A SACRED SOLO – Charles Spurgeon
A Sacred Solo
“The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I am helped; therefore my heart greatly rejoices, and with my song will I praise Him.” – Psalm 28:7
This passage has, to my mind, a peculiar charm. I do not know whether it breaks on your ears with the same pathos and power. To me, it seems charged with softness and sweetness, like a gentle strain of tender music. Let us read it again:
“The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I am helped; therefore my heart greatly rejoices, and with my song will I praise Him.”
I think I see a battle raging furiously, yet he whom it most concerns, after having displayed his prowess and fought valiantly, steps aside. Sitting down in a quiet place, bomb-proof and almost out of the sound of the cannons’ roar, he thus talks with his heart. He forgets the raging strife. He is expecting a joyful victory. He knows his weaknesses, but he has caught a glimpse of the divine strength which is guaranteed to him. He is trembling, perhaps, from the toil of the fight, and yet he rests as one insensibly subdued to settled calm and mild composure. He rests in God.
In like manner, I want you, dear friends, to get out of the crowd for a while this evening and take shelter in a quiet place. Forget just now the various troubles of business, the domestic cares which often harass you, and the inward conflicts that vex your souls. Whatever there may be to disturb, distress, or distract you, let it alone. Now, for a while, revel in that sweet peace which God alone can give—the peace of God which passes all understanding—and say unto your soul, “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I am helped; therefore my heart greatly rejoices, and with my song will I praise Him.”
The Structure of the Verse
You will notice that this sentence divides itself into three parts. The first tells us of an assured possession: “The Lord is my strength and my shield.” The second speaks of a definite experience: “My heart trusted in Him, and I am helped.” There are no “ifs,” no “buts,” no suspense of the soul midway between hope and fear. He speaks without a trace of hesitancy, for he tells of his own actual experience. The third part of our text very properly closes with an expressed emotion, a deep emotion indeed: “My heart greatly rejoices.”
And then, you see, the inward emotion is interpreted in a most proper fashion by an audible utterance: “With my song will I praise Him.”
I beg to call your studious attention to the remarkable form of this verse. There is a pair in each of my divisions, and the pair in each case consists of inward and outward. Notice, “The Lord is my strength”—that is inward. “My shield”—that is outward. “My heart trusted in Him”—that is inward. “And I am helped”—that is outward. “Therefore my heart greatly rejoices”—that is inward. “And with my song will I praise Him”—that is outward.
It is by no means trifling to note these arrangements in the structure of sacred poetry, for there is a lesson to be learned from it. It teaches us that truth and beauty are to be linked together, and that to be holy we need not be uncouth. Full often we may observe a beautiful form and an admirable fashion in the language which embodies the thoughts of the inspired psalmist. If we look at them long enough and meditate upon them fondly enough, we shall discern a symmetry in all his hallowed compositions which charms the taste, rivets the attention, and helps the memory. The sacred poet served the Lord with his best powers, reckoning nothing to be good enough for the Lord whom he loved so well. Slovenly preaching, doggerel verses, and discordant singing should be avoided, if possible, and our devotion should have the sweetest possible expression.
A Sure Possession
Let us begin with the first division of our text, and may the Spirit of God give us full faith to accept it in all its depth of meaning. We have here a sure possession: “The Lord is my strength and my shield.”
With a double grip, he takes hold of the divine covenant: “The Lord is my strength and my shield.” He gets a two-handed grasp of the God of salvation. A touch of the hem of the Savior’s garment will heal. What divine virtue, then, must stream into a man who can hold with both hands—not merely the garment’s hem, nor even the garment itself, but the Lord Himself. “The Lord is my strength and my shield.”
Perhaps some of you cannot give the double grip. Then give the finger’s touch, and it will save you. But do not be always content with that touch. Ask to lay hold upon Jesus and say, “I held Him, and I would not let Him go.” Ask to grasp Him, like Jacob at the brook Jabbok with the brave resolve, “I will not let You go except You bless me.” No, get beyond that and pray to have Paul’s hold of Christ, which was so strong and firm that he said, “Who shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord?” Both hands take hold, for the psalmist sees a double blessing. He knows also that he has a double need, and so he takes a double grip: “The Lord is my strength and my shield.”
Were you to leave out the “my” repeated again and again in this verse, how the sense would be spoiled. Let us try it: “The Lord is a strength and a shield.” Well, that is very true, but of what use is that to me? My comfort must come from the fact that “the Lord is my strength and my shield.”
Faith matured by experience, faith strengthened by the promise, faith invigorated by the Holy Spirit, who is the nourisher as well as the author of it—such faith is fired with sacred energy when it dares to lay hold on God and say, “The Lord is my strength and my shield.” This is blessed work. God grant that each of us may know how to perform it, and to this end let us seek the help of the Holy Spirit, without whom we can do nothing.
The Lord is My Strength
Notice what it is that David lays hold upon with his hands: “The Lord is my strength and my shield.” It is not the Lord’s promised grace, nor is it the bounties of providence which He has bestowed on me that I regard as my strength and my shield. It is not even the Lord’s work in my soul, or the assurance of my faith, nor the ardor of my love that has become my strength and my shield. It is not the Lord’s book, though its inspired oracles can enlighten the eyes, fortify the heart, and refresh the spirit. It is not the Lord’s attributes of power, faithfulness, or watchfulness. But it is JAH JEHOVAH Himself who is strength and shield to me.
Now, he that lays hold on God has done a daring deed, at which even “the man greatly beloved” might stand aghast, were it not written, “Let him take hold of My strength.” Oh, to say, “My God!” There is more eloquence in those two words than in all the orations of Demosthenes or Cicero. All the genius, learning, and penetration of the heathen world could never teach us how to claim the deity and take possession of the God of the whole earth.
What can we discover in the philosophy of Pythagoras, Aristotle, or Socrates that will compare with this? The man who can truly say, “The Lord is mine,” has an inheritance which death cannot wither, which space cannot compass, which time cannot limit, and which eternity cannot explore. He may be poor in pocket-money, as I suppose the owners of large estates occasionally are, but he is infinitely rich, for he has real property and an absolutely indefeasible title to it. He may feel distressingly weak, but he is infinitely strong. He may account himself to be empty, but he has all things and abounds, he, I mean, who can say, “The Lord is mine.”
Strength and Shield
Come, my brothers and sisters, be bold enough to look into your privilege. Think of it! What if you could say, “The world is mine”? It will be consumed by fire. What if you could say, “Heaven is mine”? Yet if the God of heaven were not there, it would be a wilderness. Oh, beloved! If you can say, “God is mine—Father, Son, and Spirit are mine,” what more do you need to gratify your eager quest for unspeakable joy?
Do you wish for a better song than this—“So I my best Beloved’s am, So He is mine.” Can you imagine any sweeter music than the minstrelsy of a love so tuneful, touching as it does the strings of that mysterious instrument, the soul? Is not this the climax of all wishes, all passions, all desires, all delights?
We hail you, son of Jesse, as the harmonious music of your sublime psalms breaks on our ears! But oh, You Son of David! We adore You that You have taught us to take up the strains as our own. We ourselves have felt in fact what the sweet psalmist sometimes spoke in figure. We, as Your willing followers and Your acknowledged disciples, do now, by right and privilege which You have given us, appropriate to ourselves the poems, parables, and prophecies which once vibrated in dark sayings from David’s harp, as precious utterances concerning heavenly favors to which Your sovereign grace has made us to be fairly and fully entitled.
Unhappy you, who cannot call this God your God, whatever else you may have to glory in. But happy you who know that God is yours, however little of this world’s store may fall to your portion. Thus have we considered the double grip and what it lays hold upon. Let us not pass on till we have imitated the grasp of faith and appropriated the infinite treasure. May the Holy Spirit enable us.
Inward and Outward Trust
Notice under what aspects God is thus laid hold of. Inwardly, first, as we have said, as our strength: “The Lord is my strength.” Brothers and sisters, do you know how strong you are? If you have said, “The Lord is my strength,” I challenge you to say how strong you are. “Ah, sir,” you say, “I know how weak I am.” That I will also take liberty to question, for albeit that you know yourself to be as weak as water, you are weaker yet—weaker than even your despondency has dreamed.
“I know I am nothing,” you say. Yes, but you would not even have had grace enough to know you were nothing if God had not given it to you. To be nothing is ours by nature, but to know that we are nothing and to confess that we are nothing is a gift of His grace.
Brethren, we are emptier than emptiness and vainer than vanity. We may tax language and use extravagant hyperboles, but we shall never be able to fitly estimate our own utter insignificance. We are weakness itself, hampered with the conceit of power. And yet, if we can say in truth, “The Lord is my strength,” we cannot estimate how strong we are, for there is no measuring omnipotence.
Come, let us consider the matter and let each believer speak personally. He who made the heavens and the earth is my strength. He, who fixes the mountains firm so that they start not from their places in the day of tempest, when the cedars are breaking, is my strength. Although He will one day rock heaven and earth and before His presence all creation shall flee away, yet He is my strength. These are but the hidings of power, but truly, all the force reserved and lying latent in the Almighty bosom is engaged for His saints and is my portion. Whatever omnipotence can do (and that is a wrong expression to use, for omnipotence knows no frontier or confines to its sphere of possible action) is ours.
All that God has done is but little in comparison with what He can effect when His arm shall be bared to complete His mighty purposes. Yet all the possibilities that pertain to God belong to His people. “The Lord is my strength.” With Jehovah for our strength, we obtain a matchless capacity for endurance!
No, She Has All Former Mercy Present Before Her Eyes
She sings, “I am helped.” Nor does faith say, “My heart trusted in Him, and I shall be helped.” Perhaps the needed help has not yet arrived, but she is so sure that it will come that she cries, “I am helped.” Am I as poor as I was before I prayed? No, I am not, for I have obtained the blessing I asked for. I appear to be as weak as I was before I trusted Him, but I am not, for the Lord is my strength, and having trusted in Him, I am helped. I wish we lived more in that blessed present tense in which God dwells—
“He fills His own eternal ‘now,’ And sees our ages pass.”
Now, brethren, let all the past of God’s mercy come up to your memory and let that be a part of the “now.” And then just take, as it were, a spring and bounce forward into the future—yes, leap right across life, as though it were a narrow rivulet, into heaven, and put the eternal future into the present, “now,” and sing as our sweet poet does—
“Lo! A ‘new song’ is in my mouth, To long-loved music set: Glory to You for all the grace I have not tasted yet.”
“I am helped.” I have now the good I crave. By faith, I realize it as a present possession. I am helped. I am helped. The past lives in my gratitude, the future lives in my confidence, and both alike meet in the present, and my soul is glad. “My heart trusted in Him, and I am helped.”
Confidence in God
You must notice, reverting again to the words of the text, that this confidence was, from first to last, confidence in God, and therefore, was it honored with a gracious result: “My heart trusted in Him, and I am helped.” Many and many a time we have been obliged to say, “My heart trusted in So-and-so, and I am deceived.” But here it is, “and I am helped.” Sometimes it happens, “My heart trusted in such a one, and I am disappointed, though not deceived. He would have helped me, but he could not.” But here it is, “My heart trusted in Him, and I am helped.”
All has happened according to promise—there has been no failure of faithfulness, no breach of covenant, no forgetfulness, no delay. I am helped sufficiently, punctually, continually, and so I always shall be helped until toiling and traveling days are over. Glory be to God for this.
Christian Experience and Doctrine
Dear friends, have all of you who are Christians attained to a Christian experience? Doctrine, you know, is very important. It is well that you should learn it, understand it, and adhere to it. But doctrine is only the truth in which you are instructed and is useless for growth in grace until you experience the power of it in your own souls.
Do you know why so many people run away from the truth as it is in Jesus and take up with strange conceits and new-fangled notions? It is because they have no inward experience of the old truths. Let a man once have a deep experience of the evil of sin, and I will guarantee you, he will feel his need of a Savior and the necessity of the atonement made by blood. Let him have an experience of the power of the blood upon his conscience, the peace that comes out of substitution, and he will cling to the cross. He will be ready to die for the cross. He has such joy rising out of it as he never found elsewhere.
I am obliged to cling to the gospel, for if it is not true, I am a lost man. I must hold fast to it, for all my hope is fixed there, and if it is taken away, my sun is quenched, the well of my joy is dried up, and life becomes a lingering death. But, beloved, an experience of those blessed truths which God has revealed to us by His Spirit writes them where they cannot be erased—not upon the tablet of the brain, from which they may be erased, for men forget, but upon the tablet of the heart, from which they cannot be obliterated. For men do not disclaim that which has become a part of their inward consciousness and which God has made as dear to them as their lives. May you all have such a definite experience as the text sets before us. The Holy Spirit will work it in all the saints.
A Declared Emotion
Lastly, here we have a declared emotion: “Therefore my heart greatly rejoices and with my song will I praise Him.” Here, again, is the inward phase, you see—“My heart greatly rejoices,” and then there is the outward embodiment of the internal feeling—“and with my song will I praise Him.”
Behold a heart rejoicing with a sacred and intense delight! Some people’s rejoicing is but skin deep. They laugh, their face is surfaced over with smiles, and their mouth bubbles up with silly glee. To my mind, there is hardly anything sadder than the frequent laughter which exposes a vacant mind. The moment company has gone, this volatile mirthfulness subsides and the jolly companions resolve into solitary individuals, each one dull and dreary, far from any of them being happy.
You may, perhaps, have heard of Carlini, one of the most celebrated clowns of the beginning of this century. He was a man whose wit and humor kept all Paris in a roar of laughter. But he himself had little share of the cheerfulness he simulated so well and stimulated so much. His comedies brought him no comfort. Though a professor of mirth, he was a victim of melancholy. He consulted a physician and asked him for a prescription to relieve his lowness of spirits and habitual despondency. His physician gave him some medicine, but advised him by way of recreation to go to the theater and hear Carlini, whose fun and frolic were of such repute.
“If he does not fetch the blues out of you, nobody will.”
“Alas! sir,” said he, “I am Carlini.”
And so, doubtless, it has often happened that men make glee for others when they are full of gloom themselves. The face smiles like summer, but the heart is freezing with the cold of winter. Not so the man who has laid hold on God. “My heart rejoices,” he says, “my heart rejoices.” No, he puts in the word, “greatly.” “My heart greatly rejoices,” as if it were as full of joy as ever it could be. As though it throbbed and danced joyously with a fullness of delight. “My heart greatly rejoices.”
Rejoicing and Singing
Christians can say this whenever they lay hold on God, even though they are surrounded by a world of trouble. We know sometimes what it is to wear a sad face with a glad heart, just as some others are wearing a glad face with a sad heart. Blessed is the man whom God has taught greatly to rejoice. Let him indulge the holy humor to the best of his ability. What, now, is the outcome of this sacred, soul-satisfying joy? He says, “With my song will I praise Him.”
Whenever you feel exceedingly glad in the Lord, be sure to let people know. This is one of the emotions which ought never to be concealed. When I have been preaching among the Primitive Methodists, at the very mention of joy in the Lord, I have heard them call out, “Hallelujah!” In Wales, I have heard the “Gogoniant”—glory be to God. We do not commit such improprieties here, do we? We are too quiet and proper to transgress the rules of enforced decorum. And yet, sometimes it might be the most natural thing in the world for a Christian to feel that he could not hold his strong emotions in stiff restraint but must shout aloud, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name.”
Do you think, dear friends, we sing enough? I do not think we do. The world is very pleased with singing of a certain sort. Tuneful airs are tacked on to trashy words. What foolishness we hear in the popular songs of the day. I have been quite unable to understand the sense when the sound has jingled in my ears. When I have asked, “What does it mean?” nobody has been able to interpret, or at least to make me comprehend it. To them, it may have appeared like a clever ballad, but to me it seemed mere empty doggerel.
Well, if they are not ashamed to sing their bacchanalian songs and sometimes to make night hideous with their choruses, surely we need not be ashamed to sing the songs of Zion, and to sing them with spirit too. Good woman, why don’t you sing? You would handle that box-iron just as well if you sang a psalm. You could mend those children’s clothes quite as cleverly if you would sing a hymn. Good friend there, you could crack your whip as you walked along by the side of your pair of horses pulling the cart and yet hum the while, a favorite tune.
To get alone and sing some sacred melody by yourselves is very refreshing. My father had, years ago, a servant who was always singing. And when he asked her why, she said that it helped to keep bad thoughts away. I knew a boy who was so fond of singing the praises of the Lord that his employers would let him go out on the Common sometimes to give vent to his vocal powers, for he sang rather too much and too loud for a quiet house.
I love to see young Christians full of joy. It is good, sometimes, to get away and have a time to yourself, as much as if you said, “I am not singing for any of you, but I am singing to God.” I listened one night and heard the nightingale with its delicious, “joog, joog, joog,” pouring forth such sweet music that it seemed to make the moon stand still, charmed with the strain. I know that the nightingale did not sing to me. He did not know that I was listening, nor would he have cared if he had known. Perhaps if he had noticed that I had been so close, he might have flown away. He was singing without regard to human ears. It is a sweet thing just to sing unto the Lord.
Classical music is all very well, but heart music is the essence of sweetness. “My heart trusted in Him, and I am helped, therefore my heart greatly rejoices and with my song will I praise Him.” When you walk through the woods in springtime, you come upon a stretch of blue hyacinth. You fancy that a piece has been torn away from the azure mantle of the sky and thrown down among the trees. Why are those hyacinths clothed in such cerulean splendor? For what purpose is their sweet perfume poured forth in such lavish profusion?
Do you say, “They waste their sweetness on the desert air?”
No, O Man! Know rather, that God is near. Those flowers are His and this is His garden. He delights to gaze on their living sapphires. Did you ever light upon a clump of lovely flowers in a lone spot of forest, moor, or common where the foot of man has seldom profaned the soil? Have you not paused to admire? There they stand with their golden cups, like chamberlains of a king! Why are they here in such gorgeous livery? Who is all this beautiful variety of form and color intended to greet? “Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
What king has come to dine here and sip from those jeweled chalices? It is the eternal God who made them and who takes delight in the work of His hands. It is He who walks among these solitary beauties in the cool of the day. Did you not see the flowers bow their heads in worship as they felt His breath among their foliage? Down deep at the bottom of the sea, the coral grows in luxuriant abundance, and many-tinted shells that seem like unfinished rainbows are lying there unseen, never to be seized by human hands or bartered in the market for gain.
The Lord visits those cool grottoes and takes pleasure in His own delicate handiwork. All things are not for greedy man. The Lord has His reserved gardens, His springs shut up, His fountains sealed. So let it be with us. Do not let us wait to praise the Lord till we can get an audience of our fellow creatures, though we may sometimes wish that our songs would charm their ears and win their love for Jesus. But let us, oftentimes, retire into holy solitude and then all alone, break the silence of our loneliness, saying, “My heart greatly rejoices, and with my song will I praise the Lord. As long as I live and when I die, and when I rise again, and through eternity, with my song will I praise Him.”
“In blessing You with grateful songs, My happy life shall glide away. The praise that to Your name belongs, Hourly with lifted hands I’d pray. Abundant sweetness! While I sing Your love, my ravished heart overflows; Secure in You, my God and King, Of glory that no period knows.”
How I wish that some would begin at this moment a life of praise—begin by taking God to be their strength—begin by trusting in Christ to be their shield—begin by an experience of the power of prayer to bring them help. If you do so, you shall rise from height to height in your flights of praise. You shall first join with us below to sing as best you can, and afterwards you shall mount into the upper orchestra where all the chosen singers meet, and sit and chant with them the endless anthem which ascends unto Jehovah, our strength and our song. God bless you, beloved, and give you to know and prove the sweetness of this blessed text, and make you to sing David’s divine song to the stringed instruments of your renewed hearts all the days of your lives. Amen.