George H. Morrison - Devotional SermonsThe Privilege of Worship
"As for me, I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercy." Psa 5:7
David was a man of many privileges bestowed on him in the goodness of his Lord. He had the privilege of the poetic heart and the privilege also of a royal estate. But in this text he singles out a privilege we may all share with him. It is the privilege of public worship. "As for me," he says, "I will go into thy house." The very thought of it was a delight to him. It made a secret music in his heart when the hour of public worship was approaching. For him the recurring summons to the sanctuary was not a call to be grudgingly obeyed. It was the happiest summons of his week.
This is perhaps the more remarkable in the light of the personality of David. His was one of those poetic natures for which the world is all aflame with God. We read in Revelation that in the other world there is no temple. There is no need of any sanctuary, for the whole expanse of heaven is a sanctuary. And there are natures in this present world so quick to see and feel that God is everywhere, that the whole universe for them is aglow with His presence. For them the great Creator is not far away. He is very near and He is always speaking. It is His voice that is calling in the sea and in the wind that bloweth where it listeth. The tiniest weed, the day-spring and the evening, the stars and the bird on the branch are but the manifold and changing shadows of that infinite perfection which is God. It is with such thoughts that the poet walks the world. It was with such thoughts that David walked the world. For him in every field there was an altar and a sacrifice in every breath of evening. And the wonderful thing is that with a heart like that, that saw God everywhere and worshipped Him, there should have been this overwhelming sense of the privilege of sanctuary worship.
"Let others do what they like," is what he means, "as for me, I will go into thy house." There was something there that nothing else could give him, neither the lonely mountain nor the sea. And so at once, as reasonable men, we find ourselves confronted by this question--what was there in the worship of God's house that made it thus indispensable to David?
The Sense of Human Fellowship
Well, in the first place, in the house of God there was for David the sense of human fellowship. In the deepest yearnings of his heart, he felt in the sanctuary that he was not alone. It is a lonely thing to be a king, and David the psalmist was a king. He lived in a certain solitary grandeur which is ever the penalty of royal estate. And then for him there was another loneliness that pierces deeper than that of regal state--it was the loneliness of the poetic heart. To be a monarch is to be a solitary, and to be a poet is to be a solitary. The one is separated by his rank from men, and the other by his inspiration. And it is when one recalls that David was not only a monarch but a poet too that one begins to understand his loneliness. He craved for fellowship, as we all do, and for him it was very difficult to find. He had to deny himself those pleasant intimacies that are so heartening to the common man.
My brother, out of a loneliness like that can't you gather the exquisite delight with which the poet-king would turn his steps to the communion of the house of God? There he was no longer solitary. There he was a subject, not a king. There he was as a brother among brothers under the shadow of a Father-God. And every sacrifice upon the altar and every word of penitence and praise told of a fellowship that lay far deeper than everything that can sunder human lives.
Deeper than everything which separates is the need of pardon for the sinner. Deeper than every individual craving is the craving for fellowship with God. No wonder, then, that David loved the sanctuary. No wonder that with eager feet he sought it. No wonder that the hour of public prayer was the most cherished season of his week. Seeking that fellowship which every soul demands, no matter how richly gifted it may be, he said: "As for me, I will come into thy house."
Brethren, as with David, so with us, that is the privilege of public worship. In all the deepest regions of our being, it is the assurance of a real fellowship. In the market-place, men meet and mingle on the basis or a common interest in business. In the home, lives are united by all the tender ties of human love. But in the sanctuary, the ground of fellowship is the common need of our immortal spirit which knows its weakness and its need of pardon and cannot be satisfied with less than God.
When Christian was in the Valley of the Shadow, you remember, he heard the voice of Faithful on ahead. And it cheered him and comforted his heart to know that there was another in the Valley. And that is one thing the sanctuary does for us in a way that nothing else can ever do as we fight our battles, fall and rise again, and wrestle heavenward against storm and tide. It tells us there are others in the Valley. It gives us the happy certainty of comradeship.
In common prayer we voice a common need, and in common praise a common aspiration. And within the house of God we come to feel that we are not alone, and to feel that is like a strain of music. Without that fellowship we should despair, for the pathway is infinitely hard. Without that fellowship, knowing our instability, we might falter and fall by the wayside. And then there falls on us the benediction of worship and we are wakened to the sense of brotherhood. Others have known the things that we have known, the failures and the struggles and the yearnings. Others as vile as we have been redeemed and became more than conquerors in Christ. Others, too, have been tempted to despair and have thought of the heavens as brass and yet have known that to depart from God was the avenue to death. My brother, it is such things that we learn in public worship in the house of God. No lonely meadow, no still and shady woods, no lonely mountainside can teach us that. And therefore from all the ministries of nature will the true seeker turn to the house of God, saying with the poet-king of Israel, "As for me, I shall come into thy house.'
The Message From the Past
In the second place, within the house of God there was for David the message of the past. There was the memorial of all that God had been in His unfailing shepherding of Israel. In the life of David, as in the lives of all of us, there were seasons when he was hard pressed--seasons when the sky was dark and lowering and all the sunshine seemed to have departed. And who does not know how in such times as these the light of the countenance of God is quenched as though He had quite forgotten to be gracious. Such tragic hours were in the lot of David. There seemed for him to be no justice anywhere. Slander was rife and treachery was busy; hatred was malignant and victorious.
