This was related by Joseph Hall, witnessed while he was travelling through Europe. It has long been noted, and there are several likewise accounts in Foxes Book of Martyrs, how the methos of torture or cruelty the inquisitors wrought on God’s chosen people, God revenged their blood and suffering, by ironic and almost paradoxical turn of events in the tormenters own lives, often ending in their death, but the act they had commited just a short while before, to one of the martyrs, their own death so strikingly had resemblance to the act, yet it came directly from the hand of God, that one would have to be blind to deny God’s justice and revenge over the blood of the martyrs and the cruelty inflicted upon them. Joseph Hall’s account of a similar scenario that he witnessed:

a short but memorable story which the graphier of that town (though of a different religion) reported to more ears than ours. When the last inquisition tyrannized in those parts, and helped to spend the faggots of Ardenne, one of the rst, a confident confessor, being led far to his stake, sung psalms along the way, in a heavenly courage and victorious triumph. The cruel officer, envying his last mirth, and grieving to see him merrier than his tormenters, commanded him silence. He sings still, and desirous to improve his last breath to the best. The view of his approaching glory bred his joy; his joy breaks forth into a cheerful confession. The enraged sherriff causes his tongue to be cut off near the roots. Bloody wretch! It had been good music to have heard his shrieks; but to hear his music was torment. The poor martyr dies in silence, rests in peace. Not many months after, our butcherly officer hath a son born with his tongue hanging down upon his chin, like a deer after a long chase, which never could be gathered up within the bounds of his lips. O the Divine hand, full of justice, full of revenge. —Joseph Hall

This was related by Joseph Hall, witnessed while he was travelling through Europe.  It has long been noted, and    there are several likewise accounts in Foxes Book of Martyrs, how the methos of torture or cruelty the inquisitors wrought on God’s chosen people, God revenged their blood and suffering, by ironic and almost paradoxical turn of events in the tormenters own lives, often ending in their death, but the act they had commited just a short while before, to one of the martyrs,  their own death so strikingly had resemblance to the act, yet it came directly from the hand of God, that one would have to be blind to deny God’s justice and revenge over the blood of the martyrs and the cruelty inflicted upon them.

Joseph Hall’s account of a similar scenario that he witnessed:

a short but memorable story which the graphier of that town (though of a different religion) reported to more ears than ours. When the last inquisition tyrannized in those parts, and helped to spend the faggots of Ardenne, one of the rst, a confident confessor, being led far to his stake, sung psalms along the way, in a heavenly courage and victorious triumph. The cruel officer, envying his last mirth, and grieving to see him merrier than his tormenters, commanded him silence. He sings still, and desirous to improve his last breath to the best. The view of his approaching glory bred his joy; his joy breaks forth into a cheerful confession. The enraged sherriff causes his tongue to be cut off near the roots. Bloody wretch! It had been good music to have heard his shrieks; but to hear his music was torment. The poor martyr dies in silence, rests in peace. Not many months after, our butcherly officer hath a son born with his tongue hanging down upon his chin, like a deer after a long chase, which never could be gathered up within the bounds of his lips. O the Divine  hand, full of justice, full of revenge.
—Joseph Hall

Psalm 25:1-3

To You, O LORD, I lift up my soul. The Psalmist declares at the very outset, that he is not driven here and there, after the manner of the ungodly, but that he directs all his desires and prayers to God alone. Nothing is more inconsistent with true and sincere prayer to God, than to waver and gaze about as the heathen do, for some help from the world; and at the same time to forsake God, or not to betake ourselves directly to his guardianship and protection. In order to strengthen the hope of obtaining his request, he declares, what is of the greatest importance in prayer, that he had his hope fixed in God, and that he was not ensnared by the allurements of the world, or prevented from lifting up his soul fully and unfeignedly to God. In order, therefore, that we may pray aright to God, let us be directed by this rule: not to distract our minds by various and uncertain hopes, nor to depend on worldly aid, but to yield to God the honour of lifting up our heart to him in sincere and earnest prayer.

O my God, I trust in You;  Let me not be ashamed;   Let not my enemies triumph over me. By the word trust, David confirms that faith and hope are added as the cause of such an effect, namely, the lifting up of this world, are lifted up to God. David, then, was carried upwards to God with the whole desire of his heart, because, trusting to his promises, he thereby hoped for sure salvation. When he asks that God would not let him be put to shame, he offers up a prayer, which is taken from the ordinary doctrine of Scripture, namely, that they who trust in God shall never be ashamed. The reason which is added, is that he might not be exposed to the derision of his enemies, whose pride is no less hurtful to the feelings of the godly than it is displeasing to God.

Indeed, let no one who waits on You be ashamed; Let those be ashamed who deal treacherously without cause. David declares that when he is delivered he will  not enjoy exclusively the benefit of it; but that its fruit shall extent to all true believers; just as on the other  hand, the faith of many would be shaken if he had been forsaken by God.

I know many believers who live much in the Psalms of the Bible.  Sadly, as opposed to centuries ago, they do not have the relevance to much of Christendom and the Christian life as they ought. The singing of inspired Psalms in Worship for instance, is often superseded and replaced, by uninspired,  words of men in hymns. So at once is made void the words of Jesus, in John 4:24, to worship Him in Spirit and in truth.

But even away from the setting of worship, the Psalms have great, great value.  They are one of the most comforting books for the afflicted believer, and one of the most encouraging.  They also, will help us to learn how to pray. As these Psalms which were the prayers of David and others, are a pattern for prayer, no less than The Lord’s prayer in the New Testament.

The books of the Old Testament are often relegated in favour of New Testament only; yet the Psalms are full of Christ in every way. This book, in itself, gives validation to how the Old Testament has just as much worth to today’s believer as it ever did, because just like the whole of the Old Testament is full of shadows of Christ, you cannot read the Old Testament without reading of and seeing Christ, this book perhaps above any other it is also true. Psalm 22 being an excellent example.

Our predecessors, of those who have gone before us, also knew the value of the Psalms, and appreciated them greatly and studied them devotedly.  Here is just a few short quotes, from names in Christian history, and their words apply as much today, of why the Psalms still have such value to us, as New Testament Christians.

Although all scripture, breathes the grace of God, yet Sweet beyond all others is the book of Psalms History instructs, the law teaches, prophecy announces, rebukes a Chastens, Morality persuades, but in the book of Psalms we have the fruit of all time, e and the Kind of medicine for the salvation of man.
–Ambrose of Milan

The Psalter is a little Bible, and the Summary of the old Testament, 1 verse of the Psalms is sufficient for the meditation of the day, And he who at the end of the day finds himself fully possessed of Its Sense and spirit, may consider his time well Spent
- Martin Luther

The book of Psalms I call an anatomy of all parts of the soul, For there is not an emotion from which anyone Can be Conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror The holy spirit has drawn here to the life, all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities-In short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men are usually agitated. There is no other book, in which are recorded so many deliverance’s, nor one in which the evidences and experiences, of the Fatherly Providences of God, are celebrated with such splendour of style and language, and yet with the strictest adherence to the truth.
-John Calvin

We have now before us, one of the choicest and most excellent parts of the old Testament, nay, So Much is there in it of Christ and of his Gospel, as well as of God and his law, that it has been called the summary of both Testaments.
Matthew Henry

Are you a law student? King David was! Oh how I Love thy law etc, etc. (Psalm 119:97; Psalm 19:17)

The law has become obfuscated in our day and age, of what exactly if any relevance the moral law, the ten commandments has to do with New Testament Christians. You will find all kinds of variances, there is much antinomianism about, and there is still people adding to God’s Word and gong further than Scripture requires.

The order one brings God’s law into having anyone to do with life, at least in sincerity, has a lot to do with this subject. For one to uphold the law as much as we are able, and to attempt to, before we have been justified sinners before God, is legalism, we are trying to work our way to heaven, yet without being justified before God by the blood of Christ and having His righteousness imputed to us, it’s all folly and vanity. Much like the lawyers of the New Testament that Christ called a brood of vipers.

No one will get to heaven, or be true Christians, no matter how much we try to live by the Law of God, without first having gone to the Lord in faith, and had your sins washed clean with His precious blood, and so standing righteous in his sight. The order of things is of import. The first thing in the order of faith is the above.

Any good works before that will not merit anyone out of hell.

But there is a lot of confusion today amongst New Testament Christians about exactly how or if the law applies to us today. To try and follow it to the letter, when justified sinners before God, will often get the call of “Legalist” brought down upon our heads. Yet what is the moral Law as given in the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai? It is a reflection of God’s nature, and it tells us who and what He is above almost anything else.

This is not going to be a blog post about the fourth commandment, but I am using the fourth commandment as an example here because it is the one I hear most often that people do not understand how this applies today. That we are not under law but under grace and that it’s not put down as clearly as the other commandments are. The rest of the commandments say, thou shalt not, or thou shalt. Thou shalt not kill, is quite easy to interpret, same as thou shalt not commit adultery. We can all understand that in an instant. But some parts of Scripture are not all written in the same exacting way.
It took Tertullian to first bring the doctrine of the Trinity to the church, because in Scripture the Word trinity never appears, and it is only indicated at it being so. Tertullian was a study of Scripture, and this seems often where we go wrong today. We want the answers handed to us on a plate without doing the work that all Christians should do on their own behalf to find out what God is saying about any given subject. We ask this person, or that person; we ask as Calvinist’s what Calvin thought. The one place we don’t seem to go though is to appeal to God to illuminate us and go to His Word to put the hours in, the study in, to find out what is meant exactly by, “Remember the Sabbath day, and Keep it holy.”
Is it a symptom of the immediate everything society we live in? Perhaps. It’s also a sign of sloth and of us not delighting in God’s Word if we are not prepared to study it to that extent, to be like the Berean’s and search the Scriptures to see what God is saying and meaning exactly by Exodus 20:8.
In cases like that, we need to go to all of Scripture and find all the places where the subject is brought up, and study all those places together, so that we get a systematic belief that becomes plainer the more systematized it is, and so that we can be left in no doubt. God did not leave us in darkness over the Ten Commandments and what He requires or expects of us. The answers to everything that is not plain in one place can be found by studying the whole of Scripture. Scripture interprets Scripture is an old and very true saying.

Anyone who refuses to do so, but keeps asking this person or that person, instead of going to the source in my opinion has good reason to question their conversion, especially over matters regarding the law. As what was David’s attitude in Psalm 119 that he delighted in the law and meditated on it day and night. In Psalm 19 he calls it perfect. Something perfect is not going to be changed. You cannot improve on perfect, and if the Moral law of God changed, that would indicate that God had changed too, in which case. If He was changeable He would not already be perfect so could not be God.
We read Jesus say: Matthew 5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
And he did fulfil the law. The only man since Adam and Eve fell and put a curse on the rest of us who ever had or whoever will by living a sinless life. But by his fulfilling it to the letter, then he re-established it for those who are his people who came after him. Following Christ means being conformed to him and to imitate him. He fulfilled the law perfectly, (which we can never do) but the more we try to do so, the being conformed to Christ we will be becoming. Because first comes justification, then we are followers of Christ and having the moral law as our rule of faith and practice is what makes for the sanctified Christian.
The law each and every one of them, has a lot more meat on the bones of what they actually mean, besides the one or two lines stated in the Old Testament. For instance, I have known folk who thought though shalt not commit false witness, simply meant you shouldn’t perjure yourself in court!! There is a whole lot more to that law than that, but the folk who believe that’s what it teaches were not students of Scripture nor delighted in the law of God like David did, or they would have had after many years of professing faith much more than such a basic simple knowledge as that.
You can’t be saved by the law, by doing works without first being justified by God. But you can’t be saved without the law either. Anyone who is truly justified by and before God will do good works and obey the law of God as much as any human can, as a consequence of saving faith and saving grace. God does not tell us to do what he does not give us the tools to do. What God requires of us, he gives the grace to us to do it with. So if we are not following God, and obeying his rules, yes rules I say, Do this and live, or don’t do this and die, which appear in Scripture can quite justly be called rules, the Law of God. God’s Rules and not man’s rules. But if you mention the word rules to folk at times again you will have the word Legalist come crashing down upon your head. A parent gives its child rules to follow. As long as the child obeys it stays in favour with its parents. Once it disobeys it will be punished and out of favour. And God clearly says in both covenants, do this and live. With every promise comes a threatening and a curse, the promise is for if we do obey , the threatening is what will happen and the curse being pronounced upon us if we don’t and are not ignorant new born babes, there is a very good chance we have had no real conversion. Jesus fulfilled the Law as he states in Matt. 5:17 and his people need to establish it upon the earth as his rule of thumb and it is one way He is glorified, and the more people who do, the more dominion and rule Christ will have upon the earth, because his values and morals will be becoming and more and more established the greater number of professing Christians who live the law out in life and practice.

We will either accept the whole moral law, or we reject it, and if we do that, we reject Christ along with it, because the law is the Revelation of God’s character and nature. And if we try to keep the ones that are desirous and pleasing to us, but not the ones that don’t please our flesh, we break one law, the whole law is broken. (James 2:10)
When we are justified before God, and his righteousness imputed to us, the law leads to our sanctification. The unsanctified Christian does not exist it’s an oxymoron, at least Christians that have professed so any length of time. The law teaches us what is right and wrong and what is meant by being holy. Because the sum of holiness is summed up in those ten commandments, but again, we have to dig a lot deeper to find out the full scope of each law.
Let us be like the Berean’s and search the Scriptures to see what God is saying to us and to testify of Him who perfectly kept and fulfilled the Law. (John 5:39) Ignorance is a choice if we do not. As every bit of Scripture is for our good. 1 Tim. 3:16 The Law is alive the Law is real, and without it, no one will go to Heaven. Because only those who are justified before God will be given the grace needed to obey it and so be sanctified by it.
Obey God by doing His revealed will, and do this and live. It’s the only path a true Christian, one justified before God, can follow.  If the moral law was not still enforce, then no one would need a Saviour.

And let us pray along with Augustine: Grant what thou commandest and then command what thou wilt. Because unless that is fulfilled, we will not see the face of God.

As Walter Marshall wrote:

One cause of these errors, that are so contrary one to the other, is, that many are prone to imagine nothing else to be meant by salvation, but to be delivered from hell, and to enjoy heavenly happiness and glory: hence they conclude, that, if good works be a means of glorification, and precedent to it, they must also be a precedent means of our whole salvation; and that, if they be not a necessary means of our whole salvation, they are not necessary at all to glorification. But though salvation be often taken in Scripture by way of eminency, for its fperfection in the state of heavenly glory; yet according to its full and proper signification, we are to understand by it, all that freedom from evil of our natural corrupt state, and all those holy and happy enjoyments that we receive from Christ our Saviour either in this world by faith, or in the world to come by glorfication. Thus justification, the gift of the Spirit to dwell in us, the priviledges of adoption are parts of our salvation which we take part of in this life. Thus also, the conformity of our hearts to the law of God, and the fruits of righteousness with which we are filled by Jesus Christ, in this life, are a necessary part of our salvation.—God saveth us from our sinful uncleanness here, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost as well as from hell hereafter (Ezek. xxxvi.29; Titus iii.5). Christ was called Jesus, that is a Saviour, because he saved his people from their sins. (Matt i. 21). Therefore it is part of our salvation to deliver us from our sins, which is begun in this life, by justification and sanctification, and perfected by glorification in the life to come.

I know when my cat poppy dies, I will feel sadness, yet, I have already let her go in a way even as she lives. The same is true of everything and everyone else I love or are important to me. Several months ago, to a friend, my oft complaint was, what I am I supposed to do if I lose poppy, and “Lady Erskine” is still not back, so I have nothing or no one. I always end up in places or new perceptions our outlooks without remembering how it happened, but I do know the last several months, the question above became moot. Yes, poppy is here, and I enjoy her while she is here, yet in a very real way, she is already lost to me. All we have to do, is acknowledge in our heart and understand the reality of everything and everyone in this life is perishable and temporary, and that one day they will die. If they die as we live, we are already to let them go when we don’t just merely assent to that, but hold it deep in our hearts as a fact that is inevitable and are ready for it even if its the next hour. Poppy disappearing on Saturday night was the manner in which I thought she’d died that was so upsetting. Like I had failed her at the end by not making her feel safe or being there to comfort or protect her. But if she died next week, or even tomorrow, there will be sadness, but I have already let her go, even as I love her while she lives., I’m not sure how God enabled me to do that, but I also know its true of other things I love. By the world’s standards I am dirt poor, and poverty stricken; even by most Christian standards, yet as I was just remarking to a friend, to me, I am rich. Because God has enabled me to live upon the invisible God when I have very little else, and I know that has to be where my joy comes from when as ill as this and so little in this world to take the edge off all my afflictions. But even as the things I love live, and I love them as I live, I have also been enabled to pass a sentence of death upon them, and that’s how I am able to live upon God that is invisible, in the worst of circumstances. I thank God for his amazing grace, as these things have made my life enjoyable again, by living on things invisible. I wouldn’t swap my afflictions for all the riches in the world, because this prison has been turned into a palace, that is paved with Gold, and where God abides with me, and my two cats. The riches that the world offers, would be a poor exchange. I have been richer in the past than now, and yet, I remember that emptiness that torment, that anguish that used to feel like it was destroying me. And now when less rich, and with very little to keep me warm in the worst of circumstances and quite dreadful illness, I am fuller than I have ever been in my entire life. We serve an awesome God. And while every living thing in this life is perishable and temporary, God will never leave us or foresake us.

This quote of Bunyan’s that I have posted before, completely nails it. And if we are ever to suffer rightly, when we suffer extremely, it IS the only way to do it. God got me to that place before I first came across this quote. But as soon as I read it, I knew that is what he had done for me, and by grace worked out in my life.
But, I wouldn’t advise folks to wait to do this, until they are in the place of being given the news you have an incurable illness, and perhaps by that time your life partner and spouse maybe already dead. The time to set about, doing the work below, is while we have things and riches to pass a sentence of death upon, so that when faced with the reality of it, it is already embedded in our heart, and we have already let go and have died to everything we currently cherish. I am blessed that God enabled me when at the point already. But if not for his doing so, I would still be drowning in afflictions, with every day an agony or anguish instead of feasting on the invisible God and being filled and rich and the place I once saw as a prison, would not now be the palace it has become. Yet God abides here, so why wouldn’t it be a palace, as that is whrere Kings abide in any case.

if ever I would suffer rightly, I must first pass a sentence of death upon every thing that can be properly called a thing of this life, even to reckon myself, my wife, my children, my health, my enjoyment, and all, as dead to me, and myself as dead to them. The second was, to live upon God that is invisible, as Paul said in another place; the way not to faint, is to “look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
—John Bunyan

Psalms 73:26 My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.

DEATH’S DUEL

And unto God the Lord belong the issues of death (i.e. from death).
BUILDINGS stand by the benefit of their foundations that sustain and support
them, and of their buttresses that comprehend and embrace them, and of their contignations
that knit and unite them. The foundations suffer them not to sink, the buttresses suffer
them not to swerve, and the contignation and knitting suffers them not to cleave. The
body of our building is in the former part of this verse. It is this: He that is our God is the
God of salvation; ad salutes, of salvations in the plural, so it is in the original; the God that
gives us spiritual and temporal salvation too. But of this building, the foundation, the
buttresses, the contignations, are in this part of the verse which constitutes our text, and
in the three divers acceptations of the words amongst our expositors: Unto God the Lord
belong the issues from death, for, first, the foundation of this building (that our God is the
God of all salvation) is laid in this, that unto this God the Lord belong the issues of death;
that is, it is in his power to give us an issue and deliverance, even then when we are brought
to the jaws and teeth of death, and to the lips of that whirlpool, the grave. And so in this
acceptation, this exitus mortis, this issue of death is liberatio ‡ morte, a deliverance from
death, and this is the most obvious and most ordinary acceptation of these words, and
that upon which our translation lays hold, the issues from death. And then, secondly, the
buttresses that comprehend and settle this building, that he that is our God is the God of
all salvation, are thus raised; unto God the Lord belong the issues of death, that is, the
disposition and manner of our death; what kind of issue and transmigration we shall have
out of this world, whether prepared or sudden, whether violent or natural, whether in
our perfect senses or shaken and disordered by sickness, there is no condemnation to be
argued out of that, no judgment to be made upon that, for, howsoever they die, precious
in his sight is the death of his saints, and with him are the issues of death; the ways of our
departing out of this life are in his hands. And so in this sense of the words, this exitus
mortis, the issues of death, is liberatio in morte, a deliverance in death; not that God will
deliver us from dying, but that he will have a care of us in the hour of death, of what kind
soever our passage be. And in this sense and acceptation of the words, the natural frame
and contexture doth well and pregnantly administer unto us. And then, lastly, the
contignation and knitting of this building, that he that is our God is the God of all salvations,
consists in this, Unto this God the Lord belong the issues of death; that is, that this God
the Lord having united and knit both natures in one, and being God, having also come
into this world in our flesh, he could have no other means to save us, he could have no
other issue out of this world, nor return to his former glory, but by death. And so in this
sense, this exitus mortis, this issue of death, is liberatio per mortem, a deliverance by death,
by the death of this God, our Lord Christ Jesus. And this is Saint Augustine’s acceptation
of the words, and those many and great persons that have adhered to him. In all these
three lines, then, we shall look upon these words, first, as the God of power, the Almighty
Father rescues his servants from the jaws of death; and then as the God of mercy, the
glorious Son rescued us by taking upon himself this issue of death; and then, between
these two, as the God of comfort, the Holy Ghost rescues us from all discomfort by his
blessed impressions beforehand, that what manner of death soever be ordained for us,
yet this exitus mortis shall be introitus in vitam, our issue in death shall be an entrance
into everlasting life. And these three considerations: our deliverance ˆ morte, in morte,
per mortem, from death, in death, and by death, will abundantly do all the offices of the
foundations, of the buttresses, of the contignation, of this our building; that he that is our
God is the God of all salvation, because unto this God the Lord belong the issues of death.
First, then, we consider this exitus mortis to be liberatio ˆ morte, that with God the

continue

This is a subject that has been weighing on me heavily for months. I have a somewhat unique view into some things because of the extent of my sufferings, that come under the heading of what Calvin termed “Extraordinary,” being outside most normal human experiences. I don’t plan to repeat any of them here, if you are not familar with this blog then I may suggest you read my “About” page.

I am going to be quoting extensively from John Beadle’s diary of a thankful Christian in this post and I am not sure  if I will be able to finish it in one single blog post or if there will need to be a part two out of neccessity out of consideration for readers time. I am posting it with the hopes of getting it out of my system instead of it continuing to burden me, and in the hope of doing some good, to any one else who any reader may know either now or in future who is in need of loving ones neighbour as yourself if they are in severe afflictions.

The response to this degree of suffering has also been extraordinary for the most part, from the Church, who as a church we should propogate love and  nurture each others spiritual well being, and the exact opposite for the most part was done. But this has however been weighing more heavily on me than ever before, through knowing others in dire affliction, outside the normal severity, and seeing the same thing propagated towards them, by folks who criticised those who had acted thus towards myself.  For me this is the thing that has led to me feel weighed down, both on behalf of the church, and God’s glory,  and if folks who we love are harmed needlessly it should bother us greatly.  If we love our neighbour as ourself at least.

In my opinion, it boils down to this: How much do we love our neighbour; do we love them as we love ourself?  And how thankful are we to God for the good things and blessings and comparative ease we find ourselves in?  The one, it is my belief has a direct bearing on the other.

The obvious example of Scripture is the book of Job. Whatever one thinks about the right royal shipwreck his friends made of trying to help him, their attempts were noble, and they sacrificed to do so.  We have every reason to suppose they too were prosperous men, being friends of Job, and also because of their speeches as regards prosperity as it related to being God’s children. The Bible itself tells us they were also righteous men.  They got it wrong, because even the most noble men of God, are not free of error or infallible,  but the point is, their intent and desire above anything else was to help Job.  They left their own prosperous lives behind, (which we can assume I think also included family, we have no reason to assume they were any different than most men of that age in that regards) they left it all though, to go to be with, and uphold and support their friend who was in such dire need and trouble. They loved their neighbour as themself, even in their mistaken belief that Job was not a righteous man, or it would not have all befallen him as it did. They sat in an ash heap with Job and never said a word for an entire week, they showed their love to him by that act alone; their regard for his well being and showing solidarity with him standing shoulder to shoulder with him in it, holding him up by their silent support. Who knows in those days also, how long the journey they had undertaken to be with him took aside from the time they were actually with him. Sometimes to those in severe affliction,  companionable silence can be more meaningful than words that will do harm rather than help.  They sacrficed their own pleasures, and things they could enjoy at home, being in the bosom of their families, in other words they denied themselves to the uttermost, to go and uphold and support Job in his trial.

What often seems to be forgotten in our days of ease and comfort today, is that by serving each other, we are also serving Christ. Christ said there is no greater love than a man who will lay down his life for his friends, [John 15:13] and in  way that is what Job’s friends did, because they cast their own lives, their own interests aside, in favour of  trying to help their friend.  If God gives us many blessings, then the more thankful we have to be, and the more willingly we should be to part or deprive ourself of them for a time to do the service of the Lord towards our brethren.  Children are blessings;  they should make one so full up with thanks to God, that we are brimming over with it, and that be displayed in our actions in our sevice to the Lord. With many children comes many responsibilites, but our first priority should always be to the service of the Lord, and HIS church. When we serve each other in the church, then we do indeed serve God. We shouldn’t set limits or boundaries on how much we are going to give Mr X or Mrs Y, or we are putting boundaries on how much we are willing to give  back to God, in grateful return for all he has given us, and the one debt of his precious Son’s blood that can never be repaid. If we are thankful, it will show, and this is one of the major ways, because it is the sum and substance of the Law of God.  To serve God and put God before any other creature, (that includes our nearest and dearest) and to fulfil the law by loving one’s neighbour as we do ourself.

Joseph Caryl in his exposition on Job, had much to say about the special blessings that children are. They are the greatst blessing God can give any man.  He can be read here and here on this subject.  The more our quiver is full of arrows, the greater the blessing from  God which despite the responsibility both financially and for their care, the gratitude we should have towards God for giving us them, remembering that they are not our own, and we deserve nothing good, each of us is deserving of hell, should make us put our service to God, before our enjoyment of our children or other blessings God has bestowed upon us.  If we do not, we have unthankful hearts, and are making idols of our children by putting them before our first service which should always be to God.

From John Beadle pp.124

When you have an opportunity of doing good, never plead you have many children. Cyprian had wont to say, The more children, the more charity.

Charity comes out of a thankful heart. That God has given us any good thing in this life, when we are nothing but poor worms crawling about in dungheaps. If God has given us many blessings, we should remember those blessings belong to him, are on loan to us, and he can take them back at any time, and he may do that, if we put them as the idols over our service to God, and that often comes in the form of our service to each other, and the church, and even to the stranger. Virgina is for Hugueont’s had an interesting post on Who is my Neighbour.
But when it comes to those we call our friends, have enjoyed sweet fellowship together and share the same religion with them, the desire to do good to them, should be even greater, the desire to deny our own pleasures in favour of taking up the service of God, and to love our neighbour as ourself, which if we do any less, we do not do, and break the whole law by not doing, should be borne our of love to both God and man, that the Lord is our first Love, and his service our first objective in all of life, and to love our neighbour as ourself, which if we do so, we will take their afflictions to heart as much as if they were our own, and help them bear it, weep with those who weep, and actively seek to relieve them, with no boundaries on time or thinking about the cost of what we may have to deny ourselves by doing so, becuase the things we deny ourselves for a short time of, do not belong to us anyway, they belong to the Lord, and he has only loaned them us, and he loans us things of a temporal nature, whether that be worldly riches or intimiate family relations, on the understanding that the Christians, always puts him and our service to him, and therefore show our love to him, and to show our thankfulness for him above anything or anyone else, FIRST. God is a jealous God. He will not share that glory with another. And he will not be robbed of it, by us putting anything of the world before Him. If we do anything less, then we show we love ourself far more than we do our neighbour and we value our own comforts before our service to God, as if we somehow deserve or merit them. And we also love ourself above our love to God. If we are also not thus self-sacrificing for our friends, as Job’s friends were in his trial, then it feels a betrayal to the person you call your friend while showing contempt to them by trying to assist them so little, and in some cases Psalm 55 may come to mind, especially if rather than helping, we actively make them worse.

I will leave this here for today for the readers’ convenience, but part two, will follow (DV) tomorrow.

I thnk if there was more thankfulness among Christians, we should see a lot less melancholy or morose Christians, who are in no particular hardships, no more than average at least, but instead even amongst those who seem very well blessed, and very rich and very comfortable Christians, at least compared to many others, we see the woe is me attitude and melancholia over-flowing. When surrounded by blessings and quite discernibly so, it can only speak of an unthankful heart, because somethings or other may not be just quite perfect or as we would wish it to be in thos cases.

Let us all pray for more thankful hearts, whether we rich or poor.  But let the rich not indulge such sinfulful passions and bents as melancholia at every turn as I have seen,  but rather open their eyes and see what the Lord has given them that they deserve not,  and be very thankful and humble that he stooped so low, and rather than woe is me, give thanks to Him.  One cannot simulatenously be melancholic and praising God. Ingratitude is a sin whether its from the rich or the poor.  But the sin is far more glaring in those who have a bounty given freely by God, compared to those of us who starve.

Many, by idolizing some prescribed forms now,cast off all forms of prayer; and too many from Cathedral chanting, are come to reject that sweet heavenly Gospel service of singing of Psalms: yea, so far from keeping a diary of by-past mercies, that they sleight and omit daily blessings of God in their families, and at their meals, for their daily bread and present mercies, though contrary to Scripture precepts and presidents; as if their food suited not their stomachs unless it were profane, (like themselves), that is, not sanctified by the Word and prayer.
The sacrifice of Thanksgiving was to be eaten on the same day, as one well notes; and in well-ordered families singing Psalms as Prayers hath been a daily exercise.
‘Twas a grave and just reproof of a Right Reverend Father in this city, present with his brethren on their days of humiliation and prayer, he commended their petitions and confessions but discommended their failings in thanksgiving.
And ’twas well answered by another, to one complaining of many wants and weaknesses, Be Thankfull. Be thankfull.
We look more after our privileges of Christ, then our duty we are to practice towards him; like Tenants, not so ready with their Rents, as to see their Covenants with the landlord be made good to them.
But ingratitude is a sin condemned by the light of nature; the Heathen had their Hymns to their Gods. Lycurgus made no law against it: man in requiting kindness being a law unto himself.
In Athens a servant ungrateful after manumission, his Master had an action against him, and might reduce him to bondage.
The unthankful and unholy go together in the Word, and are parallel with the evil.
Unthankfulness is the grave, the hell of benefits, the curse of blessings, a wind that dries up mercies. Let nothing be lost, saith our Saviour; Bernard applies it to favour from God. [Joh nBeadle from A Journal or Diary of a Thankfull Christian.]

Lord, when in poverty we are so weighed down by our hunger, let us at least, at LEAST, be able to give thanks for your grace freely given and unmerited. Whether we be rich or poor, Father, please give us thankful hearts.

Critical Text of Journal or Diary of a thankfull Christian by John Beadle

It was said of Martin Luther that the times he felt most in need of God’s support, comfort and consolation, a close presence of the Lord, were the times he experienced some of his biggst desertions. When he was about to speak before the Diet of Worms is one such example.

John Foxe in his Acts and Monuments of 1555, tell us of Mr Robert Glover of coventry, two or three days before his death, overwhelmed with the prospect of martyrdom, and mentioning to a friend his earnest supplication for the light of God’s countenance, yet without any sense of comfort. His darkness continued up to the period of his arriving within sight of the stake, when suddenly his whole soul was so filled with consolation, that he could not forbear clapping his hands, and crying out–”He is come!–he is come!” He appeared to go up to heaven in a chariot of fire, exhibiting little or no sensibility of his cruel death. Was not this the word of his righteousness to one, whose eyes failed in looking for it? [Ps. 119:123]

This seemed an appropriate psalm for me to meditate on today particuarly for reasons that I do not intend to go into here.  And it seems a good Psalm to post for a Lord’s Day.  When men attack us, twist our words, slander us, or revile and despise is in any way,  here is a  song of calm, trust and hope of deliverance.  No matter what men may do to us.

Psalm 56

¹Be merciful unto me, O God: for man would swallow me up; he fighting daily oppresseth me.

²Mine enemies would daily swallow me up: for they be many that fight against me, O thou most High.

³What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.

⁴In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me.

⁵Every day they wrest my words: all their thoughts are against me for evil.

⁶They gather themselves together, they hide themselves, they mark my steps, when they wait for my soul.

⁷Shall they escape by iniquity? in thine anger cast down the people, O God.

⁸Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?

⁹When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back: this I know; for God is for me.

¹⁰In God will I praise his word: in the LORD will I praise his word.

¹¹In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me.

¹²Thy vows are upon me, O God: I will render praises unto thee.

¹³For thou hast delivered my soul from death: wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living?

Sometimes separating from folks, for your own spiritual well being, doesn’t just include worldly hell raisers, but sometimes those who are part of the church yet harm you in various ways, and hold you back because of it, and because it is destructive to you to continue rather than helping you heavenwards. You will either prize the company of men no matter the cost, at the risk of ones soul or not.

Depart from me, you evil-doers; for I will keep the commandments of my God. Psalm 119:115

Safe and quiet in his hiding-place, and behind his shield, David deprecates all attempts to disturb his peace—Depart from me, you evil-doers. He had found them to be opposed to his best interests; and he dreaded their influence in shaking his resolution for his God. Indeed such society must always hinder alike the enjoyment and the service of God. “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” And can we be “agreed,” and walk in fellowship with God, except we be at variance with the principles, the standard, and conduct of a world that is “enmity against Him?” Not more needful was the exhortation to the first Christians than to ourselves, “Save yourselves from this untoward generation.” True fellowship with God implies therefore a resolute separation from the ungodly. Secure in the hiding-place, and covered with the shield of our covenant God, let us meet their malice, and resist their enticements, with the undaunted front of “a good soldier of Jesus Christ.”

Not that we would indulge morose or ascetic seclusion. We are expressly enjoined to courtesy and kindness; to that wise and considerate “walk towards them that are without,” which “adorns the doctrine of God our Savior,” and indeed in some instances has been more powerful even than the word itself, to “win souls to Christ.” But when they would tempt us to a devious or backsliding step—when our connection with them entices us to a single act of conformity to their standard, dishonorable to God, and inconsistent with our profession—then must we take a bold and unflinching stand—Depart from me, you evil-doers for I will keep the commandments of my God. [Charles Bridges--An exposition of Psalm 119]

Psalms 119:114 Thou art my hiding place and my shield: I hope in thy word.
 
We have seen the unremitting vigilance of the enemy pursuing the man of God in his secret retirement with painful distraction. See how he runs to his hiding-place. Here is our main principle of safety—not our strivings or our watchfulness, but our faith. Flee instantly to Jesus. He is the sinner’s hiding-place, “the man,”—that wondrous man, “in whom dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” Yes, Jesus exposed Himself to the fury of “the tempest,” that He might become a hiding-place, for us. The broken law pursued with its relentless curse—’The sinner ought to die’—But You are my hiding-place, who has “redeemed me from the curse of the law, being made a curse for me.” “The fiery darts” pour in on every side: but the recollection of past security awakens my song of acknowledgment, “You have been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of ‘the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall.” Our hiding-place covers us from the power of the world. “In Me”—says our Savior, “you shall have peace. Be of good cheer! I have overcome the world.” Helpless to resist the great enemy, our Lord brings us to His wounded side, and hides us there. We “overcome him by the blood of the Lamb.” To all accusations from every quarter, our challenge is ready, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” From the fear of death, our hiding-place still covers us. “Jesus through death has destroyed him that had the power of death.” Against the sting of this last enemy, a song of thanksgiving is put into our mouth, “O death! where is your sting? O grave! where is your victory? Thanks be to God, which gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Thus is “the smoking flax,” which the malice of Satan strives to extinguish, not “quenched;” nor is “the bruised reed,” which seems beyond the hope of restoration, “broken.”
 
But the completeness of our security is graphically portrayed—You are my hiding-place, to cover from danger—my shield, also to protect me in it. Either I shall be kept from trouble, that it shall not come; or in trouble, that it shall not hurt me. The hiding-place alone would be imperfect security, as being limited to one place. But my shield is moveable, wherever be the point of danger or assault. I can “quench the dart” that is aimed at my soul.
 
But a hiding-place implies also secrecy. And truly the believer’s is “a hidden life,” beyond the comprehension of the world. He mixes with them in the common communion of life. But while seen of man, he is dwelling “in the secret of the Lord’s tabernacle,” safe in the midst of surrounding danger, guarded by invincible strength. Often, indeed, must the world be surprised at his constancy, amid all their varied efforts to shake his steadfastness. They know not “the secret of the Lord, which is with them that fear Him.” And never could he have had a just conception of the all-sufficiency of his God, until he finds it above him, around him, underneath him, in all the fullness of everlasting love—his hiding-place, and his shield. Thus in the heart of the enemy’s country “he dwells on high, and his place of defense is the munitions of rocks.”
 
But are we acquainted with this hiding-place? How have we discovered it? Are we found in it, and careful to abide in it? Within its walls “that wicked one touches us not.” Yet never shall we venture outside the walls unprotected, but his assault will give us some painful remembrance of our unwatchfulness. And then do we prize our shield, and run behind it for constant security. Remember, every other hiding-place “the waters will overflow.” Every other shield is a powerless defense. Surely then the word which has discovered this security to us, is a firm warrant for our hope. And, therefore, every sinner, enclosed in the covert of love, will be ready to declare—I hope in Your word.

—Charles Bridges, “Exposition of Psalm 119″

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Though it is not the mind or memory or brain, physically or otherwise that is usually the problem in the way of below, it is the unsoundness of heart.

Psalms 119:93 I will never forget thy precepts: for with them thou hast quickened me.

Men of the world, however, with accurate recollections of all matters, connected with their temporal advantage, are remarkably slow in retaining the truths of God. They plead their short memories, although conscious that this infirmity does not extend to their important secular engagements. But what wonder that they forget the precepts, when they have never been quickened with them–never received any benefit from them? The Word of God is not precious to them: they acknowledge no obligation to it: they have no acquaintance with it. It has no place in their affections, and therefore but little abode in their remembrance.
–Charles Bridges, “An Exposition on Psalm 119″ pp. 237

Psalms 119:67 Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word.

The world and all it’s vanities, all the world had to offer that I could not have, dazzled me more blindly than if I could have feasted upon it till I had my fill. Those supposed pleasures as I saw them, those comforts were vain, yet so enticing that I almost sold my soul for them, because rather than my afflictions drawing me towards God, which were great already by any stretch of the imagination, the pleasures I supposed that would make them lighter, easier to bear, drew me away from Him, a heart frozen in vain desire and need; I thought my need was in the world, in people, and relief from the prisoner my body held me trapped within it. Wanting some relief from such great physical suffering, seemed the most natural thing in the world. But my real binds, was not in seeing my need, not seeking God with all my heart, but only going so far then standing still, demanding God supply my need and prove his love and kindness and mercy and compassion. But the fill I wanted and demanded was from His creation, not from the Creator, and how I mourn now those years of bondage, those years of longing for the vanity that the world had to offer to others, how the blessings of others especially those who had added to my lot needlessly or thoughtlessly fuelled my desire for a world full of vanities.

I loved, I laughed, I cried, felt tormented and tortured and I railed against the God of heaven against the providence that had brought my life to this. We think that being with people will relieve our loneliness and longing of the soul our inner hungers and fill the emptiness and voids we feel. We believe that our joy, our liberty and freedom, comes by being enabled by being comfortable and prosperous and popular — finding purpose in our own self-reliance –  being important in however a minute a way in the big scale of things that sense of import means to us.

We rely on ourselves to find a way out of the hole we are in–if we are helpless to do so, we rely on others to. The natural man doesn’t see his need, his want. He sees his want, but what we want is not always what we need. That verse of David from Psalm 119, refers to his illicit affair with Bathsheba; he wanted her in a fleshly, lustful desire, his want and lust became his need in his mind–it was the thing that burned inside of him, stronger and with more passion than anything else. Even if it meant departing out of the will of the God that he had served since he was a shepherd boy. (2 Samuel 12:24)

When the child that Bathsheba conceived in adultery with David was born and was ill, as the Lord had threatened that the child would die, and that the sword would never depart from David’s house from that time on. (2 Sam 12:10-18) David prayed and fasted and wept, and sought the Lord with all of his heart. He knew that sometimes the Lord’s threatening’s could be averted by pleading and intercession and prayer. (Joel 2:13). David’s devotion to God during the time of his infants illness, by fasting, prayer and tears of penitence was a great humiliation for his sin. It was a sure sign of his sincerity for sinning against God with Bathsheba. Commonly, when men beget a child by a mistress, they detach or turn away, in these days they may even persuade the mistress to have an abortion, in order to keep the child conceived in sin a secret to protect their own comfort zone; to keep the calm peace and tranquility of their home life with their wife. The child being murdered on the abortionists table cannot witness against men as a living child and evidence of their sin and indiscretion can. In some cases, they would rather murder their off-spring, rather than their sin be found out. David, aware that his own sinful actions had brought this about, in a truly penitent spirit, begged God to spare the child’s life, even knowing if the child lived it could bring him great shame and reproach, as a living child was evidence of and would testify against him in the case of his adultery. It would have been a terrible shame for God’s anointed to bear. But he begged, prayed fasted and wept for the life of his child, willing to pay the consequences that the reproach of a living child could bring down upon his head, because he owned his sin and was truly penitent for it and contrite.

When the infant died, his calm composure, putting on fresh clothes to go meet with God out of a holy reverential fear and honour of going to meet with the Living God,  to worship Him, knowing that the child’s death was God’s divine disposal and he could not now do a thing to change it. By his going to worship he practiced what Job spoke in “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the Name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21)  He had tried with his whole heart to avert the threatening of God as concerned the child when he was still alive, knowing that where there’s life there is hope, but once the child died, he accepted it in quiet resignation knowing it was final and there was nothing more he could do. He went to worship God, thankful that God had had mercy on him and spared him, and also pardoned him for his adulterous act. It is widely thought that after Nathan left David, after reproaching him, that is when David penned Psalm 51. When he says, his sin will be ever before him, and asks for the Lord to purge him like hyssop, he was not really talking of the external ceremonies of the law, but to purge him, make him clean. Purging from the Lord normally comes by way of affliction. And when he says in  Psalms 119:67 Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word. he is clearly alluding to this affair.

You see in David’s longing, his lust was for a beautiful woman, he was over-whelmed by temptation in what he saw in her. Things pleasing to our senses particularly the eyes have a power in the way of temptations and are more alluring to us.

My Bathsheba was the world outside my window and all that lay out there that I could never taste or partake of. My isolation and sense of abandonment by both God and man made me hunger and yearn after it more than anything I have previously known. I was already sick unto death, yet the afflicted state of my body and inability made it all seem the most  natural thing in the world that anyone in my shoes would want if it was them. Why? Because I knew not God nor myself. About a year or so ago things got worse still, though not by my own making, yet I was suddenly alone with God. Very alone. Totally alone–still sick unto death.

I even said goodbye to some folks of my own choosing, feeling that in all I felt by being so very alone, even more so, that to continue on in friendship of a kind, would be more destructive than cutting those ties, because it was like throwing crumbs to the starving, a little taste but not near enough to fill a belly that had been empty so long, and  made me hunger more and feel more alone than ever and more hurt over my lot in life, and when hurting so much already, they could only wreak more destruction. I chose finally, to go it alone with God, and turned my ear and heart to learning, by the sound advice I had been given repeatedly by someone of, the only way I was going to find life tenable, was to live a more spiritual life.  I also put other similar counsel into practice. I started pouring over eternity, reading such things as Baxter’s Everlasting rest. I started to know God better, and in doing that, alone with God, I started to know myself. I started to understand the actions of people I esteemed that had sometimes been a confusion to me. As I got to know both God and myself better, the penitential tears and a contrite and broken spirit started to be wrought. Yet, unlike in previous times of grief and mourning, like David, they were tears of repentance for past things that I found pierced me, and even to this day when I feel my afflictions I weep anew, not because I don’t believe I am forgiven, but because I know that before I was afflicted so severely, I went astray, and those times of mourning and grief and penitential sorrow are times of cleansing and purging even further. My aims and goals are not any longer to be rid of my sufferings or find relief at any cost–to sell my soul for relief from this great affliction– but live out my life to the glory of God. Yet I believe that there will likely always be times of great penitential mourning, because sometimes everywhere I look in Scripture reminds me of how I rejected the Word of God and God Himself, and how He had to bring me so low, that I could finally see Him for who He is, and in that he raised me  up for his honour and gave me the dignity I longed for, that I felt had been taken away from me by the actions of people I had known, that I thought I could get from the world, yet it was alone with God it was given to me. God is my portion alone as far as people, day in day out, even when in this condition physically, and yet I am fuller than ever before in a multitude of ways.  He is the strength of my countenance, and I know that, because He is my portion Alone when sick unto death. If I was surrounded by comforts and loved ones it is likely I would not be so sure of that, because it can be a very fine line about what or who we have as our chief portion, where our comfort and delight comes from if there are multiple channels of it coming to us,  and the lines can easily become blurred. Psalms 73:26 My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. The world is still outside my window, with all its streets of gold, yet it’s a gold that will turn to rust, and inside this room, alone with God, He and me with his strength and by His grace, are building an incorruptible treasure that can never be taken from me and will never rust in the least. In a million years time in eternity, The Lord and His heavenly treasure will still be as shiny and dazzling,  even more so than now, when all the streets of gold have long rusted and corroded and  long been forgotten by those who ever walked on it along with those who walked on it also long forgotten.

The treasure any of us need, first and foremost, whatever our place in life, however rich or poor our estate, is the Living God and the treasures He has to offer,  yet it can be so easy to indulge in the world and its pleasures at the cost of falling short of the mark. Pleasures and recreation are not sinful in themselves, it’s only where we place them on our priorities or how much time we indulge in them that makes them so, if we are intemperant.

I may have more to say on the David and Bathsheba affair, as it’s such a rich history with so many strands. One final note on this however, for now, is Proverbs 31. The virtuous woman. The woman all godly women long to be, was also told to Solomon by his mother, Bathsheba, and she had obviously also repented of her sin with David. Because she warns her son against the very things happening to him by taking a bad course, that had come about upon David’s house, because of her and David’s adulterous affair. (Proverb 31:1-3)

This quote from Charles Bridges is kind of continuing a theme. I don’t post things like this, to bash others, I do it, because I know people I fear fit the description of the almost Christian, or are only Christians by profession and externally, I fear for their souls and having come by that path myself,  I know the dangers all too well.

How fearful the thought of being “a branch in the true vine” only by profession! to be “taken away” at length, “cast forth as a branch—withered—gathered—cast into the fire—burned!” It is in the inner man that hypocrisy sets up its throne; whence it commands the outward acts into whatever shape or form may be best suited to effect its purpose. The upright Christian will therefore begin with calling in the help and light of God to ascertain the soundness of his heart. “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me.” Can there be a true and solid work, where there is a professed change of heart, and no manifested change of temper and conduct? Can that heart, which is found upon inquiry to be earthly—unprofitable under the power of the word, “regarding” secret “iniquity”—seeking bye-ends of praise, reputation, or gain—and for the attainment of these ends shrinking from the appointed cross—can that heart be sound in the Lord’s statutes? Impossible. [Charles Bridges–Exposition on Psalm 119:80)

The proud have forged a lie against me; but I will keep Your precepts with my whole heart. [Psalm 119:69]

If, however, the reproach of the world be “the reproach of Christ,” “let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; for He is faithful that promised.” Insincerity of heart can never support us to a consistent and persevering endurance of the cross. A heart divided between God and the world will ever be found faulty and backsliding. Wholeness of heart in the precepts of God adorns the Christian profession, awes the ungodly world, realizes the full extent of the Divine promises, and pours into the soul such a spring-tide of enjoyment, as more than counterbalances all the reproach, contempt, and falsehood, which the forge of the great enemy is employing against us with unceasing activity, and relentless hatred. Yet do not forget, believer, that these proofs of the malicious enmity of the proud must often be received as the gentle stroke of your Father’s chastisement. Let the fruits of it, then, be daily visible in the work of mortification—in the exercise of the suffering graces of the gospel—in your growing conformity to His image—and in a progressive fitness for the world of eternal uninterrupted love.
Charles Bridges “An Exposition on Psalm 119″
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Luther said: ” I never knew the meaning of God’s Word, until I came into affliction. I have always found it one of my best schoolmasters.”

And isn’t that so true for many Christians.  Sometimes my eyes seem so heavy with weeping,  that it seems to be my natural state.  In England we have a series of old time comedians who were thought to be genius’ at their art, of making folks laugh. Yet, in private life they felt torment and torture. While they seemed to make the whole world laugh, their own heart was breaking, and it often culminated with them taking their own life.  Sometimes I feel like that, as I have become an expert over a life time of hiding my feelings in many respects. I make others laugh sometimes as I sit bitterly weeping at what has become my life.  The Scriptures say: Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivereth him out of them all. (Ps 34.19) And how true that is.

On another occassion, Martin Luther, referring to a spiritual temptation on the morning of the preceding day, he said to a friend, (Justus Jonas), “Doctor, I must mark the day; I was yesterday at school.  In one of his works he called affliction, “the theology of Christians–theologium Christianorum.”.

Related in Middletons Biog. Evan. iii. 248 we have  him relating of DrAndre Rivet:

A learned French divine and afflicted saint of God, confessing to God of the last days of his afflictions,  said: “I have learned more divinity in these ten days that thou art come to visit me, than I did in fifty years before. Thou hast brought me to myself. ” “Before I was afflicted, I went astray,” and was in the world; but now I am conversant in the school of God; and he teacheth me after another manner than all those doctors, in reading whom I spent so much time.

In Psalm 94:12, and Heb 12:5  the use of the word in the acceptation of chastening  is remarkable as describing literally the instruction, by which a child is trained to the acquisition of useful knowledge, which, however, not being generally effected without chstening, accounts for the use of the word, to mark the discipine which usually attends instruction. [From the footnotes of Charles Bridges Exposition on Psalm 119]

“All these things are against me,” (Gen xlii., 36) At a brighter period of his day, when clouds were beginning to disperse, we hear that “the Spirit of Jacob revived: and Jacob said: It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive, I will go and see him before I die. (Gen xlv. 27-8) And when his evening sun was going down almost without a cloud, in the believing act of “blessing the sons of,” his beloved “Joseph” (Heb xi. 21), how clearly does he retract the language of his former sinful impatience!—”God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac, did walk–the God which fed me all my life long unto this day– the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads!” (Gen xlviii. 13-16). This surely was in the true spirit of the acknowledgement–Thou hast dealt well with Thy servant, O Lord, according to Thy Word.
–Charles Bridges, “An Exposition of Psalm 119″
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Lord, may I ever be kept from despondency—regarding it as sinful in itself, dishonorable to Your name, and weakening to my soul; and though I must “needs be sometime in heaviness through manifold temptations,” yet let the power of faith be in constant exercise, that I may be able to expostulate with my soul, “Why are you cast down, O my soul? and why are you disturbed within me? hope in God: for I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.”
—Charles Bridges

O Lord, make me more deeply ashamed, that “my soul should cleave to the dust.” Breathe upon me fresh influence from thy quickening Spirit. Help me to plead thy word of promise; and oh! may every fresh view of my sinfulness, while it prostrates me in self-abasement before thee, be overruled to make the Saviour daily and hourly more precious to my soul. For defiled as I am in myself, in every service of my heart, what but the unceasing application of his blood, and the uninterrupted prevalence of his interecession, give me a moment’s confidence before thee, or prevent the very sings that mingle with my paryers from sealing my condemnation? Blessed Saviour! it is nothing but thy everlasting merit, covering my person, and honouring  my sacrifice, that satisfies the justice of an offended God, and restrains it from breaking forth as a devouring fire, to consume me upon my very knees.
—Charles Bridges, Esposition of Psalm 119

This psalm is one of about a dozen alphabetic acrostic poems in the Bible. Its 176 verses are divided into twenty-two stanzas of eight lines each, and in Hebrew forms an acrostic, with each stanza starting with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet (alef (or aleph), bet, etc.). Further, within each stanza, each line begins with that same letter.^[1]

Employed in almost (but not quite) every verse of the psalm is a synonym for the Torah, such as dabar (“word, promise”) mishpatim (“rulings”), etc.^[1]

The acrostic form and the use of the Torah words constitute the framework for an elaborate prayer. The grounds for the prayer are established in the first two stanzas (alef and beth): the Torah is held up as a source of blessing and right conduct, and the psalmist pledges to dedicate himself to the law. The prayer proper begins in the third stanza (gimel, v. 17). Like many other psalms, this prayer includes both dramatic lament (e.g. verses 81-88) joyous praise (e.g., verses 45-48) and prayers for life, deliverance and vindication (e.g., verses 132-134). What makes Psalm 119 unique is the way that these requests are continually and explicitly grounded in the gift of the Torah and the psalmist’s loyalty to it. [From Wiki]

Question: Why is this chapter unique among chapters in the book of the Bible?
Answer: It’s the longest chapter in the Bible.. Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible, there are 176 verses. Psalm 117 is the shortest. Moses wrote Psalm 90, making that one the oldest Psalm. Psalm 119’s author is listed as anonymous, but some suggest that it may have been written by Ezra.

To wrap this post up, I shall quote a little of Charles Bridges Expostion on Psalm 119.  As long as we remain on earth, we will have indwelling sin. Each and every one of us, even the noblest of Christians. On that basis, because we can never be perfect, should we let sin reign of over us and choose our own will, our own desires over and above those of the Lord’s commandments and instructions.  Paul says,  shall sin abound so grace maybe abound? May it never be! Which I think forcibily answers the question of those who think by grace not even fighting, resiting, even trying to overcome sin, has any part in the Christian life.   When the Christian sins,  it is not because he chooses to do this or that, but because sin has overcome him, not because he deliberately chose to flout the law of God, or do his own will rather than that of the Lord.   That is a clear, peacable choice. Whereas the other, the Biblical idea, is a fight, a struggle of the spirit against the flesh.  The Christian does not easily choose sin. He maybe backslidden of course which is a different thing to that which I am alluding to here. But the life of the Christian is one of fighting; one where sin does not reign over us, which is what it is doing when we habitually make this choice or that choice,  knowing God says otheriwse, and saying  that’s what grace is for.   If we have grace, sin will not abound, and a fruit of that grace will be to ever seeking to fight and overcome indwelling sin in us.  There is a huge difference between one and the other.  The Christians life should be a sanctified one, always improving and going forwards towards heaven. Not sat down, having a rest,  or going so far and going no further.  And  when some choose to sin, they have the flippin’ nerve to call it Christian liberty, because we are under grace, not under law.  True Christian liberty, is freedom from sin reigning over us.

Bridges writes:

The unceasing advocacy of their Heavenly Friend, evidently supposes the indwelling power of sin, to the termination of our earthly pilgrimage. The supplication, also, in the prayer of our Lord teaches them to ask for daily pardon and deliverance from “temptation,” as for “daily bread.” [Matt VI:11-13] Yes–to our shame be it spoken–we are sinners still; yet–praised be God!–not “walking after the course,” not “fulfilling the desires” of sin. The acting of sin is now like the motion of a stone upward, violent and unnatural. If it is not cast out, it is dethroned. We are not as before, its “willing people,” but its reluctant struggling captives. It is not, “the day of its power.”

And here lies the  holy liberty of the Gospel–not, as some have feigned,–a liberty to “continue in sin that grace may abound,” [Rom VI: 1-2]; but a deliverance from the guilt and condemnation of abhorred, resisted, yet still indwelling sin. When our better will hath cast it off–when we can say in the sight of an heart-searching God–”What we hate, that do we.”—the responsibility is not ours:  “It is not we that do it, but sin that dwelleth in us.” [Rom 7L15-20]
But what is the Scriptural character of evangelical obedience? It is the work of the Spirit enabling us to “obey the truth,” [1 Pet. 1:22]. It is the end of the purpose of God who “hath chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world,, that we should be holy and without blame, before him in love.” [Eph. i. 4] It is the only satsifactory test of our profession. [Matt. xii. 22; John iv. 15, 21]

If we are still choosing freely to sin, without resisting it; if we are still choosing our own will over that of the Lord and Law of God, then we have very real cause to doubt and  question our estate and standing with God.  If we have the Spirit of God in us, we will no longer be conformed to the world. . As Rev. Bridges states above, i”t is the only satisfactory test of our profession.”

Psalm 119 an Expotion by Charles Bridges

A BELIEVER’S COLLOQUY WITH HIS SOUL

by J.C. Philpot

Preached at Gower Street Chapel, London, on Lord’s Day Evening, 19th July 1868.

“Why art thou cast down, 0 my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.”- .Ps 42:11

WHAT a proof it is of the truth and inspiration of the word of God, that no sooner is the Lord pleased to quicken our souls into spiritual life, than we find the Bible to become our companion, counsellor, and friend. True, we might possibly before that time, from a sense of duty or out of custom, have read the Scriptures, and that diligently. We might have been taught them from childhood, and committed large portions to memory; or even have been able so far to understand them as to speak fluently upon the truths contained in them, and contend for the doctrines of grace against opponents. But though we might have done all this, and much more than this, for who can say how far nature may go?-yet for the most part, how listlessly and languidly was the word of God read by us; how little was its spiritual meaning understood; how much less were the solemn realities revealed in it believed or acted upon.

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“Lord, hear my voice; let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.” [Psalm 130:2] 

Sinking, suffering saint, learn the secret of your support! “He prayed more earnestly.” “Who in the days of His flesh, when He offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and was heard in that He feared.” Go you and do likewise. Pray- pray- PRAY! Out of the depths of your difficulty, your need, your sorrow, cry mightily unto God. There is no ‘depth’ so profound, no darkness so dense, no need so pressing, or perplexity so great, but from it you may cry unto God, the Lord inclining His ear to the softest, faintest breathing of your soul. “For this shall every one that is godly pray unto you in a time when you may be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come near unto him.” Cries out of the depths of soul-distress have a peculiar eloquence and an irresistible success with God just as the plaintive wail of a sick and suffering child reaches and penetrates a parent’s heart more quickly and more deeply than all others. It is a beautiful thought embodied in the Psalmist’s prayer: “My soul hangs upon God. ”
  Look for a moment at the Object upon which the believing, sinking soul thus hangs. It is upon DEITY. The world around is hanging upon every object but God. Some are hanging upon self, some upon their wealth- some upon their intellectual powers-some upon their bodily strength- some upon their long life- some upon the creature- some upon their own righteousness; all are hanging upon some object below Christ and God. How frail and fatal the support! Soon the prop bends- the stirrup breaks- the fulcrum yields- the sands glide away- and great is the fall of him who suspended upon such created and fragile support his happiness in this life, and his hope of the life that is to come.
  But, the believing soul, though a desponding and sinking soul, hangs upon GOD. Listen to the language of David: “O God, you are my God; early will I seek you: my soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs for you in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.” Again: “Whom have I in heaven but You? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside You.” This is the support of every gracious soul; and he who hangs not upon this divine support, hangs upon air, hangs upon nothing.
  Listen to Jehoshaphat’s prayer in his distress, when the mighty hosts of the Ammonites came against him to battle. See how he hung upon God! “O our God, will you not judge them? for we have no might against this great company that comes against us; neither know we what to do: our eyes are upon You. ” And the Lord delivered them into his hand that day, and all that he did was to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. And thus was it with Asa. Oppressed by a powerful enemy, too strong for his scanty forces, he thus hung upon God in his extremity. “Lord, it is nothing with you to help, whether with many, or with those who have no power.” And what a “nail in a sure place” is the Lord Jesus Christ, the true, spiritual Eliakim, upon whom the soul may hang its sins, and sorrows, and hope of glory. “I will fasten him,” says the Father, “as a nail in a sure place. . . And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father’s house …. all the vessels.”

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Wicked men seem to bear great reverence to the saints departed; they canonize dead saints, but persecute living. In vain do men stand up at the creed, and tell the world they believe in God, when they abominate one of the articles of the creed, namely, the communion of saints. Surely, there is no greater sign of a man ripe for hell, than this, not only to lack grace, but to hate it.—Thomas Watson

The reason for that quote will become clearer on reading. I would replace the “wicked men” with good men in my own case.  As even my own kind have added to it at times.  They have great reverence for the covenanters, who gave their blood for the cause, but someone in their own midst, suffering terribly for the same cause, will be cast aside and overlooked.

Dark times come upon us all; the physical factors of what we may be up against in our body has a huge part to play in our mental well-being, and our spiritual  state at times.  The degree of pain I live in continuously, from head to toe,  takes a huge toll at times; and to bear it without any loved ones, apart from my cat, takes it to a different level beyong anything I could never find adequate words to describe.  We feel tossed this way and that, overwhelmed on all sides, and can’t find a way forward at times, and you are so weakened by your body, and the fact you are so alone, which is a peculiar torture of its own; it has nothing in common at all, with the lonliness we all feel at times; I know you can be lonely, even the midst of a crowd,  from my past life.  Yet to be totally alone, devoid of all humanity, without loved ones in one’s life, is something  entirely different than the lonliness most people experience.  Job has three friend’s who made his lot worse than it already is; I seem to have had an endless line, and now, I shall not be putting my head in the lions mouth again,  because I am afraid if I do, I shall be weakened beyond repair, most of all spiritually. I haven’t come this far, to  have the entrance of heaven blocked, by the thoughtlessness of Christians sat in so much more comfort, with all the aids, benefits and encouragments to their faith that I never have had. It’s not that I don’t love the brethren, I do–deeply.  But, my experience of most of the folks I have known well, has made the affliction I started with, of having an incurable illness, that  most people will not experience the like of what I do every day,  even when on their death-bed,  a thousand times worse.  Calvin said when he was in Geneva, he died a thousand deaths a day, because of the persecutions, slanders, mocking he endured, from the visible church.  It’s been a long pattern in Christian history, that  the worst kind of suffering for the believer, comes from the visible church.  In history it is most often by people who have a false religion, but look at Thomas Cramner. He took part in atrocities before his thorough conversion to the orthodoxy, and he died a martyrs death, suffering for the truth of God, by the same people he had once aided in persecuting others.  I have no reason to suspect that the people who have loaded me up with the extra degree of suffering which is by far the heaviest and biggest, of being alone,  are anything but true converts. I am not about to start playing guessing games in things like that.  And look at David in Psalm 55:

¹²For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it: neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me; then I would have hid myself from him:

¹³But it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance.

¹⁴We took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of God in company.[Ps. 55]

If we look at the book of Job, we see how his friends made things worse for him, The path of extraordinary affliction, Job seems to have set the pattern. And to be dying alone, void of all humans, with those that I love and loved and taken away from me, can only be extraordinary affliction, which was what Calvin termed Job’s trial, because it is outside of most usual human experiences.

I think the book of Job clearly does set a pattern for the extraordinarily afflicted believer.  Job’s friends were righteous and good men, they intended him well, and loved him–they did him very much harm instead.  Sadly, given the current state of the church, I doubt there are so many righteous souls and such good men around today among believers, but it seems oft to be full of immature ones, that never go forwards, and are happy to stay where they started.  So I think it has been almost inevitable, that my lot in life would only be made much worse.  But, being sick unto death, with no family, would be enough for most folks to cope with.  Add into that, my condition is so rare, and most doctors never see a case of it in their careers, so I am left mostly without any help, apart from pain medication and the like, it would be enough for any single human being to bear.  But it has been made what feels a thousand times worse by the visible church.

I think being a covenanter today, is also very rare; we are few in numbers at least, as compared to other denominations; in England,  I have never met another covenanter, apart from when a friend from the border of Scotland was in my area.  I first came into contact with Covenanters, because they were being maliciously hounded and attacked in the online world. I was neither Christian nor covenanter at the time.  But I say that, because, the covenanters today, do not always have an easy time of it, because of their faith, in a broader sense than many of the mainstream denoms. We are too strict; accused of legalism very often; of being self-righteous; by people who either don’t want to learn the truth of what we believe, or why we believe it, or because  they prefer more liberal attitudes to the life of faith.  I am a libertine, but not a liberal.  So being a covenanter has also added to this already unspeakable burden in magnitude.  I was a covenanter before I was a Christian in a very real sense, though I shall not expand further on that point here.  But my church abandoned me, when I started promoting the Westminster Standards, and when I refused to take part in the holy day of x-mass, they just forgot me, when I was by then, house-bound through illness and unable to attend.  That was the first blow against covenanters.  People at the church accused me of being an upstart that I thought I knew what the Bible said on this or that issue, that are Covenanting distinctives,  when people much older christians than me said otherwise.  I was to read later on, in the book Lion of the Covenant by Maurice Grant, that Richard Cameron, of the Cameronian Covenanters, was also accused likewise over the indulgences.

But life does get dark and heavy at times. I long for refreshment and for the Lord to bring some deliverance or take me Home to be with Him.  I love the brethren, but they have made it impossible now for me to risk any further  adding unto,  because  I am afraid for my soul if that happened.   I was reading the first sermon of Octavius Winslow, Soul Depths and Soul Heights which is on Psalm 130, and thought to share a bit of it, in light of some of the above. Because sometimes I am so overwhelmed by my afflicted state, in such poverty, by that I mean being so alone, that I feel and fear I am sinking.  We feel that of course, through the remnants of indwelling sin in us. Nevertheless we are still all human, and when living an inhumane exisence, it can and very often does take a terrible toll. And I am no less weak and infirm, or stronger than anybody else. But don’t have the help of God’s people to help lift me out of such an aweful place like others do, in much lighter afflictions.

There are also “depths” of mental darkness and despondency into which gracious souls fall. Many a shaded and lonely stage of the Christian’s pilgrimage lies in the way to heaven. Through many a dark, starless night the spiritual voyager ploughs the ocean to the desired haven where he would be. It is far more the province of faith to work and travel and sail in the dark than in the light, in the night season than the day. And thus, this essential and precious principle of the regenerate soul is put to a more crucial and certain test than when the path of the believer is decked with smiling flowers and radiant with unclouded sunshine. It is, “Faith in the dark, Pursuing its mark Through many sharp trials of love.”

We do not hesitate placing in the foreground of causes producing spiritual despondency, one which, perhaps, is the most common, though the least suspected of all- the physical constitution and state of the afflicted one. In this case the physician who prescribes for the body, rather than he who ministers to the soul, may be the most appropriate and useful adviser. So intimately united are the two constituent parts of our organism- mind and body, there must necessarily be a continuous action and reaction of the one upon the other; and the peculiar condition in which both may be at that moment, must of necessity, exert a powerful and reciprocal influence.
Now, in numberless cases of morbid religious despondency the cause is purely physical. This may, perhaps, shock the piety of some, and not the less supply ground of attack upon religion on the part of others; nevertheless, the psychological fact remains the same. A disturbed and unhealthy condition of any one vital organ of the body, may so powerfully act upon the mind, and that in its turn upon the Soul, as to tinge the mental and moral perceptions, distort the most simple truths, embitter the sweetest consolations, and shade the brightest hopes and prospects of the soul.
Depressed child of God, suffering from this cause, be of good cheer! The Lord, who loves you- loves you not less when all is dark as when all is light- knows your frame, and remembers that you are dust. Your present mental cloud-veil does not, and cannot, extinguish the heavenly light within you, touch your spiritual life, or separate you from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus your Lord. The divine nature, of which you are, through grace, a partaker, rises as far above the condition of the body as the infinite rises above the finite. The spiritual life of your soul flows from, and is bound up with, the life of God in heaven.
And if there is any gentleness and sympathy in Christ (and who can doubt it?) which clusters with a deeper intensity around a child of His love, it is he who, suffering from physical disease, pain, and languor, is at the same moment battling, as an effect, with morbid religiousness and mental despondency; and these, in their turn, gendering spiritual doubts and distress touching the happiness of the present, and the hope of the future. Little think we with what tenderness and gentleness Jesus deals with the ’sick one whom He loves,’ and what consideration and forbearance He exercises towards those who, through bodily infirmity and physical suffering, are plunged into depths of religious melancholia, bordering, it may be, on the very verge of despair and self-destruction! Jesus, who built your frame, remembers that you are dust;’ and from no heart in the universe pulsating with love towards you, flows such intelligent compassion, such patience, forbearance, and tender sympathy as from Christ’s.

“Let me never choose or to live or die,
Bind or bruise, in your hands I lie.”

Out of the depths I cry,
Oppressed with grief and sin;
O gracious Lord, draw nigh,
Complete Your work within.
O listen to Your suppliant’s voice,
And let my broken bones rejoice.
‘Out of the depths I cried,
Overwhelmed with wrath divine,’
Said Christ, when crucified
For guilty souls like mine:
His cries were heard-He died,
and rose Triumphant over all His foes.

Soul Depths and Soul Heights: Octavius Winslow

A well known quote of William Gouge, is this one:”When I look upon myself, I see nothing but emptiness and weakness; but when I look upon Christ, I see nothing but fulness and sufficiency.” — William Gouge

Octavius Winslow in his Soul Depths Soul Heights, also speaks to this subject:

Christ alone is our Redeemer, His righteousness our justification, His blood our pardon, His merits our standing before God; and it is looking to Him in faith, to His mediation, merits, and fullness, that we arrive at any degree of spiritual evidence, fruitfulness, and assurance. Turning within yourself for marks and signs of grace, and finding instead nothing but sin, and darkness, and change, how are you to become a firm believer and a joyful Christian? Looking to your experience, your fitful frames and feelings, and not by faith to Christ, the wind is not more capricious, nor the tide more changeful, than will be your peace and comfort, your holiness and hope.
 But, try the experiment of looking away from yourself to Jesus. Pass by even the cross, the atonement, the gospel, and the sacrament, and rest not until you find yourself face to face, heart to heart, with a PERSONAL, living, loving SAVIOR, -the gracious words breathing in sweetest cadence from His lips- Oh listen to their music, you sin-disturbed, soul-desponding ones!– “Come unto ME, all you that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you REST.” “Look unto ME, all the ends of the earth, and be saved: for I am God, and there is none else.” “I am the door;” “I am the bread of life.” In all these gracious invitations we hear the voice of a Personal- “I AM” -of a Personal Savior.
 Cease, then, to deal with dogmas, feelings and experience, however elevated or depressed, and behold the Lamb of God, contemplate His Person, study His work, feast upon His word, revel in His fulness, bathe in the sea of His love, and let Him be all in all to your soul. Thus turning the eye from yourself and dealing only with the Person of Jesus, the cloud will uplift from your mind, “the winter will depart, and the flowers appear, the time of the singing of birds will come, and the voice of the turtle be heard in the land;” and your soul, thus bursting from its icy fetters, its wintry sterility and gloom, into the beauty and fragrance of its new spring-life of joy, will be “Like the sweet south wind, that breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odors.” 

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“Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.” [Psalm 42:11]

Although the Book of Psalms is compiled into one volume, and called Acts 1:20 The book of Psalms; in the Hebrew there are five book of Psalms (they are divided into five books).

• The first book of Psalms, according to the Hebrew, is from the  first Psalm to the end of Psalm 41, and it is concluded with Amen and Amen.

• Secondly, the Hebrew does account the Second book of Psalms to begin at Psalm 42 unto Psalm 72, and that you find also to conclude with Amen and Amen and the end of David’s prayers.

• The third book of Psalms begins does begin at the end of Psalm 72 to Psalm 89, and there you find it does conclude with Amen and Amen.

• The fourth book of Psalms you have its beginning from Psalm 89 unto Psalm 106, and there also it concludes with Amen and Amen.

• The fifth, or last book of Psalms, is from Psalm 106 to 150, the last Psalm in the book of Psalms, and this is ended with Halleluiah.

My text falls under that Psalm that begins the second book and interpreters do differ much about the occasion this Psalm was penned upon. Generally, interpreters agree in this, that it was penned by David, either when he was fleeing before Saul, for then, David was sore troubled, and driven from his house and habitation, and was by reason of his enemies driven, from the Worship of God (from the place of God’s public Worship) and was forced to hide himself in dens and caves of the earth. Now in that sad condition that he was in, it may be supposed he made this Psalm; or else it was made  when he was forced to flee for his life before his son Absalom, when he was in danger of his life during one of these times do interpreters conceive it was when David made this Psalm, and most do agree that it was made when  David was deprived of the  public Worship if God.

From Christopher Love’s The Dejected souls cure. 

The text has been updated to modern language and where the text is not clearly discernible to read,  the most approrpiate and obvious rendition of the authors intended meaning, substutited.

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Again this is the start of a series, owing to me wanting to get something involving the Psalms at this site. The opening of the Epistle Dedicatory to the reader, the book was published posthumously.

THE
DEJECTED
SOULES
CURE

To which is added,
I. The Ministry of the Angels to the Heirs of Salvation.
I I. Gods omniprefince.

 
To the Reader.-    ..

Christian Reader,
– THou art defired to.take notice •
that the end of this our Epistleatory Preface, is not tostrew the flower of our praisess upon. -: our deceafed brother , whose prase is in all the churches of Christ. Nay, his works praise him – in the gates. To say no more of him then Christ doth of Lazarus Luke 16:22 .tbe poor , man died , and was carried by Angels into Abrahams bosom,  but there is this double end in it;

1.    To assure thee, that these seventeen Sermons on Psalm 42. and the four following on Heb. i. alt.  are thouggh a posthumus, yet a legitimate issue, they all having been diligently compared, and re-vised by Mr .Loves own Notes, except the two last 1 on Psalm  42. the Notes of which could not be found; yet the very contexture of them shews, they are a thread of the fame (pinning. This we thought good to inform thee of, because forged and suppotitious  pieces have in all ages, in all Sciences, been obtruded upon the world, under f the name of persons of any worth, or eminency.

2.     Nay, Jerome tels us that divers Apocryphal books
‘. were vented under the names of the Apostles themselves :’ The same principles of .pride. and avarice are_ busy in such impostures at this day.
Thefes Sermons we publish , and justify for his.    :!
They were calculated by him i for the Pulpit 5 – - -    .
had he -lived to publish them , ,.
qquestion but they had been more polite. -But because we would publish nothing but • what is purely his we have therefore sent them abroad they were ‘left by him , without the addition of     any considerable sentence more then what was in
his own Notes; That thou  mayest  Conclude, thou has him (peaking in thefe Treatifes and nobody else.  What ever mistakes or literal faults tliat  th’OU
may  find, impute that either to oversight of the corrector ,or the Printer; and if thou has  not a  measure of knowledge to amend them,. Exercise so
Much  charity as to cover them : For censorious critics, me care not at all to satisfy them.

continue

1I cry aloud to God,
   aloud to God, and he will hear me.
2In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord;
   in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying;
   my soul refuses to be comforted.
3When I remember God, I moan;
   when I meditate, my spirit faints.
                         Selah

  

 4You hold my eyelids open;
   I am so troubled that I cannot speak.
5I consider the days of old,
   the years long ago.
6I said,[b] "Let me remember my song in the night;
   let me meditate in my heart."
   Then my spirit made a diligent search:
7"Will the Lord spurn forever,
   and never again be favorable?
8Has his steadfast love forever ceased?
   Are his promises at an end for all time?
9Has God forgotten to be gracious?
   Has he in anger shut up his compassion?"
                         Selah

  

 10Then I said, "I will appeal to this,
   to the years of the right hand of the Most High."[c]

  

 11I will remember the deeds of the LORD;
   yes, I will remember your wonders of old.
12I will ponder all your work,
   and meditate on your mighty deeds.
13Your way, O God, is holy.
   What god is great like our God?
14You are the God who works wonders;
   you have made known your might among the peoples.
15You with your arm redeemed your people,
   the children of Jacob and Joseph.
                         Selah

  

 16When the waters saw you, O God,
   when the waters saw you, they were afraid;
   indeed, the deep trembled.
17The clouds poured out water;
   the skies gave forth thunder;
   your arrows flashed on every side.
18The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind;
   your lightnings lighted up the world;
   the earth trembled and shook.
19Your way was through the sea,
   your path through the great waters;
   yet your footprints were unseen.[d]
20You led your people like a flock
   by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

1 I love the Lord, because my voice
and prayers he did hear.
2 I, while I live, will call on him,
who bowed to me his ear.

3 Of death the cords and sorrows did
about me compass round;
The pains of hell took hold on me,
I grief and trouble found.

4 Upon the name of God the Lord
then did I call, and say,
Deliver thou my soul, O Lord,
I do thee humbly pray.

5 God merciful and righteous is,
yea, gracious is our Lord.
6 God saves the meek: I was brought low,
he did me help afford.

7 O thou my soul, do thou return
unto thy quiet rest;
For largely, lo, the Lord to thee
his bounty hath expressed.

8 For my distressed soul from death
delivered was by thee:
Thou didst my mourning eyes from tears,
my feet from falling, free.

9 I in the land of those that live
will walk the Lord before.
10 I did believe, therefore I spake:
I was afflicted sore.

11 I said, when I was in my haste,
that all men liars be.
12 What shall I render to the Lord
for all his gifts to me?

13 I'll of salvation take the cup,
on God's name will I call:
14 I'll pay my vows now to the Lord
before his people all.

15 Dear in God's sight is his saints' death.
16 Thy servant, Lord, am I;
Thy servant sure, thine handmaid's son:
my bands thou didst untie.

17 Thank off'rings I to thee will give,
and on God's name will call.
18 I'll pay my vows now to the Lord
before his people all;

19 Within the courts of God's own house,
within the midst of thee,
O city of Jerusalem.
Praise to the Lord give ye.