AN INSTRUMENT OF
Psalm 92:3
“Praise
shall employ these tongues of ours,
Till we
with all the saints above
Extol His
name with nobler powers,
And see
the ocean of His love;
Then while
we look, and wondering gaze,
We’ll fill
the heavens with endless praise.”
It has been well said that “We learn in suffering what we
teach in song.” And though only a very
few can teach in song, yet it is true of all that our songs are the fruit of
our sufferings. The children of
It is sometimes said that the angels never sing. It may be difficult to explain why this is,
but as a matter of fact we are never told that they do. We read that at creation “all the sons of
God shouted for joy” (Job 38:7); at the birth of Jesus they said, “Glory to God
in the highest” (Luke 2:14); and in Revelation 5 it is recorded that the number
of angels was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands,
saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain” (v.12), etc. But
only of the redeemed is it said, “They sung a new song” (v.9). To account for
this difference, two reasons may be suggested.
One is, the angels are not the subjects of redemption, and the first and
last songs in Scripture are both connected with redemption. The other, they have never had the varied
experience that belongs to a redeemed sinner.
It is this varied experience which an instrument of ten
strings suggest. To produce the finest
music, more than one string is necessary; and if God is to have the best music
from us, we must have more than one string to our instrument. Music is what God is seeking to get from us;
and all His dealings, as in an ordinary instrument there must be the bass and
treble or there will not be perfect harmony, so God brings the darker shades
into our life, as well as the sunshine, in order that the deeper tones may not
be lacking - in other words, that there may be more strings to the instrument.
There is one string every Christian does possess – that is
salvation. The first music God ever had
from the children of
“One String there is of sweetest tone,
Reserved for sinners saved by grace;
`Tis sacred to one class alone,
And touched by one peculiar race.”
But God wants us to have others. He wants us to praise Him with an instrument of ten strings. At the end of Romans 4 and beginning of
chapter 5, we see how we are brought to God.
The past is all settled; we have peace.
As to the present, we stand in the highest favor with God. As to the future, we rejoice in hope of the
glory of God. Then the Apostle says,
“Not only so, but we glory in tribulations also” (Rom. 5:3). Here is a
wonderful thing, to be able to glory in tribulations! To glory, or boast, in
the very thing we most dislike! Well, these very tribulations produce some of
the finest music from the saints of God. If you have learned to glory in
tribulation, you have got another string or two to your instrument – perhaps
several, because tribulations are so varied.
Look at Paul and Silas in prison, their backs laid open with stripes,
their feet fast in the stocks, their dungeon dark and unwholesome; but at
Do we know anything of this? Are you, my reader, passing
through tribulation in some form or other? It seems a rough pathway, perhaps,
but it is that you may sing, that God may (to speak figuratively) add another
string, and thus get music from you such as He has never had before. Perhaps you ask, “How can I glory in
tribulations? It seems impossible.” One way is by seeing that they can benefit
you as nothing else can. The Apostle does not say, :”We glory in tribulations
also,” without indicating the method by which it is reached. “Knowing,” he
says, “that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and
experience, hope.” He knew what tribulation
could do for him, and so he gloried in it; and more than that, he knew that the
One who passed him through the tribulation loved him perfectly. These two things the conviction that
tribulations are only a blessing in disguise, and that it must be so because
the One who permits it all loves us, will enable the weakest saint to glory in
them.
Yes, it is the “knowing” what tribulation can work, and the
“knowing” the love which is behind it all, that enables us to praise God. The psalmist says: “It is a good thing to
give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto Thy name, O Most High: to
show forth Thy loving-kindness in the morning, and Thy faithfulness every
night, upon an instrument of ten strings.”
And if God is allowing sorrow after sorrow to enter into your life, and
calamities one after another to come upon you “just as if they watched and
waited, scanning one another’s motions, when the first descends the other
follows,” He is only adding the strings which are really your own experience of
how He has delivered you and brought you to Himself, of how He loves you, and
of how He makes all things work together for your good; and thus the music may
be more varied and have greater harmony.
The history of Hezekiah presents a fine instance of this
very thing. The message comes to him,
“Thou shalt die, and not live”; and he turned his face to the wall and wept
sore. He afterward describes his
experience at this time. It seemed as
though God would make an end of him. “Like a crane or a swallow, so did I
chatter,” he says. “ I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking
upward.” But at last he comes to this, “O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for
me.” It is a blessed thing when we turn
to the Lord in perfect helplessness and ask Him to come in. And to what did it all lead? At the end,
after all the bitter experience he describes, he is able to say, “Thou hast in
love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption.” And again, “The living, the living, he shall
praise Thee, as I do this day: . . . therefore we will sing my songs to the
stringed instruments all the days of our life in the house of the Lord.” (See
Isa. 38) He can speak of stringed instruments, for the simple reason that he
knows God as he never knew Him before.
Habbakkuk is another example of the same thing. He learns that though everything goes, God
remains. “Although the fig tree shall not blossom., . . . and there shall be no
herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my
salvation. The Lord God is my
strength.” And he closes thus: “To the
chief singer on my stringed instruments.”
Very few of us, it may be, have this string – to have nothing, and no
one but God, and find Him all-sufficient, so that we can rejoice in the darkest
day. This is a very fine string to have
on the instrument: “Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice.” Phil. 4:4.
When they brought the algum trees to King Solomon, we read
that he used them for two very different purposes – to make “terraces (stairs)
. . . and harps and psalteries for
singers” (2 Chron.
Have you ever watched a musician and seen how he tightens
the strings before commencing to play?
Sometimes he screws and screws until the strings seem as though they
would snap. It is to get the right
tone. The musician knows what he is
about. And does not God, though He may
be dealing with you in much the same way, and putting a great strain upon you?
Yes, even though like the Apostle you may seem pressed out of measure, He knows
how much we can bear. And He knows the
effect the pressure will produce. The
music will be all the sweeter.
The other day we watched a man making sweets. In the pot was a thermometer, and we
wondered what that had to do with it.
On inquiry we learned that a certain heat was necessary and unless that
was registered the man knew his work would be marred. God wants sweetness in His saints, and so heats the furnace. Trouble and affliction always have one of
two effects: they either sour or sweeten.
In one case, they are gone through away from God: in the other, with
God.
We have come to the close of the church’s sojourn on
earth. How shall we spend the closing
days of this period? Shall it be in
praise? As we survey the past, with all its joys and sorrows, can we not see
that God has been stringing the instruments that shall praise Him eternally?
R.E.