VIII
THE PSALMIST - SETTING THE LORD
ALWAYS BEFORE HIM
"Lord, teach us to pray."--Luke xi. i.
"I have set the Lord always before me."--Ps. xvi. 8.
IF this so devotionally disposed disciple had lived
in the days of David, and if he had asked of David
what he here asks of his Master,--that is to say, if
he had said to David, "David, thou man after
God's own heart, teach me to pray,"--David would
have answered him in the words of the text. "Set
the Lord before you," David would have said.
"Begin every prayer of yours by setting the Lord
before you." "I am a companion of all them that
fear Thee, and of them that keep Thy precepts,"
said David. And that made David the most
accessible and the most affable of men, especially
in divine things. And, accordingly, if you had
asked David how he was able to compose such
wonderful psalms and prayers,--psalms and prayers
that have lasted to this day, and will last as long
as the world lasts, and down to the day of judgment,
--David would have told you that it was by
no power or holiness of his that he did it. "All I
do," he would have said to you, "is just to set the
Lord before me as often as I begin again to sing and
to pray. I begin; and, ere ever I am aware,
already my prayer is answered, and my psalm is
accepted." "But surely," you would have insisted,
"it must surely have been by very great power and
holiness that such psalms and prayers as the 40th
Psalm, and the 63rd, and the 103rd, and the 119th
were composed. Such psalms and prayers as these
could never have been the composition of a man
subject to like passions as we are." "I remember
well," David would reply, "I shall never forget
just how it was with me the day I began one of
the psalms you have just named. My heart within
me was as a dry and thirsty land that day. But
as I set the Lord before me, and as I went on, I
began to see His power and His glory as I had seen
Him heretofore in His sanctuary, till my soul was
satisfied as with marrow and fatness." If this was
Peter who said to his Master, "Lord, teach us to
pray!"--and most likely it was--when Peter's
denial of his Master continually came back upon
him in after days he would often go out to David's
sepulchre, which was with them to that day, and
would say in his agony: "David! David! David
of the matter of Uriah, and Psalmist of the 51st
Psalm, teach me to pray! Teach me thy penitential
heart. Teach me, the chief of sinners, how
thou didst so praise and so pray," And if David
had still been in the earthly Jerusalem he would
have taught Peter to pray by such confidences and
confessions as this. "Come, O thou that fearest
God," David would have said to Peter, "and I will
tell thee what He did for my soul! After the
matter of Uriah, my bones waxed old through my
roaring all the day long. Till one day I said, I will
confess my transgressions to the Lord! And I
took up my carriages and went a far journey into
the wilderness till I came to the Mount of God.
And as I ascended the Mount of God, amid lightning
and thunder and tempest, with my sin ever before
me, the Lord appeared to me and said, 'Behold,
there is a place by Me, and thou shalt stand upon
a rock . . . and I will cover thee with my hand
as I pass by.' And the Lord passed by, and proclaimed,
saying, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful
and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness
and truth. And I made haste and bowed
down and said, Forgive mine iniquity, O Lord, and
take me for Thy servant. And it was so. And I
sang the 103rd Psalm for the first time, all the way
home from Horeb to my own house in Jerusalem.'
And not the 40th and the 63rd and the 103rd
and.the 119th Psalms only: but, if you examine
with a practised eye any one of the great psalms,
you will see that what David says in the text is
true of the composition of them all. Whosoever or
whatsoever is present or absent from any prayer or
psalm of David, the Lord is always present and is
never absent. Or if He is ever absent at the beginning
of any psalm of David, long before the psalm
is ended--and before it has gone far--the Lord is
back again at David's right hand. We are allowed
to see deep down into David's mind and heart in
the composition of some of his psalms. And notably
so in the 103rd Psalm. We see David in the opening
of that superb psalm calling upon his soul and "all
that is within him" to take part in the composition
of that superb psalm. And eminent among all
that is within David is that so wonderful power he
has of setting the Lord before the eyes of his heart.
And not David, with his great gifts and great
privileges only. But we ourselves,--when we enter
our own souls in the same service, we also discover
in ourselves the same noble and wonder-working
power. By the bodily eye we can set things seen
and temporal before ourselves; but by the spiritual
eye we can set before ourselves things unseen and
eternal. By our inward eye we are able to see
God as we kneel down before Him. We seek His
face: and He lifts upon us the light of His countenance
sometimes, like the Psalmist, when we "consider
the heavens, the work of His fingers, the moon
and the stars which He has ordained." We set
their Maker and our Maker before us, and we fall
down in wonder and in worship saying, How great
Thou art, O God! At another time we cast our
inward eye back on the God of Abraham, and the
God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, and the God
of Moses and Isaiah; but best of all on the God
and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
And when we do so, when we set Him before us as
He was revealed to all these sons and servants of
His, then; as we go on doing so, He becomes more
to us than all His creatures; and Heaven begins
with us to take the place of earth. Such, even in
this life, do they become who truly "set the Lord
before them" in prayer. Such do they become
who are taught of David and of Jesus Christ thus
to pray, and thus to praise, and thus to walk with
God, and thus to have their conversation in Heaven.
Our Lord did not say to His disciples in so any
words that they were to set Him, their Master,
always before them when they prayed. But, all
the same, He meant it. And after He went away
from them, and went home to His glory, the Holy
Ghost soon made all the apostles see that He had
meant it. And thus it is that we see, in the Epistles
of Paul and the rest of the Apostles, such a new
departure, so to speak, in prayer. David's psalms
and prayers are the very best of their kind, and for
their day. But Paul's prayers are of quite another
kind: they belong to quite another dispensation,
as we say. There has not been a greater at prayer
and praise born of women, than David: but the
least New Testament saint is, or he might be, far
greater at prayer than even David. And that,
because the least New Testament saint has the
Lord Jesus to set before him in prayer, which David,
with all his genius, and with all his grace, had not.
Everybody must surely see that: even he who
never thought about that till this morning--even
he must see that "No man hath seen God at any
time": no, not Moses: no, not David. "But
the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the
Father, He hath declared Him. That which we
have seen and heard declare we unto you, that
you may have your fellowship with us."
We envy the twelve disciples who saw their Divine
Master every day, and had His face and figure
printed on their hearts and minds every day. What
would we not give just to have seen our Lord's face
and figure for once! To have seen Him when He
was blessing the little children, with one of them in
His arms ! To have seen His face, and heard His
voice, when He spread His skirt over the woman
who was washing His feet with her tears! To have
seen and heard His intercessory prayer with His
eyes lifted up to Heaven after the supper! Or,
again, when He said, "Father, forgive them; for
they know not what they do!" It was easy for
Peter and James and John to set their Lord always
before them! It was very easy for John to write
that le had "an Advocate with the Father, when
he remembered so well his Advocate's face, and the
very tones of His voice. I could very easily be
made a believer in Veronica's handkerchief, so much
in this matter is the wish with me father to the
thought! But no! Our times are in His hand, and
our lot in this life. And we must not forget that
these are His own words to us on this very matter--
these words.--"It is the Spirit that quickeneth:
the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak
unto you, they are Spirit, and they are life."
"Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast
believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and
yet have believed." And thus it is that the four
evangelists, who had so seen and so handled the
Word of Life, put their book into our hands, saying
as they do so,--these things about our Lord and
yours write we unto you that you may have your
fellowship with us.
Now, if David could set Jehovah always before
him in his prayers and in his psalms,--Jehovah,
Whom no man could see and live,--how much more
should we set Jesus Christ before us? Jesus
Christ, Who, being the Son of God, became the
Son of Man for this very purpose. And, so we
shall! For, what state of life is there?--what
need? what distress? what perplexity? what
sorrow? what sin? what dominion and what
disease of sin? what possible condition can we
ever be in on earth?--in which we cannot set
Jesus Christ before us in prayer and in faith,
and for help, and for assurance, and for victory?
Who are you? and what are you? and what is
your request and your petition? Open your
New Testament, take it with you to your knees, and
set Jesus Christ out of it before you. Are you like
David in the 63rd Psalm? Is your soul thirsting
for God, and is your flesh longing for God in a dry
and thirsty land where no water is? Then set
Jesus at the well of Samaria before the eyes of your
thirsty heart. And, again, set Him before your
heart when He stood on the last day, that great
day of the feast, and cried, saying, "If any man
thirst let him come to Me and drink." Or, are you
like David after the matter of Uriah? "For, day
and night, Thy hand was heavy upon me: my
moisture is turned into the drought of summer."
Then set Him before you who says: "I am not
come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
They that be whole need not a physician, but they
that are sick." Or, are you the unhappy father
of a prodigal son? Then, set your Father in
Heaven always before you: and set the Son of
God always before you as He composes and preaches
the parable of all parables for you and for your
son. Or, are you that son yourself? Then, never
lie down at night till you have again read that
peculiar parable for you, and set your father and
your mother before you. Or, are you a mother
with a daughter possessed of a devil ? In that
case set Jesus Christ, when He was in the borders
of Tyre and Sidon, before you; and listen to what
He says to the woman who begged for the crumbs
under the table: The devil, He said to her, is gone
out of thy daughter. Or, are you a happy mother
with your children still, so many little angels in
their innocence and their beauty round about you?
Then I am sure of you! You never kiss your
sleeping child, I feel sure, without thinking of Mary,
and how she must have kissed her sleeping child,
and hid all these things in her heart. Or, to come
to a very different kind of person--Are you loaded
with the curses of people who were once in your
cruel power: widows and orphans, and poor and
friendless people? Then, as often as you remember
their misery and your own--set your Redeemer
before you, who, when He came to the place,
looked up and saw Zacchaeus, and said unto him,
"Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down: for
to-day I must abide at thy house . . . . This day is
salvation come to this house, forsomuch as he also
is a son of Abraham." Or, again, after twelve
years of many physicians, are you nothing better,
but rather worse? Then set Him before you till
you are healed of your plague--Him who turned
and said: Who touched Me? Or are you a minister
with such a message that all your people are walking
no more with you? Then rest your heart on
Him who said to the Twelve, "Will ye also go
away?" And on Him who said on another
occasion, "But other fell into good ground, and
brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some
sixtyfold, some thirtyfold." And, O thou afflicted,
tossed with tempest, and not comforted, see Him
coming to the ship, walking on the sea: and see Him,
at another time, in another ship asleep on a pillow:
and hear His rebuke, "O thou of little faith,
wherefore didst thou doubt? "Or, to come to the
uttermost of all: are you tortured with your own
heart, till you cannot believe that they are worse
tortured in hell itself? Then look at His face of
infinite pity as He says to His disciples, "For,
from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil
thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts
covetousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness:
all these evil things come from within." And,
if there is any other manner of man here, for whose
soul no man cares, let that man set the Good
Shepherd before him as He says: "I am the door;
by Me if any man enter in he shall go in and out,
and find pasture." And, again, "Come unto Me, all
ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest." Sinners! set your Saviour always
before you! Child of God! set your Father in
Heaven, and His Son from Heaven, always before
you! And, because They are at your right hand,
you shall not be greatly moved.
And, then, He has appointed special times, and
special places, and special circumstances, and special
accompaniments of prayer: at which times, in
which places, and amid which accompaniments
and circumstances He will be specially present, and
will in an especial manner set Himself before you.
Seize those golden, but irrecoverable opportunities;
seize them so that He shall never be able to say to
you that He never knew you. His own word, for
one. Never open the New Testament till you have
said to yourself: "Now, O my soul, let us proceed
no further till we have set Him of Whom we are now
to read before us!" Never hear a chapter of the
Gospel read without seeing, as if you had been there,
all that is read about. Be for the time, in Bethlehem,
and in Nazareth, and in Galilee, and in Jerusalem,
and in the Garden, and on Golgotha, and on Olivet.
Never see His Name even in pen or pencil, and
never hear His Name in a sermon, or in a psalm or
prayer, without seeing His face at the same time
and falling down before Him. And when you are
in your own place of prayer, do not be in a hurry
to get on with your prayer and to get done with it.
If need be, He can make the sun stand still to give
you time to pray. Never kneel without at the same
time shutting your eyes on all earthly things, and
setting God on His Throne in Heaven, and Jesus
Christ in His intercession, before you. Take time.
It is lost time to speak to the wall. Take time till
you are quite sure that you have His ear. Be
silent till you have something to say. And then,
say it not into the air, but into the ear and the heart
of Jesus Christ. For He has an ear and a heart too,
and they are both, if you like, open to you. You
are at family worship, say, and you open your hymn-book,
and you come on John Newton's sweet hymn:
How sweet the name of Jesus sounds
In a believer's ear!
Yes, but does it at that moment sound sweet in
your ear? Are you that believer? And is
your ear full in a moment, of an unearthly sweetness?
You are a believer, and your ear is full
of that sweetness, when you set the Owner of
that Name always before you.
Jesus, my Shepherd, Husband, Friend:
and on the spot you are a lost sheep, a woman forsaken
and a friendless outcast--all met, all satisfied,
and all aglow with the love of Christ shed abroad
in your heart.
My Prophet, Priest and King:
and all that is within you is that moment at His feet!
My Lord, my Life, my Way, my End,
Accept the praise I bring:
and the praise you bring is all, at that moment,
accepted; and all because you did set the Lord
before you.
You remember what is told of that old saint who
so set the cross and its bleeding Burden before
him, that the five wounds actually came down from
off the Cross, and printed themselves on his hands
and on his feet and on his side. It is a parable of
what takes place every day in every true saint of
God and disciple of Christ. They set their dying
Lord always before them till they are crucified with
Him and till they bear about in the body the dying
of the Lord Jesus. Join the great saints in this
their crucifixion with Christ. My brethren, set the
Lord Jesus on His Cross and on His Throne before
you in all your psalms, in all your prayers, in all
your Scriptures, and at all times, till He is ever with
you: and till it would not surprise you to feel His
hand laid on your head, and to look up and see His
face some night-watch as you so abide before Him.
Set your Lord, in all these ways, before you, till,
suddenly, some midnight soon, the Bridegroom is
with you and you are for ever with Him! Even so
come quickly, Lord Jesus!
