Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 27:14
Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.
14. The Psalmist addresses himself, and encourages himself to patience. His faith rebukes his faintness.
Be of good courage ] R.V., Be strong, and let thine heart take courage. Cp. Psa 31:24; Deu 31:7; Jos 1:6-7; Jos 1:9; Jos 1:18.
Wait, I say ] R.V., Yea, wait thou. Cp. Psa 25:3; Psa 37:9; Psa 37:34; Pro 20:22.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Wait on the Lord – This is the sum of all the instruction in the psalm; the main lesson which the psalm is designed to convey. The object is to induce others, from the experience of the psalmist, to trust in the Lord; to rely upon Him; to come to Him in trouble and danger; to wait for His interposition when all other resources fail. Compare Psa 25:3.
Be of good courage – The Hebrew word here means, be strong. That is, do not faint. Do not be dismayed. Still hope and trust in the Lord.
He shall strengthen thine heart – He will strengthen thee. He will enable you to perform your duties, and to triumph over your enemies. See the notes at Isa 40:31.
Wait, I say, on the Lord – Repeating an idea with which the heart was full; a lesson resulting from his own rich experience. He dwells upon it as a lesson which he would fix deeply in the mind, that in all times of danger and difficulty, instead of despondency, instead of sinking down in despair, instead of giving up all effort, we should go forward in the discharge of duty, putting our trust solely in the Lord.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 27:14
Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart; wait, I say, on the Lord.
The Christians strength
The Church of God has often been in a low, languishing, and, to all human appearance, in a desperate condition; yet one thing, as Solomon says, is set against another, and it has been at such times that His people have realized most fully the comforts of His providence and gracious presence. These stars shine brightest in dark winter nights. How wonderful have been Gods deliverances of His people. The Bible is full of such records. And during their trials God does not leave His people comfortless. See this psalm. David here gives his own experience, and he bids us wait on the Lord. Note–
I. how we are to wait on God.
1. In His ordinances. Where did Simeon and Anna wait? Where did Joseph and Mary find Jesus when they had lost Him? He was surprised that they had not thought of the temple, where after three days they found Him. The first place they should have sought Him in was the last they thought of. Nowhere is the sinner more likely, or so likely, to find Him as where the crowd is met and the cross is raised–in His Fathers house. Besides the public ordinances of religion, such as the communion table and Sabbath services, in the use of which we are to wait upon the Lord, there are other means of grace at our service; and still more fully within our reach. The communion table is but occasionally spread, and the doors of the church may be thrown open only once a week; but the pages of the Bible are always open, and the gates of prayer, like those of heaven, are never shut. And we are to wait with faith and perseverance. The farmer sows in faith that the harvest season will come, he waits and works for it. Far away from the billows that are breaking out on the sandy shore, the vessel lies upon the beach, doomed as it would seem to rot; why then do men climb her shrouds, and man the yards, and shake out broad sheets of canvas, and loose her moorings, to catch the breeze and bear away across the deep? Theirs are acts of faith; they believe in the law of tides, and that, every billow breaking nearer and nearer, the waters at length shall wash her keel, and, rising on her sides, float her off the sands–they wait and work for that.
II. they that wait on the Lord shall receive strength. Thus God shall make good His promise, As thy days are, so shall thy strength be. Why, then, it may be asked, do men go from the house of God and from a communion table to be worsted as at other times before, by the devil, the world, and the flesh? Baptize a withering plant with water, and it lifts up its head, casts off the old leaves, and puts out a fresh crop of buds and blossoms. But why, then, are men not always the better for the ordinances of religion? The plant revives. Why not the soul? The answer is not far to seek. The ordinances of religion are compared to wells of water; but then, they are like Jacobs well. The water lies far below the surface; and to the men of the world, the mere professor of religion who has the name but not the faith of a Christian, we may say, as the woman said to our Lord, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Faith is, as it were, the rope, and our souls the vessel which we let down into this well to fill them with living water. But that they do no good to some, forms no reason why we should despise, or neglect ordinances. It is no fault in the bread, that, thrust between a dead mans teeth, it does not nourish him. The truth is, that we must have spiritual life to get the benefit of religious ordinances. Water will revive a withering, but not a withered plant; wine will restore a dying, but not a dead man. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
Waiting on the Lord
No one could be better qualified than David to offer this counsel. Now to you who are tried by the delay of Gods promises, as David was, we would explain from the text.
I. the remarkableness of waiting upon God. For–
1. He alone can supply our need. Our expectation is from Him, whether it be spiritual or temporal deliverance that we desire.
2. He is faithful as well as all powerful.
3. And He knows what is best to be done. He has all wisdom. God sees, as we do not, all the consequences of granting our desires.
II. the necessity of it. There is no alternative for us as believers. God is under necessity to be good, He cannot be otherwise; therefore we are under necessity to wait for Him.
III. the benefit of so waiting. God will strengthen thine heart. And that there will be good to us arises from–
1. The fact of Christs intercession for us.
2. The Holy Spirit is ever ready to help us. See the experience of Paul when troubled by the thorn in the flesh. He waited upon the Lord and he was helped. And so shall it be with us. (Thomas Dale, M. A.)
Waiting on the Lord
This waiting on the Lord must be–
I. an humble waiting. Humility is not so much to think meanly of oneself, as not to think of oneself at all. The high places of God are very low. The lowly in heart find Him.
II. A patient waiting. In the midst of trial and opposition we are to wait. Patience is born of storm and disaster. Tribulation worketh patience.
III. A persistent whiting. Patience shines in persistence more than in acquiescence. The Scotch girls definition of patience is a true one: Wait a bit, and dinna weary. Yet patience does not consist in taking things as they come. It is not non-resisting. God likes to be persistently inquired of. Heaven is taken by violence. Those who will not help themselves will not be helped of Heaven.
IV. an active waiting. Faith without works is dead. Prayer without works is just as dead. The sick man must use the remedy if he would get well. The business man must be fervent in business, the soldier must keep his powder dry. This applies to the work of saving souls. We must use the means within our reach, as well as trust in God. Wait is a large word. Take it in its full meaning, and it leaves nothing else for us to do. (Herrick Johnson, D. D.)
The duty of waiting
The Christian soldier is long in learning to wait. Marching and countermarching are much easier to Gods warriors than standing still. There are hours of perplexity when the willing spirit anxiously desires to serve, but knows not how. Shall it vex itself by despair? fly back in cowardice? turn aside in fear? rush forward in presumption? No; simply wait; but–
I. wait in prayer. Call upon God; spread the case before Him; tell Him the difficulty; plead His promises.
II. wait in simplicity of soul. In dilemmas it is sweet to be humble as a child. It is sure to be well with us when we feel and know our folly, and are willing to be guided by Gods will.
III. wait in faith. Express unwavering confidence; for unfaithful, untrusting confidence is an insult to the Lord. Believe that though He keeps us tarrying He will come at the right time and will not tarry.
IV. wait in quiet patience. Not rebelling under the affliction, but blessing God for it; nor murmuring against second causes, as the children of Israel against Moses; nor wishing to go back to the world again; but accepting the case as it stands, and putting it simply and whole-heartedly into the hands of our covenant God. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Brave waiting
There are two perils to which Christians are exposed; the one is that under heavy pressure they should start away from the path which they ought to pursue,–the other is lest they should grow fearful of failure, and so become faint-hearted in their holy course. Both these dangers had evidently occurred to David, and in the text he is led by the Holy Spirit to speak about them. Do not, he seems to say, do not think that you are mistaken in keeping to the way of faith; do not turn aside to crooked policy, do not begin to trust in an arm of flesh, but wait upon the Lord; and, as if this were a duly in which we are doubly apt to fail, he repeats the exhortation, and makes it more emphatic the second time, Wait, I say, on the Lord.
I. God is to be waited on.
1. As a beggar waits for alms at the rich mans door. Beggars must not be choosers. Believingly to wait upon the Lord, pleading the all-prevailing name of Jesus, is the suppliants best posture.
2. As learners for instruction. The pupils of the old philosophers were wont to walk in the groves of Academia till the wise men were ready to come and speak with them; and when any one of the wise men began to speak, the young disciples quietly followed his steps, eagerly catching up every precious sentence which he might utter. Much more should it be so with us towards our Lord Jesus; let us follow Him in every page of inspiration, study every line of creation, and learn of Him in all the teachings of His providence.
3. As a servant waits upon his lord.
(1) Oh, to be always waiting to do yet more and more for Jesus. I would go up and down my Masters house, seeing what I can do for His little children, whom I delight to cherish; what part of the house needs sweeping and cleaning, that I may quietly go about it; what part of the table needs to be furnished with food, that I may bring out as His steward things new and old; what there is to be done for my Master towards those who are without, and what is to be done for those already in His family. You will never be short of work if with your whole heart you wait upon the Lord.
(2) Sometimes the servant will have to wait in absolute inaction, and this is not always to the taste of energetic minds. It is said that Wellington kept back the Guards at Waterloo till far into the fight, and it must, I should think, have needed much courage on their part to remain calm and quiet while cannon were roaring, and the battle raging, and the shots flying about them. They must not stir till the commander-in-chief gives the order, Up, Guards, and at them! then will they clear the field and utterly annihilate the foe. They were as much serving their country by lying still till the time came as they were by dashing forward when at last the word was given. Wait, then, upon your Lord in all sorts of service and patience, for this is what He would have you to do.
4. As a traveller waiting the directions of his guide, or a mariner waiting upon the pilot who takes charge of his ship. We are to wait upon God for direction in the entire voyage of life; He is at the helm, and His hand is to steer our course.
5. As a child waits upon its parent. My father knows what I have need of, and I am sure he will give it me.
6. As a courtier waits upon his prince. Sir Walter Raleigh was wise in his generation when he took off his richly embroidered cloak to spread it over a miry place, that Queen Elizabeths feet might not be damped; the courtier knew how to smooth his own road by caring for his queen; and thus, with unselfish motives, out of pure reverence for our Lord, let us be willing to be made as the street to be walked over if Jesus can thereby be honoured. Let us lay out for our Lord the best that we have, even to the character which is dear to us as life itself, if by so doing we may bring glory to the holy and blessed name of our Redeemer.
II. courage is to be maintained. Be of good courage. Our good Lord and Master ought not to be followed by cowards.
1. Be of good courage concerning the faith which you are exercising upon Christ. He is very good to those who seek Him.
2. Be of good courage, you who have newly found Him, to avow your faith. Wear your colours before the face of all men.
3. Be of good courage in endeavouring to spread the faith which you have received. Undertake great things for Christ.
4. Be of good courage, when you pray for others. Intercession has great influence with God.
5. Be of good courage, in making self-sacrifices for the cause of Christ.
6. If you are called to endure great affliction, sharp pain, frequent sickness; if business goes amiss, if riches take to themselves wings and fly away, if friends forsake you and foes surround you, be of good courage, for the God upon whom you wait will not forsake you. Never let it be said that a soldier of the Cross flinched in the day of battle.
III. waiting upon God sustains courage. You have heard of the famous giant whom Hercules could not kill, because the earth was his mother, and every time Hercules dashed him down he obtained fresh strength by touching his parent, and rose again to the fight. We are of like nature, and every time we are driven to our God, though we be dashed upon Him by defeat, we grow strong again, and our adversarys attempt is foiled. Our heart is strengthened by waiting upon God, because we thus receive a mysterious strength through the incoming of the Eternal Spirit into our souls. No man can explain this, but many of us know what it is.
2. Waiting upon the Lord has an effect upon the mind, which in the natural course of things tends to strengthen our courage; for waiting upon God makes men grow small, and dwarfs the world and all its affairs, till we see their real littleness.
3. And then it inflames the heart with love. Nothing can give us greater courage than a sincere affection for our Lord and His work. A raven was hatching her young in a tree. The woodman began to fell it, but there she sat; the blows of the axe shook the tree, but she never moved, and when it fell she was still upon her nest. Love will make the most timid creature strong; and, oh, beloved, if you love Christ you will defy all fear, and count all hazards undergone for Him to be your joy.
4. Waiting upon the Lord breeds peace within the soul, and when a man is perfectly at rest within he cares little for trials or foes. A heart unsettled towards God is sure to be afraid of men, but when the soul waits on the Lord in glad serenity it stoops not to fear.
5. This waiting upon the Lord produces the effect of increasing our courage, because it gives us often a sight of the eternal reward, and if a man getteth a glimpse of the crown of glory, the crown of thorns will no more prick his temples.
IV. experience proves this. The text is a summary of the entire psalm. All the rest of the verse may be compared to the figures of an account, and this closing verse is the casting up of the whole–waiting on the Lord is the path of wisdom. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Tarry thou the Lords leisure
That is the rendering of the Prayer-book version, and it brings out the exact meaning of the word wait, which we have interlarded and lost sight of by making it mean such things–and legitimately enough–as prayer. It just means wait. Wait for Him as you would wait for a friend at the trysting-place who does not come. Wait for Him, and wait, and wait until He does come. We know it to be a Christian duty to be patient with our fellow-men; have we ever thought of the necessity and the duty of being patient with God? O tarry thou the Lords leisure. It is hard, I admit it is hard, to have this patience. Indeed, the more earnest you are, the more alive you are to the needs of the world, the more eager you are to see the Kingdom of Heaven brought in among men; and the more you do on behalf of the Kingdom, the more is the temptation to lose grip of this patience with God. Why tarry the wheels of His chariot? are we not saying every day, and as we go out into the world and see the evil and sin of the world we say it with a more plaintive note in our voice than ever. We strain, some of us, and hurt ourselves straining to help the Kingdom of the King to prepare the way of the Lord. Some faithful Christian work may be said almost to be the fruit of faithlessness. Some make up in zeal what they lack in faith. Some rail at God for His leisure with the world and with the Church, and act as if their efforts in His cause are almost a rebuke to God.
O that His steps among the stars would quicken!
O that His ears would hear when we are dumb!
Many the hearts from which the hope shall sicken,
Many shall faint, before His Kingdom come.
Patience is the Divine method in the world. Everything in the world is wrought patiently, smoothly, softly, naturally, sweetly. The seasons come and go. The world has been brought thus: far not by cataclysm but by change, by growth, not by creation, and it is so morally. The world has boon brought thus far by God with groanings and travailings that cannot be uttered until now, by His own Divine method of patience. The moral education of the race has gone on, step by step and stage by stage, as men were able to bear it, and able to understand it. Think of the patience of Christ. He came for the sake of the whole world to redeem the world, and He limited Himself of His own accord to twelve humble men, and He limited Himself still further, and He went on, over and over again, teaching these twelve men, preparing that morsel of soil for the precious seed. O man that art impatient, and speakest about the smallness of thy sphere, the small ministry you have in which to serve; think how limited Christs sphere was, and the patience with which He began the redemption of the world. That is the Divine method for the world, and for the Church, and for ourselves. (H. Black, M. A.)
Beggars should be willing to wait
One morning I noticed a tramp knocking at a house door. A kind-hearted woman lived there, and when she had opened the door and seen the beggar, she ran back into the kitchen to get him something to eat. After standing a moment, he turned and went on his way. Then she came to the door with the food in her hand and called after him. He almost missed that meal because he did not wait, Perhaps we have quite missed some great spiritual gift for which we have asked because we had not learned to wait on the Lord. (R. Brewin.)
Wait for an answer to prayer
When I lived in Exeter an eccentric clergyman who occupied a house in the Mint passage had had placed, under the knocker of his door, the polite request, Please dont knock unless you wait for an answer. There was a school near, and I think the boys used to give him trouble. We often give God trouble, too, when we knock at His door but do not wait for an answer. (R. Brewin.)
Christian valour
Courage is the calm, determined pursuit of the right, notwithstanding the nature of the road, ignoring the worlds flattery, despising the worlds menace, disparaging the transient garland and the transient crown. Courage is simply the disposition to go right on, irrespective of the worlds swords or of the worlds crowns. Be of good courage. Where shall it be exercised? Sometimes in silence. I think if we could make comparisons between one aspect of the Masters life and another, if everything in the Masters life was not superlative; if we could put some things in the positive and some in the comparative and make comparisons; and if I were to be asked to put my finger on the one place in the Masters life where the courage of the Lord shone out the most resplendently, I should put my finger on the word where it says, And He answered him nothing. It is superlative valour. The valour of silence, when to speak might mean gain. The courage to keep a close lip, the courage to restrain a laugh when somebody has made a filthy jest. The courage to present a perfectly passive face when conversation is becoming unfair; the courage to withhold applause when applause would simply add fury to an unclean fire. That is the courage that our Master seeks–the courage sometimes to withhold the laugh. There is many a young fellow would restrain for ever from an unclean, filthy jest if he were left in the shivering experience of a quiet and passive reception. Courage in silence; courage sometimes by speech. I think nothing shows out more radiantly and more conspicuously the valour of the Apostle Paul than that experience which he describes for us in the Epistle to the Galatians, where he tells us that when he encountered Simon Peter who was destined to be a pillar of the Church, a living light in the metropolitan church, and who had gone down to Antioch, and who had played and trifled with the truth, who had worn one coat one day and another on another day, I withstood him to the face. A thing like that is not to be received in silence. I withstood him to the face, warned him, rebuked him, to his face. Now, suppose you could get a radiant, confident, optimistic courage, a disposition that would keep its lips still and closed when it might appear as though to open them would be immediate gain, and that would speak though speech should wreck a possible career, that would go right on disregarding on the one hand a menace, or, on the other hand, a smile–suppose you could get a disposition like that implanted into the personality of men, suppose it had become part of my constitution, part of my make up–pure, clean, clear courage, what would be the influence of it? First of all, the influence of it on myself. Would it have made any influence upon my body? I want to say that it would; I want to proclaim–and I think it is a note that is not sufficiently proclaimed, and emphatically proclaimed–that Virtue makes for physical health. I would say to any athlete here, You would become a finer athlete if you were a finer man. Virtue ministers to health rather than vice, and courage will send your blood in a glow around your body rather than cowardice, when you are beset by the hostility of the world. It will influence the body, it will still more influence the mind. Would it influence the soul? I use the word soul there to describe the highest part of mans personality, the power which lays hold of and apprehends and appreciates and appropriates God. Would it affect that? There is a fine suggestive sentence in one of Emersons essays which will serve my purpose to quote it now, God never gives visions to cowards. Why does not God give visions to cowards? Because, my brethren, He cannot. Cowards close the doors, shut out the Divine. The light cannot enter the spirit, cannot find access when a man is timid and cowardly; all the entrances in his life are blocked. But if a man is valorous and courageous, having his eyes set on the truth and the pursuit of it, a man is porous, porous to everything that is Divine. The Divine can simply soak into him. If a man of a valorous spirit takes up a book to read, as he reads through the book all that is lovely in the book steeps into him; he is porous towards the lovely and the true. If he goes into a picture gallery, all that is wonderful and beautiful and spiritually suggestive about the pictures soaks into him; he is porous towards the lovely. God cannot give these things to cowards, because they are closed, they are nonporous. It was when Peter had become bold we are told that he had visions; it was after he had become great that he began to have visions of the ineffable glory, and when a man has set his eye upon the truth in the resolute, determined pursuit of it, then I say he is open in every door of his spirit to the entrance of the ministry of the Spirit of God, he becomes the tabernacle of the Almighty. That is how it would influence myself; how would it influence my neighbour? I am afraid we talk a good deal about the contagion of vice–I do not think too much–but I do not think we talk half enough about the contagion of virtue. We talk a great deal about the leaven of hypocrisy, but I do not think we speak half enough about the leaven of sincerity and truth. Everybody knows that one man can impart a vice to another by simply living with him. There is a most subtle contagion which can pass almost through the mystic influence of thought, and still more by the transmission of speech, but there is a wonderful contagion of virtue, and a man in whom the valorous temperament is enthroned, might give spirit and inspiration to a crowd. Napoleon says: There is a moment in every great war when the bravest troops feel inclined to run; it is the want of confidence in their own courage, and then Napoleon says: The supreme art of generalship is to know just when that moment will come and to provide for it. At Arcola–I am quoting the words exactly–I won the battle with twenty-five horsemen. I anticipated the moment of fright and flight, and I had twenty-five men ready of cool nerve and decision, and just at the appropriate moment I turned the twenty-five into the host, and the battle was won. Twenty-five men who had not lost their nerve brought back confidence to a host who were inclined for fright and flight. The man who was cool for fight brought back the hordes that were ready for flight. Has that no analogy in the realm of the spirit? One brave member of a family may save the whole household from moral perdition; one young fellow in a warehouse may save all his mates from the timidity which means hell; one fine, brave lad in a school who will despise all meanness and set his eyes upon the true and follow it, may gain a whole form for the army of the Lord. How, then, can we get this fine, valorous disposition? Wait on the Lord–Wait, I say, on the Lord. How painfully inadequate. Inadequate! There are some things in the spiritual which any man can prove in a day. There are some things which inevitably and almost immediately result from the life of the spirit which any man can put into momentary and daily proof. Here is one. Suppose that you find you are becoming possessed by the spirit of anger, and that passion is rising within you like an angry flood, and you feel as though you were about to be overcome, and the flood is going to merge in indiscreet and bitter and violent speech. Just then wait on the Lord, and in the name of God Almighty I promise you, with the most consummate assurance, that you will find your anger will there and then begin to subside, until it becomes as calm as a peaceful sea. If you find that you are becoming the victim of lust, Wait on the Lord, and even while you kneel you shall find that the unholy fire is being put out. If you are possessed by the feeling of envy or of jealousy, and if you are being consumed by the hateful thing, Wait on the Lord, and I promise you–and I dare you to put it to proof–that while you kneel the envy and the jealousy will pass away from your vision just as the steam passes away from our windows in the cooler light of the dawn. If I come with my spirit of timidity and cowardice into the presence of the Almighty, and say, Lord, I have a will like a reed, I would like s will like adamant, will nothing result? Will the Lord, who says to the passion, Be still; and who says to the lust, Die out; and who says to the envy, Evaporate, have nothing to say to a timid and cowardly will? He shall strengthen thine heart. When? Not just then, perhaps. I would like to make that clear if I may. It will be when you need, because perhaps just then, when you kneel, you may not need. (J. H. Jowett, M. A.)
The temptation to discouragement
Among the whole legion of evil spirits that harass the Christian, there is none more mischievous than that dark-visaged demon called Discouragement. He tries to hamstring us just at the critical time when we need all our faculties and all our graces. If he can persuade us to give up, we are gone. History is never were of telling us of those resolute spirits who would not give up–of Disraelis reply to the jeers of the British Parliament, The time will come when you will be glad to hear me; and of George Stephenson and Robert Fulton persisting with their experiments in the face of ridicule. But the children of light are not always as wise as the children of this world in carrying their point. All the more shame to us, because the man of the world has no special promise of the Divine help, and the child of God has. The one has to encourage himself in his own brain-power or his pluck, but the other may encourage himself in the Lord his God. One thing we who enlist in the service of Christ must be assured of, and that is that our campaign is for life. Regeneration does not end the fight; it is only its beginning. Our arduous work will not be done until we have gained our crown. God sees that it is trot best that we should get to heaven before ourtime, and so he ordains that this life shall be one of perpetual conflict, temptation, trial, discipline. One of the most frequent temptations to discouragement arises from the want of apparent success in the best undertakings. Brave Dr. Judson preached in Burmah six years without a visible convert. After these six years of subsoiling and seeding came a steady crop of conversions, (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)
He shall strengthen thine heart.—
The strengthening of the heart
What do we mean by the Heart? Now, just as the Will is the seat of basal, executive force, and just as the Conscience is the seat of moral instinct, so the Heart is the seat of feeling, the home of emotion, the empire of the sentiments. I wish to discuss what I may call the aristocracy of the feelings. I call them the aristocracy because they possess a certain subtlety of refinement which distinguishes them from others which are more closely and intimately related to the flesh. Like other aristocracies the members are both good and bad. Envy is a purely spiritual feeling, and may exist in all its intensity even when the vesture of the flesh has been finally dropped. Gratitude is a purely spiritual feeling, and may exist in undiminished power when the flesh has turned to dust. There are other feelings which are largely contingent upon the flesh, and which seek their gratification exclusively in the ways of the flesh. These will only indirectly concern us in the present discussion. Let us confine the attention to the more ethereal feelings–to feelings more subtle and more refined, more refined in evil and more refined in good. Now it is very evident that these feelings appear in different kinds and in varied intensity among different people. That is a very obtrusive fact in human life. If with the Divine vision we could enter into some hearts it would be like passing into a cathedral: everything is so sweet and chaste and reverent and beautiful. But if we entered into other hearts it would be like passing into a cellar: dark, damp, and forbidding, abounding in vermin and uncleanness. In some hearts the feelings lurk like carrion vultures; in others they sing and soar like the lark. Have we any responsibility as to the character of the feelings which possess the Heart? Has Conscience, the moral palate, any judgment to give concerning the things of the Heart? Is its dominion confined to the regions of thought and speech and deed, or does it, s jurisdiction reach to the inhabitants of the Heart? Yes, Conscience indicates some feelings, and definitely condemns them. Conscience indicates other feelings, and definitely approves them. What Conscience condemns I am commanded to remove. What Conscience approves I am commanded to entertain. But in the judgments of Conscience there is a larger implication even than this. That which Conscience commands me to remove I have power at hand to remove. Let us mark that well. Moral commandments are indications of possible moral attainments. Conscience searches my heart and commands me to turn out this feeling, and to give more room to that feeling, and to let in another that for long has been standing at the gate. And all this is a solemn indication to me that, according to the teaching of Conscience, I have power over my own Heart, and that for the exercise of this power I shall be called to account when I stand before the judgment-seat of God. Conscience, then, proclaims that we are responsible for our feelings. Do we recognize the obligation? Let us seek for evidence in our common judgments. Our common judgments recognize that men have power over their own hearts. We condemn a man for ingratitude. If we can exercise no dominion over our feelings the ungrateful man should be regarded with tenderest pity as the poor victim of a hard and petrifying rage. We praise and commend a man because of his warm and bounteous love, because of the bright and sunny influence with which he transforms our dull November seasons into merry days of June. Why should we commend him if men have no power over their own hearts? He is rather to be regarded as a very lucky man, who, by a most fortunate chance, has entered into a golden heritage, which less lucky men have been denied. But no such element of chance is allowed to enter in and shape and colour our judgments. If it were needful to give further elaboration to this it would be easy to detach fragments from our common speech which clearly indicate that in cur practical life we acknowledge that men can exercise sovereignty over the empire of the Heart. For instance, we blame one man for allowing his feelings to run away with him, we commend another for having his feelings well under control. I do not think this truth receives sufficient emphasis when we are considering the culture of the spiritual life. We have command over the Heart. We have authority over the feelings. Whatever feeling we want we can get. Whatever feeling we do not want we can reject. If we desire the feeling of love we have means to obtain it. If we desire the feeling of malice it will come at our bidding. How, then, are feelings created? Upon what are they dependent? They are largely, if not exclusively, dependent upon thought. Out of thought there comes feeling, just as fragrance is born of a rose, and a noisome stench of a cesspool. Our sentiments are the exhalations of our thoughts. Every thought tends to create a feeling. There are no thoughts devoid of influence. From every thought there proceeds an influence which goes to the making of a disposition. A single thought in the mind may exhale an almost imperceptible influence. But the influence is there, and steals like an intensely subtle odour into the Heart. Let the thoughts be multiplied, and the delicate odours unite to form an intensely powerful influence which we call a feeling, a sentiment, a disposition. But suppose the thought is not like a sweet rose, but like a poisonous nightshade. Here again the influence of a single thought may be too subtle for our detection, but let the thoughts be multiplied, and the poisonous exhalations will unite to form a sentiment of most destructive strength. Let us lay hold of this as a most practical principle in the culture of the spiritual life. We cannot have a good thought and not enrich the Heart. There is no chance or caprice about the matter. It is governed by immutable law. We cannot have one kind of thought to-day exhaling one kind of feeling, and the same kind of thought to-morrow exhaling another kind of feeling. No; each thought creates its own feeling, and always of one kind. There are certain thoughts which, if we will take them into our minds, will inevitably create the feeling of envy. Take other thoughts into the mind, and from them will be born the sentiment of jealousy. Take other thoughts into the mind and the Heart will speedily swell with pride. Fill the mind with another kind of thought and in the Heart will gather the sweet and tender sentiment of pity. Each thought creates its own sentiment, and we cannot help it. Some sentiments gather rapidly. They appear to attain to mature fulness in a moment. Other sentiments accumulate slowly. It often happens that the sentiment of jealousy comes to her throne only after the lapse of many years. On the other hand, anger can mount the throne and govern the life in a day. Tim mode of its operation is quite familiar to us. Anger is the distinct and immediate creation of thought. We bring certain thoughts into the mind, and from these thoughts there proceed certain sentiments. We think, and think, and think, and the feeling accumulates and increases with our thought, until at last the Heart is full with feeling, and explodes in violent passion. And so we counsel a man not to think about the injury which he has presumedly suffered, not to nurse it, and by our counsel we imply that with the rejection of the creative thought the created passion will subside. Let us advance one step further. Our thought creates our feelings. Our deeds react upon and strengthen the feelings which by thought were created. My thought plans a kindly deed. Well, the thought itself will most inevitably tend to create a kindly feeling, but the doing of the deed will also assuredly tend to reinforce the feeling. Our deeds react on the feelings which prompted them, and confirm and augment them. That is one way by which our God rewards His children. He rewards our mercifulness by increasing our resources of mercy. He rewards our deeds by enlarging our hearts. That is the law of our God, and the law finds application on the bad side as well as on the good. Every act of greed strengthens the feeling of avarice. Every act of impurity intensifies the feeling of lust. What, then, is the secret of the culture of the Heart? It is this–we must get back to the origin of feeling. We must get back to imaginations, to ideas, to ideals. As is the mind so will be the Heart. A stony Heart finds its explanation in the mind. A pure Heart may be interpreted in the mind. Set your mind on things above, exhorts the Apostle Paul; Set your mind on things above, and your feelings will soar heavenward, like white-winged angels making their way home. It is on those serene and lofty heights that a sound and healthy Heart is to be gained. It may be only a depressing revelation to a man to tell him that health can be found on the wind-swept summit. You bring him a gospel when you tell him how to get there, how means may be found even for him, however impoverished he may be. Set your mind on things above. There is no gospel in that. I so easily move amid things that are below. Is there any gospel which offers to me a heavenly gravitation to counteract the earthly gravitation, some triumphant power which will tug me towards the things that are above, as this mighty world-power drags me down to things which are below? In this word of the Master I find the gospel I seek: I, if I be lifted up, will draw . . . That is the gospel we need. The power to resist the gravitation of worldliness–to ascend into the hill of the Lord, to set the mind on things above, to think and live on the pure and heavenly heights–is to be found in a crucified and exalted Christ. Committing ourselves to Christ we shall rise with Him, and the mind will share in the resurrection. Drawn by Him we shall rise into newness of life. With the renewing of the mind we shall be transformed: high-born feelings will come to be our guests, and the pervading influence of these fragrant sentiments will sweeten all tam common ways in which we live and move and have our being. (J. H. Jowett, M. A.)
Divine strength
They that waft on the Lord, and encourage themselves to do, in the times of affliction, shall have the Lord in mercy to put strength into them, for their better enabling to wait on Him (Psa 31:24; Psa 40:1-2; Isa 40:30).
1. Reasons–
(1) To wait on the Lord, and to encourage ourselves in affliction, are notable actions of faith. Now, the grace of faith entitles us to the participation of Gods power (2Ch 20:20).
(2) In waiting on the Lord, and encouraging ourselves in time of affliction, are the right improving and employing of the talents which the Lord hath left with us; for in so doing we set faith a work. And this behaviour hath little to increase (Mat 25:28-29).
2. Uses–
(1) For instruction. See here plainly that Gods gracious gifts and works in our hearts are vouchsafed, though not for, yet in, and upon our endeavour, in obedience to His will, in the use of those means wherein He is pleased to work the same (Isa 55:3; Rom 10:17; Joh 11:26). See here the true fountain of all that courage and boldness which in all ages Gods children have shown for Gods glory and for the maintenance of His truth (1Sa 16:32; 1Sa 16:34; Psa 3:6; Psa 23:4; Dan 3:16-17; Act 3:13).
(2) For admonition. Observe the ways and means whereby God strengthens the hearts of His children, that so we may therein wait upon God in the day of affliction, for increase of strength, and courage in our souls, His Word spoken, either by God Himself (Jos 1:6-7; Jos 1:9), or by His servants (Heb 12:12). The works of His providence, wherein we have had experience of His goodness in former deliverances (1Sa 17:34-37; Psa 22:4-5; 2Ki 2:14). The company of the godly (Act 28:15; Pro 27:9; Pro 27:17). Prayer to God, as well by ourselves as by others in our behalf (Act 4:24; Act 4:29; Eph 6:19). Gods inward way of strengthening the heart is by the work of His Spirit (Joh 14:16; Isa 11:2; 2Ti 1:7). We must labour to be such, both in state of soul and behavior of life, as to whom God will vouchsafe the blessing of strength of heart in evil times. That beforehand, in the days of peace, we beware of sin, and break off the cause thereof by true repentance. That we are truly in covenant with God. That by faith we rest and rely on Gods mercy in Christ Jesus. That we be upright-hearted towards God (2Ch 16:9; Psa 18:2). (T. Pierson.)
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Psa 28:1-9
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 14. Wait on the Lord] All ye who are in distress, wait on the Lord. Take me for an example. I waited on him, and he strengthened my heart; wait ye on him, and he will strengthen your heart. You cannot be unsuccessful; fear not. Wait, I say, on the Lord; wait for his succour in doing his will. Age viriliter, says the Vulgate; act like a man, hope, believe, work, and fear not.
ANALYSIS OF THE TWENTY-SEVENTH PSALM
There are four general parts in this Psalm. David shows,
I. How free he is from fear in any danger; and he shows also the cause of his confidence, Ps 27:1-3.
II. He expresses his love to God’s house and his religion, Ps 27:4-6.
III. He prays for succour and support Ps 27:7, c.
IV. He exhorts others to dependence on the Lord, Ps 27:14.
I. It is possible (independently of the reason given in the notes) that some person, friend or foe, might ask David how he felt during the persecutions raised against him by Saul? To whom he may be supposed to return this answer: “I was never disheartened, never in despair and the reason was, God was my Light to guide me, my Rock to save me, and my Strength to sustain and support me: ‘The Lord is my light,’ c.” And this he amplifies in the next two verses: 1. By experience: he had already found this true: “When the wicked, even mine enemies, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell.” 2. He puts a case: “Though a host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident.”
The arguments for his confidence were, 1. God’s goodness, Ps 27:1. 2. His own experience, Ps 27:2. To which he adds, 3. What God would do for him.
1. He would hide him in his tabernacle, Ps 27:5.
2. That though his father and mother should forsake him, God would take him up, Ps 27:10.
3. That he should see the goodness of God in the land of the living, Ps 27:13.
II. He expresses his great love and affection to the house of God: “One thing I have desired,” and in this he was constant. “THAT (emphatically) I will seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.” For three ends: –
1. “To behold the beauty of the Lord.” To taste how good and gracious he is.
2. “To inquire in his temple.” There to search the mind of God.
3. “To offer in his temple sacrifices of joy, and to sing praises to the Lord.”
And this was another argument of his security: “For in the time of trouble he will hide me in his pavilion – he shall set me upon a rock, and my head shall be lifted up.” And –
III. He prays for succour and support.
1. For audience, and an answer: “Hear, O Lord, when I cry; have mercy upon me, and answer me.”
2. The ground of his prayer; his having willingly received the commandment of God: “He hath said, Seek ye my face. Thy face, O Lord, will I seek.”
3. The matter of his prayer in general: “Hide not thy face from me; put not thy servant away in anger.” In which he had good hope of success from former experience. “Thou hast been my help;” be to me now as thou hast been: “Leave me not, nor forsake me, O God of my salvation,” c.
4. The matter of his prayer in particular: “Teach me thy way, O God lead me in a plain path.” That is, teach me what to do that I may please thee, and “lead me in a plain path,” that I may escape the snares of my enemies. “Deliver me not over to their will,” for they seek my ruin. 1. They are perjured men: “False witnesses have risen up again me.” 2. They are mischievously bent: “They breathe out cruelty.”
5. And their cruelty and falsehood are so great that “unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living,” what would have become of me!
IV. He concludes with an exhortation that all others would consider his example, and in their greatest extremities be courageous, and put their trust in God as he did: “Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thy heart; wait, I say, on the Lord.” Be an expectant; for he that has promised to come will come, and will not tarry. But wait actively; be not idle. Use the means of grace; read, hear, pray, believe, work. Acknowledge him in all thy ways, and he will direct thy steps. They that wait upon the Lord shall never be confounded.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Wait on the Lord, O my soul; to which he now turneth his speech; as he frequently doth in this book.
He shall strengthen thine heart; he will uphold thee, and keep thee from fainting and sinking under thy burdens.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
14. Wait, &c.in confidentexpectation. The last clause is, literally, “and wait,”&c., as if expecting new measures of help.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Wait on the Lord,…. This, with what follows, is spoken by the psalmist either to himself or to others, or it may be to both, upon the rich experience he declares in Ps 27:13: it becomes believers to wait on the Lord for the common blessings of life, for even the eyes of all wait upon him for their daily food; and for the light of his countenance, when it is withdrawn from them, for he will return again at the set time; and for answers of prayer, which will be given sooner or later; and for the performance of his promises, which are yea and amen in Christ: they should wait upon him in his house and ordinances constantly, with reverence and godly fear; they should wait upon him as servants on their masters, observe his orders, and diligently execute them; and, as beggars for their alms, they should knock and wait at Wisdom’s gates, tell their case and wait, take repulses and wait, and, when they succeed, give thanks. It is good to wait upon the Lord; many are the favours and blessings such receive now, and eye has not seen what God has prepared for them that wait for him;
be of good courage; the saints have need of courage, considering the enemies they have to grapple with; the corruptions of their own hearts, the enemies of a man’s own house; the worst of all, Satan, and his principalities and powers; and men of the world, and a world of them: and they have great reason, notwithstanding, be of good courage, since God is for them; Christ is the Captain of their salvation; the Holy Spirit, that is in them, is greater than he that is in the world; angels encamp around them; they are provided with the whole armour of God; they are engaged in a good cause, are sure of victory, and shall wear the crown of righteousness; and it follows,
and he shall strengthen thine heart; that is, the Lord will do it, as he has promised to them that wait on him, Isa 40:31; or “let thine heart be strengthened”: as the Septuagint render it; and so the Chaldee paraphrase, “strengthen thine heart”; taking it for an exhortation; as indeed it seems to be by what goes before and follows; see Jos 1:6;
wait, I say, on the Lord; this is repeated, to express the importance of this duty, and to encourage to it.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
14. Wait thou on Jehovah. It may be doubted whether David, having in the preceding verses spoken of himself, here addresses his discourse to others, and exhorts them by his own example to fortitude and persevering patience, as he does in the conclusion of Psa 31:19, where, after speaking concerning himself particularly, he makes a transition, and addresses himself to all the godly. But as he speaks here in the singular number, and uses no mark to show that he directs his discourse to others, it is in my opinion probable that he applies it to himself, the more to encourage his confidence in God, lest at any time his heart should faint. (592) As he was conscious of his weakness, and knew that his faith was the great means of preserving him safe, he seasonably strengthens himself for the future. Under the word waiting, too, he puts himself in mind of new trials, and sets before his eyes the cross which he must bear. We are then said to wait on God, when, withdrawing his grace from us, he suffers us to languish under afflictions. David, therefore, having got through one conflict, prepares himself to encounter new ones. But as nothing is more difficult than to give God the honor of relying upon him, when he hides himself from us, or delays his assistance, David stirs himself up to collect strength; as if he had said, If fearfulness steal upon thee; if temptation shake thy faith; if the feelings of the flesh rise in tumult, do not faint; but rather endeavor to rise above them by an invincible resolution of mind. From this we may learn, that the children of God overcome, not by sullenness, but by patience, when they commit their souls quietly to God; as Isaiah says,
“
In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength,” (Isa 30:15.)
As David did not feel himself equal to great and difficult efforts, he borrows strength from God by prayer. Had he said no more than Act like a man, (593) he would have appeared to allege the motions of his own free-will, but as he immediately adds, by way of correction, that God would be at hand to strengthen his heart, he plainly enough shows, that when the saints strive vigorously, they fight in the strength of another, and not in their own. David does not, like the Papists, put his own efforts into the van, and afterwards supplicate for divine aid, but having done his own duty, although he knew that he was destitute of strength in himself, he requests that his deficiency may be supplied by the grace of the Holy Spirit. And as he knew that the war must be continued during his whole life, and that new conflicts would daily arise, and that the troubles of the saints are often protracted for a long period, he again repeats what he had said about waiting on God: Wait thou alone on Jehovah
(592) “ A ce que sa foy ne soit jamais esbranier.” — Fr. “That his faith might never be shaken.”
(593) Calvin here seems to use the Septuagint version. What he renders in the text, “Be of good courage,” is rendered by the Septuagint, ἀνδρίζου “Be manly, or act like a man.” The Vulgate reads, “ vinliter ae,” following the Septuagint, as it generally does. Paul uses the same phraseology in 1Co 16:13. “These,” says Ainsworth, “are the words of encouragement against remissness, fear, faintness of heart, or other infirmities.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(14) He shall strengthen.Better, let thy heart be strong.
Wait . . .Heb., wait for Jehovah, and wait for Jehovah.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
14. Wait on the Lord “Wait,” which is twice repeated for emphasis, has the sense of expect, hope, and hence to be ready for, and answers well to the New Testament word “watch,” (Mat 24:42😉 or, as Peter says, “ Hope to the end for the grace.” 1Pe 1:13.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Wait for YHWH, be strong,
And let you heart take courage.
Yes, wait you for YHWH.
Like the first section, the second section ends with a repetition, but this time it is a repetition of the need to wait for YHWH, addressed by the Psalmist to himself, and to every individual in the congregation. Sometimes patient endurance is required. God does not always act at once. And so each must wait and be strong. Each must let his heart take courage, for it is necessary to wait for YHWH, with the confidence that in the end, in His own time, He will act. He will not leave us comfortless, He will come to us (Joh 14:8).
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Psa 27:14. Wait on the Lord The Psalmist here admonishes any person who shall fall into such straits as his, to learn by his example not to be impatient, or to despond, much less despair of relief, if God do not happen to send it just when it is expected. Woe unto you that have lost patience; and what will you do when the Lord shall visit you? says the son of Sirach. There is no misery so strong and grievous, no devotion so fervent and powerful, as can bring God to article for the time of his deliverance; if we will not wait, he will not come. It may be one of the greatest ends for which the affliction that we labour under is applied to us, to reform and reduce, and root out the passion and impatience of our nature; and God is too good a physician to remove the medicine before it has wrought its effect, or to put us out of his hand before he has cured us. Indeed, he has great reason to teach us this lesson thoroughly; since, when he has given us the deliverance we pray for, all that we can desire in this life, there is still somewhat more, and of more value than that which he has given us, which we must wait for: it is the claim and protestation which we must appear with at the day of judgment; Lo this is our God, we have waited for him, and he will save us. Isa 25:9. If we have no confidence in him, and of enjoying those pleasures with him in which he himself takes delight, it is no wonder if we faint, and have not courage enough to wait; but if we have that cordial, a belief, that, after all our humiliation here below, and after all the violence of our enemies, and being trampled on by them, we shall at last be so far lifted above them as to fit by him on his heavenly throne, the talk will not be greater than we can through grace undergo, patiently to wait his time for the accomplishment of so transcendant an honour and favour to us.
REFLECTIONS.If God be for us, who can be against us? If he be our salvation, how impotent the malice of every foe? We have here,
1. David’s triumph over his enemies, through his interest in God’s love. The Lord is my light, to point out my way, to cheer my heart, and to preserve me from all the darkness of evil and sin; and my salvation, whose grace watches over me, whose power protects me, and in whose arms I am safe from every danger; whom shall I fear under such a guardian? The Lord is the strength of my life, preserving me from every deadly blow that is aimed against me by my temporal or spiritual foes. My numerous adversaries have tried their utmost malice, but stumbled and fell; and, though they should renew their desperate attacks, no fear shall dismay me: my confidence is placed on him who cannot fail. Note; (1.) Without the light of God’s word and Spirit, we must quickly stumble; but if these lead us, then shall we walk safely. (2.) Our fears are often apt to beset us from the views of the multitude or greatness of our dangers; but if our faith fail not, our fears cannot prevail. (3.) Christ is our life; till the well-spring which is in him fails, the faithful believer cannot faint. (4.) It is our duty and comfort to despair of ourselves, and be confident in God.
2. His prayer. One thing have I desired of the Lord; not to return to his own house, not to be reinstated at court, but to be admitted to the more desirable courts of the Lord’s house; there he could wish to dwell for ever, such delight had he in the ordinances of the sanctuary; to behold the beauty of the Lord, the priests in their vestments, the sacrifices smoking on the altar, and all the glory of that worldly sanctuary; and from these outward symbols to contemplate the glories of the great high-priest, and perfect sacrifice of the Messiah, to whom all this shadowy service pointed; and to inquire in his temple, to ask direction in every difficulty; and in prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, to make his requests known unto God. There he promised himself safety and security, hid under the sacred pavilion of the Divine Majesty, and firmly seated, as on a rock, which all his enemies, like boisterous waves, assail in vain. Therefore, because of such protection, will I offer in his tabernacle, though now absent from it, yet confident of again returning, sacrifices of joy, the grateful overflowings of a heart filled with the love, and big with the praises, of a gracious God. Note; (1.) God’s sanctuary is the believer’s delight; he would dwell there now, and he hopes to have his abode in it shortly for ever. (2.) They who are hid under the wing of Almighty grace, and are blest with manifestations of the beauty of the Lord as their God and Saviour, are not only safe, but happy, amidst a host of enemies. (3.) Praise is the just tribute that we owe, and should daily render, for mercies without number and without end.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Nothing can be more blessed than viewing Christ in the promises, and pleading for the fulfillment and accomplishment of them, in and for him. Isa 40:31 .
REFLECTIONS
READER, how beautiful is that scripture which hath Christ for its one glorious object, and that by holding him forth to the church’s view, in the blessed work the Father gave him to do, represents him at the same time to his people, as their glorious Head, and as their glorious example. We shall derive all the blessedness which faith can derive from the many delightful encouragements held forth in this precious Psalm, if we keep up an unceasing dependence upon our glorious Redeemer, and approach to plead, for every blessing here sought for, from our sole interest in him. Jesus is our light, our life, our salvation, and the lifter up of our heads. Without him we have neither life, nor light, nor strength, nor confidence. In him, we find all: the source, the fountain, the means, the end, of every temporal, spiritual, and eternal security. And while we thus behold him, as our great Mediator, desiring to be everlastingly in communion with the Father, let us behold our vast privileges, and plead for some sweet and spiritual enjoyment in him, and through him, who is the one object of desire, to his redeemed in all nations. And, Reader, let us seek grace to resemble the blessed Jesus, who, in the days of his flesh, was assaulted by all the powers of darkness, by waiting until the hour of deliverance arrives, which will preserve us from fainting, or from being weary in our minds. Let us pray him, who hath gone before in the trying path, that we may be looking unto him, until we find our souls strengthened with his Spirit’s might in our inward man. And depend upon it, while that grace within imparts strength to resist enemies without, neither the remains of unbelief, nor the corruptions of our nature, no, nor all the powers of darkness, will cast us down; but his strength will be perfected in our weakness, and we shall be more than conquerors, through his grace helping us.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 27:14 Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.
Ver. 14. Wait on the Lord ] Expecta, expecta. See how earnest good David is with himself and others; for he knew men’s dulness, and the difficulty of the duty. Religious men find it more easy to bear evil than to wait till the promised good he enjoyed; Heb 10:36 , the spoiling of their goods required patience; but this more than ordinary. Let our distance from God, our dependence upon him, and our undone condition without him, be but considered; and we shall be the more willing to wait, yea, to want and go without some things, that we are but too much set upon.
Be of good courage
And he shall strengthen thy heart
Wait, I say, on the Lord
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Wait. Figure of speech Apostrophe. App-6.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Waiting Courageously
Wait on the Lord:
Be strong, and let thine heart take courage;
Yea, wait thou on the Lord.Psa 27:14.
This is the concluding verse of a psalm which glows with lofty faith, and yet is clouded by a sense of depression. The magnificent opening, with its fulness of glad, exuberant energy, its high-hearted disclaimer of all fear in view of a host of enemies, and its fervid avowal of one supreme desireto dwell in the Lords house and to gaze upon His beautyis followed up by entreaties which represent a change of mood. It is one of those transitions so common in the Psalter, which make it so truly human a book. Acting on the invitation, Seek ye my face, the Psalmist begs his Lord not to cast him away, not to forsake him; he describes himself as an orphan whom God will adopt, and he glances tremblingly at a contingency which would surely have overwhelmed him
What if no faith were mine, to see
Thy love in realms where life shall be?
But the psalm goes back to the major key at last, and in the closing verse prayer passes into self-encouragement. The heart that spoke to God now speaks to itself. Faith exhorts sense and soul to wait on Jehovah. The self-communing of the Psalmist, beginning with exultant confidence and merging into prayer thrilled with consciousness of need and of weakness, closes with bracing him up to courage, which is not presumption, because it is the fruit of waiting on the Lord. He who thus keeps his heart in touch with God will be able to obey the ancient command, which had rung so long before in the ears of Joshua and is never out of date, Be strong and of a good courage; and none but those who wait on the Lord will be at once conscious of weakness and filled with strength, aware of the foes and bold to meet them.
I
Waiting
The word walk describes almost the whole of Christian life, and so does this word wait; for, rightly understood, waiting is active as well as passive, energetic as well as patient, and to wait upon the Lord necessitates as much courage as warring and fighting with enemies. It may seem an easy thing to wait, but it is one of the postures which a Christian soldier learns only with years of teaching. Marching and quick-marching are much easier to Gods warriors than standing still. There are hours of perplexity when the most willing spirit, anxiously desirous to serve the Lord, knows not what part to take. Then what shall it do? Vex itself by despair? Fly back in cowardice, turn to the right hand in fear, or rush forward in presumption? No, but simply wait.
The English Prayer-Book version of the Psalms gives a quaint but beautiful rendering of the phrase Wait on the Lord. It runs, O tarry thou the Lords leisure. This rendering brings out the exact meaning of the word wait, which we have interlarded and lost sight of by making it mean such thingsand legitimately enoughas prayer. It just means wait. Wait for Him as you would wait at the trysting-place for a friend who does not come. Wait for Him, and wait, and wait until He does come.1 [Note: Hugh Black.]
When He appoints to meet thee, go thou forth.
It matters not
If south or north,
Bleak waste or sunny plot.
Nor think, if haply He thou seekst be late,
He does thee wrong;
To stile or gate
Lean thou thy head, and long!
It may be that to spy thee He is mounting
Upon a tower,
Or in thy counting
Thou hast mistaen the hour.
But, if He come not, neither do thou go
Till Vesper chime;
Belike thou then shalt know
He hath been with thee all the time.1 [Note: T. E. Brown, Old John and Other Poems, 244]
1. Let us wait with faith. It is faith that secures the Divine blessingpersistent, expectant faith. He cannot be said to wait upon God who disbelieves that God will come to his aid, or who doubts whether He will. Loitering about to see if anything will turn up is not the same thing, by any means, as waiting for a particular person to appear, or a particular event to happen. Faith and expectation characterize the latter condition as distinct from the former. And these qualities belong to the very nature of the exercise of waiting on God. The more unwavering a mans faith is, in fact, and the higher he stretches on tiptoe of expectation, the more accurately may he be described as a man waiting on God. My soul, cries the Psalmist, waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning. How eager he represents himself to be by that figure of the anxious watchers scanning the eastern skies for signs of daybreak! And how confident, too! For more surely than the sun shall climb up over the horizon and dispel the shadows of night, his God, he believes, shall cause His face to shine upon him. His God and our Godit is not to immensity or infinity, or some dimly comprehended and overwhelming attribute, precariously personified, that we look up for help and a response to our supplications. It is to the living, self-revealing God, who hath of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets, and who hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son.
There is a school of philosophy, much current in our day, which tells us that religious truth is relative to the individual; the way to test a religion is to live it. If the philosophy of the pragmatists be right, then few forms of religious creed can claim better witness to their truth than that wherein Florence Nightingale lived and moved and had her being. She had remodelled her whole religious belief from beginning to end, and had learnt to know God in the years immediately preceding her active work in the world. Her belief helped to sustain her natural courage amidst the horrors of Scutari, and the fever and the cold of Balaclava. It inspired the life of arduous labour to which she devoted herself on returning from the East. It informed her unceasing efforts for the health of the Army and the people, for the reformation of hospitals, for the creation of an art of nursing. Does some one doubt whether any vital force can have proceeded from a belief in Law as the Thought of God, and suggest that to herself as to others she was offering a stone instead of bread? It was not so. To her the religion which she found was as the body and blood of the Most High.1 [Note: Sir Edward Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, i. 488.]
In the early spring of 1881 Captain Catherine Booth and her intrepid lieutenants, Florence Soper, Adelaide Cox, and Ruth Patrick, began life in Paris. With her own hand Catherine raised the flag at Rue dAngoulme 66, in Belleville. Here was a hall for six hundred, situated in a court approached by a narrow street. The bulk of the audience that gathered there night after night were of the artisan class. Some were young men of a lower type, and from these came what disturbance there was. The French sense of humour is keen, and there were many lively sallies at the expense of the speakers and singers on the platform. Meetings were held night after night, and for six months the Capitaine was never absent except on Saturdays. Those were days of fight, and she fought, to use her own phrase, like a tiger. She had to fight first her own heart. She knew her capacity, and God had done great things through her in England. The change from an audience of five thousand spellbound hearers in the circus of Leeds to a handful of gibing ouvriers in the Belleville quarter of Paris was indeed a clashing antithesis. A fortnight passed without a single penitent, and Catherine was all the time so ill that it was doubtful if she would be able to remain in the field. That fortnight was probably the supreme trial of her faith. The work appeared so hopeless! There was nothing to see. But for the Capitaine faith meant going on. It meant saying to her heart, You may suffer, you may bleed, you may break, but you shall go on. She went on, believing, praying, fighting, and at last the tide of battle turned.2 [Note: J. Strahan, The Marchale (1913), 51.]
2. Let us wait with patience. Patience is just the other side and the practical side of faith. Faith is the breath of life to the religious man. Without faith he cannot live. But there may be, and there often is, a faith which is extremely lacking in patience, a faith which is even impatient, a faith which, in the name of God, almost rebukes God for His leisure with the world, and with the Church, and with ourselves. We know it to be a Christian duty to be patient with our fellow-men; have we ever thought of the necessity and the duty of being patient with God? Let us have patience with God. And this patience, about which the Bible is full, is not the sickly, complaining counterfeit of it which we often hear of under the name of patience; it is the power to suffer, the power to sacrifice, the power to endure, the power to die, and, if need be, sometimes harder as it is, to continue to live for His sake. Let us wait Gods time. If there were no other reason why we must wait Gods time, this is one, and one all-powerfulbecause He knows the whole, and because we know only a part. The Psalmist cries out, under protracted and aggravated trials, Lord, how long? but he never complains or murmurs, Lord, this is too long!
It is worthy of remark that Bishop Kings first Charge elicited warm commendation from the prelate who, of all the Bishops at that time on the Bench, possessed the acutest and most vigorous intellect. Bishop Magee, of Peterborough, wrote on November 28, 1886:
What I write specially to thank you for is simply one sentence in your Chargea very pregnant one, and to me, I confess, a new oneit is, The Soul is impatient of the Mediatorial Kingdom. This is a thought which runs out very far and very deep under all our Christian life. The impatient, instead of the patient, waiting for Christ, is seen, when we come to think of it, to be the source of no small part of our ecclesiastical and even our personal errors and troubles.1 [Note: G. W. E. Russell, Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln, 122.]
Say, did impatience first impel
The heaven-sent bond to break?
Or, couldst thou bear its hindrance well,
Loitering for Jesus sake?
Oh, might we know! for sore we feel
The languor of delay,
When sickness lets our fainter zeal,
Or foes block up our way.
Lord! who Thy thousand years dost wait
To work the thousandth part
Of Thy vast plan, for us create
With zeal a patient heart.2 [Note: J. H. Newman, Verses on Various Occasions.]
3. Let us wait with assurance. According to our English Versions, the 62nd Psalm begins with the words, Truly my soul waiteth, or My soul waiteth only upon God. The adverbs do not matter at present, but the verb does. What the Psalmist actually wrote, as we can see from the word which he used, was, My soul is silent unto God. The same expression occurs elsewhere in the Old Testament. It is a very striking one. The condition of silence before God, inward silence, with every fret and murmur and disturbing thought hushed, was recognized as the condition suitable for hearing the still small voice of the Eternal One. Those that achieved it were rewarded. And have we no experiences of our own to corroborate the testimony of these Old Testament writers? Matthew Arnold tells us that
From the souls subterranean depth upborne
As from an infinitely distant land,
Come airs and floating echoes and convey
A melancholy into all our day.
But other airs and other echoes as well are upborne from the depths of the soul. There is conveyed into the day of the soul that waits upon God and is silent unto Him a peace and a quiet sense of assurance that passes all understanding. Language cannot describe the source and nature of these inward ministries of strength and consolation, but the soul knows that God has responded to its waiting.
Does it hurt you severely? one asked of a friend who lay with a broken arm. Not when I keep still, was the answer. This is the secret of much of the victoriousness we see in rejoicing Christians. They conquer the pain and the bitterness by keeping still. They do not ask questions, or demand to know why they have trials. They believe in God, and are so sure of His love and wisdom that they are pained by no doubt, no fear, no uncertainty. Peace is their pillow, because they have learned just to be still. Their quietness robs trial of its sharpness, sorrow of its bitterness, death of its sting, and the grave of its victory.1 [Note: J. R. Miller.]
4. Let us wait with prayer. Let us call upon God and spread our case before Him; tell Him our difficulty, and plead His promise of aid. In dilemmas between one duty and another, it is sweet to be humble as a child, and to wait with simplicity of soul upon the Lord. It is sure to be well with us when we feel and know our own folly, and are heartily willing to be guided by the will of God. Let us remember that God has always loved intervals. Intervals there are generally, if not always, in His best dealings with His childrenintervals before He bestows His greatest blessings, intervals before He answers prayer. And a great part of mans education lies in these intervals. The intellect is humbled, the heart is curbed, faith is trained, hopes are pointed, promises are sweetened, God is magnified. And are they not the growing times of merciesthe darkness brought in for no other end than that the light may be seen in it?
By prayer we link ourselves on to the inexhaustible riches of God. How it comes that, when I pull a switch down in my study, the room is flooded with light no man can say, save that by doing so I have linked my need on to the great centre of light energy in the town. So, all that we can say about those who keep their hearts open towards God and in the love of Christ is that by this means they link their weakness on to the grace and strength of the Eternal. But, mark you, the electric current does not break into my room of itself when my need arises. I have to make a way for it, and more, I have to keep that way open.1 [Note: Archibald Alexander.]
Prayer was the white flame at the very centre of his life. To the throne of Grace, with unfailing mindfulness and with childlike simplicity, he would bring, day by day, his friends, his people, those in special sorrow, sickness, or sin; so filling his petitions with engrossed and concentrated intercession for them in their needs that he became wholly forgetful of his own. Once, when I had been ill, he said to me, I have prayed for you night and morning for five months. And I knew that it was true. In his long life it was true of thousands of others. And he believed, with such intensity and simplicity of conviction as no man can ever have surpassed, that every word of intercession that he uttered went straight to a heavenly Fathers ear, and found an answering chord in a heavenly Fathers heart.2 [Note: Frances Balfour, Dr. MacGregor of St. Cuthberts, 532.]
Unanswered yet, the prayer your lips have pleaded,
In agony of heart these many years?
Does faith begin to fail? Is hope departing,
And think you all in vain those falling tears?
Say not the Father hath not heard your prayer;
You shall have your desire sometime, somewhere.
Unanswered yet, though when you first presented
This one petition at the Fathers Throne,
It seemed you could not wait the time of asking,
So urgent was your heart to have it known?
Though years have passed since then, do not despair;
The Lord will answer you sometime, somewhere.
Unanswered yet? Nay, do not say ungranted;
Perhaps your part is not yet wholly done;
The work began when first your prayer was uttered,
And God will finish what He has begun.
If you will keep the incense burning there,
His glory you will see sometime, somewhere.
Unanswered yet? Faith cannot be unanswered,
Her feet are firmly planted on the rock;
Amid the wildest storms she stands undaunted,
Nor quails before the loudest thunder shock.
She knows Omnipotence has heard her prayer,
And cries, It shall be donesometime, somewhere.
5. Let us wait with regularity. The most prominent feature of our waiting is too often its spasmodic character. Now and then we draw near to God, but by fits and starts, with long intervals of indifference and prayerlessness between. And that is just about as hopeless as it would be to expect to keep ourselves clean by bathing once a week. Daily our strength drains away, both physical and spiritual, and as the one must constantly be replenished, so must the other. Even earnest bursts of effort at intervals do not count for anything like so much as the quiet, constant keeping in the love of God. Volcanic eruptions have done something to transform the earths surface, but not nearly so much, geologists tell us, as the quiet, constant forces, the sun, the rain, frost, heat, and wind. And it is by the regular daily waiting, far more than by the infrequent upheaval of desire, that the power of God and the likeness of Christ pass slowly but visibly into the lives of His people. It is the daily meeting with God in spirit, the daily thought of ones humble task as Gods call to us to serve Him, the daily sense that we are His children, destined and called in Christ to fellowship with Him, the sense that we are not alone in our little corner, but that He is all about us, so that we live and move and have our being in Him, like islands in some great seait is that, repeated and continued till it becomes the habit of the spirit, that transfigures life and lifts it to blessedness and power.
It is related of Schwabe the German astronomer that, wishing to determine the relation between sun-spots and earth-magnetism, he gave himself to the recording of the varying appearances of the suns surface. For forty-two years the sun never rose a single morning free of clouds above the flat horizon of the plain at Dessau where Schwabe lived but his patient telescope was there to confront it! The man of science believes in Nature. He waits for it, in the faith that it is, and that it is the rewarder of those that diligently seek it. If only Christian people would realize that it is infinitely more worth their while to wait thus patiently upon God, what wonders of Spirit-filled lives we should see!1 [Note: Archibald Alexander.]
The other day I stumbled across a little book in which he wrote the names of those for whom he prayed, and the day of the week on which he interceded for them. It was a revelationfor one would have thought that many of those names had been forgotten by him years before. There is a great unity in the list; they all sorely needed the Divine help. He also prayed daily by name for the members of his family, and each worker of our Church on the Foreign Field was remembered by him. With the map before him he interceded for the many nations of the world.2 [Note: Love and Life: The Story of J. Denholm Brash, 65.]
II
Courage
As many as are the conflicts and perils and hardships of life, so many are the uses and the forms of courage. Courage is necessary, indeed, as the protector and defender of all the other virtues. Courage is the standing army of the soul, which keeps it from conquest, pillage, and slavery. Unless we are brave we can hardly be truthful, or generous, or just, or pure, or kind, or loyal. Few persons, says a wise observer, have the courage to appear as good as they really are. You must be brave in order to fulfil your own possibilities of virtue. Courage is essential to guard the best qualities of the soul, and to clear the way for their action, and make them move with freedom and vigour.
Courage, an independent spark from Heavens throne,
By which the soul stands raised, triumphant, high, alone;
The spring of all true acts is seated here,
As falsehoods draw their sordid birth from fear.
If we desire to be good, we must first of all desire to be brave, that against all opposition, scorn, and danger we may move straight onward to do the right.
The Rev. Henry Parnaby, M.A., writes: Only six days ago I had a long talk with the surgeon who attended Principal Simon in LiverpoolDr. Armourand he told me something very characteristic of the old Principal. When his trouble had reached a certain stage, Dr. Armour suggested to Dr. Simon that by a very delicate and difficult operation he could be cured. The operation, however, was attended with very great risk, and possibly Dr. Simon would not survive. The decision was left to him, and he took a week to think over it. He went off and consulted his family, and returned a week later to announce that he had decided not to undergo the operation. His reason was this. He was in such dreadful and continuous pain that he felt he would go into the operation with eagerness, because it promised an end of his trouble either by cure or death. He felt that he would welcome this as an end of his pain, and that therefore he would be displaying an unwillingness to endure the purifying pain which he accepted as a means of spiritual discipline from God. Dr. Armour assures me that never in all his wide experience has he found another patient who could give so courageous and honourable a reason for declining to undergo an operation.1 [Note: F. J. Powicke, David Worthington Simon, 297.]
One winter night the Marchale and two young comrades, Blanche Young and Kate Patrick, went out with shawls on their heads, and made their way to one of the boulevard cafs. The leader passed the door, and passed it again. She turned to her lieutenants and said, You have never known your Marchale till now; you see what a coward she is!
No, no, no! they both protested.
At last she put her hand on the door, pushed it open, and went in. A man in a white apron was selling drink. Going up to him, she said, May I sing something?
He stared open-mouthed.
Trembling from head to foot, she repeated, I should like to sing something,
Very well!
She began:
Le ciel est ma belle patrie,
Les anges y font leur sjour;
Le soldat qui lutte et qui prie
Y sera bientt son tour.
While she sang, Blanche chimed in with her guitar and her second voice. As they proceeded, the smoking, drinking, and card-playing ceased, and every face was turned towards them. They sang on:
En marche, en marche,
Soldats, vers la patrie!
En marche, en marche,
Soldats, vers la patrie!
When they had finished the hymn, the Marchale thanked her audience, adding that they could hear her again at Rue Auber Hall; and that she knew a Friend, of whom she wished to tell them. As she and her comrades turned to walk out, the man in the white apron bowed, as if they had done him a service.
May I come another time? said the Marchale.
Certainly, Mademoiselle!1 [Note: J. Strahan, The Marchale (1913), 114.]
1. What is the source of courage? It is waiting on the Lord. That is the truest and deepest source of courage. To believe that He is, and that He has made us for Himself; to love Him, and give ourselves up to Him, because He is holy and true and wise and good and brave beyond all human thought; to lean upon Him and trust Him and rest in Him, with confidence that He will never leave us nor forsake us: to work for Him, and suffer for His sake, and be faithful to His servicethat is the way to learn courage. Without God what can we do? We are frail, weak, tempted, mortal. The burdens of life will crush us, the evils of sin will destroy us, the tempests of trouble will overwhelm us, the darkness of death will engulf us. But if we are joined to God, we can resist and endure and fight and conquer in His strength. This is what the Psalmist means in the text, Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart.
Had we the strength!Have we perhaps the strength,
Who have all else beside? Are we not men?
Is not the Universe our dwelling-place?
And therefore perfectly in truth for us
Is not the utmost wholly possible?
O, with the baffled and the resolute
Vanguard of liberal humanity,
O to so purge our lives of the mild hours,
Our hearts of humble longings and meek hopes,
Our minds of customs and credulities,
That we may find the days wholly fulfilled
And lightened of the Spiritall the days
And all things and ourselves, rich and revealed
In the majestic meanings and the might
And passion and pure purpose of the soul!1 [Note: G. C. Lodge, Poems and Dramas, ii. 137.]
Torstensohn was one of the generals formed in the school of Gustavus Adolphus. To him that great commander transmitted the prosecution of the Thirty Years War. Physically, he was so shattered and dislocated by disease and deformity that he could neither walk nor ride on horseback. He had to be carried at the head of his forces in a litter. Yet no commander of his age was so resistless and terrible in his onset and so invariably victorious. Let us be loath to accept infirmity as an excuse for uselessness. A naturalist asks: How is it that the golden-crested wren, apparently so weak and helpless, can fly right across the North Sea from Norway? Because God knows how to fix strange energy within delicate organisms. Our very infirmities through resolution and grace may give us special efficacy.2 [Note: W. L. Watkinson.]
2. How does waiting on God sustain our courage?
(1) Our heart is strengthened by waiting upon God, because we receive a mysterious strength through the incoming of the Eternal Spirit into our souls. No man can explain this, but many of us know what it is. How wonderfully do the secret springs of omnipotence break into the feeble soul and fill it with might in the inner man. Through the sacred anointing of the Holy Ghost we have been made to shout for joy. He that made us has put His hand a second time to the work, and restored to us the joy of His salvation, filled our emptiness, removed our weakness, and triumphed in us gloriously.
That these days at the Keswick Convention in 1889 were a turning-point in Mr. Macgregors life, there is not the smallest doubt. That they made his later ministry what it was, is equally certain. To say that he sometimes appeared to claim for this experience and its effects more than the facts altogether warranted, is only to say that, though remarkably enlightened and strengthened by Gods Spirit, he remained a fallible human being. But no one who knew George Macgregor, either as a man or a minister, before that crisis and after it, could question that he found then a new secret of strength both for his own life and for his work.1 [Note: Duncan C. Macgregor, George H. C. Macgregor, 111.]
(2) Waiting upon God makes men grow small, and dwarfs the world and all its affairs, till we see their real littleness. Set your great troubles before the infinite God, and they will dwarf into such little things that you will never notice them again. He taketh up the isles as a very little thing, and the nations are as a drop of a bucket; and this great God teaches us to look at earthly things in the same light as He does, till, though the whole world should be against us, we can smile at its rage. Our worst ills are utterly despised when we learn to measure them by the line of the Eternal.
Sometimes in the country on a night in early summer you may shut the cottage door to step out into an immense darkness which palls heaven and earth. Going forward into the embrace of the great gloom, you are as a babe swaddled by the hands of night into helpless acquiescence. Your feet tread an unseen path, your hands grasp at a void, or shrink from the contact they cannot realize; your eyes are holden; your voice would die in your throat did you seek to rend the veil of that impenetrable silence.
Shut in by the intangible dark, we are brought up against those worlds within worlds blotted out by our concrete daily life. The working of the great microcosm at which we peer dimly through the little window of science; the wonderful, breathing earth; the pulsing, throbbing sap; the growing fragrance shut in the calyx of to-morrows flower; the heart-beat of a sleeping world that we dream that we know; and around, above, and interpenetrating all, the world of dreams, of angels and of spirits.
It was this world which Jacob saw on the first night of his exile, and again when he wrestled in Peniel until the break of day. It was this world which Elisha saw with open eyes; which Job knew when darkness fell on him; which Ezekiel gazed into from his place among the captives; which Daniel beheld as he stood alone by the great river, the river Hiddekel.
For the moment we have left behind the realm of question and explanation, of power over matter and the exercise of bodily faculties; and passed into darkness alight with visions we cannot see, into silence alive with voices we cannot hear. Like helpless men we set our all on the one thing left us, and lift up our hearts, knowing that we are but a mere speck among a myriad worlds, yet greater than the sum of them; having our roots in the dark places of the earth, but our branches in the sweet airs of heaven.1 [Note: Michael Fairless, The Roadmender, 86.]
(3) Nothing can give us greater courage than a sincere affection for our Lord and His work. Courage is sure to abound where love is fervent. Look among the mild and gentle creatures of the brute creation and see how bold they are when once they become mothers and have to defend their offspring. A hen will fight for her chicks, though at another time she is one of the most timid of birds. Gilbert White, in his Natural History of Selborne, tells of a raven that was hatching her young in a tree. The woodman began to fell it, but there she sat; the blows of the axe shook the tree, but she never moved, and when it fell she was still upon her nest. Love will make the most timid creature strong; and if you love Christ you will defy all fear, and count all hazards undergone for Him to be your joy. In this sense, too, perfect love casteth out fear; it hopeth all things, endureth all things, and continues still to wait upon the Lord.
In February 1894 she had two of the finest campaigns of her lifeat Havre and Rouen. The turbulent beginning at Havre was graphically described by her friend the Princess Malsoff, who accompanied the Marchale in order to have a taste of the vie apostolique. There was a great tumult in the Lyre Havraise. The Marchale had come to publish the word of love and salvation. An immense crowd forced itself into the hall, and who would have dared believe that they had all come simply to present the world with the most scandalous, the most vulgar and odious spectacle that one can imagine? When the Marchale rose with great dignity and calm she could not make herself heard. Every word was interrupted; one could see that it was a prepared stroke. One might imagine oneself to be in an asylum. But she did not let herself be discouraged; she persevered; she walked straight into the midst of the infuriated crowd. She did not tame these wild beasts, but she came out victorious all the same. Tall, beautiful, calm, sustained by her divine conviction and with the strength of a great heart, she came back again and againour admirable Marchale! In the midst of this infernal and ridiculous tumult a few lite souls felt a noble enthusiasm for this young woman who battled alone against a hostile and wicked crowd. They came to grasp her hand, to express their admiration for her and their shame for those who had broken the simplest laws of hospitality, politeness, and civilization. Blessed be our Marchale; in her the whole Arme du Salut was personified that night in its strength, its faith, its persevering love.1 [Note: J. Strahan, The Marchale (1913), 62.]
The Master knows; He can but see
How willingly, how joyfully
I would within His vineyard stay
To bear the burden of the day,
And yet He bids me stand apart
With folded hands and longing heart.
I see at morn the happy throng
Pass by my door with jest and song.
They seem so glad, they seem so gay,
So ready for the busy day.
And when at eve they homeward go
Sometimes with weary steps and slow,
But laden with the sweet new wine,
And purple clusters of the vine,
And precious sheaves of golden grain
To recompense their toil and pain;
But that the Lord doth choose for me,
I fain within their ranks would be.
Yet though I can but hope and wait,
I am not sad or desolate.
For every day with bounty free
The Master bringeth gifts to me.
From out His life there seems to shine
A wondrous glory into mine.
My life! how dark and how unclean,
How poor and fruitless has it been.
But sure the seed He planted there
That should have grown so tall and fair
Must now, at last, begin to spring
Beneath such heavenly nourishing.
And if, perchance, I fail to see
The thought of God concerning me,
I leave in peace my fallow field
Till love divine shall make it yield.
And when at last the corn and wine
Of all His harvests shall be mine,
Then shall I know, or soon, or late,
They also serve who stand and wait.
Literature
Bright (W.), Morality in Doctrine, 115.
Craig (R.), Rock Plants with Gospel Roots, 27.
Dyke (H. van), Manhood, Faith and Courage, 53.
Jowett (J. H.), From Strength to Strength, 65.
Maclaren (A.), Creed and Conduct, 15.
Newman (J. H.), Sermons on Subjects of the Day, 47.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Morning by Morning, 243.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxiii. (1877), No. 1371.
Steel (T. H.), Sermons in Harrow Chapel, 315.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons in Christ Church, Brighton, 2nd Ser., 51.
Wynne (G. R.), In Quietness and Confidence, 50.
Christian World Pulpit, xliv. 321 (C. S. Horne); liii. 136 (H. Black); lvii. 27 (J. G. Rogers); lviii. 401 (J. H. Jowett).
Church of England Magazine, xxxiv. 168 (R. W. Dale).
Church of England Pulpit, lx. 286 (C. Wordsworth).
Churchmans Pulpit: Sermons to the Young, xvi. 406 (R. G. Soans).
Twentieth Century Pastor, xxx. 20 (A. B. Macaulay).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
Wait: Psa 25:3, Psa 25:21, Psa 31:24, Psa 33:20, Psa 62:1, Psa 62:5, Psa 130:5, Gen 49:18, Isa 8:17, Isa 25:9, Isa 26:8, Isa 30:18, Lam 3:26, Hab 2:3, Luk 2:25, Luk 2:38, Rom 8:25
be: Psa 31:24, Act 28:15, 1Co 16:13, 2Ti 4:5-8
and: Psa 138:3, Isa 40:31, 2Co 12:9, 2Co 12:10, Eph 3:16, Eph 6:10, Phi 4:13, Col 1:11
Reciprocal: Gen 8:12 – And he Gen 49:24 – his bow Deu 31:6 – Be strong Jos 1:6 – Be strong 1Ki 20:22 – strengthen 2Ki 6:33 – wait for the 1Ch 19:13 – of good 2Ch 15:7 – ye strong Job 14:14 – all the days Job 16:5 – But I would Job 17:13 – If I wait Psa 37:7 – wait Psa 37:34 – Wait Psa 40:1 – I waited Psa 42:5 – hope Psa 52:9 – wait Psa 55:22 – Cast Psa 59:9 – his strength Psa 73:26 – but Psa 112:8 – heart Psa 119:28 – strengthen Pro 20:22 – wait Isa 33:2 – be gracious Isa 50:10 – let Jer 14:22 – wait Jer 42:7 – General Lam 3:25 – good Hos 12:6 – wait Zep 3:8 – wait Luk 21:19 – General Joh 5:19 – and Act 27:36 – they all Rom 2:7 – patient Jam 5:8 – stablish 1Pe 5:7 – Casting
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 27:14. Wait on the Lord O my soul, to which some think he now turns his speech: or rather, O reader, whosoever thou art, wait on God by faith and prayer, and in an humble resignation to his will. Hebrew,
, kavveh eel Jehovah, look to, or hope for, or expect, the Lord. Be of good courage Keep up thy spirits in the midst of thy greatest dangers and difficulties: let thy heart be fixed, trusting in God, and thy mind stayed on him, and then none of these things will move thee; wait, I say, on the Lord Whatever thou doest, grow not remiss or careless in thy attendance upon God, but keep close to him and thy duty. The psalmist here, says Dr. Dodd, after Bishop Patrick, admonishes any person who shall fall into such straits as his, to learn by his example not to be impatient, or to despond presently, much less to despair of relief, if God do not send it just when it is expected. There is no misery so strong and grievous, no devotion so fervent and powerful, as can bring God to article for the time of deliverance; if we will not wait, he will not come. It may be one of the greatest ends for which the affliction we labour under is applied to us, to reform and reduce us, and root out the passion and impatience of our nature; and God is too good a physician to remove the medicine before it hath wrought its effect, or to put us out of his hand before he hath cured us. Indeed, he hath greater reason to teach us this lesson thoroughly, since when he hath given us the deliverance we pray for, and all that we can desire in this life, there is still somewhat more, and of more value than that which he hath given us, which we must wait for: we must wait till the few and evil days of our pilgrimage pass away, and we arrive at the mansions prepared for us in the house of our heavenly Father; till our warfare be accomplished, and terminate in the peace of God; till the storms and tempests of wintry time shall give place to the unclouded calm and the ever-blooming pleasures of eternal spring. Horne.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
27:14 {i} Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.
(i) He exhorts himself to depend on the Lord seeing he never failed in his promises.