The petitions of our text, of course, only cover a part of the whole
field of prayer. The Psalmist is praying in the midst of some unknown
trouble, and his petitions are manifold in form, though in substance, as
I have said, they may all be reduced to one. Let me run over them very
briefly. 'Bow down Thine ear and hear me.' That is not simply the
invocation of the omniscience of a God, but an appeal for loving,
attentive regard to the desires of His poor servant. The hearing is not
merely the perception in the divine mind of what the creature desires,
but it is the answer in fact, or the granting of the petition. The best
illustration of what the Psalmist desires here may be found in another
psalm, where another Psalmist tells us his experience and says, 'My cry
came unto His ears, and the earth shook and trembled.' You put a
spoonful of water into a hydraulic press at the one end, and you get a
force that squeezes tons together at the other. Here there is a poor,
thin stream of the voice of a sorrowful man at the one end, and there is
an earthquake at the other. That is what 'hearing' and 'bowing down the
ear' means.
Then the prayers go on to three petitions, which may be all regarded as
diverse acts of deliverance or of help. 'Preserve my soul.' The word
expresses the guardianship with which a garrison keeps a fortress. It is
the Hebrew equivalent of the word employed by Paul--'The peace of God
shall _keep_ your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.' The thought is that
of a defenceless man or thing round which some strong protection is
cast. And the desire expressed by it is that in the midst of sorrow,
whatever it is, the soul may be guarded from evil. Then, the next
petition--'Save Thy servant'--goes a step further, and not only asks to
be kept safe in the midst of sorrows, but to be delivered out of them.
And then the next petition--'Be merciful unto me, O Lord!'--craves that
the favour which comes down to inferiors, and is bestowed upon those who
might deserve something far otherwise, may manifest itself, in such acts
of strengthening, or help, or deliverance, as divine wisdom may see fit.
And then the last petition is--'Rejoice the soul of Thy servant.' The
series begins with 'hearing,' passes through 'preserving,' 'saving,'
showing 'mercy,' and comes at last to 'rejoice the soul' that has been
so harassed and troubled. Gladness is God's purpose for us all; joy we
all have a right to claim from Him. It is the intended issue of every
sorrow, and it can only be had when we cleave to Him, and pass through
the troubles of life with continual dependence on and aspiration towards
Himself.
So these are the petitions massed together, and out of them let me take
two or three lessons. First, then, let us learn to make all wishes and
annoyances material of prayer. This man was harassed by some trouble,
the nature of which we do not know; and although the latter portion of
his psalm rises into loftier regions of spiritual desire, here, in the
first part of it, he is wrestling with his afflicting circumstances,
whatever they were, and he has no hesitation in spreading them all out
before God and asking for His delivering help. Wishes that are not
turned into prayers irritate, disturb, unsettle. Wishes that are turned
into prayers are calmed and made blessed. Stanley and his men lived for
weeks upon a poisonous root, which, if eaten crude, brought all manner
of diseases, but, steeped in running water, had all the acrid juices
washed out of it, and became wholesome food. If you steep your wishes in
the stream of prayer the poison will pass out of them. Some of them will
be suppressed, all of them will be hallowed, and all of them will be
calmed. Troubles, great or small, should be turned into prayers. Breath
spent in sighs is wasted; turned into prayers it will swell our sails.
If a man does not pray 'without ceasing,' there is room for doubt
whether he ever prays at all. What would you think of a traveller who
had a valuable cordial of which he only tasted a drop in the morning and
another in the evening; or who had a sure staff on which to lean which
he only employed at distant intervals on the weary march, and that only
for a short time? Let us turn all that we want into petitions, and all
that annoys us let us spread before God.
Learn, further, that earnest reiteration is not vain repetition. 'Use
not vain repetitions as the heathen do, for they think they shall be
heard for their much speaking,' said the Master. But the same Master
'went away from them and prayed the third time, using the same words.'
As long as we have not consciously received the blessing, it is no vain
reiteration if we renew our prayers that it may come upon our heads. The
man who asks for a thing once, and then gets up from his knees and goes
away, and does not notice whether he gets the answer or not, does not
pray. The man who truly desires anything from God cannot be satisfied
with one languid request for it. But as the heart contracts with a sense
of need, and expands with a faith in God's sufficiency, it will drive
the same blood of prayer over and over again through the same veins; and
life will be wholesome and strong.
Then learn, further, to limit wishes and petitions within the bounds of
God's promises. The most of these supplications of our text may be found
in other parts of Scripture, as promises from God. Only so far as an
articulate divine word carries my faith has my faith the right to go. In
the crooked alleys of Venice there is a thin thread of red stone, inlaid
in the pavement or wall, which guides through all the devious turnings
to the Piazza, in the centre, where the great church stands. As long as
we have the red line of promise on our path, faith may follow it and
will come to the Temple. Where the line stops it is presumption, and not
faith, that takes up the running. God's promises are sunbeams flung down
upon us. True prayer catches them on its mirror, and signals them back
to God. We are emboldened to say, 'Bow down Thine ear!' because He has
said, 'I will hear.' We are encouraged to cry, 'Be merciful!' because we
have our foot upon the promise that He will be; and all that we can ask
of Him is, 'Do for us what Thou hast said; be to us what Thou art.'
The final lesson is, Leave God to settle how He answers your prayer. The
Psalmist prayed for preservation, for safety, for joy; but he did not
venture to prescribe to God _how_ these blessings were to be ministered
to him. He does not ask that the trouble may be taken away. That is as
it may be; it may be better that it shall be left. But he asks that in
it he shall not be allowed to sink, and that, however the waves may run
high, they shall not be allowed to swamp his poor little cockle-shell of
a boat. This is the true inmost essence of prayer--not that we should
prescribe to Him how to answer our desires, but that we should leave all
that in His hands. The Apostle Paul said, in his last letter, with
triumphant confidence, that he knew that God would 'deliver him and save
him into His everlasting kingdom.' And he knew, at the same time, that
his course was ended, and that there was nothing for him now but the
crown. How was he 'saved into the kingdom' and 'delivered from the mouth
of the lion'? The sword that struck off the wearied head that had
thought so long for God's Church was the instrument of the deliverance
and the means of the salvation. For us it may be that a sharper sorrow
may be the answer to the prayer, 'Preserve Thy servant.' It may be that
God's 'bowing down His ear' and answering us when we cry shall be to
pass us through a mill that has finer rollers, to crush still more the
bruised corn. But the end and the meaning of it all will be to 'rejoice
the soul of the servant' with a deeper joy at last.
III. Finally, mark the lesson which we have here as to the pleas that
are to be urged, or the conditions on which prayer is answered.
'I am poor and needy,' or, as perhaps the words more accurately mean,
'afflicted and poor.' The first condition is the sense of need. God's
highest blessings cannot be given except to the men who know they want
them. The self-righteous man cannot receive the righteousness of Christ.
The man who has little or no consciousness of sin is not capable of
receiving pardon. God cannot put His fulness into our emptiness if we
conceit ourselves to be filled and in need of nothing. We must know
ourselves to be 'poor and naked and blind and miserable' ere He can make
us rich, and clothe us, and enlighten our eyes, and flood our souls with
His own gladness. Our needs are dumb appeals to Him; and in regard to
all outward and lower things, they bind Him to supply us, because they
themselves have been created by Him. He that hears the raven's croak
satisfies the necessities that He has ordained in man and beast. But,
for all the best blessings of His providence and of His love, the first
steps towards receiving them are the knowledge that we need them and the
desire that we should possess them.
Then the Psalmist goes on to put another class of pleas derived from his
relation to God. These are mainly two--'I am holy,' and 'Thy servant
that trusteth in Thee.' Now, with regard to that first word 'holy,'
according to our modern understanding of the expression it by no means
sets forth the Psalmist's idea. It has an unpleasant smack of
self-righteousness, too, which is by no means to be found in the
original. But the word employed is a very remarkable and pregnant one.
It really carries with it, in germ, the great teaching of the Apostle
John. 'We love Him because He first loved us.' It means one who, being
loved and favoured by God, answers the divine love with his own love.
And the Psalmist is not pleading any righteousness of his own, but
declaring that he, touched by the divine love, answers that love, and
looks up; not as if thereby he deserved the response that he seeks, but
as knowing that it is impossible but that the waiting heart should thus
be blessed. They who love God are sure that the answer to their desires
will come fluttering down upon their heads, and fold its white wings and
nestle in their hearts. Christian people are a great deal too much
afraid of saying, 'I love God.' They rob themselves of much peace and
power thereby. We should be less chary of so saying if we thought more
about God's love to us, and poked less into our own conduct.
Again, the Psalmist brings this plea--'Thy servant that trusteth in
Thee.' He does not say, 'I deserve to be answered because I trust,' but
'because I trust I am sure that I shall be answered'; for it is absurd
to suppose that God will look down from heaven on a soul that is
depending upon Him, and will let that soul's confidence be put to shame.
Dear friend! if your heart is resting upon God, be sure of this, that
anything is possible rather than that you should not get from Him the
blessings that you need.
The Psalmist gathers together all his pleas which refer to himself into
two final clauses--'I cry unto Thee daily,' 'I lift up my soul unto
Thee'--which, taken together, express the constant effort of a devout
heart after communion with God. To withdraw my heart from the low levels
of earth, and to bear it up into communion with God, is the sure way to
get what I desire, because then God Himself will be my chief desire, and
'they who seek the Lord shall not want any good.'
But the true and prevailing plea is not in our needs, desires, or
dispositions, but in God's own character, as revealed by His words and
acts, and grasped by our faith. Therefore the Psalmist ends by passing
from thoughts of self to thoughts of God, and builds at last on the sure
foundation which underlies all his other 'fors' and gives them all their
force--'For Thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive, and plenteous in
mercy unto all them that call upon Thee.'
Brethren! turn all your wishes and all your annoyances into prayers. If
a wish is not fit to be prayed about, it is not fit to be cherished. If
a care is too small to be made a prayer, it is too small to be made a
burden. Be frank with God as God is frank with you, and go to His
throne, keeping back nothing of your desires or of your troubles. To
carry them there will take the poison and the pain out of wasps' stings,
and out of else fatal wounds. We have a Name to trust to, tenderer and
deeper than those which evoked the Psalmist's triumphant confidence. Let
us see to it that, as the basis of our faith is firmer, our faith be
stronger than his. We have a plea to urge, more persuasive and mighty
than those which he pressed on God and gathered to his own heart. 'For
Christ's sake' includes all that he pled, and stretches beyond it. If we
come to God through Him who declares His name to us, we shall not draw
near to the Throne with self-willed desires, nor leave it with empty
hands. 'If ye ask anything in My Name, I will do it.'