These words express, with great intensity of humiliation, a consciousness which is universal among all sincere Christians I mean, the power of the world and of the body over the soul. Our slowness and sluggishness in spiritual obedience is a special proof of the power of the Fall still abiding upon us, and of our proneness to linger and hold fast by earth and its attractions.
I. One cause of this disheartening feeling is that people aim at models and examples which are too high for them. There is one examplefor all: the life of Christ; one tendencywholly unlimited in the direction of which all must press towards His example; but the standard that is, the manner and measure in which we are permitted to advance in that tendency is of God. He proportions it by His providence and His grace. All that we can do, the holiest thing we can do, is to apply and mould ourselves entirely upon the lot He has meted out to us.
II. But perhaps it may be said, "This is not my distress. I have no desire to go out of my lot into disproportioned habits; but I do not comply with this tendency of which you speak. This is the point where I cleave to the dust. I make no advance in the spiritual life." In answer it may be said that we are too hasty in looking for signs of advancement. We cannot too much desire to become sinless; but whatever may be our desire, patience is our duty. God has a seedtime, and a burial, sometimes long and strange, of the germs of spiritual life, before the feast of ingathering is fully come. We must not look out for the harvest when we have only cast the seed, nor for the vintage when we have but yesterday bound up the vines. Growth in grace is slow, because it is to be attained by the progressive and persevering action of our moral nature, under the conditions of the Fall, and against the antagonist powers of temptation.
III. But perhaps it may be said again, "This would be all very well if I were not conscious of positive faults, and sometimes even of falling back into those of which I have repented. Positive evils are alive within me, and I often see them even more active than before." Speaking still to sincere minds, it may be said that we are no sure judges of this matter. A growing consciousness of sin is no certain sign of growing sinfulness, but, on the contrary, a probable sign of growing sanctification. The same will which, in wisdom, has ordained the law of slow growth for our spiritual life, has also, in love, ordained a slow perception of our sinfulness. The surest remedy for such complaints will be found in practical rules. (1) The first is to reduce our self-examination to definite points. (2) Having reduced our self-examination to definite points, let us from the sins we have so detected choose out someone against which to direct our chief watchfulness and strength.
H. E. Manning, Sermons,vol. iii., p. 134.
I. The character of David, the son of Jesse, the king and sweet Psalmist of Israel, is one in which so many common points of our own characters meet, that it would be very difficult for us to lay hold of one thread of the loom and to draw it out from the others and study it separately. One leading idea runs through his whole life. David's is the character of a man who had intense human affections, tending even towards sensuous appetite, while to a strong degree he possessed a sense of all the higher aspirations of our nature. There are no stronger cables that bind down our tabernacle to the soil of this world than these two: strong affections and high ambition. A character with such conflicting elements, if it is to reach the desired haven under the guidance of God, must have very peculiar discipline and trials all its own.
II. It is remarkable to see the peculiar way in which Joab's influence over David was calculated to chasten and to keep in check the infirmities of the servant of God. Instances: the death of Abner; the affair of Uriah; the rebellion of Absalom.
III. We cannot but be struck with the almost necessity that there is that certain characters, if they are ever to be perfectly purified, should be placed in the same crucible of affliction. In a character like that of David, the grace of humility would have been left a plucked and withered flower far back on the path of life had it not been for the continual presence of Joab, whose hand, as it were, nurtured, though unconsciously, the lowly plant. We soon forget ourselves; we cannot help it. No voice more often with syren softness decoys us from the path of rectitude and lowliness of mind than that of a strong consciousness of personal influence over those around us; and where this is exercised for good, and not for evil, it is the more dangerous.
IV. It is necessary for the Church as well as for the individual that the faults of good men should be known. There is in man, and ever has been, a tendency to extol unduly, to elevate beyond their due place, the attainments of the saints of God. The faults of the good seem permitted to float on the surface that the holy may not overrate their fellow-man, nor the saint lose his balance and equipoise by the undue admiration of his fellow.
E. Monro, Practical Sermons on the Characters of the Old Testament,vol. i., p. 39.
I. "My soul cleaveth unto the dust." There is nothing to guide us in determining what were the circumstances of the man who said this, not the least need to inquire what they may have been. The words fit all circumstances. They carry us out of the region of circumstances. In any condition a man may cry, "My soul cleaveth unto the dust. There is a great weight upon me. You tell me I should exert myself to shake off the sloth, the despondency, which is preying upon me. But sloth and despondency are not raindrops that hang about my clothes; they are not even the clothes themselves; they have got hold of myself; they appear to be parts of my nature." The king who is after God's own heart must learn by some discipline or other that he has a soul which by very slight causes indeed, by some sickness of body, something less than that: a trivial disappointment or the mere satiety of success may be brought down to the dust, may cleave to it, may be utterly unable to lift itself up.
II. From this confession when it is really one, when it rises as a sigh out of the deeps, there comes the prayer, "Quicken Thou me according to Thy word." Then it is that man begins to believe in God, for then he begins to believe that he himself is not God. This sentence seems to contain the very essence of prayer, to be the explanation of all prayer, the necessity for it lying in a man's discovery of his weakness, the hope of it lying in the nature of God Himself and in His relation to man.
F. D. Maurice, Sermons,vol. iv., p. 259.
I. It is not a strange experience for believers to be in this depressed condition: the soul cleaving to the dust. Sometimes there may be physical causes connected with a man's state of health, and sometimes other providences of God are concerned in producing this state of things; but it is a stage in a man's spiritual history. Generally it is connected with indwelling sin. More particularly it arises in connection with the failure of faith on the part of believers. Looking at it from the side of God's providence, it is permitted by God just as a step in the believer's history, because it is necessary that the believer's history should include an enlarged acquaintance with himself, with his own insufficiency, with his own tendency to unbelief, and darkness, and sin.
II. It is not characteristic of a believer to be contented in this condition. How can any one who believes in the reality and presence of a living God be content with a feeling of this deadness and depression, this awful contrast to the life and glory of that life-giving God? More than that, the believer has faith in the presence and power of a life-giving Christ. He has faith also in the life-giving Spirit, and in the mission and work of the Holy Ghost in its power, and gentleness, and love. How can a man who believes this be content to go on with his soul cleaving to the dust? Therefore he casts himself on God in prayer, and you find him declaring to God the condition in which he is: "My soul cleaveth to the dust," and applying to God to meet this case of his: "Quicken Thou me according to Thy word."
III. There is a sure refuge for the believer with reference to this case of his. There is life for those who feel in themselves so much that looks like death. "Quicken Thou me" give me life; cause me to live "according to Thy word." This cry is not merely a cry of distress. He has the word which he can plead made known to him. It is a sure refuge and resource.
Application: (1) There is great reason for hopefulness in the condition of believers even when their souls cleave unto the dust. (2) There is great reason for earnestness. (3) There is a sure reward for those that seek the Lord.
R. Rainy, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxx., p. 237.
References: Psalms 119:25. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. i., p. 308; C. J. Vaughan, Preacher's Monthly,vol. x., p. 141.Psalms 119:27. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxiii., No. 1344.