FOUR EXHORTATIONS
Psalm 37 1-11
This psalm is well known to the brethren, but I seek to draw upon it as ever conscious of the difficulties of the way, the temptations of the pathway, all that enters into our lives here as believers. We live in a world in which Satan is walking to and fro (Job 1:7); that has not changed. We live, in that sense, in a very dangerous place. It is good that we are mindful of that, it is good that all of us, young and old, are aware of the intense activity of the enemy to turn us away from the things that we have been speaking of in the reading. I do not wish to be negative, but it is good that we are aware of the character of the world in which we are. One hymn writer says:
‘No home can we the place esteem
Which served our Saviour thus.’ (Hymn 150)
I trust no-one here is trying to settle down in this world. Our home is above, where the Lord Jesus has gone to prepare us a place. He has done that and soon He is coming for us.
I find this psalm very instructive and I would like to draw upon these four words; “Confide”, “Commit”, “Rest” and “Cease”. If it is a comfort to younger ones, I often struggle to take away a lot from an occasion like this, but here are four exhortations which it would be good if we, each one of us, could take away.
The first one is very precious; “Confide in Jehovah”. I would say simply, tell the Lord Jesus everything. That is what it means; tell Him everything, for He is intensely interested in you. This is a psalm of David. Think of his knowledge of God; what a mighty man David was! Think of the experiences that he had from his youth, experiences that we will never have, from the defeat of Goliath, those mighty battles, to his errors, for he fell to very low depths. How much David went through in his experience with God, and he writes “Confide in Jehovah”. That message is for each one of us, and it is wonderfully attractive. It is not difficult to confide in One who has your wellbeing in His heart, One who has the ability to bless you and a desire to bless you. Who are you speaking to? You are not speaking to someone you can hide from: absolutely nothing can you hide from the Lord Jesus. It is all laid bare before His eyes and He wants you to speak to Him about it. He wants you to speak to Him about the bad things and the good things, the fears and the joys; He wants you to speak to Him about your life and what enters into it. He wants you to speak to Him about your fears, for He holds the hands of those who confide in Him.
Confidence in this world is something rare. Those of us who are married may know what it is to have complete confidence in one another; we are able to share our feelings and what enters into our lives. But confiding in God goes beyond that; it is something even greater to confide in One who understands every feeling, One who has the power to influence and change our lives entirely. God would have us to confide in Him, talk to Him, share our problems with Him. He will help you to deal with them, He will show you the end from the beginning. He is able for any problem, and He will help you through. He would have you confide in Him because He is longing to help you in the things that enter into your life. He provided for the children of Israel day by day. He led them in the wilderness, He provided for them and they were able for the wilderness, because of God’s hand upon them. We are not able in our own strength but we are able as confiding in Him.
So David says here, “Confide in Jehovah, and do good”; there is a great scope in that. We certainly do not have the ability to do good in our own strength, but as under the influence of the Lord Jesus, He will show us what is good. There was a prophet, Micah, who spoke of what God had done for him, and he said, “He hath shewn thee, O man, what is good: and what doth Jehovah require of thee …?”, Mic.6:8. God would show us what is good. We may think we are doing what is good, but let us test it before God, confide in Him. Would He have us do something? He will help us about that. There are three things in that scripture in Micah: “… to do justly, and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with thy God” – three very clear pointers, guidance for the wilderness pathway. What does God require of you? Do justly, love goodness and walk humbly with your God. God will show us what is good.
Then David says, “feed on faithfulness”. Where will we find that? I certainly do not find that when I am at work, you will not find it at school, you will not find it at university. Faithfulness is found before God and in those that are under the influence of the Holy Spirit. As we gather together, we gather as those desirous to be faithful to the claims of our Lord Jesus Christ. Who of us could say we are always faithful? We all fail, but you will find this amongst the people of God – feeding on faithfulness. The Lord Jesus Himself is, as always, the supreme example to us. He is the One on whom we feed, He has remained faithful, always faithful. God Himself is faithful. We look around us; the world lets us down, we may let one another down. But God never lets us down, the Lord Jesus never lets us down, and the Holy Spirit is always there, faithful to the work that He is fulfilling. He is here to help us through this wilderness pathway.
Then “delight thyself in Jehovah”. I suppose that this is what we were doing in our reading, we were delighting in the Lord Jesus and what He is and what He has expounded to us, what we have to enjoy as coming under His influence. There is nothing greater in which man can find delight than God Himself. God made us for His pleasure but God always intends that we should find pleasure in Himself and in all that belongs to Him. Our souls can only be satisfied as dwelling upon the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, God manifest in flesh. He is the One who will satisfy us in our lives, who can satisfy you in your soul, give you the strength to go on. You will not find it outside, you will not find it in yourself, but you will find it in dwelling upon the resources in divine Persons. We have a resource there to draw on, faithfulness, love, consistency. Does the world not cry out for consistency? At work, they tell you that the only consistent thing is change. It is a wonderful relief to come home to the things of God and find in them that which never changes; God and His purpose and His love will never and can never change. The Lord Jesus says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end”, Rev.21:6. He will never change; how we can rejoice in that! The glorious Man who laid down His life for us remains the same, faithful, the One upon whom we can feed and this comes to those who confide in Him.
Then David says, “he will give thee the desires of thy heart”. These are not the desires that I had in my heart as away from God, these are not worldly, earthly desires. Who of us does not have something that we hanker after, something we want to do, something we want to achieve, something we would like to have? We know what earthly desires are, but we should put those to one side. What this scripture speaks of is a desire which God will put in your heart as having put your faith and trust in the Lord Jesus, and He will bring it to pass. Everything in this world is suited to man – to what extent can you maintain your direction and your efforts? You might achieve your end, but what is that end? Something that will be done away with. It is worthless, it achieves nothing. What God will give you is something that can never be taken away. If you give up something in this scene, it will be that which you cannot keep anyway, but you will acquire something that you cannot lose.
That is what Paul experienced and what he wrote about. God gave him, not what he had in his heart before, but what God put there. In principle, God said to Paul, ‘I will give thee the desires of thy heart’. That is an exercise for us as to what our desires are, but confide in God. If you struggle to identify these desires, as I do, speak to God about it and He will bring a change. He will bring a change in your life which leads you to be occupied with the Lord Jesus and be under the influence of the Holy Spirit, and to reach out for things new and old which He has in His store, ready to pour upon all those who love Him. There is a comfort in confiding in God which can be found nowhere else. Your age does not matter; you can be very young, and God will hear you. You may say, I am not sure how to even approach God. Simply speak to Him in private, reach out to Him, and He will hear you. He loves to hear young and old. An older saint may hear me saying this, and think, I have been doing that for thirty years longer than you have. All I would say is, I am sure you have found much joy and comfort in it. Confide in and speak to God about everything and He will direct your way.
The next thing that David speaks about is commitment: “Commit thy way unto Jehovah, and rely upon him”. This is perhaps one of the hardest things to do. The note here is interesting; it says, ‘Roll thy way upon’. Roll your way upon God; the expression implies that your whole burden is taken by Him. It seems to me to be a complete thing. “Commit thy way unto Jehovah and rely upon him”, whatever stage of life you are at. There are young believers here. You may have choices before you, subjects to decide upon, questions as to further education; many questions may enter into your mind. You may be looking for employment, a very difficult thing in today’s climate. You may be at work, finding it very difficult and you may find yourself in circumstances that you do not feel comfortable in as a Christian. You may be asked to consider things which you have to avoid because they are not something you could have to do with. Or you may be older, you may be retired, you may be worried about your pathway, you may be concerned about who will care for you, what will happen when frailty comes in. David’s wisdom shines through; “Commit thy way unto Jehovah and rely upon him and He will bring it to pass”.
I am sure that if you spoke to any of the older ones here, they would tell you something about this which is very simple. It works. My experience is limited, but I can assure you that it works. God knows what you need. We think we know what we need. You may say, I have a family to provide for with a home and food and all the other things that enter into that. God knows that, He knows what you need. He was able to sustain all the children of Israel in the wilderness for forty years. God has not changed, and what we may think in our wisdom is just the right next job, may not be so in His mind. I speak very practically, and I trust sensitively, to old and young. We cannot plan our way, but if we commit our way to the Lord Jesus, if we rely upon Him, He will bring it to pass. “He will bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday”. As dependent upon Him, may these things characterise us.
Then David says, “Rest in Jehovah”. It is a wonderful thing when a soul reaches the point that it is able to confide in the Lord Jesus, to commit your life to Him and then rest. Some may remember a brother we much loved, Mr Frank May. He used to say something that has remained with us; ‘you cannot worry and pray’. We understand what our brother meant; you cannot worry and pray at the same time. You can either worry about the problem yourself and take it upon yourself to find an answer, or you can commit it to the Lord, and then you rest in Him. I would encourage all of us to lay hold of what David teaches us. Confide in the Lord Jesus, commit your way to Him and then rest and wait patiently. I am sure there are others here who like me have a characteristic impatience. In the world today, everything has to happen instantly. That does not have any place in the affairs of God. His timing may be very different to my own. It may be that I desire something, I wait for it all my life and I never get it, but in God’s wisdom, He will have done the best for me. Patience, we all know, is hard but the message is very clear; “wait patiently for him”.
What I am speaking about is beyond the circumstances of this world, it is absolutely reliable. We cast ourselves into the hands of the One who has created this world, who created the seasons and the sun and the moon. God set those objects in the sky. Man can predict when an eclipse will happen, he is intelligent enough to work it out, but God created them. Such is the witness of creation. We have access to the God who set the stars in the heavens, who set the seasons of the year, who made the herbs of the field, the animals; all that provision. He breathed life into man. He is going to roll up this world like a book (Isa.34:4), He is going to do away with it and there will be “a new heaven and a new earth”, Rev.21:1. That might be hard to believe when we consider what God has done in creating this world in which we are, setting man in it. The beauty and wonder of creation is a witness to Himself. Well may you ask yourself, what will that new heaven and earth be like if this world is created to be done away with? Very wonderful, and that is our object, our future and our hope as relying and trusting upon God.
“Rest in Jehovah”. It is not easy to let go, especially when everything in this world would have you take hold of it. I am not saying that when we go to work or school we should not take responsibility; we undertake the responsibility we are given, we fulfil it and we seek God’s help in doing that. But we leave whatever may come next; whatever it is – God will provide that in His time and He may well test us. Think of Elijah and Elisha; the time came when Elijah was to depart and he tested Elisha. Elijah said to him, You stay here because I am going on, but Elisha said, No, I am coming with you (2 Kings 2:2). Stage by stage, different lessons were learnt. Elisha was tested about his resolve to go with the man of God, and we will be tested, but we are to hold fast to the God who we know, to the Lord Jesus who has loved us and laid down His life for us, whose precious blood was shed for us and who now sits in heaven at God’s right hand, a Man crowned with glory and honour, my Saviour. I trust you can say the same. What resources God has given us in the Holy Spirit. I often wonder at the greatness of that gift which God would give us, His Spirit, to help us through our pathways, to help us in confidence in Him, to help us in the commitment of our lives to Him and to help us in resting in Him. The Holy Spirit is a wonderful resource to us in that sense, to help us to rest, to leave matters with the God who knows best.
Then we have “Cease”. Anger, fretting – these things still rise up in us, for we are still in fleshly conditions. We seek God’s help to guard against them, but perhaps I am not alone in saying that these things still rise up, these feelings are still there. David says simply, “Cease … fret not thyself”. It is not for us as Christians to be characterised by these things. The world is full of stressed and fretting people. Satan, in the awareness that his time is short, increases the intensity of his activity to aggravate souls, to distract them from God’s goodness and His wisdom. We are not immune from that but we have resources to call upon that will help us; “fret not”. Then we have this lovely expression “but those that wait on Jehovah, they shall possess the land”.
I trust that every one of us might have these things before us – confiding, committing, resting and ceasing – in the knowledge that through them we shall dwell in the heavenly land, in what God has in His mind for us in its fulness. The children of Israel never possessed all of the land of Israel. God desires that we, as having known what it is in principle to cross the Jordan, to die with Christ, may know what it is to live with Him, to enter in by faith to a realm which is entirely outside of this world. God has a new heaven and a new earth in view, but there is a realm which we can enjoy now, for He has promised it to us and He will never let us down.
I trust that these things will stay with us, the yearning on God’s part that we would confide in Him. Keep a short account with God; confiding in Him is something we can do frequently. You may be at work, you may be at school, in some trouble: ask the Lord Jesus to help you do what is right in His eyes, to do what is good. Ask Him, He will direct you. These things are intensely practical and I trust we experience them practically – confidence in God, commitment, resting and ceasing. The result will be an answer for God’s heart. As we enter into the good of what the land speaks of in type, we do not simply sit there and enjoy it; but there will be a result for God as we are under the influence of the Holy Spirit, a pouring out of worship and thanksgiving to God Himself, led by the Lord Jesus. We will enter in Spirit into that sphere where there is, as one hymn speaks of it:
‘one loud eternal burst of praise!’ (Hymn 213
What a result there will be for God!
May these simple things help us, may we lay hold of them and may we be encouraged by them. I would exhort you – try it, prove it, because it works. May it be so, for His name’s sake.
Edinburgh
26 January 2019
A.A. Croot