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TOPIC: Spurgeon - C.H. - The Golden Alphabet (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 11 Exposition of Psalm 119:81-88
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Exposition of Psa_119:81-88
by Charles Spurgeon
81. My soul fainteth for thy salvation: but I hope in thy word.
82. Mine eyes fail for thy word, saying, When wilt thou
comfort me?
83. For I am become like a bottle in the smoke; yet do I not
forget thy statutes.
84. How many are the days of thy servant? When wilt thou
execute judgment on them that persecute me?
85. The proud have digged pits for me, which are not after thy
law.
86. All thy commandments are faithful: they persecute me
wrongfully; help thou me.
87. They had almost consumed me upon earth; but I forsook
not thy precepts.
88. Quicken me after thy lovingkindness; so shall I keep the
testimony of thy mouth.
This portion of the gigantic psalm sees the Psalmist in extremis. His
enemies have brought him to the lowest condition of anguish and
depression; yet he is faithful to the law, and trustful in his God. This octave
is the midnight of the psalm, and very dark and black it is. Stars, however,
shine out, and the last verse gives promise of the dawn. The strain will after
this become more cheerful; but meanwhile it should minister comfort to us
to see so eminent a servant of God so hardly used by the ungodly.
Evidently in our own persecutions, no strange thing has happened unto us.
81. “My soul fainteth for thy salvation: but I hope in thy word.”
“My soul fainteth for thy salvation.” He wished for no deliverance but
that which came from God: his one desire was for “thy salvation.” But for
that divine deliverance he was eager to the last degree — up to the full
measure of his strength, yea, and beyond it, till he fainted. So strong was
his desire that it produced prostration of spirit. He grew weary with
waiting, faint with watching, sick with urgent need. Thus the sincerity and
eagerness of his desires were proved. Nothing else could satisfy him but
deliverance wrought out by the hand of God; his inmost nature yearned,
and pined for salvation from the God of all grace, and he must have it or
utterly fail. “But I hope in thy word.” Therefore he felt that salvation
would come; for God cannot break his promise, nor disappoint the hope
which his own word has excited: yea, the fulfillment of his word is near at
hand when our hope is firm and our desire fervent. Hope alone can keep
the soul from fainting by using the smelling-bottle of the promise. Yet hope
does not quench desire for a speedy answer to prayer; it increases our
importunity, for it both stimulates ardor and sustains the heart under
delays. To faint for salvation, and to be kept from utterly failing of the
hope of it, is the frequent experience of the Christian man. We are “faint
yet pursuing.” Hope sustains when desire exhausts. While the grace of
desire throws us down, the grace of hope lifts us up again.
82. “Mine eyes fail for thy word, saying, When wilt thou comfort me?”
His eyes gave out with eagerly gazing for the kind appearance of the Lord,
while his heart in weariness cried out for speedy comfort. To read the word
till the eyes can no longer see is but a small thing compared with watching
for the fulfillment of the promise till the inner eyes of expectancy begin to
grow dim with hope deferred. We may not set times to God, for this is to
limit the Holy One of Israel; yet we may urge our suit with importunity,
and make fervent inquiry as to why the promise tarries. David sought no
comfort except that which comes from God; his question is, “When wilt
thou comfort me?” If help does not come from heaven it will never come
at all: all the good man’s hopes look that way, he has not a glance to dart
in any other direction. This experience of waiting and fainting is well-known
by full-grown saints, and it teaches them many precious lessons;
which they would never learn by any other means. Among the choice
results is this one — that the body rises into sympathy with the soul, both
heart: and flesh cry out for the living God, and even the eyes find a tongue,
“saying, When wilt thou comfort me?” It must be an intense longing
which is not satisfied to express itself by the lips, but speaks with the eyes,
by those eyes failing through intense watching. Eyes can speak right
eloquently; they use both mutes and liquids, and can sometimes say more
than tongues. David says in another place, “The Lord hath heard the voice
of my weeping” (Ps. 6:8). Specially are our eyes eloquent when they
begin to fail with weariness and woe. A humble eye lifted up to heaven
in silent prayer may flash such flame as shall melt the bolts which bar the
entrance of vocal prayer, and so heaven shall be taken by storm with the
artillery of tears. Blessed are the eyes that are strained in looking after
God. The eyes of the Lord will see to it that such eyes do not actually fail.
How much better to watch for the Lord with aching eyes than to have
them sparkling at the glitter of vanity!
83. “For I am become like a bottle in the smoke; yet do I not forget thy
statutes.”
“For I am become like a bottle in the smoke.” The skins used for
containing wine, when emptied, were hung up in the tent, and when the
place reeked with smoke the skins grew black and sooty, and in the heat
they became wrinkled and worn. The Psalmist’s face through sorrow had
become dark and dismal, furrowed and lined; indeed, his whole body had
so sympathized with his sorrowing mind as to have lost its natural
moisture, and to have become like a skin dried and tanned. His character
had been smoked with slander, and his mind parched with persecution; he
was half afraid that he would become useless and incapable through so
much mental suffering, and that men would look upon him as an old worn-out
skin bottle, which could hold nothing, and answer no purpose. What a
metaphor for a man to use who was certainly a poet, a divine, and a master
in Israel, if not a king, and a man after God’s own heart! It is little wonder
if we, commoner folks are made to think very little of ourselves, and are
filled with distress of mind. Some of us know the inner meaning of this
simile, for we, too, have felt dingy, mean, and worthless, only fit to be cast
away. Very black and hot has been the smoke which has enveloped us; it
seemed to come not alone from the Egyptian furnace, but from the
bottomless pit; and it had a clinging power which made the soot of it fasten
upon us and blacken us with miserable thoughts.
“Yet do I not forget thy statutes.” Here is the patience of the saints and
the victory of faith. Blackened the man of God might be by falsehood, but
the truth was in him, and he never gave it up. He was faithful to his King
when he seemed deserted and left to the vilest uses. The promises came to
his mind, and, what was still better evidence of his loyalty, the statutes
were there too: he stuck to his duties as well as to his comforts. The worst
circumstances cannot destroy the true believer’s hold upon his God. Grace
is a living power which survives that which would suffocate all other forms
of existence. Fire cannot consume it, and smoke cannot smother it. A man
may be reduced to skin and bone, and all his comfort may be dried out of
him, and yet he may hold fast his integrity and glorify his God. It is,
however, no marvel that in such a case the eyes which are tormented with
the smoke cry out for the Lord’s delivering hand, and the heart, heated and
faint, longs for the divine salvation.
84. “How many are the days of thy servant? when wilt thou execute
judgment on them that persecute me!”
“How many are the days of thy servant?” I cannot hope to live long in
such a condition; thou must come speedily to my rescue or I shall die. Shall
all my short life be consumed in such destroying sorrows? The brevity of
life :is a good argument against the length of an affliction. Lord, since I am
to live so short a time, be pleased to shorten my sorrow also.
Perhaps the Psalmist means that his days seemed too many since they were
spent in such distress. He half wished that they were ended, and therefore
he asked in trouble, “How many are the days of thy servant?” Long life
now seemed a calamity rather than a benediction. Like a hired servant, he