Hints to Preachers

Verse 1.—Firm resolution, serious difficulties in carrying it out, helps for its performance, excellent consequences of so doing.

Six questions.—Who? “I.” What? “Will bless.” Whom? “The Lord.” When? “At all times.” How? Why?

Verse 1.—Direction for making a heaven below.

Verse 2.—The commendable boaster and his gratified audience.

We may boast of the Lord, in himself, his manifestations of himself, his relationship to us, our interest in him, our expectations from him, etc.

The duty of believers to relate their experience for the benefit of others.

Verse 3.—Invitation to united praise.

Verse 3.—Magnifying—or making great the work of God, a noble exercise.

Verse 4.—Confessions of a ransomed soul. Simple, honouring to God, exclude merit, and encourage others to seek also.

Verse 4.—Four stages, “fears,” “sought,” “heard,” “delivered.”

Verse 5.—The power of a faith-look.

Verse 6.—I. The poor man’s heritage, “troubles.” II. The poor mans friend. III. The poor man’s cry. IV. The poor man’s salvation.

Verse 6.—The poor man’s wealth.

The position of prayer in the economy of grace, or the natural history of mercy in the soul.

Verse 7.—Castra angelorum, salvatio bonorum.

Verse 7.—The ministry of angels.

In what sense Jesus is “The angel of the Lord.”

Verse 8.—Experience the only true test of religious truth.

Verse 8.—Taste. The sanctified palate, the recherché provision, the gratified verdict, the celestial host.

Verse 9.—The blest estate of a God-fearing man.

Verse 9.—Fear expelling fear. Similia similibus curantur.

Verse 10.—Lions lacking, but the children satisfied. See “Spurgeon’s Sermons,” No. 65. I. Description of a true Christian, “seek the Lord.” II. The promise set forth by a contrast. III. The promise fulfilled.

Verse 10.—What is a good thing?

Verse 11.—A royal teacher, his youthful disciples, his mode of instruction, “Come;” his choice subject.

Verse 11.—Sunday-school work.

Verses 12, 13, 14.—How to make the best of both worlds.

Verse 13.—Sins of the tongue—their mischief, their cause, and their cure.

Verse 14 (first clause).—The relation between the negative and positive virtues.

Verse 14 (second clause).—The royal hunt. The game, the difficulties of the chase, the hunters, their methods, and their rewards.

Verse 15.—Our observant God. Eyes and ears both set on us.

Verse 16.—The evil man checkmated in life, and forgotten in death.

Verse 17.—Afflictions and their threefold blessing. I. They make us pray. II. They bring us the Lord’s hearing ear. III. They afford room for joyful experience of deliverance.

Verse 18.—The nearness of God to broken hearts, and the certainty of their salvation.

Verse 19.—Black and white, or bane and antidote.

Special people, special trials, special deliverances, special faith as a duty.

Verse 20.—The real safety of a believer when in great perils. His soul, his spiritual life, his faith, hope, love, etc.; his interest in Jesus, his adoption, justification, these all kept.

Verse 21.—Wickedness, its own executioner, illustrated by scriptural cases, by history, by the lost in hell. Lessons from the solemn fact.

The forlorn condition of a man of malicious spirit.

Verses 21, 22.—Who shall and who shall not be desolate.

Verse 22.—Redemption in its various meanings; faith in its universal preservation; the Lord in his unrivalled glory in the work of grace.