'Because of his strength will I wait upon Thee: for God is my
defence.... 17. Unto Thee, O my strength, will I sing: for God is my
defence, and the God of my mercy.'--PSALM lix. 9, 17.
There is an obvious correspondence between these two verses even as they
stand in our translation, and still more obviously in the Hebrew. You
observe that in the former verse the words 'because of' are a supplement
inserted by our translators, because they did not exactly know what to
make of the bare words as they stood. 'His strength, I will wait upon
Thee,' is, of course, nonsense; but a very slight alteration of a single
letter, which has the sanction of several good authorities, both in
manuscripts and translations, gives an appropriate and beautiful
meaning, and brings the two verses into complete verbal correspondence.
Suppose we read, 'My strength,' instead of 'His strength.' The change is
only making the limb of one letter a little shorter, and as you will
perceive, we thereby get the same expressions in both verses.
We may then read our two texts thus: 'Upon Thee, O my Strength! I will
wait.... Unto Thee, O my Strength, I will sing!' They are, word for
word, parallel, with the significant difference that the waiting in the
one passes into song, in the other, the silent expectation breaks into
music of praise. And these two words--_wait_ and _sing_--are in the
Hebrew the same in every letter but one, thus strengthening the
impression of likeness as well as emphasising, with poetic art, that of
difference. The parallel, too, obviously extends to the second half of
each verse, where the reason for both the waiting and the praise is the
same--'For God is my defence'--with the further eloquent variation that
the song is built not only on the thought that 'God is my defence,' but
also on this, that He is 'the God of my mercy.'
These two parallel verses, then, are a kind of refrain, coming in at the
close of each division of the psalm; and if you examine its structure
and general course of thought, you will see that the first stands at the
end of a picture of the Psalmist's trouble and danger, and makes the
transition to the second part, which is mainly a prayer for deliverance,
and finishes with the refrain altered and enlarged, as I have pointed
out.
The heading of the psalm tells us that its date is the very beginning of
Saul's persecution, when 'they watched the house to kill' David, and he
fled by night from the city. There is a certain correspondence between
the circumstances and some part of the picture of his foes here which
makes the date probable. If so, this is one of David's oldest psalms,
and is interesting as showing his faith and courage, even in the first
burst of danger. But whether that be so or not, we have here, at any
rate, the voice of a devout soul in sore sorrow, and we may well learn
the lesson of its twofold utterance. The man, overwhelmed by calamity,
betakes himself to God. 'Upon Thee, O my Strength! will I wait, for God
is my defence.' Then, by dint of _waiting_, although the outward
circumstances keep just the same, his temper and feelings change. He
began with, 'Deliver me from my enemies, O Lord! for they lie in wait
for my soul.' He passes through 'My Strength! I will wait upon Thee,'
and so ends with 'My Strength! I will sing unto Thee.' We may then throw
our remarks into two groups, and deal for a few moments with these two
points--the waiting on God, and the change of waiting into praise.
Now, with regard to the first of these--the waiting on God--I must
notice that the expression here, 'I will _wait_,' is a somewhat
remarkable one. It means accurately, 'I will watch Thee,' and it is the
word that is generally employed, not about our looking up to Him, but
about His looking down to us. It would describe the action of a shepherd
guarding his flock; of a sentry keeping a city; of the watchers that
watch for the morning, and the like. By using it, the Psalmist seems as
if he would say--There are two kinds of watching. There is God's
watching over me, and there is my watching for God. I look up to Him
that He may bless; He looks down upon me that He may take care of me. As
He guards me, so I stand expectant before Him, as one in a besieged
town, upon the ramparts there, looks eagerly out across the plain to see
the coming of the long-expected succours. God 'waits to be
gracious'--wonderful words, painting for us His watchfulness of fitting
times and ways to bless us, and His patient attendance on our unwilling,
careless spirits. We may well take a lesson from His attitude in
bestowing, and on our parts, wait on Him to be helped. For these two
things--vigilance and patience--are the main elements in the scriptural
idea of waiting on God. Let me enforce each of them in a word or two.
There is no waiting on God for help, and there is no help from God,
without watchful expectation on our parts. If ever we fail to receive
strength and defence from Him, it is because we are not on the outlook
for it. Many a proffered succour from heaven goes past us, because we
are not standing on our watch-tower to catch the far-off indications of
its approach, and to fling open the gates of our heart for its entrance.
He who expects no help will get none; he whose expectation does not lead
him to be on the alert for its coming will get but little. How the
beleaguered garrison, that knows a relieving force is on the march,
strain their eyes to catch the first glint of the sunshine on their
spears as they top the pass! But how unlike such tension of watchfulness
is the languid anticipation and fitful look, with more of distrust than
hope in it, which we turn to heaven in our need! No wonder we have so
little living experience that God is our 'strength' and our 'defence,'
when we so partially believe that He is, and so little expect that He
will be either. The homely old proverb says, 'They that watch for
providences will never want a providence to watch for,' and you may turn
it the other way and say, 'They that do _not_ watch for providence will
never _have_ a providence to watch for.' Unless you put out your
water-jars when it rains you will catch no water; if you do not watch
for God coming to help you, God's watching to be gracious will be of no
good at all to you. His waiting is not a substitute for ours, but
because He watches therefore we should watch. We say, we expect Him to
comfort and help us--well, are we standing, as it were, on tiptoe, with
empty hands upraised to bring them a little nearer the gifts we look
for? Are our 'eyes ever towards the Lord'? Do we pore over His gifts,
scrutinising them as eagerly as a gold-seeker does the quartz in his
pan, to detect every shining speck of the precious metal? Do we go to
our work and our daily battle with the confident expectation that He
will surely come when our need is the sorest and scatter our enemies? Is
there any clear outlook kept by us for the help which we know must come,
lest it should pass us unobserved, and like the dove from the ark,
finding no footing in our hearts drowned in a flood of troubles, be fain
to return to the calm refuge from which it came on its vain errand?
Alas, how many gentle messengers of God flutter homeless about our
hearts, unrecognised and unwelcomed, because we have not been watching
for them! Of what avail is it that a strong hand from the beach should
fling the safety-line with true aim to the wreck, if no eye on the deck
is watching for it? It hangs there, useless and unseen, and then it
drops into the sea, and every soul on board is drowned. It is our own
fault--and very largely the fault of our want of watchfulness for the
coming of God's help--if we are ever overwhelmed by the tasks, or
difficulties, or sorrows of life. We wonder that we are left to fight
out the battle ourselves. But are we? Is it not rather, that while God's
succours are hastening to our side we will not open our eyes to see, nor
our hearts to receive them? If we go through the world with our hands
hanging listlessly down instead of lifted to heaven, or full of the
trifles and toys of this present, as so many of us do, what wonder is it
if heavenly gifts of strength do not come into our grasp?
That attitude of watchful expectation is vividly described for us in the
graphic words of another psalm, 'My soul waiteth for the Lord more than
they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for
the morning.' What a picture that is! Think of a wakeful, sick man,
tossing restless all the night on his tumbled bed, racked with pain made
harder to bear by the darkness. How often his heavy eye is lifted to the
window-pane, to see if the dawn has not yet begun to tint it with a grey
glimmer! How he groans, 'Would God it were morning!' Or think of some
unarmed and solitary man, benighted in the forest, and hearing the wild
beasts growl and scream and bark all round, while his fire dies down,
and he knows that his life depends on the morning breaking soon. With
yet more eager expectation are we to look for God, whose coming is a
better morning for our sick and defenceless spirits. If we are not so
looking for His help, we need never be surprised that we do not get it.
There is no promise and no probability that it will come to men in their
sleep, who neither desire it nor wait for it. And such vigilant
expectation will be accompanied with patience. There is no impatience in
it, but the very opposite. 'If we hope for that we see not, then do we
with patience wait for it.' If we know that He will surely come, then if
He tarry we can wait for Him. The measure of our confidence is ever the
measure of our patience. Being sure that He is always 'in the midst of'
Zion, we may be sure that at the right time He will flame out into
delivering might, helping her, and that right early. So waiting means
watchfulness and patience, both of which have their roots in trust.
Further, we have here set forth not only the nature, but also the object
of this waiting. 'Upon Thee, O _my Strength_! will I wait, for God is
_my Defence_.'
The object to which faith is directed, and the ground on which it is
based, are both set forth in these two names here applied to God. The
name of the Lord is Strength, therefore I wait on Him in the confident
expectation of receiving of His power. The Lord is 'my Defence,'
therefore I wait on Him in the confident expectation of safety. The one
name has respect to our condition of feebleness and inadequacy for our
tasks, and points to God as infusing strength into us. The other points
to our exposedness to danger and to enemies, and points to God as
casting His shelter around us. The word translated 'defence' is
literally 'a high fortress,' and is the same as closes the rapturous
accumulation of the names of his delivering God, which the Psalmist
gives us when he vows to love Jehovah, who has been his Rock, and
Fortress, and Deliverer; his God in whom he will trust, his Buckler, and
the Horn of his salvation, and his _High Tower_. The first name speaks
of God dwelling in us, and His strength made perfect in our weakness;
the second speaks of our dwelling in God, and our defencelessness
sheltered in Him. 'The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous
runneth into it, and is safe.' As some outnumbered army, unable to make
head against its enemies in the open, flees to the shelter of some hill
fortress, perched upon a crag, and taking up the drawbridge, cannot be
reached by anything that has not wings, so this man, hard pressed by his
foes, flees into God to hide him, and feels secure behind these strong
walls.
That is the God on whom we wait. The recognition of His character as
thus mighty and ready to help is the only thing that will evoke our
expectant confidence, and His character thus discerned is the only
object which our confidence can grasp aright. Trust Him as what He is,
and trust Him because of what He is, and see to it that your faith lays
hold on the living God Himself, and on nothing beside.
But waiting on God is not only the recognition of His character as
revealed, but it involves, too, the act of laying hold on all the power
and blessing of that character for myself. '_My_ strength, _my_
defence,' says the Psalmist. Think of what He is, and believe that He is
that for _you_, else there is no true waiting on Him. Make God thy very
own by claiming thine own portion in His might, by betaking thyself to
that strong habitation. We cannot wait on God in crowds, but one by one,
must say, '_My_ strength and _my_ defence.'
And now turn to the second verse of our two texts: 'Unto Thee, O my
Strength! will I sing, for God is my defence and the God of my mercy.'
Here we catch, as it were, waiting expectation and watchfulness in the
very act of passing over into possession and praise. For remember the
aspect of things has not changed a bit between the first verse of our
text and the last. The enemies are all round about David just as they
were, 'making a noise like a dog,' as he says, and 'going round about
the city.' The evil that was threatening him and making him sad remains
entirely unlightened. What has altered? He has altered. And how has he
altered? Because his waiting on God has begun to work an inward change,
and he has climbed, as it were, out of the depths of his sorrow up into
the sunlight. And so it ever is, my friends! There is deliverance in
spirit before there is deliverance in outward fact. If our patient
waiting bring, as it certainly will bring, at the right time, an answer
in the removal of danger, and the lightening of sorrow, it will bring
first the better answer, 'the peace of God, which passeth all
understanding,' to keep your hearts and minds. That is the highest
blessing we have to seek for in our waiting on God, and that is the
blessing which we get as soon as we wait on Him. The outward deliverance
may tarry, but ever there come before it, as heralds of its approach,
the sense of a lightened burden and the calmness of a strengthened
heart. It may be long before the morning breaks, but even while the
darkness lasts, a faint air begins to stir among the sleeping leaves,
the promise of the dawn, and the first notes of half-awakened birds
prelude the full chorus that will hail the sunrise.
It is beautiful, I think, to see how in the compass of this one little
psalm the singer has, as it were, wrought himself clear, and sung
himself out of his fears. The stream of his thought, like some mountain
torrent, turbid at first, has run itself bright and sparkling. How all
the tremor and agitation have gone away, just because he has kept his
mind for a few minutes in the presence of the calm thought of God and
His love. The first courses of his psalm, like those of some great
building, are laid deep down in the darkness, but the shining summit is
away up there in the sunlight, and God's glittering glory is sparklingly
reflected from the highest point. Whoever begins with, 'Deliver me--I
will wait upon Thee,' will pass very quickly, even before the outward
deliverance comes, into--'O my Strength! unto Thee will I sing!' Every
song of true trust, though it may begin with a minor, will end in a
burst of jubilant gladness. No prayer ought ever to deal with
complaints, as we know, without starting with thanksgiving, and, blessed
be God, no prayer need to deal with complaints without ending with
thanksgiving. So, all our cries of sorrow, and all our acknowledgments
of weakness and need, and all our plaintive beseechings, should be
inlaid, as it were, between two layers of brighter and gladder thought,
like dull rock between two veins of gold. The prayer that begins with
thankfulness, and passes on into waiting, even while in sorrow and sore
need, will always end in thankfulness, and triumph, and praise.
If we regard this second verse of our text as the expression of the
Psalmist's emotion at the moment of its utterance, then we see in it a
beautiful illustration of the effect of faithful waiting to turn
complaining into praise. If we regard it rather as an expression of his
confidence, that 'I shall yet praise Him for the help of His
countenance,' we see in it an illustration of the power of patient
waiting to brighten the sure hope of deliverance, and to bring summer
into the heart of winter. As resolve, or as prophecy, it is equally a
witness of the large reward of quiet waiting for the salvation of the
Lord.
In either application of the words their almost precise correspondence
with those of the previous verse is far more than a mere poetic
ornament, or part of the artistic form of the psalm. It teaches us this
happy lesson--that the song of accomplished deliverance, whether on
earth, or in the final joy of heaven, will be but a sweeter, fuller
repetition of the cry that went up in trouble from our waiting hearts.
The object to which we shall turn with our thankfulness is He to whom we
betook ourselves with our prayers. There will be the same turning of the
soul to Him; only instead of wistful waiting in the longing look, joy
will light her lamps in our eyes, and thankfulness beam in our faces as
we turn to His light. We shall look to Him as of old, and name Him what
we used to name Him when we were in weakness and warfare,--our
'Strength' and our 'Defence.' But how different the feelings with which
the delivered soul calls Him so, from those with which the sorrowful
heart tried to grasp the comfort of the names. Then their reality was a
matter of faith, often hard to hold fast. Now it is a matter of memory
and experience. 'I called Thee my strength when I was full of weakness;
I tried to believe Thou wast my defence when I was full of fear; I
thought of Thee as my fortress when I was ringed about with foes; I know
Thee now for that which I then trusted that Thou wast. As I waited upon
Thee that Thou mightest be gracious, I praise Thee now that Thou hast
been more gracious than my hopes.' Blessed are they whose loftiest
expectations were less than their grateful memories and their rich
experience, and who can take up in their song of praise the names by
which they called on God, and feel that they knew not half their depth,
their sweetness, or their power!
But the praise is not merely the waiting transformed. Experience has not
only deepened the conception of the meaning of God's name; it has added
a new name. The cry of the suppliant was to God, his strength and
defence; the song of the saved is to the God who is also the God of his
mercy. The experiences of life have brought out more fully the love and
tender pity of God. While the troubles lasted it was hard to believe
that God was strong enough to brace us against them, and to keep us safe
in them; it was harder still to think of them as coming from Him at all;
it was hardest to feel that they came from His love. But when they are
past, and their meaning is plainer, and we possess their results in the
weight of glory which they have wrought out for us, we shall be able to
look back on them all as the mercies of the God of our mercy, even as
when a man looks down from the mountain-top upon the mists and the
clouds through which he passed, and sees them all smitten by the
sunshine that gleams upon them from above. That which was thick and damp
as he was struggling through it, is irradiated into rosy beauty; the
retrospective and downward glance confirms and surpasses all that faith
dimly discerned, and found it hard to believe. Whilst we are fighting
here, brethren! let us say, 'I will wait for Thee,' and then yonder we
shall, with deeper knowledge of the love that was in all our sorrows,
sing unto Him who was our strength in earth's weakness, our defence in
earth's dangers, and is for ever more the 'God of our mercy,' amidst the
large and undeserved favours of heaven.