A Sermon: “He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill, that he may set him with princes, even with the princes of his people” (Ps. cxiii. 7, 8)

BY THE REV. D. MACFARLANE, DINGWALL,
Preached on Sabbath, 8th September, 1917.

WE find these words with some addition in the second chapter of First Samuel, as part of Hannah’s song of praise to the Lord for His goodness to her in giving her a son, who was from his youth taught of the Lord, and became an eminent prophet in His service. In our text we have two things to notice:—

I.—The condition of the man spoken of; and
II.—That which the Lord does for him.

I.—The condition of the man spoken of.

1. The Lord’s people, of whom Hannah was one, are characterised in Scripture as poor. If it is true of us, as we are by nature, that we are poor, the believer is “poor in spirit,” but the man who is in his natural state is spiritually poor. When God created man he was rich, having God Himself as his portion in all He is and in all He has, and he was perfect in the image of his Creator, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, but by sin he lost all these riches, and he became poor indeed. Nothing belongs to him in this state but sin, and misery. He is as poor now as any reasonable creature could be in the world. This is not only the testimony of Scripture concerning man in his fallen state, but it is also what the Spirit convinces of, when He begins the good work in the soul of the sinner.

2. He is in “the dust,” namely, of spiritual death, dead in trespasses and sins.” He is dead spiritually as the body of man is put in the grave, there is not the least breath of life in it. “We were by nature the children of wrath, even as others” (Eph. ii. 3).

3. He is in the dust of repentance. This he must be, if he is saved. Under the Old Testament dispensation even a king, when brought to repentance, had to put off his royal apparel and cover himself with sackcloth and ashes. If individuals and nations were brought to this dust, there would be hope for them. Although individuals are brought to repentance, there is no sign yet of our nation coming to repentance, and therefore the Lord continues to smite us with the sword of war, scarcity of food, and other calamities. “O that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways! I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries. He should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat: and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee” (Ps. lxxxi. 13, 14, 16). The Lord complained of other people who did not return to Him that smote them.

We have no doubt but He makes the same complaint against our nation. Without repentance and reformation He will not accept of their worship. “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations: incense is an abomination unto me: the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow” (Isaiah i. 11-17).

1. He is in the dust of humiliation. When Manasseh was brought to repentance, he humbled himself greatly, because he sinned greatly. People by nature are proud and haughty, and say, like Pharaoh, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice?” (Ex. v. 2), but it is otherwise with the Lord’s people: they humble themselves in the presence of Him who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and are in their own estimation very small. When Abraham was pleading with God for sparing Sodom and Gomorrah, he, though eminent in grace, reckoned himself as dust and ashes. “Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes” (Genesis xviii. 27). In the past, when the Lord was pouring out His judgments on nations, including our own nation, a day of humiliation was appointed by our Sovereign, but in our evil day those in authority, though appealed to repeatedly, refuse to appoint a day of humiliation on a week-day, with the result that the Lord shows His displeasure at them by the continuance of the present terrible War, and in other ways in His holy providence. We have sinned against God. Were it not for sin there would not be such a thing heard in the world as this man and that man died. All who lived in the world in the past, except Enoch and Elijah, died, and their bodies were brought to the dust of death, and all who now live in the world, and all who shall live in it to the end of time, with the exception of those living in the world at the Second Advent of Christ, shall die, and their bodies shall be brought to the dust of the grave. This is a divine appointment: “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews ix. 27). This ought to make us seek preparation for death.

The man spoken of in our text is not only in the dust, but he is also on “the dunghill.” I take this to mean our state of corruption. We are not only guilty, but also our whole nature is depraved by sin. “We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isaiah lxiv. 6). There is no dunghill so filthy as our corrupt nature. Man in that view of him is not only lying on the dunghill, but the dunghill is within him. All who shall be raised from the dunghill shall be convinced of their depraved condition. It was a sense of this condition that made the Apostle Paul cry out: “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. vii. 24).

II.—That which the Lord does for the man that is in this uncomfortable condition.

“He raiseth him from the dust.” It is not the man himself that raiseth himself from the dust, nor can the Lord’s people raise him from it, although they may be used, as they are, as instruments to do this work; it is God that does it. He does it in love, mercy, and compassion, according to His eternal purpose of salvation.

1. He raiseth him from the dust of spiritual death by quickening him by His Spirit. “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. ii. 1). It is the same Almighty power that raised Christ from the dead that raises the sinner out of his spiritual grave. “And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places” (Eph. i. 19, 20). In this quickening of the dead to life some speak of the co-operation of the sinner with God, but what co-operation can a dead man give? When Christ raised up Lazarus from the dead, the dead man did not, and could not, co-operate with Christ in his own resurrection. There is not such a thing as co-operation in this work; the sinner is passive in regeneration, but when he is brought to life and born again, then he acts in doing the will of God.

2. Once the sinner is raised from his spiritual grave, he shall never fall into it again, although he is conscious of much of the power of death in him, which has the effect on him in joining others in the prayer, “Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee?” (Psalm lxxxv. 6), which is a sign of life. A dead man cannot speak.

3. He is raised up from a state of condemnation to a state of justification on the ground of Christ’s righteousness being imputed to him, and received by faith alone. This is a glorious lifting-up of the guilty sinner. He shall never fall into a state of condemnation again, for “there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” He is exalted in the righteousness of Christ. He is as highly exalted in that righteousness in this world as he shall be in glory.

4. He is raised up in his nature by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, the groundwork of which is the new nature begotten in regeneration. An unregenerate sinner cannot be sanctified. Sanctification is a progressive work that goes on till the death of the believer, when he is made perfect in holiness. The quickening of the sinner from death to life, his regeneration and sanctification, are effected by means of the word of the Gospel. The word of the law is used in awakening to a sense of his sinful and lost condition, but it is the word of the Gospel that is used in accomplishing a saving change—a change of nature and a change of state.

5. He is raised up from being a child of the devil to be a child of God, and has a right to all the privileges of the sons of God.

6. He is raised up from the slavery of sin to serve God, the chief end for which man was originally created.

7. He is raised up to the rank of a prince. God sets him “with princes, even with the princes of his people.” This is true of the new-born babe as well as of the more advanced Christian. The son of a king is a prince the day he is born, although he is not at that stage of his life conscious of his high dignity. As he advances in years he will come to realise his high rank. When the sinner is savingly changed from a state of nature to a state of grace, he may not be able at once to realise his high rank; but, as he “grows in grace, and in the knowledge of his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Peter iii. 18), he comes to know that he is one of the princes of God’s people, and when he reflects on the low state in which he had been by nature and the state in which he is now, he is filled with thankful wonder, and “calls upon his soul and all that is within him to be stirred up to praise and magnify the Lord,” to whom the glory of the change is due. “Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits” (Ps. ciii. 1, 2).

8. His body shall be raised up at the general resurrection on the last day. Death separates his soul from his body, and while his soul rests in heaven, his body rests in the grave as in a bed made comfortable by his Saviour, whose body lay in that bed, and “who is the first begotten from the dead.” Although Christ’s body rested in the grave for a short time, three days and three nights, the bodies of some of the Lord’s people have rested in their graves for several thousands of years. The body of Abel has rested there longer than any of them, for he was the first that died by a violent death, having been killed by his brother Cain. It is remarkable that the first son of Adam was a murderer, and that the first man murdered was a godly man. The spiritual resurrection of the soul was a great and glorious change, and the literal resurrection of the body shall be a great and glorious change also, effected by the same Almighty power. It is He whose voice raised up the soul from its spiritual grave that shall raise up the body at the resurrection, for He is “the resurrection and the life.” The glorious change that shall be made on the body of the man spoken of in our text is described in the fifteenth chapter of 1st Corinthians—it is sown a corruptible body; it is raised incorruptible. That is, it is broken down and reduced to dust; that is the meaning of the word corruptible here. It is raised incorruptible; that is, it cannot be broken down by sickness or death after that any more for ever after the resurrection. It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory, in such glory as that one would be apt to wonder whether it was the same body that was separated from the soul at death. “The vile body” shall be changed, and fashioned like unto the glorious body of Christ (Phil. iii. 21). It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. When put in the grave, it is so weak that it cannot move, but when raised from the grave, then, instead of being a drag upon the soul, as it had been before death, on account of many infirmities, it shall keep pace with the soul in serving God throughout eternity. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. We are not to understand by this change that the body shall be a spirit like the soul. It shall be as to substance the same body that was laid in the grave. Christ’s resurrection from the dead is the pattern of the resurrection of His people. At His resurrection it was the same body that was crucified that was raised from the dead, and He took that body with Him to heaven. Those who hold the view that the bodies of believers shall at the resurrection be made spiritual bodies, like their souls, found their view on the Scripture, “that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” but they do not understand the meaning of that Scripture, for flesh and blood there signifies the infirmities incident to the body in the state of imperfection. In His state of humiliation Christ took upon Him the sinless infirmities of His people, such as weakness, fatigue, etc., and the days of His humiliation are called in Scripture, “The days of his flesh,” but the days of His flesh came to an end at His resurrection. “He was crucified in weakness,” but He left all His infirmities in the grave.

9. Lastly.—He shall raise him up from his state of pilgrimage, trials, and tribulations to a state of rest in heaven, where the sun shall never go down, and where he shall serve God perfectly, as he never managed to do when on earth. His holy and happy state there no tongue of man or angel can express, except as it is revealed in the Word of God. We shall leave him there to enjoy his unspeakable felicity in the full enjoyment of God to all eternity.

In conclusion.—We have been speaking of the great and wonderful change that God made in the state of the man who was by nature in the dust and on the dunghill, lifting him up from that state, and setting him among the princes of His people. You ought to look back on your past history and examine yourself as to whether you can point to a time when that change took place in your case. Perhaps some of the Lord’s people who were converted in their childhood may find it difficult to point out the exact time in which they were savingly changed, but others, like the Apostle Paul, can tell the very day in which they were converted; and others of them who cannot tell the day are able to tell the year, and the season of the year, in which they were convinced of their sins and enabled to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and all of them manifest by their walk and conversation that the change has really taken place. “By their fruits they are known.” All whom the Father gave to Christ in the everlasting covenant of grace shall be brought out of a state of nature to a state of grace on earth, and a state of glory in heaven. As was said about the cattle of the children of Israel in Egypt, that not a hoof of them was left in Egypt, it may be said about them that not a hoof of them shall be left to perish in the state of nature. If you are one of these, and, although you should have such a mean view of yourself as to consider yourself but a hoof, you shall not be left to die in your sins. There was an ungodly woman at Lochcarron, called Kate Mhor, or big Kate, who, according to her own confession, was guilty almost of every sin mentioned in the decalogue. This great sinner was converted under the ministry of the Rev. Lauchlan MacKenzie. After she was brought to the liberty of the Gospel, she was afraid to come forward to the Lord’s table, although the Session was willing to admit her. On a Communion occasion she received a token, but, remembering what a notorious sinner she was, she did not come forward, and when the last table was served, they heard a doleful scream in the congregation. This was big Kate. The minister, knowing her state of mind, concluding that she denied the Lord, and that her opportunity on that occasion for professing Him publicly was gone, intimated that there would be another table, and invited any who had received a token to come forward. Kate Mhor came forward to the table. She was the only communicant at that table, and the minister who served it spoke from the words, “There shall not an hoof be left behind,” a suitable text for her who considered herself but a hoof among the Lord’s people.

We shall conclude by repeating the words of Hannah in her song of praise to the Lord for His goodness to her: “The Lord killeth, and maketh alive; he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up. The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich; he bringeth low, and lifteth up. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory” (1 Samuel ii. 6-8).

THE Word of God, when grasped with a firm hold of faith, is found to be a strong “sword of the Spirit,” wherewith we “wound the dragon.” Even the ten commandments, when written in the heart and uttered against him, are sufficient to repel the enemy. Against this roaring lion they are like ten weapons such as Samson’s, or ten swords such as Michael’s.—Krummacher.