Expositions of Holy Scripture: Psalms Part 46

There is a story in the Book of Chronicles, about one battle in which Judah engaged, of a very singular kind. The first step in the campaign was that the king of Judah gathered all his people together, and prayed to G.o.d, and said, 'We know not what we shall do. We have no strength against this great mult.i.tude that cometh against us, but our eyes are unto Thee.' Then a prophet came and a.s.sured him of victory, and next day they arrayed the battle. It was set in this strange fashion: in the forefront were put the priests and Levites, with their instruments of music, and not soldiers with spears and bows, and they marched out to battle with this song, 'The Lord is gracious and merciful. His mercy endureth for ever.' Then, without the stroke of sword or thrust of spear, G.o.d fought for them and scattered their foes.

'Which things are an allegory.' If we recognise our helplessness, G.o.d is our help. If we conceit ourselves to be strong, we are weak; if we know ourselves to be impotent, Omnipotence pours itself into us. We read once that Jesus Christ healed 'them that had need of healing.' Why does the Evangelist not say, without that periphrasis, 'healed the sick'? Because he would emphasise, I suppose, amongst other things, the thought that only the sense of need fits for the reception of healing and help.

If, then, we desire that G.o.d should be 'the Strength of our hearts, and our Portion for ever,' the coming of His help must be wooed and won by our sense of our own impotence, and only they who say, 'We have no might against this great mult.i.tude that cometh against us,' will ever hear from Him the blessed a.s.surance, 'The Lord will fight for you.' 'Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord!' So, brethren! the a.s.surance of faith follows the consciousness of weakness, and both together will lead, and nothing else will lead, to the realisation of the vision of faith, and bring us at last, weak as we are, to the hills where the weary and foot-sore flock 'shall lie down in a good fold, and on fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel.'

MOUNTAINS ROUND MOUNT ZION

'They that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever. 2. As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people from henceforth, even for ever.'--PSALM cxxv. 1, 2.

The so-called 'Songs of Degrees,' of which this psalm is one, are probably a pilgrim's song-book, and possibly date from the period of the restoration of Israel from the Babylonish captivity. In any case, this little psalm looks very much like a record of the impression that was made on the pilgrim, as he first topped the crest of the hill from which he looked on Jerusalem. Two peculiarities of its topographical position are both taken here as symbols of spiritual realities, for the singularity of the situation of the city is that it stands on a mountain and is girdled by mountains. There is a tongue of land or peninsula cut off from the surrounding country by deep ravines, on which are perched the buildings of the city, while across the valley on the eastern side is Olivet, and, on the south, another hill, the so-called 'Hill of Evil Counsel'; but upon the west and north sides there are no conspicuous summits, though the ground rises. Thus, really, though not apparently, there lie all round the city encircling defences of mountains.

Similarly, says the Psalmist, set and steadfast as on a mountain, and compa.s.sed about by a protection, like the bastions of the everlasting hills, are they whose trust is in the Lord. Faith, then, gives inward stability, and faith secures an encircling defence.

But, more than that, notice that the mountains encompa.s.s a mountain.

Faith, in some measure, makes the protected like the Protector. And then, beyond that, notice the two 'for evers.' Zion cannot be moved, it 'abideth for ever,' and 'the Lord is about His people from henceforth and for ever.' To trust in G.o.d gives the transitory creature a kind of share in the uncreated eternity of that in which he trusts. Now these are four thoughts worth carrying away with us.

I. The simple act of trust in G.o.d brings inward stability.

The word here that is rightly translated 'trust,' like most expressions in the Old Testament for religious emotion, has a distinctly metaphorical colouring about it. It literally means to 'hang upon'

something, and so, beautifully, it tells us what faith is--just hanging upon G.o.d. Whoever has laid his tremulous hand on a fixed something, partakes, in the measure in which he does grasp it, of the fixity of that on which he lays hold; so 'they that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion,' that stands there summer and winter, day and night, year out and year in, with its strong b.u.t.tresses and its immovable ma.s.s, the very emblem of solidity and stability.

Ay! and this is true about these tremulous hearts of ours. There is one way to make them stable, and only one; and that is that they shall be fastened, as it were, to that which is stable, and so be steadfast because they hold by what is steadfast. There is no other means by which any heart can be made immovable, except in so far as it may be moved by holy impulses and sweet drawings of love and loftinesses of aspiration towards G.o.d; there is no other means by which a heart, with all its inward perturbations and all its outward sources of agitation, can be made calm and still, except by living, deep, continual fellowship with Him who is the Eternal Calm, and from whose stable Being we mutable men can derive serenity which is a faint likeness of His immutability. 'We which have believed do enter into rest.'

How can I still these hot desires of mine, this self-a.s.serting will, all these various pa.s.sions and emotions which sweep through my soul, and which must not be made mute and dead--or else there will come corruption and stagnation--but must be made so to move as that in their very motion shall be rest? How can I do that? By one way, and one only. Live in fellowship with G.o.d, and that will quiet perturbations within and tumults without. The foot of the Master on the midnight stormy sea will smooth the waves which the moonbeams have not power to still, but only to reveal their heavings. 'They that trust in the Lord shall be like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved,' and yet is not torpid in its immobility, but full of fertility and of beauty wedded to its steadfastness.

In like manner, the only way by which not only the inward storms can be quieted, but the outward a.s.saults of perturbing circ.u.mstances, disasters, changes, difficult duties, and the like, can ever be received with tranquillity is, that they should be received in quiet faith. And, in like manner, the only way by which men can be made steadfast and immovable in brave, pertinacious adherence to the simple law of right, whatsoever temptations may try to draw them aside, and whatsoever frowns may gather upon the face of affairs so as to frighten them from the path of rect.i.tude--the only way by which they can conquer evil, so as not to be hurried into forbidden paths, is this same making sure of their hold upon G.o.d, and carrying with them day by day, and moment by moment, into all the little difficulties and small temptations that would lead to trivial faults, the one solemn thought that bids all these back into their lairs--G.o.d is near me and I am with Him.

Oh, brethren! if we could live in touch with Him and, as this great word for 'trust' suggests, be fastened to Him, as a man, swinging from a cliff over the crawling sea, fathoms below him, clutches the rope that is his safety--then we should live in tranquillity, and be steadfast, immovable.

They say that in the great church of St. Peter there is only one temperature in summer and winter; that the fiercest heat may be pouring down in the colonnades, or the sharpest frost may have silenced the tinkling fall of the fountains in the Piazza; but within the great portal the thermometer stands the same. Thus, if we live in the Temple, and keep inside its doors, the thermometer in our hearts will be fixed; and the anemometer--the measurer of the wind--will point to calm all the year round. 'They that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be moved.'

II. Again, this same att.i.tude of realising the divine Presence, Will, and Help, will bring around us encircling defences.

I have already said that one peculiarity of the topography of the sacred city is that, at first sight, the metaphor of my text seems to break down, for n.o.body, looking at the situation of the city with uninstructed eye, would say that it was compa.s.sed all around with mountains. On two sides it manifestly is; on two sides it apparently is not, though the land rises on the north and west till it is higher than the tops of the houses. We may not be fanciful in taking that as a parable. 'As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people'--a very real defence, but a defence that it takes an instructed eye to see; no obvious protection, palpable to the vulgar touch, and manifest to the sensuous eye, but something a great deal better than that--a real protection, through which we may be sure that nothing which is evil can ever pa.s.s.

Whatsoever does get over the encircling mountains, and reaches us, we may be sure, is not an evil but a very real good. Only we have to interpret the protection on the principles of faith, and not on those of sense. When, then, there come down upon us--as there do upon us all, thank G.o.d!--dark days, and sad days, and solitary days, and losses and bitternesses of a thousand kinds, do not let us falter in the belief that if we have our hearts set on G.o.d, nothing has come to us but what He has let through. Our sorrows are His angels, though their faces are dark, and though they bear a sword that flames and turns every way. It is hard to believe; it is certainly true, and if we could carry the confidence of it as a continual possession into our ordinary lives, they would be very different from what they are to-day.

III. And then, remember the other thing that I said. My text suggests that--

Simple trust in G.o.d, in some measure, a.s.similates the protected to the Protector.

The mountains girdle a mountain, and so my trust opens my heart to the entrance into my heart of something akin to G.o.d. As the Apostle Peter, in his brave way, is not afraid to say, it makes us 'partakers of the divine nature.' The immovableness of the trustful man is not all unlike the calmness of the trusted G.o.d; and the steadfastness of the one is a reflex of the unchangeableness of the other. We have not understood the meaning of faith, nor have we risen to the experience of its best effects upon ourselves, unless we understand that its great blessing and fruit, and the purpose for which we are commanded to cherish it, is that thereby we may become like Him in whom we trust. 'They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.' That is the key to the degradations that inhere in idolatrous worship, and that principle is true about all worship--as the G.o.d so is every one that trusteth in it. 'As the mountains are round about Mount Zion,' G.o.d is round about the people that are becoming G.o.dlike.

IV. Mark further the significant repet.i.tion of the same expression in reference to the stability of the man protected and the continuance of the protection. Both are 'for ever'. That is to say, if it is true that G.o.d is round about me, and that, in some humble measure, my heart has been opening to be calmed and steadied by the influx of His own life, then His 'for ever' is my 'for ever,' and it cannot be that He should live and I should die. The guarantee of the eternal being of the trustful soul is the experience to-day of the reality of the divine protection. And thus we may face everything--life, death, whatsoever may come, a.s.sured that nothing touches the continuity and the perpetuity of the union between the trusting soul and the trusted G.o.d. 'The mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but My lovingkindness shall not depart from thee; nor shall the covenant of My peace be removed, saith the Lord.' The earthquake comes. It shatters a continent and changes the face of nature; makes valleys where there were mountains, and mountains where there were vales, and open seas where there were fertile plains and covers everything with ruin and with rubbish. But there emerge from the cloudy and chaotic confusion the city perched on the hill and its encompa.s.sing heights. 'The world pa.s.seth away, and the fashion thereof, but he that doeth the will of G.o.d abideth for ever.'

THE CHARGE OF THE WATCHERS IN THE TEMPLE

'Behold, bless ye the Lord, all ye servants of the Lord, which by night stand in the House of the Lord. 2. Lift up your hands in the Sanctuary, and bless the Lord. 3. The Lord that made Heaven and earth bless thee out of Zion.'--PSALM cx.x.xiv.

This psalm, the shortest but one in the whole Psalter, will be more intelligible if we observe that in the first part of it more than one person is addressed, and in the last verse a single person. It begins with 'Bless _ye_ the Lord'; and the latter words are, 'The Lord bless _thee_.' No doubt, when used in the Temple service, the first part was chanted by one half of the choir, and the other part by the other. Who are the persons addressed in the first portion? The answer stands plain in the psalm itself. They are, 'All ye servants of the Lord, which by night stand in the House of the Lord.' That is to say, the priests or Levites whose charge it was to patrol the Temple through the hours of night and darkness, to see that all was safe and right there, and to do such other priestly and ministerial work as was needful; they are called upon to 'lift up their hands in'--or rather _towards_--'the Sanctuary, and to bless the Lord.'

The charge is given to these watching priests, these nightly warders, by some single person--we know not whom. Perhaps by the High Priest, perhaps by the captain of their band. They listen to the exhortation to praise, and answer, in the last words of this little psalm, by invoking a blessing on the head of the unnamed speaker who gave the charge. So we have in this antiphonal choral psalm a little s.n.a.t.c.h of musical ritual falling into two parts--the charge to the watchers and the answering invocation. We may find a good deal of practical teaching in it. Let us look, then, at this choral charge and the response to it.

The charge to the watchers.

We do not know what the office of these watchers was, but in the second Temple, to the period of which this psalm may possibly belong, their duties were carefully defined, and Rabbinical literature has preserved a minute account of the work of the nightly patrol.

According to the authorities, two hundred and forty priests and Levites were the nightly guard, distributed over twenty-one stations. The captain of the guard visited these stations throughout the night with flaming torches before him, and saluted each with 'Peace be unto thee.'

If he found the sentinel asleep he beat him with his staff, and had authority to burn his cloak (which the drowsy guard had rolled up for a pillow). We all remember who warned His disciples to watch, lest coming suddenly He should find them asleep. We may remember, too, the blessing p.r.o.nounced in the Apocalypse on 'Him who watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked.' Shortly before daybreak the captain of the guard came, as the Talmud says: 'All times were not equal. Sometimes he came at c.o.c.kcrow, or near it, before or after it. He went to one of the posts where the priests were stationed, and opened a wicket which led into the court. Here the priests, who marched behind him torch in hand, divided into two companies which went one to the east, and one to the west, carefully ascertaining that all was well. When they met each company reported "It is peace." Then the duties of the watch were ended, and the priests who were to prepare for the daily sacrifice entered on their tasks.'

Our psalm may be the chant and answering chant with which the nightly charge was given over to the watchers, or it may be, as some commentators suppose, 'the call and counter-call with which the watchers greeted each other when they met.'

Figure then, to yourselves, the band of white-robed priests gathered in the court of the Temple, their flashing torches touching pillar and angle with strange light, the city sunk in silence and sleep, and ere they part to their posts the chant rung in their ears:--'Bless ye the Lord, all ye servants of the Lord which by night stand in the House of the Lord! Lift up your hands to the Sanctuary, and bless the Lord!'

Notice, then, that the priests' duty is to praise. It is because they are the servants of the Lord that, therefore, it is their business to bless the Lord. It is because they stand in the House of the Lord that it is theirs to bless the Lord. They who are gathered into His House, they who hold communion with Him, they who can feel that the gate of the Father's dwelling, like the gate of the Father's heart, is always open to them, they who have been called in from their wanderings in a homeless wilderness, and given a place and a name in His House better than of sons and daughters, have been so blessed in order that, filled with thanksgiving for such an entrance into G.o.d's dwelling and of such an adoption into His family, their silent lips may be filled with thanksgiving and their redeemed hands be uplifted in praise.

So for us Christians. We are servants of the Lord--His priests. That we 'stand in the House of the Lord' expresses not only the fact of our great privilege of confiding approach to Him and communion with Him, whereby we may ever abide in the very Holy of Holies and be in the secret place of the Most High, even while we are busy in the world, but it also points to our duty of ministering; for the word 'stand' is employed to designate the attendance of the priests in their office, and is almost equivalent to 'serve.' 'To bless the Lord,' then, is the work to which we are especially called. If we are made a 'royal priesthood,'

it is that we 'should show forth the praises of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvellous light.' The purpose of that full horn of plenty, charged with blessings which G.o.d has emptied upon our heads, is that our dumb lips may be touched into thankfulness, because our selfish hearts have been wooed and charmed into love and life.

The Rabbis had a saying that there were two sorts of angels: the angels that served, and the angels that praised; of which, according to their teaching, the latter were the higher in degree. It was only a half-truth, for true service is praise.

But whatever the form in which praise may come, whether it be in the form of vocal thanksgiving, or whether it be the glad surrender of the heart, manifested in the conscious discharge of the most trivial duties, whether we 'lift up our hands in the Sanctuary, and bless the Lord' with them, or whether we turn our hands to the tools of our daily occupation and handle them for His sake, alike we maybe praising Him. And the thing for us to remember is that the place where we, if we are Christians, stand, and the character which we, if we are Christians, sustain, bind us to live blessing and praising Him whilst we live. 'Behold!'--as if He would point to all the crowded list of G.o.d's great mercies--'Bless ye the Lord, all ye servants of the Lord that ... stand in the house of the Lord.'

And then there is another point that comes out of this charge to the watchers, viz. the necessity of strenuously trying to unite together service of G.o.d and communion with G.o.d. These priests might have said--'When we go our rounds through the empty and echoing corridors of the dark Temple, we perform the charge which G.o.d gave us; and it needs not that we pray. We are working for Him and doing the work which He appointed us; and that is better than all external ritual.' But this unknown speaker who charges them knew better than that. The priests'

service under the Old Covenant was very unspiritual service. Their work was sometimes very repulsive and always purely external work, which might be done without one trace of religion or devotion in it. And so the speaker here warns them, as it were, against the temptation which besets all men that are concerned in the outward service of the house of G.o.d, to confound the mere outward service with inward devotion. The charge bids us remember that the more sedulously our hands and thoughts are employed about the externals of religious duties, the more must we see to it that our inmost spirits are baptized into fellowship with G.o.d.

It is not enough to patrol the Temple courts unless we 'lift up our hands to the sanctuary,' and with our hearts 'bless the Lord.' And all we who in any degree and any department are officially or semi-officially connected with the work of the Christian Church have very earnestly and especially to lay this to heart. We ministers, deacons, Sunday-school teachers, tract distributors, have much need to take care that we do not confound watching in the courts of the Temple with lifting up our own hands and hearts to our Father that is in heaven; and remember that the more outward work we do, the more inward life we ought to have. The higher the stem of the tree grows and the broader its branches spread the deeper must strike and the wider must extend its underground roots, if it is not to be blown over and become a withered ruin.

And so all you Christian men and women! will you take the plain lesson that is here? All ye that stand ready for service, and doing service, all 'ye that stand in the house of the Lord, behold' your peril and your duty--and 'bless ye the Lord,' and remember that the more work the more prayer to keep it from rotting; the more effort the more communion; and that at the end we shall discover with alarm, and with shame confess 'I kept others' vineyards and my own vineyard have I not kept'; unless, like our Master, we prepare for a day of work and toil in the Temple by a night of quiet communion with our Father on the mountainside.

And then there is another lesson here which I only touch, and that is that all times are times for blessing G.o.d. 'Ye who _by night_ stand in the house of the Lord, bless the Lord': so though no sacrifice was smoking on the altar, and no choral songs went up from the company of praising priests in the ritual service; and although the nightfall had silenced the worship and scattered the worshippers, yet some low murmur of praise would be echoing through the empty halls all the night long, and the voice of thanksgiving and of blessing would blend with the clank of the priests' feet on the marble pavements as they went their patrolling rounds; and their torches would send up a smoke not less acceptable than the wreathing columns of the incense that had filled the day. And so as in some convents you will find a monk kneeling on the steps of the altar at each hour of the four-and-twenty, adoring the Sacrament exposed upon it, so (but in inmost reality and not in a mere vulgar outside form that means nothing) in the Christian heart there should be a perpetual adoration and a continual praise--a prayer without ceasing. What is it that comes first of all into your minds when you wake in the middle of the night? Yesterday's business, to-morrow's vanities, or G.o.d's present love and your dependence upon Him?

In the night of sorrow, too, do our songs go up, and do we hear and obey the charge which commands not only perpetual adoration, but bids us fill the night with music and with praise? Well for us if it be, antic.i.p.ating the time when 'they rest not day nor night saying, Holy! Holy! Holy!'

Now, that is the priests' charge. Look for a moment at the answering blessing: 'The Lord that made heaven and earth bless thee out of Zion.'

'Thee?' Whom? Him who gave the solemn charge. Their obedience to it is implied in the blessing which the priests invoke on the head of the unnamed speaker. So they express their joyful consent to his charge, and their desires for his welfare whose clear voice has summoned them to their high duty and privilege. They obey, and their first prayer is a prayer for him.

May we venture to draw from this interchange of counsel and benediction a simple lesson as to the best form in which mutual goodwill and friendship may express itself? It is by the interchange of stimulus to G.o.d's service and praise, and of grateful prayer. He is my best friend who stirs me up to make my whole life a strong sweet song of thanksgiving to G.o.d for all His numberless mercies to me. Even if the exhortation becomes rebuke, faithful are such wounds. It is but a shallow affection which can be eloquent on other subjects of common interests, but is dumb on this, the deepest of all; which can counsel wisely and rebuke gently in regard to other matters, but has never a word to say to its dearest concerning duty to the G.o.d of all mercies.

And the true response to any loving exhortation to bless G.o.d, or any religious impulse which we receive from one another, is to invoke G.o.d's blessing on faithful lips that have given us counsel.