About This Product
Excerpt: My purpose in this series of papers is not to interpret the Psalms, but to draw from them some portion of the spiritual instruction and edification they afford our souls. The interpretation has been sought to be given elsewhere. The Psalms afford us special light on the government of God and the sympathies of the Spirit of Christ with His people. This, in the first instance, has the Jews for its object and center of display. Still, in making allowance for the difference of their state and ours, and of the relationship of a people with Jehovah and children with a Father, God’s ways in government apply to us Christians also. If it is not the highest ground on which a Christian is viewed, for that is heavenly; it is a most important and interesting one, and brings out all the tenderest displays of divine care, the care of Him who counts the very hairs of our head, and the seriousness and vigilance required in walking before God, who never swerves from His holy ways, who is not mocked, nor withdraws His eyes from the righteous, though all be the ministration of His grace for perfecting us according to these ways before Him. Of this application of the government of God to the Christian’s ways, the Epistles of Peter are more especially the witness. See, for example, 1 Peter 1:17; 1 Peter 3:10-15, and the spirit and tenor of the whole Epistle. This government in the second Epistle is carried on to the consummation of all things. The first is more the government of the righteous, the second the judgment of the wicked, though that judgment, as closing the power of evil and the deliverance of the just, be alluded to in the first also. He was the apostle of the circumcision, and this subject came specially under his eye in teaching.
Psalm 3. Let us see the lessons of the first psalms which follow. Troublers are multiplied, but the first thought of faith is Jehovah. There the spirit is at home, and looks at troublers from thence. Jehovah is thus trusted. When Jehovah comes in the heart before those that trouble me, all is well. Our spirits see Him concerned in matters, and are at peace. He is a glory, shield, and lifter up. Another point is, it is not a lazy, listless, view of evil and good, nor listless confidence. Desire and dependence are active, the links of the soul with Jehovah. I cried, and He heard. That is certain. That is the confidence that, if we ask anything according to His will He hears, and if He hears, we have the petition. We do not desire, if sincere, to have anything not according to His will; but it is an immense thing, in the midst of trial and difficulty, to be sure of God’s hearing, and God’s arm in what is according to His will. Hence rest and peace. “I laid me down and slept; I awaked: for Jehovah sustained me.”
Table of Contents
1. Practical Reflections on the Psalms - First Book by J.N. Darby
2. Practical Reflections on the Psalms - Second Book by J.N. Darby
3. Practical Reflections on the Psalms - Third Book by J.N. Darby
4. Practical Reflections on the Psalms - Fourth Book by J.N. Darby
5. Practical Reflections on the Psalms - Fifth Book by J.N. Darby
6. Practical Reflections on the Proverbs by J.N. Darby
7. The Whole Armor of God by J.N. Darby
8. The Love of God by J.N. Darby
9. Divine Perfectness of Love by J.N. Darby
10. The Capacity for Knowing Divine Love, and How We Know It by J.N. Darby
11. What Is Death? by J.N. Darby
12. What Is the Responsibility of the Saints? by J.N. Darby
13. The Saints' Praise as Taught and Led by Christ by J.N. Darby
14. Psalm 69 by J.N. Darby
15. Promise Fulfilled and God Revealed in Grace by J.N. Darby
16. The Resurrection by J.N. Darby
17. To Him That Overcometh by J.N. Darby
18. Philippians 2 and 3 by J.N. Darby
19. Philippians 3 and 4 by J.N. Darby
20. On the Philippians by J.N. Darby
21. Brief Thoughts on Philippians by J.N. Darby