Psalms 20

Psalms 20:4

What Is Your Wish? Thy heart’s desire.—Psalms 20:4.What do you wish for most? Tell me, and I shall tell you what sort of a boy or girl you are. For your wishes are like a handful of grass thrown up into the air; the grass shows which way the wind blows, and your wishes show the real you. You think that you make your wishes. So you do.

But your wishes also make you, and what you wish for most you are.Now everyone has wishes, from baby, who holds out his chubby hand to reach a biscuit or a favorite toy, to grandfather and grandmother, who wish for a cozy fireside, a footstool at their feet, and a kind little grandchild to run their errands, unlace their boots, and toast their slippers at the fire.We begin to wish as soon as we are born, and we keep on wishing though we live to be a hundred and twenty. But it is when we are young that we wish the hardest; and the boy or girl who has no wishes does not exist.

If such a child were to be found he would be worth exhibiting in a museum or a menagerie with a label round his neck, and on it these words, “The Only Specimen.”1. When we are young we long for many things. We usually long in the first place to be grown-up. We think it would be perfect to be done with school and lessons, to be free to do exactly as we like. The extraordinary part of it is that grown-up people generally long to be young. They say, “Oh! if only we were children again!” They have tried both childhood and manhood and they prefer childhood.

So you see there must be something specially nice about being young, and you needn’t be in too great a hurry to grow up.Some of you are longing to be grown-up because you wish to be doctors, or nurses, or lawyers, or teachers, or carpenters, or pilots, or bulldozer drivers, or preachers. You are counting the years till you can be what you have set your heart upon being.Then, besides these big wishes for the future, you have ever so many little wishes for the present.

You are wishing for a watch, or a bicycle, or a fishing-rod and tackle, or an electric torch, or a set of tools, or a new video game, or a phone, or a trampoline, or—but you see we could go on all morning, just counting your different wishes!Then some of us have wishes that we are too shy to put into words. We want to be honorable and brave and true and good, to love God and help others, but we’d rather not speak about that. These wishes are somehow sacred things.2. Now let me tell you a secret. What we wish for most we often get, if—and this is the important half of the secret—if we only wish it hard enough. Yes, that’s true, although some of you will say it sounds too good to be true. It is because of this. If you want a thing very badly you bend all your will towards getting it.

You try every road that you think will reach it. You “leave no stone unturned,” as the saying is, till you get that wish fulfilled. You see, you do more than say, “I should like” you do more than say, “I wish”; you say, “I will,” and you get it.That sounds rather nice. Yes, but to me it also sounds rather dangerous. The nice bit is that it teaches you not to be content with merely wishing things in a half-hearted way. It encourages you to stick in and get them. Success comes to the boy or girl who determines to succeed. The dangerous bit is that you may want the wrong things, and hurt yourselves and others in getting them.

There are people in the world today who have wanted certain things so tremendously that they have trampled on faith and love and honor and justice to get them. And when they have got them, these same things have tasted as dust and ashes in their mouth. They wish now that they had never wished for them.3. So we must be careful to wish right wishes, and we must try to get them in a right way. If we do not get them we shall know that God thinks it is best for us not to have these wishes granted. But that need not keep us from wishing other wishes or even the same wishes, for God may fulfill our heart’s desires in another way.There was a very famous American doctor whose dream as a boy was to become a great surgeon.

His father was dead and his mother was very poor; and a medical training is very expensive, so it did not look as if he would see his dream fulfilled. But he worked and he struggled and he studied, he overcame tremendous obstacles, and at the age of thirty he found himself assistant to a great American professor of surgery.

It looked as if he were really going to get his wish at last.Then a terrible thing happened. He developed a rare form of skin disease which meant that he couldn’t perform ordinary operations. He was in deep despair, so deep that he thought of taking his own life; but fortunately he told his professor, and that wise man said, “You can’t do wet surgery, but why not try dry surgery?” The young man later became world-famous. He gained his desire to be a great surgeon, but he was not the kind of surgeon he first set out to be.And that is the way with some of our wishes. God does not grant us them exactly. He fulfills them another way because He wants us to do other work for Him. But He still wants us to keep on wishing and bringing our wishes to Him. Some wishes He will grant us here and now.

Some He may refuse because they would harm us if we got them. Some He will keep to grant us in that better country where all noble longings and all unselfish desires will be grandly and wonderfully fulfilled.

Psalms 20:5

The Banner Of Victory In the name of our God we will set up our banners.—Psalms 20:5.On the day the Armistice was signed, I walked down the streets of one of our big cities and what do you think I saw? Well, just what you might have seen in any of the cities or towns of Scotland that day—crowds of boys and girls shouting and singing and waving flags. Most of the people I met were smiling, but the boys and girls were the happiest of all as they waved their banners of victory. It was the greatest day in their lives.Now, boys and girls, what you did that day I want you to do always. I want you always to carry a Banner of Victory and the other name of that Banner is the Banner of Righteousness.The psalm from which our text is taken might be called the National Anthem of Israel. It used to be sung before the Israelites went out to battle.

The Israelites were God’s chosen people. When they fought they felt that it was God’s battles they were· fighting.

So when they went forth to battle it was in His name they set up their banners and then they felt sure of victory.Now the Banner of Righteousness has God’s name on it and that means two things. It means, first, that we are fighting for Him and, second, that He is fighting for us.1. It means that we art fighting for Him. All those who fight for right within and without are fighting for God. But why should we fight for right? I want to give you three reasons.(1) The first is that anyone who is not on the side of right will be quite out of it. It is going to be the fashion, as it never was before, to champion right and justice. But that is a poor reason.

I shall give you a better.(2) That is that we owe it to the men who laid down their lives for us. They died for us and for the cause of righteousness, but they left their work unfinished. I don’t suppose there is a boy here who hasn’t regretted that he wasn’t old enough to go and fight. But, boys, there is something for you to do too. You can live for the cause they died for. You can take up the task they laid down. You can fill the blank—you and you alone. Will you do it?

Will you stand for all that is brave and true and honorable and pure?(3) That brings me to the third reason—because the country, the world, is looking to the hoys and girls to build it up again. And you can never have a good world without good people in it.Boys and girls, have you realized how tremendous it is to be alive today, how stupendous it is just to be a boy or a girl? I would give a gold mine to be a boy or a girl just now. You are standing at the beginning of a new era, and what sort of era it is going to be depends largely upon you. What kind of world are you going to make, boys and girls? We are waiting to see.2.

But there is one thing we must not forget, for if we forget it our Banner of Victory may turn into a Banner of Defeat. If God’s name is on our banner then it means that He is fighting for us.

He is fighting for us when we are fighting for Him, and that means that we are under His protection and can suffer no harm.Once during a time of martial law in Havana there was a street fight and a man was shot. Everyone ran away except one Englishman who had nothing to do with the fight. As he was on the spot he was arrested Somebody was found to swear that he was guilty, and he was sentenced to be shot the following morning.Now news of what had happened came to the ears of the British consul, and the next day he went to the place of execution and claimed the man as a British subject. The officer in command of the firing party showed his orders and said he could not release his prisoner. Then the consul asked permission to shake hands with the condemned man before he was shot. This the officer granted, and the consul walked up, drew a United Kingdom flag from his pocket, and threw it around the Englishman. “Now,” he said, “shoot if you dare!” The officer could not shoot through the flag without insulting the British nation, so he applied to the Governor for instructions, and the prisoner’s innocence was soon proved.There is a verse in the Song of Songs which contains these words, “His banner over me was love.” If God’s love is all round us and over us then no enemy can really harm us. We may bear the scars of many a tough fight, but we shall win through in the endLand of our birth, we pledge to thee Our love and toil in the years to be; When we are grown and take our place, As men and women with our race. Father in heaven, who lovest all, Oh help Thy children when they call; That they may build, from age to age, An undefiled heritage. Teach us to bear the yoke in youth, With steadfastness and careful truth; That, in our time, Thy grace may give The truth whereby the nations live. Teach us to rule ourselves alway, Controlled and cleanly night and day; That we may bring, if need arise, No maimed or worthless sacrifice. Teach us to look, in all our ends, On Thee for judge, and not our friends; That we, with Thee, may walk uncowed By fear or favor of the crowd. Teach us the strength that cannot seek, By deed or thought, to hurt the weak; That, under Thee, we may possess Man’s strength to comfort man’s distress.

Teach us delight in simple things, And mirth that has no bitter springs; Forgiveness free of evil done, And love to all men ’neath the sun! Land of our birth, our faith, our pride, For whose dear sake our fathers died; O Motherland, we pledge to thee, Head, heart, and hand through the years to be! (Rudyard Kipling, The Children’s Song.)