The greatest lesson to learn in life is how to die well. To die well is to pass from this sad and fallen world into paradise, and so to bid farewell to all our pains and cares and sorrows, into the glorious presence of Almighty God. To enjoy this great and blessed change, we must all in this life prepare.
Were the believer asked, What is the ground of your faith and hope? He would instantly reply, with David, “I hope in his Word,” but this general answer implies several distinct truths, as, first, that the Scriptures are the Word of God; and secondly, that this Word contains a warrant of hope. We may regard the Word as the immediate warrant of a hope which rests on God himself as its supreme object, or in other words, the proximate ground of hope is God’s testimony, while its ultimate ground is God’s character. Persuaded that the Scriptures are the Word of God, the believer hopes, because he finds a warrant for hope there; and this Word he deems a sufficient warrant, because it comes to him on the authority of One who can neither err nor deceive, whose faithfulness is pledged in every promise, and his honour concerned in every declaration which it contains.
There are very few people who would not agree with the apostle when he says that Christ is precious to believers. All who have been educated in a Christian land, however incorrect their views, and however dead their hearts, have a notion, at least, that but for Christ they could never get to heaven, and few or none would therefore contradict the assertion that he is a Saviour to be valued. But when one comes a little closer and asks professing people why he is precious to them, and in what degree, the answers to this question are indefinite and vague.
Terrible as the doctrine of God’s wrath is, it is a doctrine which, perhaps more than any other, wakes sinners up to appreciate the love of God in the gospel. Jesus puts it in these lovely words: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
In his parish, there lived a wealthy young Laird, who in defiance of a pious education had forsaken the God of his fathers, and struck out into a career of headlong wickedness. He was an heritor of the parish, and the representative of a distinguished family; and as such, had occupied a conspicuous place in the house of God. This was now deserted; and he sought by every means to shun the presence of his minister, at home and abroad, as well as that of his associates in the discipline of the church. Every one saw that the young man was hastening on to ruin. His amiable spouse was now neglected and broken-hearted. His very children seemed to be forgotten; and the fireside scenes of his former days, so peaceful and so happy, were lost sight of and forsaken for the haunts of drunkenness and impiety; while his fine estate was melting away, as snow before the sun of summer, and pious parents presenting his case to the minds of their rising children, as a specimen of the misery which a life of debauchery ever entails on its wretched victim.
The place which these words occupy at the close of the revelation made by God to man, hardly less than the meaning of the words themselves, unquestionably gives to them a very marked and peculiar importance. With the exception of the Apostolic benediction which is contained in the last verse of the chapter, and of the awful threatening against adding to or taking from the words of the prophecy of this book, which occupies the verses immediately following our text, the language before us forms the latest audible utterance of God’s lips to this world.
The sixteenth Psalm is a strong ally to a freely-offered gospel for the vilest sinner, and for that reason it should be precious to us. But are there any other riches in the Psalm? Indeed, there are. The Psalm records not only the historical fact of Christ’s resurrection, but it also records the exercise of our Lord’s soul leading up to his suffering and death. In the Psalm, the Lord Jesus speaks in the first person: “I have set the Lord always before me … thou shalt not leave my soul in hell.” Through David, the Spirit beforehand gave words that Christ in the days of his flesh would take upon his own lips as the sincere expression of the exercise of his soul. The sixteenth Psalm shows us how the Father wonderfully supported, upheld, and communed with Christ, as that true man undertook the work of our redemption.
