For those who are saved, and know it for a certainty, these words written by the fine author of days gone by, H.A. Ironside Litt.D., can give you spiritual food for thought. Comments are made on Psalm 17, these words are timely as we contemplate our position in 1998, two years before the next millennium.
From the pen of Ironside,
"Studies on the Psalms"
p.p. 91-96, verses 1-8:
What a word this is for us. It is
so possible for prayer to go out of feigned lips;
it is so possible to pray absolutely
beyond our experience. Have you ever heard people pray something like this,
"O Lord, we do thank Thee for Thy wondrous love and grace, for the way
Thou dost so fully satisfy our hearts", and then the next night, perhaps,
they are off to the world for satisfaction. That is prayer going
out of feigned lips. Or, have you
ever heard people pray like this, "O Lord, grant that the love of Christ
may absolutely control us, that nothing but His grace and love toward others
may be seen," and within twenty minutes they are saying the meanest, unkindest
things about fellow believers or about others in the world? That is prayer
going out of feigned lips. Sometimes people pray like this, "O Lord, we
look up to Thee. We trust Thee for everything, for daily bread to meet
our need," and yet within an hour they may be talking to you about their
circumstances and saying, "I am nearly worried to death; I don't know what
I am going to do." The two things do not go together. That is praying out
of feigned lips. But the Lord Jesus could say, "Give ear unto My prayer,
that goeth not out of feigned lips." His inmost being was in full accord
with the words of His mouth. There is a beautiful figure of that in connection
with the Tabernacle. Every whit of it uttered His glory. Surrounding the
court of that tabernacle there were curtains of fine twined linen suspended
from pillars, forming the wall, all around it. That speaks of Christ's
righteousness before the world. The world from the outside could see that
white curtain surrounding the court, and the white linen always speaks
of righteousness in Scripture. But inside where the sanctuary itself stood
there were ten curtains of fine twined linen fastened together that formed
the tent of the tabernacle, the tabernacle proper. The world outside could
not see those curtains for they were covered over with goats' hair and
rams' skins dyed red seal skins, or badgers' skins curtains. They were
there for the priests and for God to see. But do you get this point? If
you were outside you saw the curtains of fine twined linen surrounding
the court, and as God looked down He saw the curtains of fine twined linen
inside the sanctuary. In other words, the Lord Jesus Christ's righteousness
was just the same under the eye of God as it was under the eye of man.
It is so different with us. We can often seem so righteous and so good
and so holy before our brethren, but as God looks down upon us it is so
different. There was nothing like that with Jesus. In every respect His
inward life and His outward life were in perfect agreement. He was just
the same before men that He was before God. He was just the same in the
presence of God that He was in the presence of men, and that is why He
could say, "Give ear unto My prayer, that goeth not out of feigned lips."
There was nothing unreal about Jesus. Oh, that we might be more like Him!
"Let My sentence come forth from
Thy presence." That is another way of saying,
"I just hand My case over to Thee;
whatever Thou dost choose will be all right." "Let My sentence come forth
from Thy presence; let Thine eyes behold the things that are equal." "I
know Thou wilt weigh everything right, Father, and so I hand it over to
Thee." And then He can say, "Thou hast proved Mine heart; Thou hast visited
Me in the night; Thou hast tried Me, and shalt find nothing; I am purposed
that My mouth shall not transgress." He was the holy, sinless Saviour!
He had to be that or He never could have died for me. If there had been
any evil way in Him,
He would have needed a Saviour Himself,
but because He was ever the Holy Son of God, He was competent to take my
sin upon Himself and die in my room and stead. Now notice the place the
Word of God had in His life, "Concerning the works of men, by the word
of Thy lips I have kept Me from the paths of the destroyer."
Thou hast held fast "My goings in
Thy paths, that My footsteps slip not."
The Lord Jesus Christ who was the
Eternal Word, I and He was the theme of all Holy Scripture, chose Man on
earth to live by the Word. He fed on the Word; was sustained by the Word.
When Satan said, "If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones
be made bread" (Matt. 4:3), He met him with the Word and said, "It is written,
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out
of the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4). And so He met the devil in one temptation
after another with the Word, for the Word was hidden in His heart and there
was no possibility of His sinning against the Father. Would that you and
I were more controlled by the Word. So often we think of it as something
to exercise our minds about, and we are more concerned about getting an
intellectual understanding of Scripture than we are of hiding the Word
in our hearts. That is why we are so ready to run to hear all kinds of
thrilling addresses and why we spend so little time over the Word privately
and why we care so little whether we get to hear the Word if it is simply
the opening up of the truth for our practical sanctification.
As far as the private life is concerned
there are some who seldom open a Bible from one week to another. The blessed
Lord could say, "He wakeneth morning by morning, He wakeneth Mine ear to
hear as the learned" (Isa. 50:4). Think of Him, the holy, spotless Son
of God, feeding on the Word, and yet you and I imagine we can get along
without it! God give us a deeper love for the Word of God and help us to
eat it that we too may say, "Concerning the works of men, by the word of
Thy lips I have kept Me from the paths of the destroyer."
And then notice His perfect confidence
in the Father, in verses 6 and 7, "I have called upon Thee, for Thou wilt
hear Me, O God: incline Thine ear unto Me, and hear My speech. Shew Thy
marvelous loving-kindness, O Thou that savest by Thy right hand them which
put their trust in Thee from those that rise up against them."
Is it not lovely to listen, as it
were, to the secret things going on between the Father and the Son, the
things that the Lord Jesus delighted to say to His Father when He was alone
with Him, for that is what you have in a Psalm like this.
How beautiful the next verse is, "Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of Thy wings." These two figures are used frequently in the Old Testament. "The apple of the eye." If you were to look up that word "apple" in a critical concordance or a Hebrew lexicon you might be surprised at the real word, for the literal Hebrew is, "little man"-"Keep me as the little man in the eye." If you stand close to me and you look into my eye, what do you see there? A little man and that little man is yourself; you see yourself reflected upside down; you are a little man in my eye. Now the Lord Jesus says to the Father; David says to Jehovah, "Keep me as the little man in Thine eye." God is always looking at you, and you are reflected in His eye. How deep is His interest in you! And then the other figure is that of a great eagle protecting its young. "Hide Me under the shadow of Thy wings." "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty" (Psa. 9I:I). "From the wicked that oppress me, from my deadly enemies, who compass me about." (End of Ironside quote).
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