Psalms 40:9

The great salvation began to be spoken by the Lord, Heb. ii. It is the gospel of Christ that is preached to all nations. What it is that is preached: It is righteousness (

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — unbalanced-parens

Righteousness - Thy faithfulness. Great congregation - In the most public and solemn assemblies: not only to the Jews, but also to all nations; to whom Christ preached by his apostles, as is observed Eph. ii, 17.

I have preached righteousness in the great congregation,....

It was to Christ his me at and drink to go on with the work appointed to him ( John iv. 34 ); and the reason here given is, Thy law is within my heart; it is written there, it rules there. It is meant of the law concerning the work and office of the Mediator, what he was to do and suffer; this law was dear to him and had an influence upon him in his whole undertaking.

I have preached righteousness in the great congregation. The purest morality and the highest holiness were preached by Jesus. Righteousness divine was his theme. Our Lord's whole life was a sermon, eloquent beyond compare, and it is heard each day by myriads. Moreover, he never shunned in his ministry to declare the whole counsel of God; God's great plan of righteousness he plainly set forth. He taught openly in the temple, and was not ashamed to be a faithful and a true witness. He was the great evangelist; the master of itinerant preachers; the head of the clan of open air missionaries. O servants of the Lord, hide not your lights, but reveal to others what your God has revealed to you; and especially by your lives testify for holiness, be champions for the right, both in word and deed. Lo, I have not refrained my lips, O Lord, thou knowest. Never either from love of ease, of fear of men, did the Great Teacher's lips become closed. He was instant in season and out of season. The poor listened to him, and princes heard his rebuke; Publicans rejoiced at him, and Pharisees raged, but to them both he proclaimed the truth from heaven. It is well for a tried believer when he can appeal to God and call him to witness that he has not been ashamed to bear witness for him; for rest assured if we are not ashamed to confess our God, he will never be ashamed to own us. Yet what a wonder is here, that the Son of God should plead, just as we plead, and urge just such arguments as would befit the mouths of his diligent minsters! How truly is he "made like unto his brethren."

WHO IS THE SPEAKER that gives utterance to these marvellous words? In the first instance they must be understood to proceed from our Lord Jesus Christ. By the Spirit of prophecy in the Old Testament they were spoken of him, and by the Spirit of interpretation in the New Testament they have been applied to him. Mark, then, how vehemently he here declares that he has fully discharged the work which he was sent to accomplish. When, in the days of his flesh, he was crying to his Father for preservation in a season of dire distress, he might well ask that he should then be helped, since all the previous strength he possessed had been laid out in his Father’s service. But because this profession emphatically belongs to our Savior we need not suppose that it exclusively belongs to him. On the other hand, Christ being our forerunner and our example, we are encouraged to emulate the high calling and the dutiful obedience he so perfectly exhibited. I. UNDOUBTEDLY OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, AS WE READ HIS HISTORY IN THE FOUR EVANGELISTS, MOST GLORIOUSLY FULFILLED HIS LIFE-MISSION. He was constantly testifying to the gospel of God, the gospel of his righteousness and of his grace. From the first moment when he, being full of the Holy Ghost, began to preach the gospel, until the day when he was taken up into heaven, while he blessed his disciples, he was instant in season and out of season. There were no waste moments of time, no neglected opportunities, no talents held in reserve. “I must work,” was his motto. The zeal of God’s house consumed him. It was his meat and his drink to do the will of him that sent him.

WHO IS THE SPEAKER that gives utterance to these marvellous words? In the first instance they must be understood to proceed from our Lord Jesus Christ. By the Spirit of prophecy in the Old Testament they were spoken of him, and by the Spirit of interpretation in the New Testament they have been applied to him. Mark, then, how vehemently he here declares that he has fully discharged the work which he was sent to accomplish.

SOMETIMES, dear Friends, we should take a review of life. There are occasions when men feel bound to do so and the retrospect may be full of profit to themselves. I find that many look back in hours of trouble. A dark cloud brings them to a pause. In prosperity they might have run on with very little thought, but sorrow calls them to a halt.

SOMETIMES, dear Friends, we should take a review of life. There are occasions when men feel bound to do so and the retrospect may be full of profit to themselves. I find that many look back in hours of trouble. A dark cloud brings them to a pause. In prosperity they might have run on with very little thought, but sorrow calls them to a halt. They are driven to God in prayer and at such times it is not unusual for them, if God has been gracious to them in the past, to recollect His great goodness and to mention it while they are pleading at the Mercy Seat. They say, "He has dealt well with His servants. The Lord has helped us up to now." They look back and see the Ebenezers which they have raised in past years and then they cry, "Has God forgotten to be gracious?"— "And can He have taught me to trust in His name, And thus far have brought me to put me to shame?' Thus they drive their griefs away and the remembrance of past mercy helps them to snatch firewood from the altars of the bygone years, with which to kindle the sacrifice of the present moment. Men are also accustomed to review their lives when they are brought near to the grave. It is helpful, when we fear that life is about to end, to begin to add it up, to see what the sum total reaches. If God should say to us, "Set your house in order, for you shall die, and not live," the best way to do it is to remember the past—looking at what we have done and what God has done—and then to set one against the other, that we may repent of the sin and may hope because of the mercy. Now, albeit that we may not, ourselves, be brought so near to death's door as that, yet during the past month or so we have, as a people, been continually going to the sepulcher. I think that there were seven notable Brothers and Sisters who fell asleep last week, so constantly have death's arrows been flying among us.

I have preached righteousness - I think it best to refer these words to Christ and his apostles. In consequence of his having become a sacrifice for sin, the Jewish sacrificial system being ended, the middle wall of partition was broken down, and the door of faith, the doctrine of justification by faith, opened to the Gentiles. Hence the Gospel was preached in all the world, and the mercy of God made known to the Gentiles; and thus righteousness - justification by faith, was preached in the great congregation - to Jews and Gentiles, throughout the Roman empire. The great congregation, both in this and the following verse, I think, means the Gentiles, contradistinguished from the Jews. The word righteousness means the plan or method of salvation by Jesus Christ - God’s method of justifying sinners by faith, without the deeds of the law. See Rom 3:25-26 (note), and the notes there.

I have preached righteousness in the great congregation - I have main tained and defended the principles of righteousness and truth among assembled multitudes. it would be difficult to see how this could be applied to David himself, or on what occasion of his life this could be said of him; but no one can doubt that this is applicable to the Messiah: (a) He was a preacher. (b) He addressed vast multitudes. (c) Before them all, and at all times, he maintained and illustrated the great principles of “righteousness” as demanded by the law of God, and unfolded the way in which all those multitudes might become righteous before God. Lo, I have not refrained my lips - I have not closed my lips. I have not kept back the truth. O Lord, thou knowest - He could make this solemn appeal to God as the Searcher of hearts, in proof that he had faithfully uttered all that had been required of him in making known the will of God. Compare Joh 17:4, Joh 17:6,Joh 17:8, Joh 17:14, Joh 17:26.