as an evil doer, even unto bonds,’ II Tim. 2:9.  Many grievous things were laid to his charge.  Whence,

Note. That the best of men may and oft do suf­fer under the notion of vile and wicked persons.  Let the saints’ enemies alone to black their persons and cause.  Christ himself must be ‘numbered among the transgressors,’ and no less than blasphemy be laid to his charge.  Persecutors think it not enough to be cruel, but they would be thought just while they are cruel—‘Ye have condemned and killed the just,’ James 5:6.  Here is a bloody murder committed with all the formalities of justice.  They condemn first, and then kill; and truly, murder on the bench is worse in God’s account than that which is perpetrated by a villain on the highway.  Well, there is a time when Paul’s cause and the rest of suffering saints’ shall have a fairer hearing than here they could meet with, and then it will appear with another complexion than when drawn with their enemies’ black-coal.  The names of the godly shall have a resurrection as well as their bodies.  Now they are buried with their faces down­ward—their innocency and sincerity charged with many false imputations; but then all shall be set right. And well may the saints stay to be cleared as long as God himself stays to vindicate his own government of the world from the hard speeches of ungodly ones.

Second Observable. Observe the true cause of Paul’s sufferings.  It was his zeal for God and his truth—‘for which I am in bonds:’ that is, for the gospel which I profess and preach.  As that martyr who, being asked how he came into prison, showed his Bible, and said, ‘This brought me hither.’  Perse­cutors may pretend what they will, but it their religion and piety that their spite is at.  Paul was an honest man, in the opinion of his countrymen, so long as he was of their opinion, went their way, and did as they did; but when he declared himself to be a Christian, and preached his gospel up, then they cried him down as fast—then his old friends turned new enemies, and all their fists were about his ears.  The wicked are but the devil's slaves, and must do as he will have them. Now, it is truth and godliness that pull down his king­dom.  When, therefore, these appear in the saints’ lives, then he calls forth the wicked world, as a prince would do his subjects into the field, to fight for him; so that it is impossible to get to heaven without blows. ‘He that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution:’ {II Tim. 3:12} that is, one way or other; and none more than the preacher.  He puts his hand into the wasp's nest, and therefore must expect to be stung; he treads on the serpent’s head, and it were strange if he should not turn again to bite him.  But let not this trouble you.  Fear not what you can suffer, only be careful for what you {do} suffer. Christ’s cross is made of sweet wood.  There are comforts pec­uliar to those that suffer for righteousness.  When Sabina, a Christian martyr, fell in travail in the pris­on, and was heard to cry and make a dolor in those her child-bearing throes, some asked her how she could endure the torments which her persecutors prepared for her, if she shrank at those?  ‘O,’ saith she, ‘now I suffer for sin, then I shall suffer for Christ.’

Exhortation to ministers in discharge of their duty as ambassadors of the King of kings 2/2

(3.) Think it not enough that thou deliverest thy message from God, but show a zeal for thy Master, whose cause thou negotiatest.  Should an ambassador, after audience had, and his errand coldly done, then give himself up to the pleasures of the court where he is resident, and not much mind or care what answer he hath, nor how his master’s business speeds, surely he could not say he had done the duty of a faithful ambassador.  No; his head and heart must be both at work how he may put life into the business and bring it soonest to the desired issue.  Abraham’s servant would neither eat nor drink till he saw which way his motion would work, and how they would deal with his master.  Thus should ministers let those they are sent to see they are in earnest—that their hearts are deeply engaged in their embassy.  When their people show their respect to their persons, though they are thankfully to resent this civility, yet they are not to let them know this is not it they come for, or can be content with; but that they would deal kindly with their Master, whose message they bring, and send them back to him with the joyful news of their repen­tance and acceptation of Christ.  They should pas­sionately endeavour their salvation; one while trying to dissolve them with the soft entreaties of love; another while beleaguering them with threatenings, that if they will to hell, they may carry this witness with them, that their destruction is of themselves, and comes not on them for want of your care and compas­sion to their souls.  It is not enough you are orthodox preachers, and deliver truth; it is zeal God calls for at your hands.  He so strongly himself desires the salva­tion of poor sinners, that he disdains you, whom he sends to impart it to them, should coldly deliver it, without showing your good-will to the thing. Christ, when he sends his servants to invite guests to his gospel-supper, bids them ‘compel them to come in,’ Luke 14:23.  But how?  Surely not as the Spaniards did the Indians, who drove them to be baptized as we drive cattle with staves and stones.  We are not to pelt them in with outward violence and cruelty practised upon their bodies, but [by] a spiritual force of argument subduing their hearts in our powerful preaching. Percutit ut faciat voluntarios, non salvet invitos—when God smites the consciences of men with the terrors of his threatenings, it is to make them willing, not to save them against their wills (Bern.).

(4.) Let not any person or thing in the world bribe or scare thee from a faithful discharge of thy trust.  Ambassadors must not be pensioners to a for­eign prince.  He is unworthy to serve a prince in so honourable an employment that dares not trust his master to defend and reward him.  Such a one will not long be faithful to his trust; nor will he in the ministry, that rests not contented with God’s promise for his protection or reward.  O how soon will he for fear or favour seek to save his stake or mend it, though it be by falsifying his trust to God himself? Blessed Paul was far from this baseness, and hath set a noble pattern to all that shall be God’s ambassadors to the end of the world: ‘As we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts. For neither at any time used we flattering words, as ye know, nor a cloke of covetousness; God is witness,’ I Thes. 2:4, 5.

(5.) Be kind to and tenderly careful of thy fellow-subjects.  Were it not strange if an ambassador, sent from hence to Turkey or Spain, instead of pro­tecting and encouraging the English merchants there in their trade, should hinder their traffic, and employ all the power of his place to their prejudice and dam­age?  Surely this prince sent him not to be an enemy, but a friend and patron, to his good subjects there. The minister, as God’s ambassador, is to encourage the saints in their heavenly trade, to assist them by his counsel, and protect them from the scorn that their wicked neighbours cast upon them for their goodness.  O how sad is it if he shall bend his minis­try against them! if he shall weaken their hands and strengthen the hands of the ungodly, in or out of the pulpit, by his preaching or practice!  Better he were, with a millstone tied about his neck, thrown into the sea, than thus to offend these little ones!  Moses, he smote the Egyptian, but rescued the Israelite.  What account will they make to God of their embassy, who, in the very pulpit, smite the Israelite with their tongues, twitting them for their purity, and stroke the Egyptian—the profane and wicked, I mean, in their congregations—whereby they bless themselves as going to heaven, when, God knows, their feet stand in the ways that will undoubtedly lead them to hell!

An argument for Paul’s request, taken from his present afflicted state

Second Argument. The second argument with which he stirs them up to his remembrance in their prayers, is taken from his present afflicted state—‘for which I am an ambassador in bonds.’  In the Greek ¦< 8LF,4—in a chain.  When we hear of an ambas­sador and a chain, we might at first expect it to be a chain of gold about his neck, and not a chain of iron about his leg or arm; yet it is the latter here is meant. Paul was now a prisoner at Rome, but in libera custodia. as is thought by interpreters from this pas­sage—in a chain, not in chains; it being usual there for a prisoner to be committed to the custody of some soldier, with whom he might walk abroad, having a chain on his right arm, which was tied to his keeper’s left arm.  Such a prisoner, it is conceived, this holy man was now.  Paul the lamb was prisoner to Nero the lion, and therefore both needed and desired the church’s prayers for him.  Many are the observables which this short passage might afford.  I shall lightly touch them, but not enlarge upon them.

Exhortation to ministers in discharge of their duty as ambassadors of the King of kings 1/2

Exhortation 2. To the ministers of the gospel. You see, brethren, your calling; let it be your care to comport with this your honourable employment.  Let us set forth a few directions.

(1.) Stain not the dignity of your office by any base unworthy practices.  Dignitas in indigno, saith Salvian, is ornamentum in luto—O lay not the dig­nity of your function in the dirt by any sordid unholy actions!  Paul magnified his office; do not you do that which should make others vilify and debase it.  That which makes others bad will make you worse.  ‘Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?’ John 6:70.  You are called angels, but if wicked, you become devils.  We have read of ‘a prophet’s reward,’ Matt. 10:41, which a­mounts to more than a private dis­ciple’s; and do you not think there will be a prophet’s punishment in hell, as well as reward in heaven? One saith, ‘If any were born without original sin, it should be the minister; if any could live without actual sin it should be the minister; if there were such a thing a venial sin, it should not be in ministers.  They are more the servants of God than others; should not they then be more holy than others?’  Art thou fit to be an ambassador, who art not a good subject? to be a minister, that art not a good Christian?

(2.) Keep close to thy instructions.  Ambassadors are bound up by their commission what they are to say; be sure therefore to take thy errand right, before thou ascendest the pulpit to deliver it.  ‘I have re­ceived of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you,’ I Cor. 11:23.  God bids the prophet, Eze. 3:17, ‘Hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me.’   It must be from him, or it is not right.  O take heed thou dost not set the royal stamp upon thy own base metal!  Come not to the people with, ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ when it is the divination of thy own brain.  No such loud lie as that which is told in the pulpit.  And, as thou must not speak what he never gave thee in commission, so not conceal what thou hast in command to deliver.  It is as dangerous to blot out, as put in, anything to our message.  Job com­forted himself with this, that he had ‘not concealed the words of the Holy One,’ Job 6:10.  And Paul, from this, washeth his hands of the blood of souls, ‘I am pure from the blood of all men.  For I have not shun­ned to declare unto you all the counsel of God,’ Acts 20:26, 27.  Pray, observe, he doth not say he hath de­clared all the counsel of God.  No; who can, but God himself?  The same apostle saith, ‘We prophesy but in part.’ There is a terra incognita—unknown land, in the Scriptures, mysteries that yet were never fully discovered.  We cannot declare all that know not all. But he saith, ‘He shunned not to declare all.’  When he met a truth, he did not step back to shun it; as when we see a man in the street with whom we have no mind to speak, we step into some house or shop till he be past.  The holy apostle was not afraid to speak what he knew to be the mind of God; as he had it from God, so should they from him.  He did not balk in his preaching what was profitable for them to know.  Caleb, one of the spies sent to Canaan, could not give them a full account of every particular place in the land, but he made the best observation he could, and then brings Moses word again—‘As it was,’ saith he, ‘in mine heart,’ Joshua 14:7; while others basely concealed what they knew, because they had no mind to the journey; and this gained him the testi­mony from God’s own mouth to be a man that ‘followed him fully,’ Num. 14:23.  So he that doth his utmost to search the Scriptures, and then brings word to the people as it is in his heart, preaching what he hath learned from it, without garbling his conscience and detaining what he knows for fear or favour, this is the man that fulfills his ministry, and shall have the euge—well done! of a faithful servant.

USE OR APPLICATION-Exhortation to the people to hearken to God’s ambassadors 2/2

(3.) Consider how much the heart of God is engaged in the message his ambassadors bring.  When a prince sends an ambassador about a negotiation, the success of which he passionately desires, and from which he promiseth himself much honour, to be opposed in this must needs greatly provoke and en­rage him.  There is nothing that God sets his heart more upon than the exalting of Christ, and his grace through him, in the salvation of poor sinners.  This therefore is called ‘his counsel,’ Heb. 6:17; ‘the pleasure of the Lord,’ Isa. 53:10. Abraham’s servant knew how much his master desired a wife for his son and heir among his kindred, and therefore presseth Laban with this as the weightiest argument of all other, ‘If you will deal kindly and truly with my mas­ter, tell me; and it not, tell me;’ as if he had said, By this the truth of your love to my master will be seen.  So here.  If ye will indeed deal kindly with God, tell his ambassadors so, by your complying with them in that which he so affectionately desires.  This the Lord Jesus, when on earth, called ‘his Father's business,’ which must be done, whatever comes on it: ‘Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?’ Luke 2:49.  He knew he had never come hither except for the despatch of this, and could not look his Father on the face, when he went back, except this was finished. Therefore, as this sped, and the work of the gospel made progress, or met with any stop, in the hearts of men, he mourned or rejoiced.  When it was rejected, we find him ‘grieved for the hardness of their hearts,’ Mark 3:5.  When his disciples make report how vic­toriously the chariot of the gospel ran, ‘in that hour,’ it is said, ‘he rejoiced in spirit,’ Luke 10:21.  When he was taking his leave of the world, his thoughts are at work how the gospel should be carried on, and the salvation of souls suffer no prejudice by his departure; he therefore empowers his apostles for the work: ‘All power is given me.  Go, preach the gospel to all na­tions.’  Yea, now in heaven he is waiting for the success of it, and listening how his servants speed in their errand.  Now, what a prodigious sin is it, by thy impenitency to withstand God in his main design!  Do you indeed deal kindly with our Master, whose embassy we bring?

           (4.) Consider the weight and importance of the message these ambassadors bring unto you.  It is not a slight, sleeveless errand we come about.  ‘I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil,’ Deut. 30:15.  ‘He that believeth not,...the wrath of God abideth on him,’ John 3:36.  We come not to en­tice you with the favour of an earthly prince, who may promise honours to‑day, and lose his own crown to-morrow.  We bait not our hook with the world’s treasures or pleasures; but bring you news of a heaven that shall as surely be yours as you are now on earth, if you accept of the offer.  We scare you not with the displeasure of a mortal man, ‘whose breath is in his nostrils;’ not with the momentary torment of a rack or gibbet, which continue hardly long enough to be felt; but with the never-dying wrath of the ever-living God.  And what we either promise or threaten in God's name, he stands ready and resolved to perform. He ‘confirmeth the word of his servants, and per­formeth the counsel of his messengers;’ Isa. 44:26.

           (5.) Consider on what terms the gospel and its messengers stay among you.  There is a time when God calls his ambassadors home, and will treat no longer with a people; and that must needs be a sad day!  For, when they go, then judgments and plagues come.  If the treaty ends, it will not be long before the war begins.  ‘Elisha died,...and the bands of the Mo­abites invaded the land,’ II Kings 13:20.  The prophet once gone, then the enemy comes.  The angel plucks Lot out of Sodom, and how long had they fair weather after?  The Jews put away the gospel from them by their impenitency, which made the apostles ‘turn to the Gentiles,’ Acts 13:46.  But did they not thereby call for their own ruin and destruction, which presently came flying on the Roman eagle’s wings to them? They judged themselves unworthy of eternal life, and God thought them unworthy also to have a temporal.  If once God calls home his ambassadors, it is no easy matter to bring them back, and get the treaty, now broke up, set on foot again.  God can least endure, upon trial made of him, to be slighted in that which he makes account is one of the highest ways he can express his favour to a people.  Better no ambas­sadors had come, than to come and go re infectâ —without effecting what they came for.  They ‘shall know,’ saith God, ‘there hath been a prophet among them,’ Eze. 2:5; that is, they shall know it to their cost.  God will be paid for his ministers’ pains.  Now, min­isters die, or are removed from their people, and glad they are to be so rid of them; but they have not done with them till they have reckoned with God for them.

USE OR APPLICATION-Exhortation to the people to hearken to God’s ambassadors 1/2

            

                                                        

           Are ministers ambassadors?  This shows the gos­pel ministry to be an office peculiar to some, not a work common to all.  An ambassador we know is someone who hath his commission and credential let­ters from his prince to show for his employment.  It is not a man's skill in state affairs that makes him an ambassador, nor ability in the law that makes a man a magistrate, but their call to these places.  Neither do gifts make a man a minister, but his mission: ‘How can they preach except they be sent?’  The rules which the Spirit of God gives about the minister’s admission into his function were all to no purpose if it lay open to every man's own choice to make him a preacher.  ‘Lay hands suddenly on no man,’ I Tim. 5:22; that is, admit none to the ministry without good proof and trial.  But why should any be set apart for that which every one may do?  This leads to an exhortation, 1. To the people.  2. To the minister.

           Exhortation 1. To the people.  Be persuaded in the fear of God to hearken to the message these am­bassadors bring.  What mean you to do in the busi­ness they come to treat about?  Will you be friends with God or not?—take Christ by faith into your embraces, or resolve to have none of him?  We are but ambassadors; back again we must go to our Mas­ter that sends us, and give an account what comes of our negotiation.  Shall we go and say, Lord, we have been with the men thou sentest us unto; thy message was delivered by us according to our instructions; we told them fire and sword, ruin and damnation, would come upon them, if they did not at thy call repent and turn; we laid both life and death before them, and spared not to reveal ‘the whole counsel of God’ for their salvation; but they believed never a word we spake; we were to them as those that mocked, or told what we had dreamed in the night, and not the words of truth an faithfulness?  O God forbid that this should be the report which at their return they make to God of their negotiation!  But the more to affect you with the importance of their message, and your answer to it, consider these things following:

           (1.) Consider the wonderful love of God in send­ing you these ambassadors.  Is it not a prince that sends to one of his own rank, but a God to his rebel creature; against whom he might have sent, not an ambassador to treat, but an army of judgments to fight and destroy.  It is not against rebels that are en­trenched in some place of strength, or in the field with a force wherewith you are able to resist his power; but to his prisoners fettered and manacled —to you that have your traitorous head on the block. It is not any need he hath of your life that makes him desire your salvation.  A prince sometimes saves his rebellious subjects because he needs their hands to fight for him, and weakens himself by shedding their blood; but God can ruin you, and not wrong himself. If you perish, it is without his damage.  The Pharisees are said to reject ‘the counsel of God against themselves,’ Luke 7:30.  It is you that suffer, not God.

           (2.) Consider what an intolerable affront is given to the majesty of heaven by rejecting his offers of grace.  Princes’ requests are commands.  Who dare deny a king what he asks? and darest thou, a poor thimbleful of dust, stout it out against thy Maker?  It is charged upon no less than a king as an act of insufferable pride, that ‘he did...evil in the sight of the Lord his God, and humbled not himself before Jere­miah the prophet speaking from the mouth of the Lord,’ II Chr. 36:12. But what! must a king come down from his throne, and humble himself before a poor prophet that was his own subject.  God will not have him tremble and bow, not to Jeremiah, but to ‘Jere­miah...speaking from the mouth of the Lord.’  O, consider this, ye that think it childish and poor-spirited to weep at a sermon, to humble yourselves at the reproof of a minister!  Your carriage under the word preached declares what your thoughts of God himself are.  When Naash slighted David’s ambassa­dors, and abused them, the king took the scorn upon himself.  ‘I will publish the name of the Lord,’ saith Moses, ‘ascribe ye greatness unto our God,’ Deut. 32:3.  How should they ascribe greatness to God while Moses is preaching to them.  Surely he means by their humble attendance on, and ready obedience to, the word he delivered in God’s name.

Why God useth men, and not angels, as his ambassadors

           Third. But if God will use ambassadors, why does he not employ some glorious angels from heaven to bring his message, rather than weak and frail men?

           Answer (1). The apostle gives us the reason: ‘We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excel­lency of the power may be of God, and not of us,’ II Cor. 4:7; ¦< ÏFJD"6­\<T4H F6,b,F4<—in vessels of shell.  As the precious pearl is found in a shell, so this precious treasure of the gospel shall be found in frail men, that the excellency of the work may be of God. The more contemptible the instrument, the more glorious appears his divine power in using it for so high and noble an end.  To see a man wound another with a sword that is sharp and weighty would carry no wonder; but to wound him with a feather in his hand, this would speak it a miracle.  To see men fall down and tremble when an angel—a creature of such might and glory—is the speaker, is no great wonder; but to behold a Felix quivering on the bench, while a man, and he a poor prisoner at the bar, preacheth to his judge, this carries a double wonder.  First, that so poor a creature as Paul was, and in the condition of a prisoner, durst be so bold; and also, that so great a person as Felix was should be smitten with his words, as if some thunderbolt had struck him.  Who will not adore the power of a God in the weakness of the instrument?  Had God employed angels in this busi­ness, we should have been in danger of ascribing the efficacy of the work to the gifts and parts of the instrument, and of giving credit to the message for the messenger’s sake that is so honourable.  But now, God sending those that are weak creatures like our­selves, when anything is done by them, we are forced to say, ‘It is the Lord's doing,’ and not the instruments'.  What reason God had this way to pro­vide for the safe-guarding his own glory, we see by our proneness to idolize the gifts of men, where they are more eminent and radiant than in others.  What would we have done if angels had been the mes­sengers?  Truly, it would have been hard to have kept us from worshipping them, as we see John himself had done, if he had not been kept back by the angel’s seasonable caveat, Rev. 19:10.

           Answer (2). Ministers, being men, have an ad­vantage many ways above angels for the work.

           (a) As they are more nearly concerned in the message they bring than angels could have been; so that they cannot deceive others, without a wrong to their own salvation.  What greater argument for one’s care than his own interest?  Surely that pilot will look how he steers the ship that hath an adventure in the freight.

           (b) Their affections have a naturalness arising from the sense of those very temptations in them­selves which their brethren labour under.  This an angel could not have; and by this they are able to speak more feelingly to the condition of other men than an angel could do.  So that what man wants of the angels’ rhetoric is recompensed with his natural affection and sympathy flowing from experience.  He knows what a troubled conscience is in another, by having felt it throb in his own bosom; as God told his people, having been themselves sojourners in Egypt, ‘You know the heart of a stranger.’  And who will treat poor souls with more mercy than they who know they need it themselves?

           (c) The sufferings which ministers meet with for the gospel’s sake are of great advantage to their breth­ren.  Had angels been the ambassadors they could not have sealed to the truth of the doctrine they preached with their blood.  Paul’s bonds were famous at court and country also: ‘Many of the brethren,...waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold to speak the word without fear,’ Php. 1:14.  Angels might have sounded the trumpet of the gospel with a shriller voice; but men alone have pitchers to break—I mean frail bodies—by suffering for the gospel, whereby the glory of its truths, like the lamp in Gideon’s soldier’s hand, shines forth upon the eyes of their greater enemies, to the confusion of their faces and amaze­ment of their hearts.

The duty of the ministry is set out by the title ‘ambassadors

2. Ministers of the gospel are by God designated ambassadors, to set out the duty of their office. Where there is honosthere is onus—places of honour are places of trust and service.  Many like well enough to hear of the minister’s dignity—with Diotrephes, they love pre-eminence—that would willingly be ex­cused the labour that attends it.  None have a greater trust deposited in their hands than the minister.  It is tremendum onus—a weight that made the apostle tremble under it: ‘I was among you,’ saith Paul, ‘with much fear and trembling.’ To them is ‘committed the word of reconciliation,’ II Cor. 5:19.  If the treaty of peace between God and sinners doth not speed, the ambassador is sure to be called to an account how he discharged his place.  But more of the minister’s duty as an ambassador afterwards.

Why God delivers his gospel by ambassadors from mankind

           Second. The second thing we propounded to give an account of was, why God would send ambassa­dors to his poor creature.  I answer,

1. Negatively.

           (1.) Not because he needs man’s good-will. Earthly princes’ affairs require they should hold a cor­respondence with their neighbours, therefore they send ambassadors to preserve peace or preserve amity.  But God can defend his crown without the help of allies.

           (2.) Not because he was bound to do it.  There is a law of nations, yea of nature, that obliges princes before they commence a war to offer peace.  But the great God cannot be bound, except he binds himself.  When Adam sinned, God was free, and might have chosen whether he would make a new league with man, or take vengeance on him for breaking his faith in the first.  But,

2. Affirmatively.  No other account can be given of this but the good-will and free-grace of God. When Christ, who is the prime Ambassador, landed first on earth, see what brought him hither, ‘Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us,’ Luke 1:78.  Tender mercy indeed, for the life of man lay under God’s foot at his pure mercy.  He was no more bound to treat with his creature than a prince with a traitor legally con­demned.  Wherever God’s ambassadors come, they come on mercy's errand: ‘The Lord God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes, and sending; because he had compassion on his people,’ II Chr. 36:15.

           Question. But if God will treat with his poor creatures, why doth he it by ambassadors, and not by himself immediately?

           Answer. This is the fruit of divine indulgence. Sin hath made the presence of God dreadful; man cannot now well bear it.  What a fright was Adam put into when he heard but the voice of God walking towards him in the garden, and not furiously rushing upon him?  The Jews had the trial of this; they soon had enough of God’s presence, and therefore came to Moses, saying, ‘Speak thou with us,...but let not God speak with us, lest we die,’ Ex. 20:19.