Be Not Far From Me.

By Spurgeon from the Treasury of David...FILLED with comfort for the hurting soul...

Forsake me not, O Lord: O my God, be not far from me.

Make haste to help me, O Lord my salvation.

Verse 21. Forsake me not, O Lord. Now is the time I need thee most. When sickness, slander, and sin, all beset a saint, he requires the especial aid of heaven, and he shall have it too. He is afraid of nothing while God is with him, and God is with him evermore. Be not far from me. Withhold not the light of thy near and dear love. Reveal thyself to me. Stand at my side. Let me feel that though friendless besides, I have a most gracious and all sufficient friend in thee.

Verse 22. Make haste to help me. Delay would prove destruction. The poor pleader was far gone and ready to expire, only speedy help would serve his turn. See how sorrow quickens the importunity of prayer! Here is one of the sweet results of affliction, it gives new life to our pleading, and drives us with eagerness to our God. O Lord my salvation. Not my Saviour only, but my salvation. He who has the Lord on his side has salvation in present possession. Faith foresees the blessed issue of all her pleas, and in this verse begins to ascribe to God the glory of the expected mercy. We shall not be left of the Lord. His grace will succour us most opportunely, and in heaven we shall see that we had not one trial too many, or one pang too severe. A sense of sin shall melt into the joy of salvation; grief shall lead on to gratitude, and gratitude to joy unspeakable and full of glory.

Following After Good and Seeking Peace...

From the Treasury of David...Spurgeon's commentary on the psalms.  BEAUTIFUL, CONVICTING, AND ENCOURAGING.


Depart from evil and do good; Seek peace and pursue it.--Psalm 34:14

Go away from it. Not merely take your hands off, but yourself off. Live not near the pest house. Avoid the lion's lair, leave the viper's nest. Set a distance between yourself and temptation. And do good. Be practical, active, energetic, persevering in good. Positive virtue promotes negative virtue; he who does good is sure to avoid evil. 

Seek peace. Not merely prefer it, but with zeal and care endeavour to promote it. Peace with God, with thine own heart, with thy fellow man, search after this as the merchantman after a precious pearl. Nothing can more effectually promote our own happiness than peace; strife awakens passions which eat into the heart with corroding power. Anger is murder to one's own self, as well as to its objects. And pursue it. Hunt after it, chase it with eager desire. It may soon be lost, indeed, nothing is harder to retain, but do your best, and if enmity should arise let it be no fault of yours. 

Follow after peace when it shuns you; be resolved not to be of a contentious spirit. The peace which you thus promote will be returned into your own bosom, and be a perennial spring of comfort to you.

 The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and His ears are open to their cry.--Psalm 34:15

He observes them with approval and tender consideration; they are so dear to him that he cannot take his eyes off them; he watches each one of them as carefully and intently as if there were only that one creature in the universe. His ears are open unto their cry. His eyes and ears are thus both turned by the Lord towards his saints; his whole mind is occupied about them: if slighted by all others they are not neglected by him. Their cry he hears at once, even as a mother is sure to hear her sick babe; the cry may be broken, plaintive, unhappy, feeble, unbelieving, yet the Father's quick ear catches each note of lament or appeal, and he is not slow to answer his children's voice.

A True Convert...

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

“Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.

“But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.”

These are some pretty disconcerting and convicting words from Jesus here in Matthew 7 and even more disconcerting is that He is speaking to the "religious" who think they are saved but really are not.   So what is the key issue for Jesus??   

Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. ³² And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”--John 8:31

Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? --Romans 6:16

in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight— ²³ if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister.--Colossians 1:22-23

And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him,--Hebrews 5:9

Clearly, obedience to the His Word is the key issue for Jesus...

The house built on the rock reflects a life that believes and obeys Jesus ....it is a life that places all its hope in God and His word.  The house built on the sand reflects a life built on man's opinions and self-righteousness...it is a life that is self-ruled rather than ruled by the Spirit of God.  

It is not good enough to hear the word of God and profess to be a believer. Once the profession is made your life should reflect what your heart believes.  In fact, your life will always reflect what your heart truly believes.  A life that professes Christ but does not reflect His holiness, does not possess His Spirit.  A child of God will shine forth the nature of His Father in Heaven.  This is not to say that a believer will not stumble, but the general direction of his life will be one lived in obedience to the word of God.  Those that persist in lawlessness indicate that they were never of the truth.  I love the picture that James paints of the true convert of God.  A believer is one 

"who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does."

James also paints for us the other picture:

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.

Desiring the Very Presence of God...

To My Beloved Daughters,

Thinking on Jesus this morning in the Garden of Gethsemane where He went with His disciples to pray before His crucifixion.    It was here that Luke tells us that Jesus' sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

 And He was withdrawn from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and prayed, saying, “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.”  Then an angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthening Him. And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

In Matthew 26:38 Jesus says this: Then He said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me.”

What was it that caused Jesus to say that His soul was sorrowful even unto death?  What was it that caused Him so much anguish?  It wasn't the fear of man or the physical suffering that He was about to endure that caused Jesus such anguish...so what was it?  Here's the beautiful answer:  It was the inevitable separation from His Father in Heaven that would occur as He drunk the cup prepared for Him.   

It was that for the first and only time in eternity Jesus would be separated from His Father in Heaven.   It is also the only time on record that Jesus did not address God as Father.  Read His last words directly quoted from Psalm 22.

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”--Matthew 27:46

He who knew no sin became sin for us and had the fullness of divine wrath poured out upon Himself.   Our God is holy and cannot look upon sin. The Father forsook the Son because the Son took upon Himself our sin.  He became a curse for us.  He became the propitiation for our sins.  I don't pretend to understand how the full fury of God's wrath was poured out upon Jesus in those hours on the cross...I can't even begin to explain or understand the depths of the anguish that this separation caused my Jesus....but here is how this particular passage spoke to my heart this morning.

Separation from His Father in Heaven caused Jesus much distress...it caused Him to sweat droplets of blood...it caused Him to be sorrowful even unto death.  Oh, Father, may my one desire be live in unbroken fellowship and communion with you here on earth.  I want to abide in the beauty of Your presence.   May the overwhelming desire of my heart be to dwell with You, the most High God, and take shelter under the shadow of Your wings.  Help me to surrender to all that You have for me as Your Son Jesus did knowing that I have nothing to fear...You are on my side.  Knowing that when I cry out to You...You answer me and  set me in a broad and safe place.   You are FOR me and there is nothing that can separate me from You.  

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?  He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shalltribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  As it is written:

“For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”

Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.  For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.--Romans 8:31-39

PSALM 27

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
Whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life;
Of whom shall I be afraid?
When the wicked came against me
To eat up my flesh,
My enemies and foes,
They stumbled and fell.
Though an army may encamp against me,
My heart shall not fear;
Though war may rise against me,
In this I will be confident.

One thing I have desired of the Lord,
That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord,
And to inquire in His temple.
For in the time of trouble
He shall hide me in His pavilion;
In the secret place of His tabernacle
He shall hide me;
He shall set me high upon a rock.

And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me;
Therefore I will offer sacrifices of joy in His tabernacle;
I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the Lord.

Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice!
Have mercy also upon me, and answer me.
When You said, “Seek My face,”
My heart said to You, “Your face, Lord, I will seek.”
Do not hide Your face from me;
Do not turn Your servant away in anger;
You have been my help;
Do not leave me nor forsake me,
O God of my salvation.
When my father and my mother forsake me,
Then the Lord will take care of me.

Teach me Your way, O Lord,
And lead me in a smooth path, because of my enemies.
Do not deliver me to the will of my adversaries;
For false witnesses have risen against me,
And such as breathe out violence.
I would have lost heart, unless I had believed
That I would see the goodness of the Lord
In the land of the living.

Wait on the Lord;
Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart;
Wait, I say, on the Lord!