The Words Opened, and the Doctrine Raised

PSALM XXXIX. 9.

VJ was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it

This Psalm consists of two parts: a narration and prayer take up the whole. In the former you have the prophet’s disease discovered, and in the latter the remedy applied. My text falls in the latter part, where you have the way of David’s cure, or the means by which his soul was reduced to a still and quiet temper. I shall give a little light into the words, and then come to the point that I intend to stand upon.

“I was dumb.” The Hebrew word signifies to be mute, tongue-tied, or dumb; it signifies also to bind, as well as to be mute and dumb, because they that are dumb are, as it were, tongue-tied, and bound up. The sight of God’s hand in the affliction that was upon him, makes him lay a law of silence upon his heart and tongue.

u I opened not my mouth, because thou didst it.” He looks through all secondary causes, to the First Cause, and is silent; he sees the hand of God in all, and so sits mute and quiet.

The sight of God in affliction, is of an irresistible efficacy, to silence the heart, and to stop the mouth of a gracious man. In the words you may observe three things:

1. The person speaking, and that is David; David a king, David a saint, David a man after God’s own heart, David a christian. And here wTe are to look upon David, not as a king, but as a christian, as a man whose heart was right with God.

2. The action and carriage of David under the hand of God, in these words, “I was dumb, and opened not my mouth.”

3. The reason of this humble and sweet carriage of his, in these words, u because thou didst it.” The proposition is this:

Doct. u That it is the great duty and concernment of gracious souls to be mute and silent under the greatest afflictions, the saddest providences, and sharpest trials that they meet with in this world.”

For the opening and clearing up of this great and useful truth, I shall inquire,

I. What this silence is that is here pointed at.

II. What a gracious, a holy silence doth include.

III. What this holy silence doth not exclude.

IV. The reasons of the point: and then bring home all by way of application to our own souls.