My God and My Country

Word of God

But he replied and said, "It is written, 'It is not by bread alone that a man lives, except by every word that issues from the mouth of God

The Gospel According to Matthew 4:4

The Book of Psalms 6:5-7

5 For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall praise thee? 6 I fainted in my mourning: I cause my bed every night to swim, and water my couch with my tears. 7 Mine eye is dimmed for despite, and sunk in because of all mine enemies.

Brethren:

In today’s reading recall if you will the words in the Book of Jonah chapter 2 verse 7;

“When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord: and my prayer came unto thee into thine holy Temple.”

Friends, even when we are in utmost despair due to divers tribulations or when our iniquities weigh heavily upon our hearts we can take comfort from both David and Jonah. For they were certain (in the former as will be revealed later in the psalm) that God would hear their cries for assistance and mercy. For such is the love of the Father, who chastises, but does so in love. - Doktor Riktor Von Zhades - Servant of Christ

“David had more courage and consideration than to mourn thus for any outward affliction; but, when sin sat heavily upon his conscience and he was made to possess his iniquities, when his soul was wounded with the sense of God’s wrath and his withdrawings from him, then he thus grieves and mourns in secret, and even his soul refuses to be comforted. This not only kept his eyes waking, but kept his eyes weeping. It has often been the lot of the best of men to be men of sorrows; our Lord Jesus himself was so. Our way lies through a vale of tears, and we must accommodate ourselves to the temper of the climate. It well becomes the greatest spirits to be tender, and to relent, under the tokens of God’s displeasure. David, who could face Goliath himself and many another threatening enemy with an undaunted bravery, yet melts into tears at the remembrance of sin and under the apprehensions of divine wrath; and it was no diminution at all to his character to do so.

True penitents weep in their retirements. The Pharisees disguised their faces, that they might appear unto men to mourn; but David mourned in the night upon the bed where he lay communing with his own heart, and no eye was a witness to his grief, but the eye of him who is all eye. Peter went out, covered his face, and wept. Sorrow for sin ought to be great sorrow; so David’s was; he wept so bitterly, so abundantly, that he watered his couch. The triumphs of wicked men in the sorrows of the saints add very much to their grief. David’s eye waxed old because of his enemies, who rejoiced in his afflictions and put bad constructions upon his tears. In this great sorrow David was a type of Christ, who often wept, and who cried out, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, (Read Hebrews 5:7).” - Matthew Henry 17^th Century Theologian