Psalms 43

Lovers faint away if they have not a sight of the object loved. A gracious soul can want health, but not want God who is the health of his countenance (Psalm 43:5). If God should say to a soul that entirely loves him, Take your ease, swim in pleasure, solace yourself in the deli…

The world does busy him, but God does delight and satisfy him. He says as David (Psalm 43:4), God my exceeding joy, the gladness or cream of my joy. 4 He who loves God, cannot live without him.

2. Seeing there is a God, let us labor to get an interest in him (Psalm 48:14): "This God is our God." Two things will comfort us, deity and propriety: since the fall we have lost likeness to God, and communion with God; let us labor to recover this lost interest, and pronounce…

Answer. Surely by remembering the works of the Lord and his wonders of old, and by meditating in all his works and gracious acts which he had done for him. So likewise in another place in great anguish of spirit, he says to his soul, Why art thou cast down my soul, and why art t…

The new Man, which is renewed in Knowledge. Psalms 43:3, 4. O send out thy Light and thy Truth; let them lead me, let them bring me into thy holy Hill.

Hence it is that the saints have been like Mount Zion, and remained impregnable in the midst of waves, being settled upon the Rock of Ages. O Sirs, could you account God your exceeding joy, how sweetly and cheerfully would you go to his altar upon all occasions (Psalm 43:4). And…

When a soldier faints in the field, he soon lets fall his sword. David chides himself out of his melancholy (Psalm 43:5): Why are you cast down O my soul? Why are you disquieted within me?

Fourthly, this is the especial work of wisdom: if God has let out any beam of wisdom into your souls, to show unto you any thing of the excellency of Christ, this will be immediately desired; as in that Parable of the wise Merchant, as soon as he had found the Pearl, he went and…

David was not ignorant of the ten commandments, of their sound; but he begs their spiritual sense and use. 5. If we would have the Spirit, we must ask it of God in prayer: For God gives the Spirit to those that ask him (Luke 11:13), and therefore we must say as David (Psalm 43:3…

2. That when any divine dispensation goes cross to our affections, yes our prayers and expectations, yet even then can faith bring meat out of the eater, and find many occasions of praise and thanksgiving to God: for nothing falls out so cross, but we may see the hand of God in…

Now there is an inseparable connection between our walking in the time of this life, and being received into Heaven after this life; and he that is resolved to walk by the rule of God's direction, may promise himself to be received into glory after his journey is ended. So (Psal…

Second, God's mourners sometimes lack comfort through discontent and peevishness. David makes his disquiet the cause of his sadness (Psalm 43:5): Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you disquieted within me?

And this the heart sees by faith (Jeremiah 31:18): "You have corrected me, and I was as an untamed heifer" — untamed and wanton, flinging and throwing here and there. So David confesses the unquietness of his heart (Psalm 43:5): "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you…