Preached by Rev. N. CAMERON, in St. Jude’s, Glasgow, on Harvest Thanksgiving Day (Wednesday, 4th December, 1929). (Taken down by a Hearer.)
WE have here in this Psalm which was composed by David in the Wilderness of Judah and that must have been (according to one sentence in the Psalm) when he had to flee for his life from his own unnatural son Absalom because we find that he mentions near the end of the Psalm that he was a king at the time. He was not crowned king of Judah nor of Israel when he had to flee before King Saul, and he says here at the beginning of the Psalm that he was hungry and thirsting not after his crown, his palace, or his kingdom, but God. He says here: “O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee; my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is.” That was his experience. Then he goes on to say what he really wished to see, viz., the “power and glory of God.” To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary” an honest prayer in the heart of a man that desires God’s fellowship above every other thing in the world. Although he was in danger of losing his kingdom and life, he prays neither for his life nor for his kingdom but that he would have the fellowship of God for ever.
Then he goes on to show the reasons why he desired so much to enjoy God, His communion and His fellowship—“Because thy loving-kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee.” It was better for David to lose his natural life than to lose the loving-kindness of God. There were many since that day who were of the same mind (many of them in Scotland) who preferred to lose their natural life than to lose faith and the loving-kindness of God. In order to meditate on these words for a short time, we shall notice, first of all, My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; secondly, my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips.
I. The satisfaction that the immortal soul of man may have (and many have had) in the enjoyment of God.
He says here: “My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness.”
We shall notice, further, a few of the reasons why the people of God in the world—and even those who have got the means of grace—should live in expectation of enjoying this extraordinary favour, for this is a favour that cannot dry up to the carnal enjoyments of this world and make them just an abomination to those who would enjoy God in Christ and the Spirit as their own God. We have to mention some things as regards how the Lord satisfies man’s soul. We are gathered together here to-day purposely to acknowledge in thankfulness God’s goodness for providing for our bodies. It is a Harvest Thanksgiving Day and that means that we have many, many reasons why we should thank God in face of all our ill-deserts how He is providing for us, notwithstanding how provoking we are as a people and as a nation.
We shall notice how God satisfies the soul of man. Man’s soul must be emptied of the fullness of it. When a vessel is full you cannot put anything more in it, and when men are fully satisfied with their own condition there is no place in them for the blessing of God, and if they go on in that condition, full of the world in their heart and in their mind, they will go to eternity without knowing anything of what those realise of whom the text speaks. God empties the soul of man. It is written concerning Moab:—”Moab hath been at ease from his youth, and he hath settled on his lees, and hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither hath he gone into captivity; therefore, his taste remained in him, and his scent is not changed.” They were fully satisfied with themselves, with the carnal mind that is enmity against God and which departs from Him, and you, who are in that condition, do not need to expect that you will know anything until you will be emptied of that. God empties His people. He awakens them by His Spirit to a realisation of the awful corruption that is in them and they immediately begin to depart from these things and turn away. They cease to be satisfied with themselves, they cease to be satisfied with the pleasures of sin in the world and cease to be satisfied with all the good things the world can give without God. Until there is this, you can never expect to know anything at all about the enjoyment, the exceeding great enjoyment of those who are truly God’s people.
You must be emptied of yourself, you cannot be satisfied with yourself. You cannot be satisfied with the fullness that is in you, in your heart, in your mind, and not only that there must be a sense of your need, your need of being filled with all the fullness of God and when a sinner feels this he is “filled with marrow and fat,” the best things that are known in the world for supporting the body, and this means the best things that are known in time or eternity to satisfy the soul, so that they are a people who are emptied of this and who realise how poor they are. They have nothing that they can bring to God, nor offer to Him, nothing that can satisfy their own conscience and nothing that can satisfy the claims of God’s justice upon them. Whatever way God may take to do it—He may do it in a moment as He did in the case of Saul of Tarsus or He may take a long time doing it—it will come to this that the poor sinner realises that he has nothing that will stand at death and at the Great Day and that he needs what is greater than the whole material creation. Offer the whole material creation to a sinner that is convinced of his real condition as guilty and he will spurn the idea. He cannot be put off with the whole world instead of having an interest in the salvation that is in Christ; he must have Christ, to be without Him is death.
It is to such sinners that are truly convinced of what the Scriptures declare concerning them as regards their state and their nature and also how impossible it is for them to think even one good thought that would reconcile them to God, that God the Holy Ghost—who leads this man through His own Word—begins now to reveal to the sinner the fullness that is in Christ. The poor, empty, guilty sinner begins now to see in the Scriptures that there is in Christ all that he needs for time and for eternity. If the sinner now could get Christ, this is the thing above all things when the sinner realises his ruined condition and the claims of God against him. Nothing else will do, and it is the Holy Spirit, my friends, that points the sinner to see in God’s Word not a dream nor a vision but reveals to him Christ as the Saviour of the lost. It is told of a weak-minded man who lived near Inverness that he was so weak that sometimes he would break out laughing in church. He never did it, however, in an irreverent way. This day in the middle of a sermon—on a Communion Sabbath—he began to laugh and of course the minister knew well that the man was not responsible and that he had some occasion. He sent for him the next day and he asked him: “Why were you laughing yesterday?” “Oh,” he said, “I saw Christ yesterday.” “Where did you see Him?” “I saw Him in the sermon, the Word of God. I did not see any picture nor anything of that nature but I saw Christ in the glory of His Person and finished work in the Scriptures as these were set before me in the sermon.”
When God the Holy Ghost points his eye and gives him to see in the looking-glass or mirror of God’s Word Christ in the glory of His Person and finished work as the Holy Ghost sets before the sinner there, it is there that the sinner sees Him, it is there that the sinner desires to have Him, this Christ of the Scriptures, not a false Christ, the true Christ, the Son of God who was sent by the Father in His infinite love into this world and who came in His own infinite love to obey and to suffer and die for guilty men, and who rose again and ascended to heaven and is now at the right hand of God as the Great High Priest of His Church pleading the merits of His own blood, for the forgiveness of sins for perishing sinners. It is the Holy Ghost which reveals Christ in the Scriptures, not only in the Scriptures of the New Testament, but down through all the Scriptures of the Old Testament, the priesthood, the altar, the blood shed. He sees Christ in all these as typified in them but he sees Christ in the finished work of Calvary without any shadow at all as the better thing that the Apostle, or the Holy Ghost, says was to come. He comes into the soul of a sinner when he realises his own ruined condition and the wrath that he is under and the guilt that lies upon him, and sees in Christ all that he needs to satisfy him, divine justice and his own conscience. He begins then to hunger and thirst after this Christ as his righteousness. You find that it is to such that the promises of God’s Word are given. You cannot find promises in the Scriptures at all to men that are at ease in Sion but you find promises to those who are “hungering and thirsting after righteousness.” “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled” or satisfied, and wherever this is, wherever there is a hungering and a thirsting after getting satisfaction in Christ crucified, you may rest assured (as sure as God says it), wherever that person is on the face of the earth who has got a hunger and a thirst in him that nothing can satisfy but Christ as his righteousness and also as his sanctification (because these two things are not separate at all) that he will be filled.
We cannot at all, my dear friends, accept as godly, men who say that they are Christians and that they are Christ’s and show they have no hunger after holiness but hunger after the vanities of the world. That is only a delusion but those who are truly hungering and thirsting it shews life is there for there is no such thing in any dead creature as hunger and thirst and God’s promise is to that life that has a hunger and thirst after the righteousness of Christ and after holiness—”it shall be filled.” It is this that we have got in our text: “My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness.” When one is satisfied you cannot take more. There is a satisfaction in Christ crucified to a poor guilty sinner that is enabled by grace to receive Him as his own Word, his own personal Saviour. There is such satisfaction there that the poor sinner can say: “This will do for me for time and for an endless eternity.”
He speaks here about the nature of this satisfaction that the sinner receives in the moment God bestows faith on him, or as we have it in the Shorter Catechism: “Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace whereby we receive and rest upon Him alone for salvation as He is offered to us in the gospel.”
When God, my friends, enables a sinner to receive Christ in the offer of the gospel it is God’s offer to the perishing sinner and especially to the sinner that is conscious of his need. When he is enabled to receive Him he will get what will satisfy the claims of conscience, the claims of God’s justice, and the peace of God comes into the immortal soul. If you were to ask that sinner who sees Christ as his own Saviour if he were satisfied he would say:—”I am satisfied with Christ and the salvation that is in Him, satisfied with His righteousness, satisfied with His finished work.” And this is true, my friends, of all. David says concerning it that it is like a man being “satisfied with marrow and fat.” That is, as has already been said, the best things known among men—”marrow and fat”—and this moment, there never has been anything in heaven nor in earth like it, a poor sinner who may have been days and months afraid that he would be in hell for ever, and through Christ crucified and offered in the gospel, receives the satisfaction that is of such a nature that no creature ever got more satisfaction than he gets and never got anything so sweet.
Men in their natural state look upon true godliness as being a morose thing, a sad sort of thing and a thing in which there is no pleasure at all. Ah! my friend, you are greatly deceived. There is more pleasure in one moment of peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, peace through His blood, the forgiveness of sins—there is more pleasure in one moment of it than the world had since God created it. It is only a false peace—the pleasures of sin. Those who have never tasted of the “fatness and marrow” of God’s grace know nothing whatsoever about what the happiness and the consolation is, as we have it: “If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love.” There is something that language is too weak to express and which it cannot convey as to what the satisfaction is which the sinner who receives Christ enjoys.
I heard once from a godly woman that that servant of God who was at Fort Augustus (Rev. Francis McBean) was preaching in Plockton. He was describing the extraordinary joy that the soul had that came by faith into possession of Christ and of God in Christ as his own portion for eternity. He said that there were three looking at the sinner, who was rejoicing, with envious eyes—the devil, the world and the flesh. He said that the devil remarked to the world: “Wait you till I will go after him, I will put an end to his rejoicing.” “Oh,” said the world, “wait you till I will go after him and I will make it bitter for him,” but, said the flesh: “Wait you two till I begin and I will make it more wretched for him than the two of you.” You find in the case of the Apostle Paul who knew what the meaning of these words were—a man to be “satisfied with marrow and with fatness,” the best things that ever have been heard of—how that man, not by Satan, nor by the world, but by his own carnal nature—had to cry out: “O! wretched man that I am!” after being satisfied with the marrow of the gospel, of the love of God in the gospel, satisfied with the covenant of grace and with all that that covenant contains. I have noticed in the sermons of the divines of the Second Reformation (such as Samuel Rutherford) that they used to say: “If you are satisfied with the covenant of grace and with God’s way of salvation to perishing men through Christ and Him crucified, the covenant of grace is yours”—to be satisfied shews that it has become yours already.
Well, my friends, here we have David stating about being “satisfied with marrow and fatness.” I desire to notice two or three things about the covenant of grace. The sinner is fully satisfied with the order of the covenant of grace. The unconverted sinner has got many things against the order of God’s way of salvation. He would like to have a share in the work himself. He cannot be reconciled to be saved as a ruined sinner without any merit or anything at all in himself that draws God’s mercy to him. You see, the sinner that looks at the order of the covenant of grace sees that this is the order of it that God commends His love to perishing men in that while men were yet sinners Christ died for them, and that it is not at all a good man or a good woman that God justifies but an ungodly man, a sinner that never did anything but sin. If I were to enter into that I think that this is very plainly at the root of the determined opposition to the covenant of grace that men are not satisfied that the glory should be God’s and the shame theirs; but those who are taught of God are fully satisfied with the order of it and it is true of them what God says in another place: “Thou shalt not lift up thy head any more with shame in the day that I shall be reconciled to thee.” They are satisfied with that shame and confusion of face belongs to them but that mercy, grace and truth and righteousness belong to the Lord their God. They are fully satisfied with that, that the glory will be His and nothing of it theirs, and that is one reason why they cannot depart from the order of God’s covenant when other men want to set up man as something great and honourable and good. That is really where those who believe they are going to be saved by the covenant of works and those who are going to be saved by the covenant of grace differ. They accept God’s character as to their state and nature, and they accept God’s character as regards His mercy, pity and free love to perishing men that it is altogether on account of what God is in Himself, and not on account of anything that is in them. There is order in all things.
They are again satisfied with the stability of the covenant of grace. They are not Arminians. They do not believe that a sinner who is born again and is united to Christ by faith may perish eternally. They do not believe that those who are satisfied with this marrow and fatness shall fall away finally. They are satisfied with this “that the mountains shall depart and the hills shall be removed” but God will not depart from those to whom He is reconciled in Christ and this gives them satisfaction. It will not do for them that it will be the last act of their will which will fix their destiny for eternity. They look upon God who is reconciled to them now in Christ as unchangeable, the covenant made with them in Christ as unchangeable as God Himself, far more so than the mountains or hills of this world. They are satisfied with that. I am not saying at all that they are sure that this covenant belongs to themselves but I am saying that this covenant is as stable as the throne of God. “Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face.” They see that as stable as the eternal God Himself.
We shall notice further in connection with this that they are quite satisfied again with the conditions of this covenant. They are satisfied that no sinner shall be saved but a sinner that must forsake his sins and when I make use of the term “condition” here it is not because I mean what very often is its meaning. It is not a condition which they can fulfil; but a sinner that is saved from his sins, is done with sin. Those who are not satisfied with that condition, who must have their carnal pleasures and religion along with it, show that they are not satisfied with the conditions upon which God offers to save a sinner—”Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” They are fully satisfied with that and their prayer is to God that He would save them from their sins, save them from committing sin and that He would save them from the sinfulness of their nature which appears in their thoughts, in their desires and affections and such things. They want holiness. They are quite satisfied with what God says: “Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord.”
I desire to notice one other point about this covenant of grace, i.e., they are satisfied also with the nature of the covenant. The covenant of works was made between God and man and this covenant was hanging, or based, upon what man would do if he gave obedience and whether man would continue to give that obedience. Whenever man failed, from the nature of the covenant it was broken and would never be made up. No sinner will ever see heaven by his or her works. That is done for ever but the nature of this covenant is that God made it, not with man at all, but with God His own Son. God, the Father, made this covenant with His Son in order that He might take the place of the guilty sinner and that He would render an obedience to God’s law and justice and the satisfaction of His sufferings and death which God required in order to save a sinner, and the nature of it is this that those, who receive Christ as their covenant, are not hanging now at all upon anything they may do. One sin brought the whole race to an estate of sin and misery, brought them to be liable to eternal punishment. That is not the nature of this covenant at all. The nature of it is that it was Christ that stood in man’s place and that He finished the work which justice and law required in order that man might be saved and when the sinner receives Christ by faith every sin that he commits does not at all break this covenant for them. If that were so no sinner could be saved. God’s people sin as well as others. It is not, my friends, upon their own goodness or their own works (although they certainly have them), but in their hearts, words and conduct they are different to the people of the world. As I said already they desire holiness, they desire conformity to God’s law and the gospel, but, my friends, it is not at all of this nature that if that sinner is justified freely by grace through the righteousness that is in Christ Jesus, if that sinner were to commit sin after that, that he would be gone. The nature of it is that God forgives sin to the sinner freely through the merits of Christ’s blood and He will continue to forgive the sinner to the last breath the sin of his nature and of his thoughts and words and actions, and Christ gives of the Holy Ghost, or the Spirit of Christ, to the soul that is united to Christ that although he sins he goes again and again (I do not know how many times a day he must go) to God confessing sin, imploring forgiveness and mercy through the blood of Christ, and the nature of the covenant is that he will receive this. I read in the writings of Thomas Boston a very wonderful thing in connection with that. It was the opinion of the divines that when God forgives sin He forgives all sin—one great forgiveness. Thomas Boston did not contradict that but said that when God forgave sin to the sinner that He forgave him all the sins that he committed and that he would commit and that were in him, but he said that Christ was a guarantee to God for that sinner, that He would bring him to repentance right on to the end of his days in the world and to confess his sins and to implore mercy of God; that this thing was not at all in the hands of the sinner himself. It is Christ that has bound Himself to the covenant of grace to God the Father that all the sins that the sinner who has been justified by faith and forgiven and a righteousness imputed to him that is perfect, for Christ bound Himself to bring that sinner to repentance right down to the end of his days in the world, and we agree with that. It may be proved from Scriptures how this is true. Take, for instance, one case. There was David, a man of God, and it seems that he had no feeling for about a year at least about the awful sins which he had committed until Nathan was sent to bring him to repentance, and when God, my friends, sends a scripture truth it awakens the conscience of the sinner and causes him to go to his knees to confess sin to God, just as Boston said that Christ is bound in the covenant of grace to see to it that the sinner to whom God forgives sin will repent and go to God for mercy, and that is the nature of it.
We will notice in the last place just a word or two as to the reason the people of God should expect this, expect all the blessings of the covenant of grace and why this is set before sinners by God as the only way of salvation and offered in the gospel to “whomsoever will;” and remember you ought to plead with God that He would make you willing by His own Spirit in a day of His power. First, man ought, my friends, to look for this satisfaction and especially those who are called: for this is really what reveals election. No one knows until the effectual calling of the Spirit makes it known in the world. This is true especially of those who are called. It ought to encourage sinners when God promises in His own Word to satisfy those who “hunger and thirst after righteousness.” There is no use offering food to a man that has no appetite nor water to a man that is not thirsty; that is the way with the sinner, he has no need of Christ, no sense of his need, like a man that does not know what it is to be hungry—quite full—and that does not know what it is to be thirsty. Where grace is—hunger and thirst—God attaches a promise to that, that the sinner shall be filled, and if you have that, my friends—a hunger—and you know what hunger means in the body, there is a hunger in the soul that nothing can satisfy but Christ and a thirst that nothing can satisfy but the Holy Ghost, you may rest assured that you will be filled. You will be satisfied for God promises it. His promise will not fail.
I desire to notice further in connection with this that God also reveals that it was for such that He made a provision in the gospel, for the poor, for the needy, those who have nothing, who see they are going to eternity for ever and ever, having nothing wherewith they will meet death on the Great Day of Judgment if they shall be without Christ and that is an experience that is felt even in the world. Those who are conscious of this you find are called in the Scriptures to “come to Christ,” and there is a promise attached: “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” What does that mean? It just means that God is offering salvation freely to the man who is thirsty and hungry and has no money, nothing by which he can buy these things. God offers freely. Well, that is what the sinner needs, wine and milk, bread, all that the immortal soul needs is offered freely. It is offered to the person that is hungry for it and that is thirsty, and He invites sinners to come to Him. What is the meaning of the words? “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” It is impossible for a man to be carrying a heavy burden and not to feel weary carrying it. It is impossible for you to find a man like that who will say that he does not know what it is to be weary who will have a load physically. Well, it is impossible spiritually to find a man or woman who fits in with that text who is “weary and heavy laden,” weary seeking Christ like the Church in the Song of Solomon and having a load of guilt; it is impossible for a sinner conscious of a heavy load of sin, from his youth to the present and the efforts he has been making to get this load off not to be weary of it. He invites such to come to Him and He will give them “rest.” Oh! do you think that Christ will not stand to His own word? Where a sinner has a load of sin that he is afraid will sink him to hell and who is weary carrying that, do you think, my friend, if he comes to Christ, looks to Him, He will fail in His word that that sinner will get rest? Never! His word will never fail.
I desire to notice further in connection with those who are truly God’s people that they have had past experience of beholding the power and brightness of His face within His holy place. They have had past experience of what really they want, as you find David praying for it in the 51st Psalm: “Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation,” this means that David by his own body deprived himself of the joy that he had in God’s salvation in the past and he was praying now that God would restore it to him, and oh, alas, how often we are guilty of depriving ourselves of the joy of God’s salvation which I believe all that are saved tasted of one day and thought that they would never lose it. It is not upon Him that you will lay the blame but on yourself and your own unsteadfastness and your own folly that caused all that you have to endure in the way of walking in darkness and having no light in the world.
In conclusion, my friends, whatever afflictions those, who have tasted that the “Lord is gracious,” may have, this is true of them they can never accept any more of the character that the godless world give to God. They will not accept that He is austere and it will be a pang when they feel that they are without Him, without the favour of God. They cannot allow any one to say anything about Him but that “the Lord our God is merciful, and He is gracious, long-suffering, and slow to wrath, in mercy plenteous.” They know His character even in the darkest hour and we believe this that this is part of the grief they have when they are afraid that they caused Him to hide His face for ever on account of their sins that they are going to lose such a being as God is, to lose Him as their portion, to lose Him for eternity.