Precious liquid! The tears of saints. Precious to God. Every tear that wells up in the soul and falls from the wet eyes of his people, he diligently collects and keeps in his bottle.

Tears stand for all the sorrows that come to the people of God on account of Christ and the gospel. They sob with their heads in their hands, and their shoulders heave, and waters of sorrow run from their eyes. These tears are not tears of rebellion but expressions of deep sorrow of heart. The soul is oppressed and in anguish, and words fail to express what the tears in their eyes tell so clearly.

Jesus wept. David wept. Saints weep.

Surely, this world is a valley of tears, of sorrow, and of the shadow of death. God is near his saints, and he collects their tears in his bottle as he comforts them with the truth that they belong to Jesus Christ, their faithful savior. It is a bottle of remembrance. Their sorrows will not be forgotten.

These tears of the saints are brought to the souls and to the eyes of the saints by many wanderings. David was harried from place to place by the reprobate Saul. Finally, David was driven from the land of Israel to the land of the Philistines! So God’s people are made fugitives in the earth. They are estranged from mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and lifelong acquaintances. They are dismissed as clients by some, and others will not do business with them. They are stripped of their inheritances and their possessions. All day enemies wrest your words. All their thoughts against you are for evil. The enemies meet, they lurk, and they watch. They wait for your soul. And many tears flow from the eyes of God’s people.

Are not these collected in his bottle?

And is there not a book in which all these tears and wanderings are recorded? A record of remembrance.

Yet the tears and the wanderings that caused them are not merely recorded but ordained! Yes, not only a book of remembrance but a book of the decree. God ordained the wanderings. He gave the enemy the power to afflict his saints. He ordained the enemy and the affliction and all the tears.

Is that not the cross? They took Jesus Christ, and wicked hands crucified and slew him; yet according to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. And so all our tears are but the extension of Christ’s, and all our wanderings are a share in his, for whom the world had no room. Christ’s anguish is our salvation.

A book that is also a record of the tears and wanderings according to God’s judgment. In his ledger is God’s evaluation of the enemies of his people. He is angry with the wicked every day. And the sufferings they inflict upon his people he hates. He holds the enemies guilty, whose fierce persecution and love of war bring these tears to the eyes of his saints. God judges his saints righteous in Christ. God’s record of their wanderings and tears is one of love in Christ, and so God judges that all their sorrows and even their very tears must serve for their glory in heaven, for so he ordained.