The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol. 50

THERE is an old promise, concerning God’s people, which says, “Before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.” This text is one of the instances in which the Lord has dealt with his saints upon the lines of that promise. Read the preceding verse. David there prays, “Save with thy right hand, and answer me;” and while he is waiting for God to answer him, he remembers that God has already spoken. In effect, he says to himself, “I am waiting for an answer, but God has given it to nie.” Very often, the response to a believer’s petition has been practically received before he presents his request, and he only needs that God should open his eyes for him to see that, before he called, God had answered his supplication. Indeed, brethren and sisters in Christ, in one sense, all your prayers — that is, your prayers that ought to be answered, — are already answered; for, whatsoever there may be that you may rightly ask of God, you really have it, since, in giving us Christ, he has already given us all things. An important part of the duty of faith is to believe that you have what you ask in prayer, and then you shall have it. This is blessed philosophy; may we all learn it! Oftentimes, when we are crying to God, and waiting for an answer to our petition, if we did but look around us, and if we had more acute powers of observation, — if our spiritual faculties were keener and quicker, we should perceive that we already have the very thing for which we are asking. Some of you have, perhaps, been saying, “Oh, that we were indeed the Lord’s people, who have their prayers answered even before they offer them!” Well, then, turn to the Book, and you will find that the Lord has there told you that you are his if, indeed, you are believing in his Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. God has given you, by that most sure’word of testimony, the clearest possible evidence of your personal interest in Christ already. If you are asking for some further kind assuring word, to soothe your fears to rest, turn to the Bible, for there is in it the very word you need. So, seek it out, for I may truly say of God’s revelation in this blessed Book, —

What more can he say than to you he hath said,
You who unto Jesus for refuge have fled?”

This leads me to the practical remark that, possibly, the very thing that you have been praying for so long, you may already have obtained; and God may not intend you to pray any longer about it, but may say to you, as he did to Moses, “‘ Wherefore criest thou unto me? Speak unto the children.of Israel, that they go forward.’ Believe that you have the blessing for which you are asking, and go forward in that belief. The time for praying about it has passed; this is the time for grasping the blessing by faith, and using it to my praise and glory.” So it seems to me, in our text, that David had prayed, and then suddenly recollected that he had already received the very thing for which he had asked. So he shakes himself from the dust, and cries, confidently and jubilantly, “God hath spoken in his holiness; I will rejoice, I will divide Shechem, and mete out the valley of Succoth.”

I. Three things are clear in the text; and the first is, that Gop’s WORD IS THE FOUNDATION OF FAITH: “God hath spoken in his holiness.” That is the solid basis on which faith builds,

To me, this is a very precious truth, even for the very childhood of Christian life: “God hath spoken.” He has not merely put before us his works, which are like hieroglyphs, difficult to read at times; but he has actually broken what else had been the eternal silence, and spoken to us in words that even a child can comprehend. Unbelieving men still say, as they did of old, “‘ Since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.’ If there is a God at all, there is a great gulf fixed between him and men; how can we know anything about him?” Ah, sirs! that great gulf will always be between you and your God if you do not believe in the revelation that he has given you in his inspired Word. Until that terrible day comes, when he shall speak in thunder-tones of wrath, and summon his guilty creatures to appear at his judgment bar, you will not hear his voice, except as it speaks to you in his Word.

But “God hath spoken in his holiness;” and we ought to be thankful that we have not to serve a God who is dumb. He spake, in the garden of Eden, when our first parents sinned against him. To the serpent he said, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” It was a message of hope to the world when God spake that great promise concerning his Son. Since then, “at sundry times and in divers manners,” God hath spoken unto men by his servants, and “by his Son,” of which we have the record in this blessed Book; and, since it is a message of mercy and love to us, we ought at once to rejoice that “God hath spoken.” Sinner, you are pleading with God for mercy; and he might well refuse to answer you even a word; but “God hath spoken” already, and the answer to your petition is already recorded in his Word. If, when Adam sinned, he had turned away from our rebellious race, and said, “Henceforward, I will hold no communication with you until that day when, with fire and sword, I punish you for your many transgressions;” we should have had no cause for complaining against him; certainly, we could not have impeached his justice, or found fault with his severity. But “God hath spoken;” he hath broken the silence which would have been death to us; and, blessed be his name, he hath divinely spoken to us by him who is THe Worp or God, — by God’s great logos, — the only voice by which he could fully speak out his whole soul so that men might be able to comprehend him; and it is upon what God hath spoken unto us, by his Son, that we have to place our faith; so that, had he not spoken, we should not have had any foundation for our faith; but this is our joy, that “God hath spoken.”

Many of us are, I trust, at least somewhat acquainted with what God hath spoken; though I wish that we were all more perfectly acquainted with his Word, and that our confidence more fully rested upon what the Lord has therein revealed to us.

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