Expositions of Holy Scripture: Psalms Part 12

'A faithful Creator--' He made us to need what we do need, and He is not going to forget the wants that He Himself has incorporated with our human nature. He is bound to help us because He made us. He is the G.o.d of Truth, and He will help us. But if we take 'redeemed' in its highest sense, the Psalmist, arguing from G.o.d's past mercy and eternal faithfulness, is saying substantially what the Apostle said in the triumphant words, 'Whom He did foreknow, them He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son ... and whom He did predestinate them He also ... justified, and whom He justified them He also glorified.' 'Thou hast redeemed me.' 'Thou art the G.o.d of Truth; Thou wilt not lift Thy hand away from Thy work until Thou hast made me all that Thou didst bind Thyself to make me in that initial act of redeeming me.'

So we can say, 'He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?' You have experiences, I have no doubt, in your past, on which you may well build confidence for the future. Let each of us consult our own hearts, and our own memories. Cannot _we_ say, 'Thou hast been my Help,' and ought we not therefore to be sure that He will not 'leave us nor forsake us' until He manifests Himself as the G.o.d of our salvation?

It is a blessed thing to lay ourselves in the hands of G.o.d, but the New Testament tells us, 'It is a fearful thing to _fall into_ the hands of the living G.o.d.' The alternative is one that we all have to face,--either 'into Thy hands I commit my spirit,' or into those hands to fall. Settle which of the two is to be your fate.

GOODNESS WROUGHT AND GOODNESS LAID UP

'Oh how great is Thy goodness, which Thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee; which Thou hast wrought for them that trust in Thee before the sons of men!'--PSALM x.x.xi. 19.

The Psalmist has been describing, with the eloquence of misery, his own desperate condition, in all manner of metaphors which he heaps together--'sickness,' 'captivity,' 'like a broken vessel,' 'as a dead man out of mind.' But in the depth of desolation he grasps at G.o.d's hand, and that lifts him up out of the pit. 'I trusted in Thee, O Lord!

Thou art my G.o.d.' So he struggles up on to the green earth again, and he feels the sunshine; and then he breaks out--'Oh! how great is Thy goodness which Thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee.' So the psalm that began with such grief, ends with the ringing call, 'Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord.'

Now these great words which I have read for my text, and which derive even additional l.u.s.tre from their setting, do not convey to the hasty English reader the precise force of the ant.i.thesis which lies in them.

The contrast in the two clauses is between goodness laid up and goodness wrought; and that would come out a little more clearly if we transposed the last words of the text, and instead of reading, as our Authorised Version does, 'which Thou hast wrought for them that trusted in Thee before the sons of men,' read 'which Thou hast wrought before the sons of men for them that trusted in Thee.'

So I think there are, as it were, two great ma.s.ses of what the Psalmist calls 'goodness'; one of them which has been plainly manifested 'before the sons of men,' the other which is 'laid up' in store. There are a great many notes in circulation, but there is far more bullion in the strong-room. Much 'goodness' has been exhibited; far more lies concealed.

If we take that ant.i.thesis, then, I think we may turn it in two or three directions, like a light in a man's hand; and look at it as suggesting--

I. First, the goodness already disposed--'wrought before the sons of men'; and that 'laid up,' yet to be manifested.

Now, that distinction just points to the old familiar but yet never-to-be-exhausted thought of the inexhaustibleness of the divine nature. That inexhaustibleness comes out most wondrously and beautifully in the fundamental manifestation of G.o.d on which the Old Testament revelation is built--I mean the vision given to Moses prior to his call, and as the basis of his message, of the bush that burned and was not consumed. That lowly shrub flaming and not burning out was not, as has often been supposed, the symbol of Israel which in the furnace of affliction was not destroyed. It meant the same as the divine name, then proclaimed; 'I AM THAT I AM,' which is but a way of saying that G.o.d's Being is absolute, dependent upon none, determined by Himself, infinite, and eternal, burns and is not burned up, lives and has no proclivity towards death, works and is unwearied, 'operates unspent,' is revealed and yet hidden, gives and is none the poorer.

And as we look upon our daily lives, and travel back in thought, some of us over the many years which have all been crowded with instances and ill.u.s.trations of divine faithfulness and favouring care, we have to grasp both these exclamations of our text, 'Oh! how great is Thy goodness which Thou hast wrought,' how much greater 'is Thy goodness which is laid up!' The table has been spread in the wilderness, and the verities of Christian experience more than surpa.s.s the legends of hungry knights finding banquets prepared by unseen hands in desert places. It is as when Jesus made the mult.i.tude sit down on the green gra.s.s and feast to the full, and yet abundance remained undiminished after satisfying all the hungry applicants. The bread that was broken yielded more basketfuls for to-morrow than the original quant.i.ty in the lad's hands. The fountain rises, and the whole camp, 'themselves and their children and their cattle,' slake their thirst at it, and yet it is full as ever. The goodness wrought is but the fringe and first beginnings of the ma.s.s that is laid up. All the gold that has been coined and put into circulation is as nothing compared with the wedges and ingots of ma.s.sive bullion that lie in the strong room. G.o.d's riches are not like the world's wealth. You very soon get to the bottom of its purse. Its 'goodness,' is very soon run dry; and nothing will yield an unintermittent stream of satisfaction and blessing to a poor soul except the 'river of the water of life that proceedeth out of the Throne of G.o.d and of the Lamb.'

So, dear brethren! that contrast may suggest to us how quietly and peacefully we may look forward to all the unknown future; and hold up to it so as to enable us to scan its general outlines, the light of the known and experienced past. Let our trustful prayer be; 'Thou hast been my help: leave me not, neither forsake me, O G.o.d of my salvation!' and the answer will certainly be: 'I will not leave thee, till I have done unto thee that which I have spoken to thee of.' Our Memory ought to be the mother of our Hope; and we should paint the future in the hues of the past. Thou hast goodness 'laid up,' more than enough to match 'the goodness Thou hast wrought.' G.o.d's past is the prophecy of G.o.d's future; and my past, if I understand it aright, ought to rebuke every fear and calm every anxiety. We, and only we, have the right to say, 'To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant.' That is delusion if said by any but by those that fear and trust in the Inexhaustible G.o.d.

II. Now let us turn our light in a somewhat different direction. The contrast here suggests the goodness that is publicly given and that which is experienced in secret.

If you will notice, in the immediate neighbourhood of my text there come other words which evidently link themselves with the thought of the goodness laid up: 'Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy presence.'

That is where also the 'goodness' is. 'Thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion ... blessed be the Lord! for He hath shewed me His marvellous kindness in a strong city.' So, then, the goodness which is wrought, and which can be seen by the sons of men, dwindles in comparison with the goodness which lies in that secret place, and can only be enjoyed and possessed by those who dwell there, and whose feet are familiar with the way that leads to it. That is to say, if you wish the Psalmist's thought in plain prose, all these visible blessings of ours are but pale shadows and suggestions of the real wealth that we can have only if we live in continual communion with G.o.d. The spiritual blessings of quiet minds and strength for work, the joys of communion with G.o.d, the sweetness of the hopes that are full of immortality, and all these delights and manifestations of G.o.d's inmost love and sweetness which are granted only to waiting hearts that shut themselves off from the tumultuous delights of earth as the bases of their trust or the sources of their gladness--these are fuller, better than the selectest and richest of the joys that G.o.d's world can give. G.o.d does not put His best gifts, so to speak, in the shop-windows; He keeps these in the inner chambers. He does not arrange His gifts as dishonest traders do their wares, putting the finest outside or on the top, and the less good beneath. 'Thou hast kept the good wine until now.' It is they who inhabit 'the secret place of the Most High,' and whose lives are filled with communion with Him, realising His presence, seeking to know His will, reaching out the tendrils of their hearts to twine round Him, and diligently, for His dear sake, doing the tasks of life; who taste the selected dainties from G.o.d's gracious hands.

How foolish, then, to order life on the principle upon which we are all tempted to do it, and to yield to the temptation to which some of us have yielded far too much, of fancying that the best good is the good that we can touch and taste and handle and that men can see! No! no!

Deep down in our hearts a joy that strangers never intermeddle with nor know, a peace that pa.s.ses understanding, a present Christ and a Heaven all but present, because Christ is present--these are the good things for men, and these are the things which G.o.d does not, because He cannot, fling broadcast into the world, but which He keeps, because He must, for those that desire them, and are fit for them. 'He causeth His sun to shine, and His rain to fall on the unthankful and on the disobedient,'

but the goodness laid up is better than the sunshine, and more refreshing and fertilising and cleansing than the rain, and it comes, and comes only, to them that trust Him, and live near Him.

III. And so, lastly, we may turn our light in yet another direction, and take this contrast as suggesting the goodness wrought on earth, and the goodness laid up in heaven.

Here we see, sometimes, the messengers coming with the one cl.u.s.ter of grapes on the pole. There we shall live in the vineyard. Here we drink from the river as it flows; there we shall be at the fountain-head. Here we are in the vestibule of the King's house, there we shall be in the throne room, and each chamber as we pa.s.s through it is richer and fairer than the one preceding. Heaven's least goodness is more than earth's greatest blessedness. All that life to come, all its conditions and everything about it, are so strange to us, so incapable of being bodied forth or conceived by us, and the thought of Eternity is, it seems to me, so overwhelmingly awful that I do not wonder at even good people finding little stimulus, or much that cheers, in the thought of pa.s.sing thither. But if we do not know anything more--and we know very little more--let us be sure of this, that when G.o.d begins to compare His adjectives He does not stop till He gets to the superlative degree and that _good_ begets _better_, and the better of earth ensures the _best_ of Heaven. And so out of our poor little experience here, we may gather grounds of confidence that will carry our thoughts peacefully even into the great darkness, and may say, 'What Thou didst work is much, what Thou hast laid up is more.' And the contrast will continue for ever and ever; for all through that strange Eternity that which is wrought will be less than that which is laid up, and we shall never get to the end of G.o.d, nor to the end of His goodness.

Only let us take heed to the conditions--'them that fear Him, them that trust in Him.' If we will do these things through each moment of the experiences of a growing Christian life, and at the moment of the experience of a Christian death, and through the eternities of the experience of a Christian heaven, Jesus Christ will whisper to us, 'Thou shalt see greater things than these.'

HID IN LIGHT

'Thou shall hide them in the secret of Thy presence from the pride of man; Thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues.'--PSALM x.x.xi. 20.

The word rendered 'presence' is literally 'face,' and the force of this very remarkable expression of confidence is considerably marred unless that rendering be retained. There are other a.n.a.logous expressions in Scripture, setting forth, under various metaphors, G.o.d's protection of them that love Him. But I know not that there is any so n.o.ble and striking as this. For instance, we read of His hiding His children 'in the secret of His tabernacle,' or tent; as an Arab chief might do a fugitive who had eaten of his salt, secreting him in the recesses of his tent whilst the pursuers scoured the desert in vain for their prey.

Again, we read of His hiding them 'beneath the shadow of His wing'; where the divine love is softened into the likeness of the maternal instinct which leads a hen to gather her chickens beneath the shelter of her own warm and outspread feathers. But the metaphor of my text is more vivid and beautiful still. 'Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy face.' The light that streams from that countenance is the hiding-place for a poor man. These other metaphors may refer, perhaps, the one to the temple, and the other to the outstretched wings of the cherubim that shadowed the Mercy-seat. And, if so, this metaphor carries us still more near to the central blaze of the Shekinah, the glory that hovered above the Mercy-seat, and glowed in the dark sanctuary, unseen but once a year by one trembling high priest, who had to bear with him blood of sacrifice, lest the sight should slay. The Psalmist says, into that fierce light a man may go, and stand in it, bathed, hid, secure. 'Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy face.'

I. Now, then, let us notice, first, this hiding-place.

The 'face' of G.o.d is so strongly figurative an expression that its metaphorical character cannot but be obvious to the most cursory reader.

The very frankness, and, we may say, the grossness of the image, saves it from all misconception, and as with other similar expressions in the Old Testament, at once suggests its meaning. We read, for example, of the 'arm,' the 'hand,' the 'finger' of G.o.d, and everybody feels that these mean His power. We read of the 'eye' of G.o.d, and everybody knows that that means His omniscience. We read of the 'ear' of G.o.d, and we all understand that that holds forth the blessed thought that He hears and answers the cry of such as be sorrowful. And, in like manner, the 'face'

of G.o.d is the apprehensible part of the divine nature which turns to men, and by which He makes Himself known. It is roughly equivalent to the other Old and New Testament expression, the 'name of the Lord,' the manifested and revealed side of the divine nature. And that is the hiding-place into which men may go.

We have the other expression also in Scripture, 'the light of Thy countenance,' and that helps us to apprehend the Psalmist's meaning.

'The light of Thy face' is 'secret.' What a paradox! Can light conceal?

Look at the daily heavens--filled with blazing stars, all invisible till the night falls. The effulgence of the face is such that they that stand in it are lost and hid, like the lark in the blue sky. 'A glorious privacy of light is Thine.' There is a wonderful metaphor in the New Testament of a woman 'clothed with the sun,' and caught up into it from her enemies to be safe there. And that is just an expansion of the Psalmist's grand paradox, 'Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy face.' Light conceals when the light is so bright as to dazzle. They who are surrounded by G.o.d are lost in the glory, and safe in that seclusion, 'the secret of Thy face.'

A thought may be suggested, although it is somewhat of a digression from the main purpose of my text, but it springs naturally out of this paradox, and may just deserve a word. Revelation is real, but revelation has its limits. That which is revealed is 'the face of G.o.d,' but we read, 'no man can see My face.' After all revelation He remains hidden.

After all pouring forth of His beams He remains 'the G.o.d that dwelleth in the thick darkness,' and the light which is inaccessible is also a darkness that can be felt. Apprehension is possible; comprehension is impossible. What we know of G.o.d is valid and true, but we never shall know all the depths that lie in that which we do know of Him. His face is 'the secret'; and though men may malign Him when they say, 'Verily, Thou art a G.o.d that hidest Thyself, O G.o.d of Israel!' and He answers them, 'I have not spoken in secret' in a dark 'place of the earth,' it still remains true that revelation has its mysteries born of the greatness of its effulgence, and that all which we know of G.o.d is 'dark with excess of light.'

But that is aside from our main purpose. Let me rather remind you of how the thought of the secret of G.o.d's face being the secure hiding-place of them that love Him points to this truth--that that brightness of light has a repellent power which keeps far away from all intermingling with it everything that is evil. The old Greek mythologies tell us that the radiant arrows of Apollo shot forth from his far-reaching bow, wounded to death the monsters of the slime and unclean creatures that crawled and revelled in darkness. And the myth has a great truth in it. The light of G.o.d's face slays evil, of whatsoever kind it is; and just as the unlovely, loathsome creatures that live in the dark and find themselves at ease there writhe and wriggle in torment, and die when their shelter is taken away and they are exposed to the light beating on their soft bodies, so the light of G.o.d's face turned upon evil things smites them into nothingness. Thus 'the secret of His countenance' is the shelter of all that is good.

Nor need I remind you how, in another aspect of the phrase, the 'light of His face,' is the expression for His favour and loving regard, and how true it is that in that favour and loving regard is the impregnable fortress into which, entering, any man is safe. I said that the expression the 'face of the Lord' roughly corresponded to the other one, 'the name of the Lord,' inasmuch as both meant the revealed aspect of the divine nature. You may remember how we read, 'The name of the Lord is a strong tower into which the righteous runneth and is safe.' The 'light' of the face of the Lord is His favour and loving regard falling upon men. And who can be harmed with that lambent light--like sunshine upon water, or upon a glittering shield--playing around Him?

Only let us remember that for us 'the face of G.o.d' is Jesus Christ. He is the 'arm' of the Lord; He is the 'name' of the Lord; He is the 'face.' All that we know of G.o.d we know through and in Him; all that we see of G.o.d we see by the shining upon us of Him who is 'the eradiation of His glory and the express image of His person.' So the open secret of the 'face' of G.o.d is Jesus, the hiding-place of our souls.

II. Secondly, notice G.o.d's hidden ones.

My text carries us back, by that word 'them,' to the previous verse, where we have a double description of those who are thus hidden in the inaccessible light of His countenance. They are 'such as fear Thee,' and 'such as trust in Thee.' Now, that latter expression is congruous with the metaphor of my text, in so far as the words on which we are now engaged speak about a 'hiding-place,' and the word which is translated 'trust' literally means 'to flee to a refuge.' So they that flee to G.o.d for refuge are those whom G.o.d hides in the 'secret of His face.' Let us think of that for a moment.

I said, in the beginning of these remarks, that there was here an allusion, possibly, to the Temple. All temples in ancient times were asylums. Whosoever could flee to grasp the horns of the altar, or to sit, veiled and suppliant, before the image of the G.o.d, was secure from his foes, who could not pa.s.s within the limits of the Temple grounds, in which strife and murder were not permissible. We too often flee to other G.o.ds and other temples for our refuges. Ay! and when we get there we find that the deity whom we have invoked is only a marble image that sits deaf, dumb, motionless, whilst we cling to its unconscious skirts.

As one of the saddest of our modern cynics once said, looking up at that lovely impersonation of Greek beauty, the Venus de Milo, 'Ah! she is fair; but she has no arms,' so we may say of all false refuges to which men betake themselves. The G.o.ddess is powerless to help, however beautiful the presentment of her may have seemed to our eyes. The evils from which we have fled to these false deities and shelterless sanctuaries will pursue us across the threshold; and as Elijah did with the priests of Baal upon Carmel, will slay us at the very foot of the altar to which we have clung, and vexed with our vain prayers. There is only one shrine where there is a sanctuary, and that is the shrine above which shines 'the glory of G.o.d in the face of Jesus Christ'; into the brightness of which poor men may pa.s.s and therein may hide themselves.

G.o.d hides us, and His hiding is effectual, in the secret of the light and splendour of His face.

I said, too, that there was an allusion, as there is in all the psalms that deal with men as G.o.d's guests, to the ancient customs of hospitality, by which a man who has once entered the tent of the chief, and partaken of food there, is safe, not only from his pursuers, but from his host himself, even though that host should be the kinsman-avenger. The red-handed murderer, who has eaten the salt of the man whose duty it otherwise would have been to slay him where he stood, is safe from his vengeance. And thus they who cast themselves upon G.o.d have nothing to fear. No other hand can pluck them from the sanctuary of His tent. He Himself, having admitted them to share His hospitality, cannot and will not lift a hand against them. We are safe _from_ G.o.d only when we are safe _in_ G.o.d.

But remember the condition on which this security comes. 'Thou shalt hide _them_ in the secret of Thy face.' Whom? Those that flee for refuge to Thee. The act of simple faith is set forth there, by which a poor man, with all his imperfections on his head, may yet venture to put his foot across the boundary line that separates the outer darkness from the beam of light that comes from G.o.d's face. 'Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?'

That question does not mean, as it is often taken to mean--What mortal can endure the punishments of a future life? but, Who can venture to be G.o.d's guests? and it is equivalent to the other interrogation, 'Who shall ascend to the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in His holy place?' The answer is, If you go to Him for refuge, knowing your danger, feeling your impurity, _you_ may walk amidst all that light softened into lambent beauty, as those Hebrew children did in the furnace of fire, being at ease there, and feeling it well with themselves, and having nothing about them consumed except the bonds that bound them.

Remember that Jesus Christ is the Hiding-place, and that to flee to Him for refuge is the condition of security, and all they who thus, from the snares of life, from its miseries, disappointments, and burdens, from the agitation of their own hearts, from the ebullition of their own pa.s.sions, from the stings of their own conscience, or from other of the ills that flesh is heir to, make their hiding-place--by the simple act of faith in Jesus Christ--in the light of G.o.d's face, are thereby safe for evermore.

But the initial act of fleeing to the refuge must be continued by abiding in the refuge. It is of no use to take shelter in the light unless we abide in the light. It is of no use to go to the Temple for sanctuary unless we continue in it for sacrifice and worship. We must 'walk in the light as G.o.d is in the light.' That is to say, the condition of being hid in G.o.d is, first of all, to take refuge in Jesus Christ, and then to abide in Him by continual communion. 'Your life is hid with Christ in G.o.d.' Unless we have a hidden life, deep beneath, and high above, and far beyond the life of sense, we have no right to think that the shelter of the Face will be security for us. The very essence of Christianity is the habitual communion of heart, mind, and will with G.o.d in Christ. Do you live in the light, or have you only gone there to escape what you are afraid of? Do you live in the light by the continual direction of thought and heart to Him, cultivating the habit of daily and hourly communion with Him amidst the distractions of necessary duty, care, and changing circ.u.mstances?

But not only by communion, but also by conduct, must we keep in the light. The fugitive found outside the city of refuge was fair game for the avenger, and if he strayed beyond its bounds there was a sword in his back before he knew where he was. Every Christian, by each sin, whether it be acted or only thought, casts himself out of the light into the darkness that rings it round, and out there he is a victim to the beasts of prey that hunt in darkness. An eclipse of the sun is not caused by any change in the sun, but by an opaque body, the offspring and satellite of the earth, coming between the earth and sun. And so, when Christian men lose the light of G.o.d's face, it is not because there is any 'variableness or shadow of turning' in Him, but because between Him and them has come the blackness--their own offspring--of their own sin. You are not safe if you are outside the light of His countenance.

These are the conditions of security.

III. Lastly, note what the hidden ones find in the light.