1. Help, Lord. A short, but sweet, suggestive, seasonable, and
serviceable prayer; a kind of angel’s sword, to be turned every way, and to be
used on all occasions. The psalmist sees the extreme danger of his position and
therefore turns to the Lord, whose help is never denied to his servants. Help,Lord is a very useful
ejaculation which we may dart up to heaven on occasions of emergency. As small
ships can sail into harbors which larger vessels cannot enter, so our brief
cries and short petitions may trade with heaven when our soul is wind-bound,
and business-bound, as to longer exercises of devotion, and when the stream of
grace seems at too low an ebb to float a more laborious supplication. Forthe godly man ceaseth. The death, departure, or decline of godly men should
be a trumpet-call for more prayer. The present times always appear to be
especially dangerous, because they are nearest to our anxious gaze, and
whatever evils are rife are sure to be observed, while the faults of past ages
are further off, and are more easily overlooked. Yet we expect that in the
latter days, “because
iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold,” and then we must address ourselves
to the churches’ Lord, by whose help the gates of hell shall be kept from
prevailing against us. The faithful fail. Common honesty is no longer
common when common irreligion leads to universal godlessness. David had his eye
on Doeg, and the men of Ziph and Keilah, and perhaps remembered the murdered
priests of Nob, and the many banished ones who were with him in the cave of
Adullam, and wondered where the state would drift without the anchors of its
godly and faithful men. David, amid the general misrule, did not take to
seditious plottings, but to solemn petitionings.
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