Psalms 118:13

"I have been driven on like a heap of sand, so that I was falling, but the Lord upheld me" [Psalm 118:13]. For though there were a great multitude of believers, that might be compared to the countless sand, and brought into one communion as into one heap; yet "what is man, save Thou be mindful of Him?" He said not, the multitude of the Gentiles could not surpass the abundance of my host, but, "the Lord," he says, "has upheld me." The persecution of the Gentiles succeeded not in pushing forward, to its overthrow, the host of the faithful dwelling together in the unity of the faith.

Thrusting thou hast thrust at me (so the word is), so that I was ready to fall. Satan is the great enemy that thrusts sorely at us by his temptations, to cast us down from our excellency, that we may fall from our God and from our comfort in him; and, if Go had not upheld us by his grace, his thrusts would have been fatal to us.

), helped him to keep his feet and maintain his ground. Our spiritual enemies would, long before this, have been our ruin if God had not been our helper. (3.) God preserved his life when there was but a step between him and death (

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — leading-punctuation

Thou hast thrust sore at me, "Thrusting, thou hast thrust at me." It is a vigorous apostrophe, in which the enemy is described as concentrating all his thrusting power into the thrusts which he gave to the man of God. He thrust again and again with the keenest point, even as bees thrust their stings into their victim. The foe had exhibited intense exasperation, and fearful determination, nor had he been without a measure of success; wounds had been given and received, and these smarted much, and were exceeding sore. Now, this is true of many a tried child of God who has been wounded by Satan, by the world, by temptation, by affliction; the sword has entered into his bones, and left its mark. That I might fall. This was the object of the thrusting: to throw him down, to wound him in such a way that he would no longer be able to keep his place, to make him depart from his integrity, and lose his confidence in God. If our adversaries can do this they will have succeeded to their heart's content: if we fall into grievous sin they will be better pleased than even if they had sent the bullet of the assassin into our heart, for a moral death is worse than a physical one. If they can dishonour us, and God in us, their victory will be complete. "Better death than false of faith" is the motto of one of our noble houses, and it may well be ours. It is to compass our fall that they compass us; they fill us with their venom that they may fill us with their sin. But the Lord helped me; a blessed "but." This is the saving clause. Other helpers were unable to chase away the angry nations, much less to destroy all the noxious swarms; but when the Lord came to the rescue the hero's single arm was strong enough to vanquish all his adversaries. How sweetly can many of us repeat in the retrospect of our past tribulations this delightful sentence, "But the Lord helped me.

In memory of my 50th birthday, our friends have built a house at the back of the Tabernacle, to be used for the purposes of the Church, and to be called JUBILEE HOUSE. It will be a lasting Ebenezer bearing this witness, "Hitherto has the Lord helped us." I was asked to select a text of Scripture to put upon a stone which all could read and, thereby, be made to understand the meaning of the house and its name. The chosen text of Scripture (Psalm 118:13-18) was cut into a stone after a fashion, but the words were not set forth in full—the mason thought it sufficient to inscribe the chapter and the verses. Now, as people do not generally carry their Bibles with them to refer to, this appeared to me to be a failure. I like a matter made boldly clear, so that he may run that reads it! Therefore, I have had the words, themselves, engraved upon a large slab of marble, to be read by all of our day and by coming generations, also. I believe that such memorials silently work for lasting good and the more of them the better. In this case, at least, if there are not "sermons in stones," there will be texts of sermons, which is even better. The passage which is thus made conspicuous is a truthful summary of my personal experience in reference to the faithfulness of God. It may seem to be a long inscription, but I could not afford to give up a line of it. David wrote of himself and I can appropriate every word as descriptive of God's dealings with me. Let me read the whole of it in your hearing—"YOU HAVE PUSHED ME VIOLENTLY THAT I MIGHT FALL: BUT THE LORD HELPED ME. THE LORD IS MY STRENGTH AND SONG, AND HE HAS BECOME MY SALVATION. THE VOICE OF REJOICING AND SALVATION IS IN THE TABERNACLES OF THE RIGHTEOUS: THE RIGHT HAND OF THE LORD DOES VALIANTLY. THE RIGHT HAND OF THE LORD IS EXALTED: I SHALL NOT DIE, BUT LIVE, AND DECLARE THE WORKS OF THE LORD.