Because he hath set his love upon Me, therefore will I deliver him.
The character which God approves
I. The character which God approves. It is founded in the knowledge of Himself; it is established in the love of Himself, which that knowledge naturally inspires, and it is manifested and completed in the worship of Himself, which is the genuine expression of that powerful and animating affection which we are bound to cultivate.
II. The privileges which belong to this character. How great a satisfaction and relief is it in the time of affliction to have the company of a faithful and affectionate friend, who takes a part in our sorrow, who tenderly hears all our complaints! who kindly watches over our weakness! Such friends are the precious gifts of God. But they cannot be always near to each of us, and in many cases, all their attentions and sympathy are fruitless. Is there, then, no eye to see, and no powerful hand to assuage the sorrows of the heart, and the pains of sinking nature? Yes--“I.” saith the Lord, “will be with you!” (J. L. Adamson.)
A good man and the great God
I. A good man in relation to the great God.
1. He loves God. “He hath set his love upon Me.” All his affections are set on God; in Him his soul reposes.
2. He knows God. “He hath known My name.” He knows Him, not merely with the intellect, but with the heart, experimentally. God’s “name” is Himself. You can only really know a man as you sympathize with him.
3. He worships God. “Call upon me.”
II. The great God in relation to the good man. “Because” the good man is thus in relation to God, God does two things for him.
1. Delivers him. “ Therefore will I deliver him.” Delivers him from all evils, natural and moral.
2. Dignifies him. “I will set him on high,” where he shall have the sublimest views, enjoy the greatest security, command the greatest attention and respect. (Homilist.)
The favourite of God
I. What God says of him.
1. “He knows My name.”
(1) As a sin-hating, sin-avenging God! and this knowledge was a means of leading him to a deep sense of his own personal corruption, guilt, and danger as a sinner.
(2) As concentrated in the name of Jesus, who “shall save His people from their sins.”
2. “He hath set his love upon Me.” In the love of a Divinely-illuminated believer there is--
(1) Gratitude.
(2) Admiration.
(3) Delightful complacency.
3. “He shall call upon Me.” “A holy heart,” says Leighton, “is the temple of God, and therefore must be a house of prayer.”
II. What God says to him.
1. There are some important truths implied. Though persons may be the objects of Divine favour, yet they are not exempt from trials and crosses of various kinds. Though the guilt of sin be taken away, there remains some of the effects of it, which God’s people feel while in the body; and though they are sinners saved by grace, yet they are still on probation for eternity, and exposed to temptations, and pains, and sufferings, and to death itself.
2. There are some important truths expressed. The Lord’s eye of infinite love is always fixed upon His suffering children; His ear of infinite love is wakefully attentive to their cry; His hand of infinite love is exerted to support them under their troubles, and finally to exalt them above them. (W. Dawson.)
Love must be fixed on God
Now, that is not a state to be won and kept without much vigorous, conscious effort. The nuts in a machine work loose; the knots in a rope “come untied,” as the children say. The hand that clasps anything, by slow and imperceptible degrees loses muscular contraction, and the grip of the fingers become slacker. Our minds and affections and wills have that same tendency to slacken their hold of what they grasp. Unless we tighten up the machine it will work loose, and unless we make conscious efforts to keep ourselves in touch with God, His hand will slip out of ours before we know that it is gone, and we shall fancy that we feel the impressions of the fingers long after they have been taken away from our neglectant palms. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
I will set him on high, because he hath known My name.--
The name of God known
Knowing by sight and knowing by name are the two expressions we use in common conversation to indicate a slight and superficial acquaintance with any one. To say that we know a man by name, and only so, is to lay claim to the least possible acquaintanceship, and yet God’s declaration runs, “I will set him on high because he hath known My name.” Evidently one of two things is true. Either the preparation needed for entrance into heaven is a very slight and trivial one, being the mere ability to remember and repeat a given word; or else there must be in this Bible phrase, “knowing God’s name,” a vast deal more meaning than appears. Without doubt we are all agreed in favour of the second of the two alternatives. In modern life proper names are given in such an artificial way that we have come almost to forget the original purpose and design of names. But when we come to look into the matter we find that there is more in a name than this, or, at least, that there ought to be. Consider, by way of illustration, the method a naturalist, a chemist let us say, follows in assigning names to the materials with which he has to deal. He gives to things names that tell their own story--names that to the practised eye reveal in a moment the nature of the thing named. When a chemist discovers a new compound he does not name it at random, he does not choose a name simply because it strikes his fancy; indeed, he has really no choice at all in the matter, for the very laws of his science compel him to assign to the new substance a name which tells exactly, by means of a pre-arranged system of letters and numbers, just what the ingredients are, and in precisely what proportions they are mingled. Thus with the chemist to know the name of anything is equivalent to knowing the nature of it. Of course, taking men as they are and the world as it is, the application of this principle to proper names would be out of the question. And yet in primitive communities, and in that state of society’ which we find depicted in the earlier books of Scripture, some approach to this method of assigning names according to nature is observed. The proper names in the Book of Genesis almost all of them point to some personal characteristic either of body or mind in the bearer of the name. With these thoughts fresh in our minds we shall be better able, I think, than without them we could have been, to appreciate the singular stress laid in Scripture upon the importance of knowing God’s name. What is really meant is this, that man’s highest privilege, the end and purpose for which he was created, is to know God. But notice this: Every stage, every epoch, era, crisis in this progressive revelation of God has been marked by the annunciation of a name (Genesis 17:1; Exodus 3:14; Exodus 6:3). Just is proportion to men’s enlarged knowledge of the nature of God has been their need of a new name for Him, not so much to replace as to supplement the old name. In other words, the names of God are so many tide-marks to indicate the continuous rise of revelation. The risen Christ is speaking to the eleven on a mountain in Galilee. They are there by an appointment made on the day of the Resurrection. They are alone together. They are soon to part. The movement is one when we naturally listen for a word of power. Now, if ever, is the time for the whole substance of the revelation which this Christ has come to bring to be compressed into a sentence. It is spoken: “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” This is the Christian name of God. This is the new dispensation ushered in. Is God the Father our Father? Do we know Him as the provident and faithful parent who cares for all our cares, who watches for our need, who lifts us when we stumble and strengthens us when we stand? Do we look upon the world we live in as His workmanship? Do its glory and its beauty, its wealth of storm and sunshine, speak to us of Him? Is God the Son our Saviour? Do we accord anything more than a cold assent to those sentences of the Creed that tell how for us men and for our salvation He came down from heaven, and, in the dreariness and isolation of a poor man’s lot, toiled, and wept, and prayed, and suffered? Do we really find in Him and in His Cross a refuge when conscience upbraids us and the thought of guilt lies heavy on the heart? Is God the Holy Ghost our Sanctifier? All unworthy of so Divine a guest, do we still believe that He is our guest, and that He dwells within us? Do we supplicate His greater nearness and dread the thought of grieving Him away? Are we willing that His presence should be to us a cleansing fire, burning away all that is base and worthless in us? The doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity is precious to believers, not on account of its title; no special virtue is claimed for that, but simply because it faithfully reflects what the Scriptures teach about the being of God. The Bible tells us plainly that God is one. The Bible tells us plainly that God is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The doctrine of the Trinity couples together these two declarations, and affirms of them that they cannot be conflicting, that they must be harmonious. That is the whole of it. The Church does not stultify herself by asserting that three means the same thing as one, or that one equals three. But what the Church in this instance does is merely what natural science in a hundred instances does--she affirms two truths, the relations between which can only be dimly discerned, and, having asserted them, she lets them stand. There are motions of the heavenly bodies that cannot be reconciled with Newton’s law of gravitation. But does astronomy deny either the fact of the motions or the truth of the law? No; she accepts both, and bides her time, hoping for fuller light. The doctrine of the Trinity of God in no sense militates against the doctrine of the Unity of God. Indeed, the assertion of the Unity is quite as much an essential feature of the doctrine as is the assertion of the Trinity, for the ancient faith is this: “That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity.” (W. R. Huntington, D.D.)