Psalm 17:15

Verse 15. When I awake. How apt and obvious is the analogy between our awakening out of natural sleep, and the holy soul's rising up out of the darkness and torpor of its present state into the enlivening light of God's presence? It is truly said so to awake at its first quitting these darksome regions, when it lays aside its cumbersome night veil. It doth so more perfectly in the joyful morning of the resurrection day when mortality is swallowed up in life, and all the yet hovering shadows of it are vanished and fled away. And how known and usual an application this is of the metamorphic terms of sleeping and awaking in Holy Writ, I need not tell them who have read the Bible. Nor doth this interpretation less fitly accord to the other contents of this verse; for to what state do the sight of God's face, and satisfaction with his likeness, so fully agree, as to that of future blessedness in the other world? But then the contexture of discourse in this and the foregoing verse together, seems plainly to determine us to this sense: for what can be more conspicuous in them, than a purposed comparison, an opposition of two states of felicity mutually to each other? That if the wicked whom he calls men of time (as the words rlxm ~ytmm are rendered by Pagninus -- Homines de tempore -- and do literally signify) and whose portion, he tells us, is in this life: and the righteous man's, his own; which he expected not to be till he should awake, that is, not till after this life. John Howe.

Verse 15. There is a sleep of deadness of spirit, out of which the shining of God's loving countenance doth awake a believer and revive the spirit of the contrite ones; and there is a sleep of death bodily, out of which the lovingkindness of the Lord shall awake all his own in the day of the resurrection, when he shall so change them into the similitude of his own holiness and glorious felicity that they shall be fully contented for ever: and this first and second delivery out of all trouble may every believer expect and premise to himself. "I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness." David Dickson.

Verse 15. There is a threefold meaning in this verse, inasmuch as it is in Christ alone, the firstborn from the dead, the express image of Jehovah's glory, that the saints will rise immortal, incorruptible, and be like the angels in heaven.

Verse 15. Everlasting life and salvation in heaven, is not a truth revealed only by the gospel, but was well known, clearly revealed, and firmly believed, by the saints of old. They had assurance of this, that they should live with God for ever in glory. When I awake, with thy likeness. Psalms 17:15 . "Thou wilt receive me to glory." Psalms 73:24 . "In thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." Psalms 16:11 . They looked for another country, whereof Canaan was but a type and shadow, as the apostle shows in the epistle to the Hebrews 11:16 . They knew there was an eternal state of happiness for the saints, as well as an eternal state of misery for the wicked; they did believe this in those days. Samuel Mather on the "Types," 1705.

HINTS FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS

Verse 15. This is the language

(1). Of a man whose mind is made up; who has decided for himself; who does not suspend his conduct upon the resolution of others. (2). Of a man rising in life, and with great prospects before him. (3). It is the language of a Jew.

Verse 15. The beholding of God's face signifies two things.

William Jay.

Verse 15. See "Spurgeon's Sermons," No. 25. Title, "The Hope of Future Bliss." Divisions.

Verse 15. To see God and to be like him, the believer's desire. J. Fawcett.