Explanatory Notes and Quaint Sayings (part 2 of 2)

Verse 14.—“The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him.” The truth and sincerity of God to his people appears in the openness and plainness of his heart to them. A friend that is close and reserved, deservedly comes under a cloud in the thoughts of his friend; but he who carries, as it were, a window of crystal in his breast, through which his friend may read what thoughts are writ in his very heart, delivers himself from the least suspicion of unfaithfulness. Truly, thus open-hearted is God to his saints: “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him.” He gives us his key, that will let us into his very heart, and acquaint us what his thoughts are, yea, were, towards us, before a stone was laid in the world’s foundation; and this is no other than his Spirit (1 Cor. ii. 10, 11), “One who knows the deep things of God;” for he was at the council-table in heaven, where all was transacted. This, his Spirit, he employed to put forth and publish in the Scriptures, indited by him, the substance of those counsels of love which had passed between the Trinity of Persons for our salvation; and that nothing may be wanting for our satisfaction, he hath appointed the same Holy Spirit to abide in his saints, that as Christ in heaven presents our desires to him, so he may interpret his mind out of his word to us; which word answers the heart of God, as face answers face in the glass.—William Gurnall.

Verse 14.—“The secret of the Lord.” This “secret” is called a secret three ways. 1. Secret to the eye of sole nature, and thus it is not meant; for so the grace of Christ is a secret only to heathens and such as are blind as they, for common Christians know it—the rind of it. 2. Secret to the eye of taught nature, nor thus is it meant; for so the grace of Christ is a secret only to the ignorant sort of Christians; many carnal gospellers that sit under a good ministry know it and the bark of it. 3. Secret to the eye of enlightened nature, and thus it is meant; for so the grace of Christ is a secret to all unsanctified professors, whether learned or unlearned, namely, the pith of it; for though great doctors and profound clerks, and deep studied divines unconverted, know the doctrine of grace, and the truth of grace; though they can dispute of grace and talk of the glory of grace, yea, and taste a little the good word of grace, yea, and understand it generally, it may be as well as St. Paul and St. Peter, as Judas did, yet the special and the spiritual knowledge thereof, for all their dogmatical illumination, is a secret unto them.—William Fenner.

Verse 14.—“The secret.” Arminius and his company ransack all God’s secrets, divulge and communicate them to the seed of the woman, and of the serpent all alike; they make God’s eternal love of election no secret, but a vulgar idea; they make the mystery of Christ, and him crucified, no secret, but like an apothecary’s drug, catholical; they make the especial grace of God no secret, but a common quality; faith no secret, but a general virtue; repentance and the new creature no secret, but an universal gift; no secret favour to St. Peter, but make God a party unto, not to love St. Peter more than Judas; no secret intent to any one person more than another; but that Christ might have died for all him, and never a man saved; no secret working of the Lord in any more than other; but for anything that either God the Father hath done by creating, God the Son by redeeming, or God the Holy Ghost by sanctifying, all the world were left to their scrambling—take it if you will, if you will not, refuse. They say God would have men to be saved, but that he will not work it for his own part, rather for this man or that man determinatively that he be saved.—William Fenner.

Verse 14.—“He will shew them his covenant,” or, and he will make them to know (for the infinitive is here thought to be put for the future tense of the indicative, as it is Eccles. iii. 14, 15, 18; Hos. ix. 13; xii. 3), his covenant, i.e., he will make them clearly to understand it, both its duties or conditions, and its blessings or privileges; neither of which ungodly men rightly understand. Or, he will make them to know it by experience, or by God’s making it good to them; as, on the contrary, God threatens to make ungodly men to know his breach of promise. Numb. xiv. 34. Or, as it is in the margins of our Bibles, and his covenant (is, i.e., he hath engaged himself by his promise or covenant) to make them know it, to wit his secret, i.e., that he will manifest either his word or his favour to them.—Matthew Pool.

Verse 14.—It is neither learning nor labour that can give insight into God’s secrets, those Arcana imperii, “The mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.” Matt. xiii. 11. “The mind of Christ.” 1 Cor. ii. 16. These things come by revelation rather than by discourse of reason, and must therefore be obtained by prayer. Those that diligently seek him shall be of his Cabinet Council, shall know his soul secrets, and be admitted into a gracious familiarity and friendship. “Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.” John xv. 15.—John Trapp.

Verse 14.—Walking with God is the best way to know the mind of God; friends who walk together impart their secrets one to another: “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him.” Noah walked with God, and the Lord revealed a great secret to him, of destroying the old world, and having him in the ark. Abraham walked with God, and God made him one of his privy council: “Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?” Gen. xxiv. 40, and xviii. 17. God doth sometimes sweetly unbosom himself to the soul in prayer, and in the holy supper, as Christ made himself known to the disciples in the breaking of bread. Luke xxiv. 35.—Thomas Watson.

Verse 15.—“Mine eyes are ever toward the Lord.” Though we cannot see him by reasons of our present distance and darkness, yet we must look towards him, towards the place where his honour dwells, as those that desire the knowledge of him and his will, and direct all to his honour as the mark we aim at, labouring in this, that “whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him.”—Matthew Henry.

Verse 15.—“Mine eyes.” As the sense of sight is very quick, and exercises an entire influence over the whole frame, it is no uncommon thing to find all the affections denoted by the term “eyes.”—John Calvin.

Verse 15.—“He shall pluck my feet out of the net.” An unfortunate dove, whose feet are taken in the snare of the fowler, is a fine emblem of the soul, entangled in the cares or pleasures of the world; from which she desires, through the power of grace, to fly away, and to be at rest, with her glorified Redeemer.—George Horne.

Verse 17.—“The troubles of my heart are enlarged.” Let no good man be surprised that his affliction is great, and to him of an unaccountable character. It has always been so with God’s people. The road to heaven is soaked with the tears and blood of the saints.—William S. Plumer.

Verse 17.—“O bring thou me out of my distresses.” We may not complain of God, but we may complain to God. With submission to his holy will we may earnestly cry for help and deliverance.—William S. Plumer.

Verse 18.—“Look upon mine affliction and my pain; and forgive all my sins.” We may observe here, that sickness and weakness of the body come from sin, and is a fruit of sin. Some are weak, and some are sick, “for this cause.” I shall not need to be long in the proof of that, which you have whole chapters for, as Deut. xxviii. 27, seq.; and many Psalms, cvii., and others. It is for the sickness of the soul that God visits with the sickness of the body. He aims at the cure of the soul in the touch of the body. And therefore in this case, when God visits with sickness, we should think our work is more in heaven with God than with men or physic. Begin first with the soul. So David (Psa. xxxii. 5), till he dealt roundly with God, without all kind of guile and confessed his sins, he roared; his moisture was turned into the thought of summer. But when he dealt directly and plainly with God, and confessed his sins, then God forgave him them, and healed his body too. And therefore the best method, when God visits us in this kind, is to think that we are to deal with God. Begin the cure there with the soul. When he visits the body, it is for the soul’s sake: “Many are weak and sickly among you.”—Richard Sibbes.

Verse 18.—“Look upon mine affliction and my pain.” In sickness of body trust to Jesus, he is as powerful and as willing to help us now as he was to help others in the days of his flesh. All things are possible to us if we believe. It is but a word for him to rebuke all storms and tempests whatsoever. Let us not do like Asa, trust only in the physician, or in subordinate means, but know that all physic is but dead means without him. 2 Chron. xvi. 12. Therefore, with the means, run to Christ, that he may work with them, and know that virtue and strength comes from him to bless or curse all sort of means.—Richard Sibbes.

Verse 19.—“Consider mine enemies,” etc. Or look upon them; but with another kind of look; so as he looked through the pillar of fire upon the Egyptians, and troubled them (Exod. xiv. 24), with a look of wrath and vengeance. The arguments he uses are taken both from the quantity and quality of his enemies, their number and their nature, “For they are many;” the hearts of the people of Israel, in general, being after Absalom (2 Sam. xv. 12, 13); and so the spiritual enemies of the Lord’s people are many; their sins and corruptions, Satan, and his principalities and powers, and the men of this world. “And they hate me with cruel hatred;” like that of Simeon and Levi (Gen. xliv. 7); their hatred broke out in a cruel manner, in acts of force and cruelty; and it was the more cruel, inasmuch as it was without cause; and such is the hatred of Satan and his emissaries against the followers of Christ; who breathe out cruelty, thirst after their blood, and make themselves drunk with it; even their tender mercies are cruel, and much more their hatred.—John Gill.

Verse 19.—“Consider mine enemies.” God needeth not hound out many creatures to punish man, he doeth that on himself. There is no kind of creature so hurtful to itself as he. Some hurt other kinds and spare their own, but mankind in all sorts of injuries destroyeth itself. Man to man is more crafty than a fox, more cruel than the tiger, and more fierce than a lion, and in a word, if he be left to himself man unto man is a devil.—William Struther’s “Christian Observations,” 1629.

Verses 19, 20.—“Consider mine enemies.... O keep my soul and deliver me.” We may say of original concupiscence, strengthened and heightened by customary transgressions, its name is legion, for it is many. Hydra-like, it is a body with many heads; and when we cut off one head, one enormous impiety, there presently sprouts up another of like monstrous nature, like venomous guilt. From the womb then it is of original sin and sinful custom, as from the belly of the Trojan horse, there does issue forth a whole army of unclean lusts, to surround the soul in all its faculties, and the body too in all its members.—Robert Mossom.

Verse 20.—“Let me be not ashamed; for I put my trust in thee.” When David reaches verse 20, we are reminded of Coriolanus betaking himself to the hall of Attius Tullus, and sitting as a helpless stranger there, claiming the king’s hospitality, though aware of his having deserved to die at his hands. The Psalmist throws himself on the compassions of an injured God with similar feelings; “I trust in thee!”—Andrew A. Bonar.

Verse 21.—“For I trust in, or wait on thee.” As preservation is a continued creation, so is waiting a continued trusting; for, what trust believes by faith, it waits for by hope; and thus is trust a compound of both.—Robert Mossom.

Verse 22.—“Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his troubles.” If thou wilt not pity and help me, yet spare thy people, who suffer for my sake, and in my sufferings.—Matthew Pool.

Verse 22.—“Redeem Israel,” etc. In vita vel post mortem meam,¹⁷ either whiles I live, or after my death. This is every good man’s care and prayer. None is in case to pray for the church, that hath not first made his own peace with God.—John Trapp.

Verse 22.—This most beautiful of “Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” closes with a sweet petition—such an one, as every one of the true Israel of God would wish to depart with on his lips, “Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his troubles.” It breathes the same holy aspiration as the aged Simeon’s, “Lord! now lettest thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”—Barton Bouchier.