The Bible is with me to the 27th
Psalm. Psalm chapter 27. We often thank the Lord for His
mercy in bringing us unto this hour. Sometimes we might even
be guilty of using those words just to fill a little space.
This morning we would not need to have any other reason than
the goodness and mercy of God to say those words because the
Lord has been very, very merciful to us in this past week. So we're
thankful for the Lord's mercy that has brought us to this good
hour. Here in the 27th Psalm, let me
read beginning with verse 7 and read down through the 10th
verse. Hear, O Lord, when I cry with
my voice. Have mercy also upon me, and
answer me. When thou saidest, Seek ye my
face, my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek. Hide not thy face far from me. Put not thy servant away in anger. Thou hast been my help. Leave
me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation. When my father
and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up. My text this morning is found
in the B portion of verse 9. Verse 9B, where the scripture
says, Thou hast been my help, Leave me not, neither forsake
me, O God, of my salvation. Thou hast been my help, leave
me not, neither forsake me, O God, of my salvation. David was a
praying man. David had been in many, many
tights in his life, and the Lord had been his help. He in verse
7 said, Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice. When I cry with
my voice, have mercy also upon me, and answer me. He said, when
you said, seek my face, my heart said unto thee in obedience,
thy face, Lord, will I seek. And then he says, hide not thy
face far from me. Hide not thy face far from me. Those that are praying, people,
know that often times it appears that God has hid his face from
them. It appears that their prayer
doesn't get out of the room. It appears that Unto them that
the heavens are brass, and that their voice is not heard by Almighty
God. But David said, Hide not thy
face far from me, put not thy servant away in anger. He said,
I don't want you to put me away in anger. I don't want you to
take my life from me because you're upset with me, or because
in some way or another I have displeased thee, or in some way
or another I have brought down upon myself your frown. Don't put me away in anger. I think this could mean two things.
One, it could mean don't put me away from your face so that
you will not hear me when I cry unto you. And I think it could
mean even more than that. And that is that the Lord could
take him out of the land of the living because of his anger with
him. But then he says, Thou hast been
my help. This has been my experience. And because you have been my
help, leave me not now in the present crisis, neither forsake
me now because I'm in trouble, O God of my salvation. Now, beloved, in the time of
distress, in the time of crisis, is no time, I would say it's
a very poor time to try to choose a helper. It's a very poor time
to try to find a helper that is in the time of crisis. Because
while we're trying to make a selection, the danger may have overtaken
us already. While the fox was considering
which way to run, the hounds had seized him already. While the sick man was selecting
a physician and trying to determine what medicine that he ought to
take, his disease carried him off. His disease took him off
into eternity. It is well to be shut up, I suppose,
to want help. That is, if that help is all
sufficient, if that help is all we need, it is good to be shut
up to want to help. It is good to have no alternative,
but to have, as the old proverb has it, Hobson's choice, that
is, that or none. It's good to have a helper, and
David had one. The believer, the child of God
in this world, in our travels and in our afflictions and difficulties
and trials in this world, is exactly in the same condition
that David was in. Exactly. He must trust his God. His confidence must be in the
living God. Or he's without hope and he's
without help. If you can't trust God, who can
you trust? You must trust the living God. God must be our help. Now we've
learned the folly, have we not, of self-confidence. Has God ever
put you in a place where you had no ability to help yourself,
where there was no visible means for you to be delivered? Has
God ever placed you in a fix and in a tight where that you
could not, by your own wisdom or your own ability, extract
yourself from that situation? Has God ever been pleased to
show you how really weak you are and how helpless you are
in certain situations. Well, David learned that he was
helpless and that he needed God to help him to be his help. And
we're compelled, beloved, to look to God alone, as David was
compelled to look. The wind is called blessed, which
drives the ship into the harbor of safety. And blessed is that
distress which forces a man to rest only in the Lord his God. Blessed is that stress that wings
a man away from self-sufficiency and brings him to face reality
and that is our only hope is God Almighty and our only helper
is the Lord. And it's good to have decided
to made up your mind to the fact that God is the help of His people
long before you get into the crisis situation. This was the
condition here of the psalmist when he wrote this text. He looked
to God alone in his past experience. the goodness of the Lord showed
forth as the pole star of his life's voyage and therefore as
to the future he fixed his eyes steadily on that one sure and
guiding light and trusted in the God of his salvation. He
said God has been my star in the past, leading and directing
God's arm has helped me in the past, and he believed and trusted
in the God of his salvation for the future. In the time of trouble
and distress, it is good to have a plea ready for use. It is good
to have a plea ready for use. And I would call this text here
this morning a mighty plea. Because David said, Thou hast
been my help, leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation. It's good for you to have a plea
ready. Say, preacher, I don't really
think I'm going to need a plea like David had here. Well, beloved,
you may not feel you may need one, but you may need one before
the day is out. You may need a mighty plea to
seek your God. Well, be ready. Have one ready
for use. A plea that is available under
all circumstances and conditions. A plea of our very own, which
wells up from our own inner consciousness. A mighty plea to urge before
the throne of grace, because you may fall in to a situation
before the day is out where you need God to come and help you. And I think it must be, as David's
was, a very simple plea, one which we can understand ourselves,
like David in Psalm 12 and verse 1. You ought to look in the first
verse of Psalm 12, and I want you to see David's very simple,
very simple plea there in that chapter. And it's very interesting
to me how this plea was set forth. Notice it in Psalm chapter 12
and verse 1, the first two words, Help, Lord. Help, Lord. Can you hear David crying that
way? This man of prayer, the psalmist,
the sweet singer of Israel, the man who'd experienced many deliverances
at the hands of the Lord. Could you hear him praying, Help,
Lord. Help! I'm in trouble. I'm in
distress. I'm in a difficult situation.
I cannot, I cannot deliver myself. Help! Lord. And so this is a
very simple plea. That's what I'm talking about.
And not like some I've heard in prayer meetings. I've heard
some in prayer meetings and I would ask myself, while they were praying
and after they got finished praying, what on earth were they asking
for? They just seemed to pray all
around, but really, never really asked for anything specifically. They did not have a single plea
before God, this simple plea like David had when he said,
help, Lord, or when he said, Thou hast been my help, leave
me not, neither forsake me. Now beloved, what do we study
to have a plea, to have words to say before the Lord, but make
them very simple and very plain. A soul in distress is in no fit
condition, in my humble opinion, and I think I know well what
I'm talking about, to puzzle itself over deep and dark reasoning. No, it wants a child's plea,
like this in our text this morning, Thou hast been my help. Help,
O Lord, leave me not, neither forsake me. This is a personable,
this is a very suitable and simple argument. It's not sent off from,
off for, from a mail-order house someplace, but this is a home-grown
plea, and it grows out of our own experience of helplessness
and being destitute at times and needing the hand of God to
come in a merciful way and to deal with us and to lead us out
and to deliver us. The poor wafering man can understand
this plea. Help, Lord! Thou hast been my
help, leave me not, neither forsake me. The illiterate can use this
as well as the learned. You don't have to be an educated
man to say, help Lord, I need help. Hear my cry, I need help. Now, this plea is good, and I
think it is full of real good. power, real spiritual power. I call it a mighty plea and I
believe it is. I believe it is indeed and I
think we ought to attempt this morning to learn it by heart
and to have it ready when we need the Lord's help. Well, there
are two things here that I want to talk about very briefly this
morning in our text. having give you a little preface
to the verse. First of all, I want to talk
about experience gratefully telling her tale, and that is, Thou hast
been my help. And then secondly, we have necessarily,
urgently pleading experience And that is, leave me not, neither
forsake me. Well, in a few words here then,
let's try if we can to talk a little bit about experience, gratefully
telling her tale, the Lord has been my help. Well, beloved,
the preacher can say, yea, the preacher must say, with all of
his heart, Oh God, Thou hast been my help. I will not at this
time attempt to tell my experience of the past week. I've went through
a very, very traumatic experience and the Lord did in mercy deliver
me. He did in mercy deliver me, the
Lord was my help. I know that many of you this
morning, if this were the proper time for it, that you could rise
up and say, God has also been my help. The Lord has been my
help. What would we have done without
that help given us in a time of need, given us from the Lord
Himself? Do you believe that God comes
down and helps man? David believed it. And he said,
this has been my experience. Oh Lord, Thou hast been my help. And he gratefully told out the
fact that the Lord had visited him and helped him. Now the Lord
our God displayed His power and His mercy many, many times on
our behalf. And for some of us it's so very
near at hand that we would have to be a fool not to recognize
that the Lord has been our help. And so we tell that out gratefully. Charles Haddon Spurgeon said
when he preached from this text in the Metropolitan Tabernacle
in London, England on November 23 in 1873, he said if hands
were to be held up this morning to indicate who they were in
our congregation, who the Lord had helped, there would be a
forest of hands held up. He went on to say, Yes, Lord,
we thy servants assembled here in the thousands do solemnly
confess that thou hast been our help. Well, in that congregation
of over 6,000 people, I think he probably read them right.
Now, David had been helped of God all through his life. You
can read the life of David and search it out and you ought to
do that so that you would see how that God delivered David
on so many, many occasions. Now then, His whole life, I think,
can be summed up in one sentence. Thou hast been my help. Thou hast been my help. His whole life can be summed
up by that one sentence. And I believe that by the time
you and I get to glory, it probably can be said of us. His life can
be summed up, the Lord was his helper. The Lord helped him. He was not left alone. The Lord had mercy on him and
the Lord came in due time and rescued and delivered and provided
for that man. I believe God's people, as they
live in this world, will not get out of this world. If they
live very long in it without experiencing some times when
the Lord must, when the Lord must, when they're shut up to
it, when there is no other way, God must appear for them. The
Lord must send from above and draw them out of great waters. The Lord must come and under
the shadow of His wings They will be made to rejoice because
the Lord has been their help. I don't see any way of you getting
out of this world. You say, well, the preacher may
have those experiences, or some of the other people that walk
with God here may have them, but I'll never have them. You
will have them. You leave it to God. You will
have those experiences when you will be able to stand up later
and gratefully, gratefully tell out your experience. So that's
the first point in our text this morning. Experience, gratefully
told out. The Lord has been my help. Now the second point, and like
I said, I'll be very brief. I don't have a lot of strength
this morning, but I'll give you this second point. And that is
necessity pleading our experience. Now, Thou hast been my help.
He says, leave me not, neither forsake me. Don't forsake me
in this crisis. I'm in trouble. I'm in deep trouble. I don't know how I got here or
I might know how I got into trouble. I do not know this or I don't
know that about my trouble. But Lord, Thou hast been my help
in the past. Now leave me not, neither forsake
me. Well, Lord, I would say I'm unworthy
to be noticed. And my doubts and fears and sin
tell me that it would not be fit. for an infinitely holy God
to look upon such a rebellious worm as I am. It would not be
fit, Lord, that you would notice me, but Lord, You have already
noticed me. Lord, you have already been my
help. Lord, you've already done it.
You have been my help in the past. And if it were not wrong
for you to help me once, it will not be wrong for you to help
me twice. Leave me not. neither forsake
me. Beloved, this was the cry of
David. I'm going to try to break this down so you'll see what
it is here. Necessity driving David here
to this plea and to this cry before God. If it did not stain
your spotless robe to hold out your hand to a fallen and condemned
sinner in years gone by, it will not stain your purity to lend
me your hand again. It will not. Now it is your power,
it is in your power to help me now. When you helped me before,
you were all sufficient. You're an all sufficient God.
The power belongs to you. You said, your son said that
all power belonged to him in heaven and in earth. And when
you helped me before, you had the power and you displayed your
power. Now help me, help me out of this
crisis and help me out of this affliction that has come upon
me. I'm weak and I'm all alone with
none to help and cannot help myself. Leave me not, neither,
neither forsake me. Your own arm of mercy was equal
to the emergencies that I had in the past. All of the emergencies
that I've ever had in the past, your own arm was equal to that
emergency. And it must be so now. Surely you're no less God now
than the last time that you delivered me. Leave me not, neither forsake
me. Thou hast been my help. You delivered me in the past
when no way of relief was visible to me, and you're able to do
it again. I know that you can do it again. And so David says, you've been
my help, now do it again. Be my help again, and come to
me and deliver me. And Lord, you've been my help,
and if you do not help me now, all that help that you've given
me in the past will go for nothing. It'll all be wasted. You've helped
me in the past, you must come to me now and help me. That that help that's gone before
will not be rendered useless and nothing. It is no use to
have helped me so far if you do not help me to the very end. Lord, leave me not. Leave me
not. Neither forsake me. Lord, you've
invested much mercy and love in this poor worm. And if you
don't help me now, you'll lose everything that you've invested. All the mercy you showed upon
me. If you won't show me mercy now,
oh Lord, you're going to lose all that you've invested. Lord,
if it's been wise for you to help me so far. If in your wisdom
you determined to help me before, then it must be wise not to leave
me or forsake me now in this present distress, in this crisis,
in this situation. where I cannot deliver or help
myself. It must be wise if your wisdom
dictated it before. I'm just trying to tell you what
David is saying here. I'm trying to help you to see
this mighty plea. I'm trying to help you to get
it fixed in your own heart so that when you get in trouble
and in crisis you'll be able to cry unto your God. Lord, if it has been wise to
help me so far, then it must be wise for you to continue to
help me. The work which wisdom undertakes,
eternal mercy, the poet said, ne'er forsakes. And so if God
took up the work, If God laid hold of you, the Scripture says
that He that has begun a good work in us will continue it until
the day of Jesus Christ. And if He started a work, if
He helped you, if you've ever been sure that God laid His hand
on you and you received a touch from Heaven in your life, if
you know it to be a fact, then surely, surely the Lord will
not forsake that work which he's begun in you. Perhaps the very
backbone of this argument or of this mighty plea lies in the
attribute of immutability. The attribute of God, the attribute
of immutability, the unchangeableness of God. The fact that God never
changes. All of us change day by day. We change one way and then we
change the other. But the God of the Bible, the
Lord, He is God and He changes not. He is immutable. He is unchanging. Now, Thou hast been my help.
If you can change, then you can leave me now. You said, I will
never leave thee nor forsake thee, so that you may boldly
say the Lord is your helper, and you need not fear what man
shall do unto you. But if you're less God than I
think you are, less God than what the Bible reveals you to
be, if you're less God than whatever testimony of the old saints of
God said you were, then you can leave me. But if you be Jehovah
God, If you be I am that I am. If you be all God, as you testified
you are, same, the same, forever and forever. If you have one,
listen, if you have once, being the unchangeable God, bless me,
you're bound by the force of your nature to go right on blessing
me as long as you're God and as long as I require a blessing. Can you buy all of that? Can
you buy all of that? That's the immutability of God.
God doesn't change. He stays the same. And therefore,
seeing that He is God, and it's not going to change, then He
can't leave me. He said, I won't leave you. He
said, your name, He said, is engraved on the palm of my hand. He said, your walls are ever
before me. They're always before me. He
said, you're lost. Now, God is a very personal God. Often the scriptures, David talks
about my God, my God. And this God is our God. The Bible says all things are
naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. God sees you and he sees all
there is to be seen about you. Now I am God, and I change not. Therefore the sons of Jacob are
not consumed. God is a God of mercy and a God
of grace. If you live to this good hour,
it's testimony to the fact that God is an immutable God. that He hadn't turned on you
and sent you to hell before He gave you an opportunity even
this morning to seek mercy and to seek salvation in His Son,
the Lord Jesus Christ, and to find forgiveness and the washing
away of your sins. He who has kept you to this day,
if He changed, He might leave you. But since He cannot change,
He will see you right on through to eternal glory. He will see
you on through. How wicked we are to doubt and
to mistrust a faithful, a faithful and loving God. Well, I think
there is another thing here. And namely, it is a plea to God's
love. I believe that David looked upon
God as being his spiritual father. And I believe that he looked
upon God as being a loving God. A merciful and gracious and kind
and compassionate God. A God who often made known His
loving kindness to him. And he looked upon God as being
a God of love. He would say, Lord, if you love
me enough to help me before, you love me enough to help me
now. Surely if you love me enough to redeem me, surely if you love
me enough to put away my sin that I die not, surely if you
love me enough to bestow upon me forgiveness and pardon, surely
if you love me enough in the past to help me, surely you will
not leave me now." Now you may think, some of you may think,
well that preacher is laboring this. He's trying to drive this
nail right through the board. He is trying as it were to drive
it through and then bend it over on the other side. That's exactly
what I'm trying to do. That's exactly my intention. That's exactly why I came here
this morning is to talk to you about this mighty plea and trust
that God will be pleased to fix it in your heart. There are unexpected
things that develop. Unexpected things that come upon
us. unexpected situations in this
world where there is nothing certain but change. And you and
I need to know who our Helper is, and we need to know how to
call on Him in a very simple, plain way. And this God of ours
loves His people. He loved them from old time.
He loved them from the foundation of the world. He loved them before
the song of the first angel ever broke the solemnity of silence. God loves his people and he loves
them as a father. It is the plea of a child to
a father. Thou hast been my help, oh leave
me not, neither forsake me. You've always fed me. A son would
say to his father, would you let me starve now? Or the son
would say to his father, you've always clothed me. Would you
let me go naked now? You've always supported me. Will
you now abandon me in my need and abandon me in my affliction
and abandon me in my distress? Well, of course, you know the
answer to that. It is with us and our God as though he had
led us. Some of us a fourth of the way
through the wilderness. Some of us a half of the way
through the wilderness. and some of us three quarters
of the way through the wilderness, and some of us maybe even further
than that through the wilderness. But I will tell you this, we
did not know one inch of the road when we started, not one
inch of the road, and we had no provision for the journey. No provision for the journey
when we started this thing. God laid hold of me when I was
16 years old. I did not know anything about
the Bible and I knew nothing about the Christian life. I knew nothing about this thing
that people call the race that God's people are running in this
world. I knew nothing. And God Almighty
laid hold of me and I didn't know, as I said, what the first
book in the Bible was or the last book in the Bible. But the
Lord laid hold of me. But He helped us to this point
and this place. And you said, Preacher, how did
you get here? Well, I'll just tell you this, that I wouldn't
be here if it wasn't for Almighty God. And I'll tell you I wouldn't
be here if He hadn't made the provision. And I wouldn't have
got this far through the wilderness if the Lord hadn't intended to
get me all the way through the wilderness. He led me this far
because He intended to, He purposed to, and I believed all along,
and I believed the other night that what God purposes to do,
He will determine what He does do. And the Lord purposes to
bring His people through all the way unto the end and bring
them home to eternal glory. God means to bring His people
home. will he now say, well, I got to leave you to yourself.
There's no path out of this wilderness. You don't know where it is, but
I brought you three quarters of the way. Now you find your
own path out of this wilderness. Find your own way out. Is the
Lord going to do that to his people? Will a loving father
do that to his son? Will a loving father do that
to his son? Will he say, son, son, I'm going
to leave you right here. I've been your help, but I'll
leave you. No, a loving father will not do that. No, the Lord
will furnish a path and the Lord will furnish shelter. The Lord
will deliver us. Well, the question can be asked,
why did you bring me here? We often ask that question in
our mind. Lord, why did you bring us to
this place? Why, Lord, did you allow this to happen? Why did
I get over here? How did I ever get in this mess?
How did I ever get in this fix? How did I ever get between this
rock and this hard place? How in the world could I have
ever got this noose around my neck? How could I have got this
burden on my back? How could it be, Lord? How could
it be? And do you know that the Lord
has the answer to that? You know, all the way, the Lord
says, I want you to depend on Me. Everything I ever learned
from the Word of God teaches me that I ought to depend on
the Lord, I ought to trust God. Don't you think that is the message
of the Bible? Do you think it would ever be
wrong for a man to trust God? For a man to depend upon the
Lord? Don't you think that it is wise? Don't you think it's
spiritually healthy for a man to depend on God and to trust
God all the way during his lifetime, depend on the Lord for everything?
Don't you think it's healthy? Don't you think it's spiritual?
I don't think you can get any more spiritual than depending
on the God of the Bible and trusting Him for help. All the way, I
have depended on you for everything. I could not have found my way
so far along. Will you now, will you now leave
me? Lord, there ain't no way I'd
be here unless you brought me here. Will you leave me now?
Are you going to leave me in the middle of this mess? Are
you going to take me out or are you going to leave me here? Now
not many men could resist such an argument as this, if their
son talked to them in that way. Not many men could resist this
argument, and much less a loving and faithful God. A loving and
faithful God is not going to resist. He is not going to hear
an argument like this. He is going to hear this plea.
He would say, if in my kindness I have undertaken to leave this
poor, ignorant preacher, and brought him so far. I cannot
leave him till I've landed him safely at home. I can't leave
him. I've got to stay with him. I've got to stay with him. This
poor, ignorant creature. I've got to stay with him until
he's landed safe on heaven's shore. The child, listen, let
me just illustrate it like this. Let's say that there's a child
that has fell overboard out of a boat. And there's a fellow
that on board the ship and he's a strong swimmer. And he swims
out to where the little child is and he picks up this little
child and puts him on his shoulders and he begins to swim back to
the shore. And he gets about half way back
to the shore and he turns to the child and said, Dad, you
just get off my back now. I've done something for you.
I've done something for you. Now do the rest yourself. Well, this little child would
cry to him and say, listen, I was sinking. I was sinking. You picked
me up. I would be dead now if you hadn't
picked me up. I'd already left this world.
I'd be dead now if it wasn't for you. Do let me cling to you. Do not leave me. Let me cling
to you and strike out for sure again. Strike out for sure again. Listen to me. That's what David
is saying right here. He said, Thou hast been my help.
You've helped me before. Now don't leave me. And don't
forsake me in this situation and in this crisis. We may, I
think, reason in the same manner with God. Well it cannot be,
it must not be so that God will ever leave his people or forsake
them. You remember what Hebrews chapter 13 says, the Lord said
I'll never leave thee nor forsake thee. This pleading is mighty
brother and sister and we ought to take it up and we ought to
memorize it. We ought to study it and think
about it. Read the life of David and see
what he was talking about when he said the Lord had been his
help. Listen if you will to these poems
and we'll close. The poet said, thou hast helped
in every need. This emboldens me to plead. After so much mercy passed, wilt
thou let me sink at last? It cannot be. God will not allow
us to sink at last. Listen to this, man's plea to
man is that he never more will beg and that he never begged
before. Man's plea to God is that he
did obtain a former suit and therefore sues again. How good a God we serve that
when we sue, makes His old gifts the examples of His new. How wonderful, how merciful is
our God. Well, I'm sure that somebody
will get around to telling you about what happened to me this
week. But I'll tell you what, what happened to me was real.
And it wasn't just something that I imagined in my mind. It
was real. And the Lord, sure enough, did
deliver me. God has been my help. Leave me
not, neither forsake me. Father, in the name of Jesus,
remember this church. And thou hast had mercy upon
us all. Not only upon this preacher.
You had mercy upon his family. And you had mercy also upon this
church. And so may we all today rejoice
in our God and in the freeness of His grace and mercy and in
His absolute immutability and His sovereignty and in His good
pleasure that He is delighted in us and showed mercy to us. In Jesus' name, Amen.