Expositions of Holy Scripture: Psalms Part 41

Now, brethren! there are two ways in which we may look at this parallelism of our text: the one is as containing a stringent requirement; the other as holding forth a mighty hope. It contains a stringent requirement. Our religion does not consist in a.s.senting to any creed. Our religion is not wholly to consist of devout emotions and loving and joyous acts of communion and friendship with G.o.d. There must be more than these; these things there must be. For if a man is to be guided mainly by reason, there must, first of all, be creed; then there must be corresponding emotions. But creed and emotions are both meant to be forces which shall drive the wheels of life, and conduct is, after all, the crown of religion and the test of G.o.dliness. They that hold communion with G.o.d are bound to mould their lives into the likeness of His. 'Little children, let no man deceive you,' and let not your own hearts deceive you. You are not a Christian because you believe the truths of the Gospel. You are not such a Christian as you ought to be, if your religion is more manifest in loving trust than in practical obedience which comes from trust. 'He that doeth righteousness is righteous,' and he is to be righteous 'even as He is righteous.' If you are G.o.d's, you will be like G.o.d. Apply the touchstone to your lives, and test your Christianity by this simple and most stringent test.

But again, we may look at the thought as holding forth a great hope. I do not wish to force upon Old Testament writers New Testament truth. It would be an anachronism and an absurdity to make this Psalmist responsible for anything like a clear evangelistic statement of the way by which a man may be made righteous. That waited for coming days, and eminently for Jesus Christ. But it would be quite as great a mistake to eviscerate the words of their plain implications. And when they put side by side the light and the reflection, G.o.d and the G.o.dly, it seems to me to be doing violence to their meaning for the sake of trying to make them mean less than they do, if we refuse to recognise that they have at any rate an inkling of the thought that the Original and Pattern of human righteousness was likewise the Source of it. This at least is plain, that the Psalmist thought that 'the fear of the Lord' was not only, as he calls it at the close of the former of the two psalms, 'the beginning of wisdom,' but also the basis of goodness, for he begins his description of the G.o.dly with it.

I believe that he felt, what is a.s.suredly true, that no man, by his own unaided effort, can ever work out for himself a righteousness which will satisfy his own conscience, and that he must, first of all, be in touch with G.o.d, in order to receive from Him that which he cannot create. Ah, brethren! the 'fine linen, clean and white, which is the righteousness of saints,' is woven in no earthly looms; and the l.u.s.trous light with which it glistens is such as 'no fuller on earth can white' men's characters into. Another Psalmist has sung of the man who can stand in the holy place, 'He shall _receive_ the blessing from the Lord, even righteousness from the G.o.d of his salvation,' and our psalms hint, if they do not articulately declare, how that reception is possible for us, when they set forth waiting upon G.o.d as the condition of being made like Him. We translate the Psalmist's feeling after the higher truth which we know, when we desire 'that we may be found in Him, not having our own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is of G.o.d by faith.'

So much, then, for the first point of correspondence in these two psalms.

II. G.o.d and the G.o.dly are alike in gracious compa.s.sion.

If you will turn to the two psalms for a moment, and look at the last clauses of the two fourth verses, you will see how that thought is brought out. In the former psalm we read, 'The Lord is gracious and full of compa.s.sion': in the latter we find, 'he' (the upright man) 'is gracious and full of compa.s.sion, and righteous.'

I need not trouble you with any remarks about certain difficulties that lie in the rendering of that latter verse. Suffice it to say that they are such as to make more emphatic the intentional resemblance between the G.o.dly as there described, and G.o.d as described in the previous one.

Of both it is said 'gracious and full of compa.s.sion.'

Now that great truth of which I have been speaking, the divine righteousness, is like white Alpine snow, sublime, but cold, awful and repellent, when taken by itself. Our hearts need something more than a righteous G.o.d if we are ever to worship and draw near. Just as the white snow on the high peak needs to be flushed with the roseate hue of the morning before it can become tender, and create longings, so the righteousness of the great white Throne has to be tinged with the ruddy heart-hue of gracious compa.s.sion if men are to be moved to adore and to love. Each enhances the other. 'What G.o.d hath joined together,' in Himself, 'let not man put asunder'; nor talk about the stern Deity of the Old Testament, and pit Him against the compa.s.sionate Father of the New. He is righteous, but the proclaimers of His righteousness in old days never forgot to blend with the righteousness the mercy; and the combination heightens the l.u.s.tre of both attributes.

The same combination is absolutely needful in the copy, as is emphatically set forth in our text by the addition of 'and righteous,'

in the case of the man. For whilst with G.o.d the tyro attributes do lie, side by side, in perfect harmony, in us men there is always danger that the one shall trench upon the territory of the other, and that he who has cultivated the habit of looking upon sorrows and sins with compa.s.sion and tenderness shall somewhat lose the power of looking at them with righteousness. So our text, in regard to man, proclaims more emphatically than it needs to do in regard to the perfect G.o.d, that ever his highest beauty of compa.s.sion must be wedded to righteousness, and ever his truest strength of righteousness must be softened with compa.s.sion.

But beyond that, note how, wherever there is the loving and childlike contemplation of G.o.d, there will be an a.n.a.logy in our compa.s.sion, to His perfectness. We are transformed by beholding. The sun strikes a poor little pane of gla.s.s in a cottage miles away, and it flashes with some likeness of the sun and casts a light across the plain. The man whose face is turned G.o.dwards will have beauty pa.s.s into his face, and all that look upon him will see 'as it had been the countenance of an angel.'

If we have, in any real and deep measure, received mercy we shall reflect mercy. Remember the parable of the unmerciful debtor. The servant that cast himself at his lord's feet, and got the acquittal of his debt, and went out and gripped his fellow-servant by the throat, leaving the marks of his fingernails on his windpipe, with his 'Pay me that thou owest!' had all the pardon cancelled, and all the debt laid upon his shoulders again. If we owe all our hope and peace to a forgiving G.o.d, how can we make anything else the law of our lives than that, having received mercy, we should show mercy? The test of your being a forgiven man is your forgivingness. There is no getting away from that plain principle, which modifies the declaration of the freedom of G.o.d's full pardon.

But I would have you notice, further, as a very remarkable ill.u.s.tration of this correspondence between the gracious and compa.s.sionate Lord and His servant, that in the verses which follow respectively the two about which I am now speaking, the same idea is wrought out in another shape.

In the psalm dealing with the divine character and works we read, immediately after the declaration that He is 'gracious and full of compa.s.sion,' this--'He hath given meat to them that fear Him'; and the corresponding clause in the second of our psalms is followed by this--to translate accurately--'It is well with the man who showeth favour and lendeth.' So man's open-handedness in regard to money is put down side by side with G.o.d's open-handedness in regard to giving meat unto them that fear Him. And again, in the ninth verse of each psalm, we have the same thought set forth in another fashion. 'He sent redemption unto His people,' says the one; 'He hath dispersed, He hath given to the poor,'

says the other. That is to say, our paltry giving may be paralleled with the unspeakable gifts which G.o.d has bestowed, if they come from a love which is like His. It does not matter though they are so small and His are so great; there is a resemblance. The tiniest crystal may be like the hugest. G.o.d gives to us the possession of things in order that we may enjoy the luxury, which is one of the elements in the blessedness of the blessed G.o.d, who is blessed because He is the giving G.o.d, the luxury of giving. Poor though our bestowments must be, they are not unlike His.

The little burn amongst the heather carves its tiny bed, and impels its baby ripples by the same laws which roll the waters of the Amazon, and every fall that it makes over a shelf of rock a foot high is a miniature Niagara.

III. So, lastly, we have still another point, not so much of resemblance as of correspondence, in the firmness of G.o.d's utterances and of the G.o.dly heart.

In the first of our two psalms we read, in the seventh verse, 'All His commandments are _sure_.' In the second we read, in the corresponding verse, 'his heart is _fixed_, trusting in the Lord.' The former psalm goes on, 'His commandments _stand fast_ for ever and ever; and the next psalm, in the corresponding verse, says 'his heart is _established_,'

the original employing the same word in both cases, which in our version is rendered, in the one place, 'stand fast,' and in the other 'established.' So that the Psalmist is thinking of a correspondence between the stability of G.o.d's utterances and the stability of the heart that clasps them in faith.

His commandments are not only precepts which enjoin duty. All which G.o.d says is law, whether it be directly in the nature of guiding precept, or whether it be in the nature of revealing truth, or whether it be in the nature of promise. It is sure, reliable, utterly trustworthy. We may be certain that it will direct us aright, that it will reveal to us absolute truth, that it will hold forth no flattering and false promises. And it is 'established.' The one fixed point amidst the whirl of things is the uttered will of G.o.d.

Therefore, the heart that builds there builds safely. And there should be a correspondence, whether there is or no, between the faithfulness of the Speaker and the faith of the hearer. A man who is doubtful about the solidity of the parapet which keeps him from toppling over into the abyss will lean gingerly upon it, until he has found out that it is firm. The man that knows how strong is the stay on which he rests ought to lean hard upon it. Lean hard upon G.o.d, put all your weight upon Him.

You cannot put too much, you cannot lean too hard. The harder the better; the better He is pleased, and the more He breathes support and strength into us. And, brethren! if thus we build an established faith on that sure foundation, and match the unchangeableness of G.o.d in Christ with the constancy of our faith in Him, then, 'He that believeth shall never make haste,' and as my psalm says, 'He shall not be afraid of evil tidings; his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.'

The upshot of the whole matter is--we cannot work out for ourselves a righteousness that will satisfy our own consciences, nor secure for ourselves a strength that will give peace to our hearts, and stability to our lives, by any other means than by cleaving fast to G.o.d revealed in Jesus Christ.

We have borne the image of the earthly long enough; let us open our hearts to G.o.d in Christ. Let us yield ourselves to Him; let us gaze upon Him with fixed eyes of love, and labour to make our own what He bestows upon us. Thus living near Him, we shall be bathed in His light, and show forth something of His beauty. G.o.dliness is G.o.d-likeness. It is of no use to say that we are G.o.d's children if we have none of the family likeness. 'If ye were Abraham's sons ye would do the works of Abraham,'

said Christ to the Jews. If we are G.o.d's sons we shall do the works of G.o.d. 'Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect;' be ye merciful as your Father is merciful. And if thus we here, dwelling with Christ, are being conformed to the image of His Son, we shall one day 'be satisfied' when we 'awake in His likeness.'

EXPERIENCE, RESOLVE, AND HOPE

'Thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. 9. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.'--PSALM cxvi. 8, 9.

This is a quotation from an earlier psalm, with variations which are interesting, whether we suppose that the Psalmist was quoting from memory and made them unconsciously, or whether, as is more probable, he did so, deliberately and for a purpose. The variations are these. The words in the original psalm (lvi.) according to the Revised Version, read, 'Thou hast delivered my soul from death; hast Thou not delivered my feet from falling?' The writer of this psalm felt that that did not say all, so he put in another clause: 'Thou hast delivered my soul from death, _mine eyes from tears_, and my feet from falling.' It is not enough to keep a man alive and upright. G.o.d will wipe away his tears; and will often keep him from shedding them.

Then the original psalm goes on: 'Thou hast delivered ... my feet from falling, that I may walk before G.o.d,' but the later Psalmist goes a step further than his original. The first singer had seen what it is always a blessing to see--what G.o.d meant by all the varieties of His providences, viz. that the recipient might walk as in His presence; but the later poet not only discerns, but accords with, G.o.d's purpose, yields himself to the divine intention, and instead of simply saying 'That was what G.o.d meant,' he says, 'That is what I am going to do--I will walk before the Lord.' There is still another variation which, however, does not alter the sense. The original psalm says, 'in the light of the living'; the other uses another word, a little more intelligible, perhaps, to an ordinary reader, and says, 'in the land of the living.'

Now, noting these significant variations, I would draw attention to this expression of the Psalmist's acceptance of the divine purpose, and the vision that it gave him of his future. It is hard to say whether he means 'I will walk' or 'I shall walk'; whether he is expressing a hope or giving utterance to a fixed resolve. I think there is an element of both in the words. At all events, I find in them three things: a sure antic.i.p.ation, a firm resolve, and a far-reaching hope.

I. A sure antic.i.p.ation.

'Thou hast'--'I will.' The past is for this Psalmist a mirror in which he sees reflected the approaching form of the veiled future. G.o.d's past is the guarantee of G.o.d's future. G.o.dless people, who get wearied of the monotony of life, begin to say before they have gone far in it, 'Oh!

there is nothing new. That which is to be hath already been. It is just one continual repet.i.tion of the same sort of thing.' But that is only partially true. There is only one man in the world who can truly and certainly say, 'To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant'; and that is the man who says; 'He delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.' For the continuance of things here is not guaranteed to us by the fact that they have lasted for so long. Why, n.o.body knows whether the sun will rise to-morrow or not--whether there will be a to-morrow or not. There will come one day when the sun sets for the last time. What people call the 'uniformity of nature' affords no ground on which to build certainty as to the future.

We all do it, but we have no right to do it. But when we bring G.o.d into the future, that makes all the difference. His past is the guarantee and the revelation of His future, and every person that grasps Him in faith has the right to pray with a.s.surance, 'Thou hast been my Helper; leave me not, neither forsake me,' and to declare triumphantly, 'The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me.'

So, brethren! all the past, as it is recorded for us in Scripture, lives and throbs with faithful promises for us to-day. Though the methods of the manifestation may alter, the essence of it remains the same. As one of the Apostles says, 'Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our advantage, that we, through the encouragement ministered by the Scriptures, might have hope'; and looking forward into all the future, might discern its wastes unknown, all lighted up by the one glad certainty that He that is 'the same yesterday and to-day and for ever'

will be there, and we shall be beside Him. What G.o.d has done, He will keep on doing. 'The Lord hath delivered mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling,' and therefore 'I shall walk before the Lord in the land of the living.'

Our experience yields fuel for our faith. We have been near death many a time; we have never fallen into it. Our eyes have been wet many a time; G.o.d has dried them. Our feet have been ready to fall many a time, and if at the moment when we were tottering on the edge of the precipice, we have cried to Him and said, 'My feet have well-nigh slipped,' a strong Hand has been held out to us. 'The Lord upholdeth them that are in the act of falling,' as the old psalm, rightly rendered, has it, and if we have pushed aside His hand, and gone down, then the next clause of the same verse applies, for He 'raiseth up those that have fallen,' and are lying prostrate.

As it has been, so it will be. 'Thou hast been with me in six troubles,'

therefore 'in the seventh Thou wilt not forsake me.' We can wear out men; and we cannot argue that because a man has had long patience with some unworthy recipient of his goodness, his patience will never give out. But it is safe to argue thus about G.o.d. 'I say not unto thee, until seven times, but until seventy times seven'--the two perfect numbers multiplied into each other, and the product again multiplied by one of them, to give the measureless measure of the exhaustless divine love, and the sure guarantee that to His servant 'to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant.'

Then, again, if we put a little different meaning into the Psalmist's words (and as I said, I think both meanings lie in them), they suggest that he did not look forward into the future only with expectation, but that along with expectation there was resolve. So we have here

II. A firm resolve.

'I will walk before the Lord.' What does 'walking before the Lord' mean?

There are two or three expressions very like each other, yet entirely different from each other, in the Old and in the New Testament, about this matter. We read of 'walking with G.o.d,' and of 'walking before G.o.d,'

and of 'walking after G.o.d.' And whilst there is much that is common to all the expressions, they look at the same idea from different angles.

'Walking with G.o.d,' communion, fellowship, and companionship are implied there. 'Walking after G.o.d,' guidance, direction, and example, and our poor imitation and obedience, are most conspicuous there. And 'walking before G.o.d' means, I suppose, mainly, feeling always that we are in His presence, and have the light of His face, and the glance of His all-seeing eye, falling upon us. 'If I take the wings of the morning, and fly into the uttermost parts of the sea, Thou art there.' 'Thou art acquainted with all my ways, search me, O G.o.d!' That is walking before G.o.d. To put it into colder words, it means the habitual--I do not say unbroken, but habitual--effort to feel in our conscious hearts that we are in His sight; not only that we are with Him, but that we are 'naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.' And that is to be the result, says our psalm, as it is the intention, of all that G.o.d has been doing with us in His merciful providence, in His quickening, sustaining, and comforting influences in the past. He sent all these varying conditions, kept the psalmist alive, kept him from weeping, or dried his tears, kept him from falling, with the intention that he should be continually blessed in the continuous sunshine of G.o.d's presence, and should open out his heart in it and for it, like a flower when the sunbeams strike it. Oh! how different life would look if we habitually took hold of all its incidents by that handle, and thought about them, not as we are accustomed to do, according to whether they tended to make us glad or sorry, to disappoint or fulfil our hopes and purposes, but looked upon them all as stages in our education, and as intended, if I might so say, to force us, when the tempests blow, close up against G.o.d; and when the sunshine came, to woo us to His side. Would not all life change its aspect if we carried that thought right into it, and did not only keep it for Sundays, or for the crises of our lives, but looked at all the trifles as so many magnets brought into action by Him to attract us to Himself? Dear brother, it is not enough to recognise G.o.d's purpose, we must fall in with it, accept the intention, and co-operate with G.o.d in fulfilling it. It is a matter of purity and of piety, to say, 'Thou hast delivered my soul from death, that I may walk before Thee.'

But there has to be something more. There have to be a firm resolve, and effort without which the firmest resolve will all come to nothing, and be one more paving-stone for the road that is 'paved with good intentions.' That firm resolve finds utterance in the not vain vow, 'I will'--in spite of all opposition and difficulties--'I will walk before the Lord,' and keep ever bright in my mind the thought, 'Thou G.o.d seest me.'

Ay! and just in the measure in which we do so shall we have joy. In some of those inhuman prisons where they go in for solitary confinement, there is a little hole somewhere in the wall--the prisoner does not know where--at which at any moment in the four-and-twenty hours the eye of the gaoler may be, and they say that the thought of that unseen eye, glaring in upon the felons, drives some of them half mad. The thought that poor Hagar found to be her only comfort in the wilderness--and so christened the well after it--'Thou G.o.d seest me,' must be the source of our purest joy; or it must be a ghastly dread. When He comes at last, some men will lift up their faces to the sunshine and have their faces irradiated by the light; and some will call on the rocks and the hills to cover them from His face, and prefer rather to be crushed than to be blasted by the brightness of His countenance. If we are right with G.o.d, then the gladdest of thoughts is, 'Thou knowest me altogether, and Thou hast beset me behind and before.' If we are right with G.o.d, 'Thou hast laid Thine hand upon me' will mean for us support and blessing. If we are wrong, it will mean a weight that crushes to the earth.

And if we are right with Him, that same thought brings with it security and companionship. Ah! we do not need ever to say 'I am alone' if we are walking before G.o.d. It brings with it, of course, an armour against temptation. What mean, l.u.s.tful, worldly seduction has any power when a man falls back on the thought, 'G.o.d sees me, and G.o.d is with me'? Do you remember the very first instance in Scripture of the use of this phrase?

The Lord said unto Abraham, 'Walk before Me, and be thou perfect.' That was not only a commandment, but it was a promise, and we might as truly, for the sense of the pa.s.sage, read, 'Walk before Me, and thou shalt be perfect.' That thought of the present G.o.d draws the teeth of all raging lions, and takes the stings out of all serpents, and paralyses and reduces to absolute nothingness every temptation. Clasp G.o.d's hand, and you will not fall.

III. There is lastly here, a far-reaching hope.

I do not know whether the Psalmist had any notion of any land of the living except the land of Earth, where men pa.s.s their natural lives. I almost think that both he and his brother, whose words he was imitating, had some glimpse of a future life of closer union, when eyes should no more weep nor feet fall. At any rate, you and I cannot help reading that hope into his words. When we read, 'I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living,' we cannot but think of the true and perfect deliverance, when it shall be said, with a depth and a fulness of meaning with which it is never said here, 'Thou hast delivered my soul from death,' and the black dread that towered so high, and closed the vista of all human expectation of the future, is now away back in the past, hull-down on the horizon as they say about ships scarcely visible, and no more to be feared. We cannot but think of the perfect deliverance of 'mine eyes from tears,' when 'G.o.d shall wipe away the tears from off all faces, and the rebuke of His people from off all the earth.' We cannot but think of the perfect deliverance of 'my feet from falling'

when the redeemed of the Lord shall stand firm, and walk at liberty on the golden pavements, and no more dread the stumbling-blocks of earth.

We cannot but think of the perfect presence of G.o.d, the perfect consciousness that we are near Him, when He shall 'present us faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.' We cannot but think of the perfect activity of that future state when we 'shall walk with Him in white,' and 'follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.' And one guarantee for all that far-reaching hope is in the tiny experiences of the present; for He who hath delivered our souls from death, our eyes from tears, and our feet from falling, is not going to expose Himself to the scoff, 'This "G.o.d" began to build, and was not able to finish.' But He will complete that which He has begun, and will not stay His hand until all His children are perfectly redeemed and perfectly conscious of His perfect Presence.

REQUITING G.o.d