ADDRESS XIII.

DELIGHTING IN THE LORD.

"Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart."-PSALM XXXvii. 4.

THE blessings here promised are, doubtless, temporal blessings, but the principles of the passage are of present application to us who are blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

I need scarcely say, though it seems suitable to say it at the outset, how little, comparatively, is there among God's children of " delight in the Lord." There is, doubtless, a large amount of trust in the Lord, and a large amount of hope in Him, but with all this trust and hope, and having no confidence in anything else but the Lord, let me ask you, as witnesses in your own case, Do you know much, in your own life, of delight in the Lord ? Is it not so, that some of you know very little of rest even in the Lord, to say nothing of positive delight? There must be something wrong at the root of things, when a believer is living barely trusting and hoping, but never fully at rest, never delighting in the Lord. And yet the broad command to every saint is, "Delight thyself in the Lord."

There are many reasons why men do not delight in

the Lord. Some of them regard the unsaved, the natural man, of whom we do not now speak; the others regard believers. Shall I say it is because of the unbelief of believers that they have so little of true delight in the Lord? Some have but little truth, and that little is dull and torpid in their souls. And, alas! that it should be so, when more truth is put before them they do not see it. They seem to have no receptive faculty. Talk to them of a thousand blessed things concerning our adorable Master and Lord, and of our association with Him, the eternal love and grace of the Father, and they cannot receive them. How can they rejoice and have joy when they do not believe? You understand me; they do believe, and are on the rock as to the blood, but they are, as it were, clinging to the outside of the ark of gopher wood, (which ark was Christ,) with the storm yet, seemingly, pitilessly lashing them; and are not like Noah, who was in perfect security inside the refuge, having the gopher wood (Christ) between him and judgment, and the open window alone between him and the calm azure of heaven beyond! Believers must be ascertainedly in Christ Jesus, or they will not know the joy of the Lord as their strength.

Now, I want, beloved friends, at present, to speak from these words, first, a little doctrinally; next, experimentally, and then, practically.

For if there be no doctrine, there is no basis for our delight. If no experience, if no delight in the Lord, no practical issue. We shall be able to traverse these things by observing in the text A SPECIAL COMMAND and a SPECIAL PROMISE.

The command is, " Delight thyself also in the Lord; " the promise is," He shall give thee the desires of thine heart."

And here I would that the Lord may begin with me; for I cannot tell you how I desire and long, yea long, that God may give me what I want-more truth,

more life in my own soul, more of a sense of an unhindered and an ungrieved Spirit dwelling within me, more unction, and power, and utterance in declaring the truth. I myself, beloved, want much. I feel capable of endless, infinite blessings; and I long that He may give you what you want. Our wants are truly many, but here is the royal, the heavenly way of supply, Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart."

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How may we define the word delight? "Delight," I suggest, is joy resting in its object, joy in sweet indulgence; it is not so much active, though it is active, as it is passive. The word carries with it its own meaning. If you had a loved child at the antipodes, and longed to see his face again, and the child returned, and you had him in your arms, the emotion you would experience would be that of "delight; " you would be delighting in the object of your love; your joy would be indulging itself in its object. You understand, beloved friends, that if you would delight yourself in the Lord, you must know and love the Lord Himself as the only true basis for your delight.

The very name he bears here is instructive, “THE LORD," the incommunicable name. Neither saint nor sinner can rejoice in that blessed name unless they know the Lord, unless they have Him. Do you know the meaning of that name? When Moses said, "I beseech thee shew me thy glory," the Lord said to him, “I will shew thee my glory. I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and my glory shall pass before thee." And the Lord passed before him, and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty."

You will observe that when He said, "My glory

shall pass before thee," He did not say as He said to Abraham, "Lift up thine eyes on high, and behold there the glorious heavens bespangled with their starry lustre.' He did not say, "Behold the firmament on high;" although the heavens do show His glory. This glory, which He was about to show him, was a higher glory far than any material glory, and what He said was, "I will show thee a higher glory, even my highest glory, and here it is-I am the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty." Mark the words-" By no means clear the guilty;" so that, when "the guilty" had to receive what was due to the guilty, and the Lord could not, because of His holiness and truth, clear the guilty, then the Lord Jesus, in our nature, stood for the guilty-became, so to speak, guilty-and the Lord God, who could not clear the guilty, could not, and did not, clear Him! Oh, sinner!-saved or unsaved-look now, and behold the rock that was once riven; see the glory of the Lord-His highest glory, as seen in our redemption and salvation-passing by; and along with me this morning delight thyself in the Lord. For lo, here is glory; we behold His glory, and stand gazing upon His glory, and know His glory, and believe in His glory, and are saved by the knowledge of His glory. Oh, it is here we have our rock, it is here we have the very source of our delight! I repeat it; we cannot delight in Him unless we know Him. And this is His chief gloryHis ability, which He found in Himself, to save. the darkest sinner out of hell were here, and the justice of God could hunt him down into the burning lake of hell, that justice could not so profoundly show itself in such dealing with the guilty as it does in the suffering victim on the cross. It is the Gospel I am now preaching. God says, "I will show you my glory:

If

my glory is this: I can forgive transgression and sin, but I cannot clear the guilty." How so? What is this ?-He can forgive! but cannot clear! the guilty? What is this He says? Let me explain.

The Lord Himself, Jehovah Jesus, He came and stood for the guilty, and the sword of justice, and the thunderbolt of wrath fell on Him. And so, it is because God could not spare the guilty, He could not spare His Son, that you and I, who are the guilty for whom He suffers and dies-may have forgiveness, yea, may have eternal life. Oh, it is God who hath done this-we get the beginning of it all in God. Can I delight in God if He be in the attitude of unsatisfied justice? Can I delight in the thunder-cloud if I know the bolt is about to fall on me? Can I delight in the storm if I know that death and hell are in it? No; but when I see the bolt falling on Christ, and the storm breaking on Him, I see their wrath against me exhausted; and when I know the love and grace of the Lord, who, to save me, Himself ordered it all, then I can, and must, and do, delight myself in the Lord.

Beloved, here is the root of your delight in Him. Believe me, whether sinner or saint, you can have no delight in Him unless you see the judgment due to the guilty expended on the cross; unless you see condemnation and punishment exhausted utterly, finally overpast, in Christ, who took the place of the guilty. Says Paul, the Apostle, "He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." I do not like human additions to God's words. Some read, "He hath made him to be a sin-offering." It takes the true glory of the passage out of it. out of it. He was a sin-offering we know; but what the Lord means is simply this-that sin itself, not its offering or its sacrifice merely, was on Christ— on Him, not in Him. We see it in Aaron. Beside the victim itself, Aaron gathered, in his two hands, the