Psalms 73

Our love to other things must be more indifferent; some drops of love may run beside to the creature, but the full stream must run towards God; the creature may have the milk of our love, but we must keep the cream of our love for God. God who is above all must be loved above al…

Question: What is it to be spiritual? Response: To be refined and sublimated, to have the heart still in heaven, to be thinking of God and glory, and to be carried up in a fiery chariot of love to God — this is to be spiritual (Psalm 73:25): Whom have I in heaven but you: on whi…

I will joy in the God of my salvation. The flowers in the garden die, but a man's portion remains: So outward things die and change, but (Psalm 73:26) you are the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. 2. In case of sadness of spirit, when God seems to cast off the soul…

2nd Motive: If we glorify God, he will glorify our souls forever; by raising God's glory we increase our own; by glorifying God we come at last to the blessed enjoying of him, and that brings me to the second point — the enjoying of God. Secondly, man's chief end is to enjoy God…

Object. But God's own people suffer great afflictions, they are injured and persecuted (Psalm 73:14). All the day long have I been plagued and chastened every morning.

First, there is a providential guiding: God guides our affairs for us, chalks out a way he would have us walk in; he resolves our doubts, unties our knots, appoints the bounds of our habitation (Acts 17:26). Second, a spiritual guiding (Psalm 73:24): You shall guide me with your…

2. If God be a God of knowledge, then see the folly of hypocrisy. Hypocrites do not virtutem facere, but fingere, Melanct. they carry it fair with men, but care not how bad their hearts are; they live in secret sin: (Psalm 73:11). They say how does God know? (Psalm 10:11). God h…

2. A child-like love to God is known, as by the effects, so by the degree; it is a superior love. We love our Father in heaven above all other things; above estate or relations, as oil runs above the water (Psalm 73:25). A child of God seeing a supereminency of goodness, and a c…

How many miles can the soul travel in an instant! (2.) The soul being spiritual, moves upward, it contemplates God and glory (Psalm 73:25). Whom have I in Heaven but you?

Use 2. Seeing there is a God, he will deal righteously, and give just rewards to men. Things seem to be carried in the world very unequally; the wicked flourish (Psalm 73); they who tempt God are delivered (Malachi 3:15). The ripe clusters of grapes are squeezed into their cup,…

6. Brother. It shows us what little cause the children of God have to envy the prosperity of the wicked; Quis aerario, quis plenis loculis indiget, Sen. The wicked have the waters of a full cup wrung out to them (Psalm 73:10), as if they had a monopoly of happiness; they have al…

But now the Lord has forsaken us,' etc. This we may also see in Asaph (or whatever other holy penman of Psalm 73): his heels were well-nigh tripped up in the dark. 'My feet were almost gone,' says he (verse 2) — that is, from keeping his standing by faith, as the apostle speaks…

This then may direct poor souls in distress as to what to venture all upon — on what ground to hazard souls, labors, endeavors, faith, repentance, obedience, and all — upon his name, when they see nothing in themselves to which any promise belongs. As David says in Psalm 73:26:…

It was Job's friends' fault, who having had no experience of such a condition themselves concluded he was a hypocrite. If you judge thus, then as Asaph says, 'You condemn the generation of the just' (Psalm 73:13-14). And herein Satan also is gratified and the strict ways of grac…

As it is a fond and childish fault, so it is brutish also, thus to judge — I call it so because you are led therein by sense alone, and like beasts believe nothing but what you feel and see, and measure God's love by his looks and outward carriage. When Asaph did this in other a…

The second is implied; that therefore we must labor to keep that faith evermore with us, which must keep us, and to cherish and preserve that that must preserve us to salvation. David was an excellent practitioner hereof: no man was more tried and tossed than he, yet he ever dre…

The Romans painted the vanity of worldly things in the form and shape of a man; in his right hand a Rose, in his left hand a Lily, under his feet Wormwood: An Emblem of the world: The Rose is sweet, the Lily fair, but both fading; and under the feet Wormwood; at death all the de…

God's love may be felt, but not fathomed. Oh then let the saints have God-admiring thoughts; the Psalmist esteemed him above the glory of heaven, and the comforts of the earth (Psalm 73:25). God is the marrow and quintessence of all good: His beauty is amazing, his love is ravis…

Proverbs 1:32: 'The prosperity of fools destroys them.' So also Psalm 73. Question 2. Dare you draw the same conclusion upon all others who have been as much — yes, more — afflicted than yourself?

This is a special season for God to show his love to such a soul, if ever before or after, an opportunity, such as does not occur, neither before, while it was in the body; nor after, when it is united to the body again, at the Resurrection: if ever therefore he means to show a…

1. It fails of all sorts of comforts it had in and by its union with the body in this world (Luke 16:9). When you fail, says Christ, speaking of death — it is your city-phrase when any of you break, and perhaps are thereby driven into another kingdom, as the soul now is. 2. Then…

And sometimes very irreligious and unbelieving thoughts arise, as if there were no advantage to be had by religion, and all our pains, zeal, and care about duty were little better than lost labor. Psalm 73:13-14: Truly I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in inn…

Use 3. The third Use serves to humble believers who have anything of the work of grace, and so, to work them up to thankfulness to Him that has imparted aught of it to them: Is there any of you that have grace, who has made you to differ from others? It was not yourselves but fr…

Third, in urging this doctrine more hardly upon the people, to cause them not to rest on the letter of the law, but seek to the promised Messiah, in whom only was their righteousness — as young heirs and minors are kept under tutors while their minority expires. But, first, who…

Answer: The thing in question is not concluded; we say not we are to pray for the salvation of none but believers only, and that Christ died for none but those that already believed: we are to pray for all ranks, believers or unbelievers, as Christ died for thousands of both, bu…

Now if thus to desire him, is to find Christ, then there is no more to be doubted of in such a case as this; but the heart thus seeking him in his ordinances, and the affections gone after him there, more than after any of his benefits, then in truth we have the Son, he could no…

A sense of our wants may be a means to humble us, to quicken us to prayer, but it should not be a temptation to beget in us unthankfulness, or murmuring against God's providence, or any disquietness or unsettledness in our minds. And though they may be very pinching, yet we shou…

Thess. 5. The prosperitie of the men of this world, ends in perdition. read, Ps. 73. Paul says not simply that Grace and peace comes frō God, but from God the father and from Jesus Christ: that he may teach vs rightly to acknowledge and worship God.

Thirdly, this doctrine serves to beat down a point of natural atheism in the heart of man, which makes many think it a vain thing to serve God, and to hear his word (Job 21:15; Malachi 3:14). David was troubled with this corruption (Psalm 73:15). Many of them which profess the n…

Now the reasons why we ought especially to do good to them of the household of faith, may be these. First, because God loves all his creatures, specially mankind, most especially the faithful, upon whom he does bestow the riches of his love, yea himself also: for though God be g…

For God cannot repeat this doctrine too often. The reason is, not only to astonish the infidels, but also to bring consolation to the good, who are often times disquieted, when the wicked are at their ease, and have all things at their desire: which David confesses when he says;…

But such thoughts are nothing but the seeds of impiety; as Solomon shows (Ecclesiastes 8:11). This therefore made the Psalmist enter in the sanctuary of God, to consider of this thing, rather than to consult with flesh and blood about it (Psalm 73:17). Now if we follow this inte…

Verse 14. The dead shall not live, neither shall the dead arise, because you have visited and scattered them, and destroyed all their memory. The Prophet comes again to speak of the woeful end of the wicked, whose prosperous estate often disquiets and dismays us, as we may see i…

This promise is more extensive than the former; for the Lord declares that he will be present, wherever two or three are met together in his name, to guide them by his counsel, (Psalm 73:24,) and to conduct to a prosperous result whatever they shall undertake.

When we see wicked ones to prosper in the world, and godly men crushed and destroyed in the way of righteousness and integrity; it may tempt us to think, there is no advantage by religion, and all our self-denyal and holiness, to be little better than lost labor. Thus stood the…

These gifts of Providence are common to the worst of men, and are no special distinguishing fruits of Gods love. The vilest of men have been filled even to satiety with these things, Psalm 73:7 Their eyes stand out with fatness: they have more than heart could wish. Second Consi…

Providences in themselves, are not a perfect guide. They often puzzle and entangle our thoughts; but bring them to the Word, and your duty will be quickly manifested, as Psalm 73. 16, 17. Vntil I went into the Sanctuary, then I understood their end: and, not only their end; but…

(4.) Sometimes sin is prevented in the saints, by the better information of their minds at the Sacred Oracles of God. Thus, when sinful motions began to rise in David's mind, from the prosperity of the wicked, and his own afflicted state, and grew to that height, that he began t…

If prosperous Providences befall us, we cannot say, Herein is a sure sign that God loves me; for who have more of those Providences than the people of his wrath? Psalm 73:7 They have more than their hearts can wish. Sure that must be a weak Evidence for Heaven, which accompanies…

Whereas Job at that time lay under the sorest and heaviest affliction that could be, all his estate was gone, and his body was full of diseases, and his soul was full of horror, and all this he does express by this, the hand of the Lord has touched me. So (Psalm 73:14), to be to…

4. We may take them exclusively, or privatively, as they deny anything desirable to be in any beloved, but in Christ, he is all, and so consequently they must be nothing, he is altogether lovely, and so they must be altogether loathsome: Christ is never rightly conceived of, nor…

Certainly such men are the causes of all that contempt which is cast upon the ways and ordinances of God; and their secret profaneness has given occasion to the gross and open profaneness that now abounds in the world; and the hypocrisy of former years has too fatally introduced…

Old Chytraeus had this only and all-sufficient medicine and remedy in his troubled affairs, to support his fainting heart, the Father's heart, the faithful word and powerful hand of Jehovah, and thus he sings, Unae est in trepidâ mihi re Medicina Jehovae, Cor Patrium, os verax,…

Nay, they put on this busy bee to buzz about one flower after another, till it has wearied itself in vain, and sit down in utter despair of comfort and satisfaction. Only interest in the God of heaven, and the image of the God of heaven make up all defects: see Psalm 73:25-26. A…

4. Do we thirst for the living God? Are our souls big with holy desires (Psalm 73:25): There is none upon earth my soul desires besides you. Do we desire holiness as well as Heaven?

Psalm 73:28. But it is good for me to draw near to God. This Psalm is no less elegant than sacred: It is calculated for the Meridian of God's Church in all times; but especially it is fit for the godly to meditate upon in times of calamity.

'Tis the quintessence of all happiness, and that without which all our other enjoyments are sapless, and insipid: For this, none are better qualified than those that are arrayed with the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. 'Twas when…

And instead of condemning others, though never so faulty, should we not each of us bewail it before the Lord, that we have been so little acted by this excellent spirit, and repent of all that which we have at any time said or done, contrary to the law of meekness, and from unde…

The providence of God is likewise everywhere spoken against by murmurers and complainers (Jude 16) that quarrel with it, and find fault with the disposals of it, and when they are hardly bested curse their king and their God (Isaiah 8:21). Thus is the mouth of the ungodly set ag…

Chap. 6. 1, 2, 3. And David says of the wicked, that they are not in trouble as other men, their eyes stands out with fatness, they have more then their heart could wish; but for himself, all the day long he was plagued, and chastened every morning, Psalm 73. Christ tells his Di…