Bible Commentaries

THE VICTORY OF FAITH

‘Thou shalt deal bountifully with me.’

Psalms 142:7

I. These words honoured God.—David was in the cave, praying and pouring out complaints. His ‘spirit was overwhelmed’; ‘refuge failed’ him; he was ‘brought very low’; the cry was wrung from him—‘Deliver me from my persecutors; for they are stronger than I.’ And even ‘whiles he was speaking in prayer,’ the Spirit descends; he is strengthened with might in the inner man; and from the dark cavern of Adullam rises the shout of victory, ‘Thou shalt deal bountifully with me.’ Oh, what honour this put upon God’s faithfulness! When a child is seated on its father’s knee, and says, ‘I am afraid of nothing,’ the parent delights in his happiness and love; but when the father leaves his child alone, and says, ‘Fear nothing, for I shall come for you,’ and the minutes pass by, and the time seems long, and the little one’s heart is full, and yet he says, ‘I will not fear, for father said he would come’; would not these words overheard send a keener thrill of pleasure through that parent’s breast?

II. What gave the Psalmist this blessed confidence?—He knew the bountiful heart of the God he served, that He had all power, riches, wisdom, and willingness. He knew his own pitiful condition, that it would appeal to the tender compassion of the Lord. He remembered, doubtless, former deliverances—the lion and the bear, the sword of Goliath, and the javelin of Saul, till his complaining was lost in praise: ‘Thou shalt deal bountifully with me.’ Did David miscalculate? Let his throne and kingdom reply.

Believer, will you not honour God by a like affiance? Have not you the same Father?

—Bishop E. H. Bickersteth.

Illustration

‘Amid the storm and strife, the rapine and wrong, which characterised the Middle Ages, holy souls found God to be what we have now described, and expressed themselves very tenderly in this sense. Hear, for instance, Master Eckart: “All that is in the Godhead is ours. It is above all names, above all nature. I ask that God, by His grace, should bring me into union with the essence of His nature. I would enter into that eternal unity which was mine before all time, into a state above all addition or diminution from the world, into the immobility whereby all is moved.”’