Expositions of Holy Scripture: Psalms Part 48

Remember, too, that the incense lay dead, unfragrant, and with no capacity of soaring, till it was kindled; that is to say, unless there is a flame in my heart there will be no rising of my aspirations to G.o.d.

Cold prayers do not go up more than a foot or two above the ground; they have no power to soar. There must be the inflaming before there can be the mounting of the aspiration. You cannot get a balloon to go up unless the gas within it is warmer than the atmosphere round it. It is because we are habitually such tepid Christians that we are so tongue-tied in prayer.

Where was the incense kindled from? From coals brought from the Altar of Burnt Offering in the outer court; that is to say, light the fire in your heart with a coal brought from Christ's sacrifice, and then it will flame; and only then will love well upwards and desires be set on the things above. The beginning of Christian fervour lies in the habitual realising as a fact of the great love which 'loved me and gave itself for me.' There is no patent way of getting a vivid Christian experience except the old way of clinging close to Jesus Christ the Saviour; and in order to do that, we have to think about Him, as well as to feel about Him, a great deal more than I fear the most of us do.

Further, does not this lovely symbol of my text suggest to us a glorious thought, the acceptableness even of our poor prayers, if they come from hearts inflamed with love because of Christ's great redeeming love? The Psalmist, thinking humbly of himself and of the worth of anything that he can bring, says, 'Let my prayer come before Thee as incense,' an 'odour of a sweet smell, acceptable to G.o.d'; yes, even our prayers will be sweet to Him if they are prayers of true aspiration and mounting faith, leaping from a kindled heart, kindled at the great flame of Christ's love.

Were you ever in a Roman Catholic cathedral? Did you ever see there the little boys that carry the censers, swinging them backwards and forwards every now and then, and by means of the silver chains lifting the covers? What is that for? Because the incense would go out unless the air was let into it. So a constant effort is needed in order to keep the incense of our prayers alight. We have to swing the censer to get rid of the things that make our hearts cold; we have to stir the fire, and only so shall we keep up our devotion. Remember the incense burned all day long on the altar; though perhaps but smouldering, like the banked-up fires in the furnaces of a steamer that lies at anchor, still the glow was there; and twice a day there came the priest with his pan full of fresh glowing coals from the altar in the Outer Court, and kindled it up into a flame once more. Which things are thus far an allegory that our devotion is to be diffused throughout our lives in a lambent glow, and if it is, it will have to be fed by special acts of worship day by day.

You hear people talk of not caring about times and seasons of prayer, and of the beauty of making all life a prayer. Amen! I say so too. But depend upon it that there will never be devotion diffused through life unless there is devotion concentrated at points in the life. There must be reservoirs as well as pipes in order to supply the water through the whole city. So the incense is perpetually to be heaped on the Altar of Incense, but also it is to be stirred to a fragrant blaze and fed, morning and evening, by fresh coals from the altar.

II. Now let me say a word about the other thought here--the sacrifice of the empty-handed.

'The lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.' In accordance with the genius of Hebrew poetry the same general idea is repeated in the second member of the parallelism, but with modifications. What is implied in likening the uplifted empty hands to the evening sacrifice?

First, it is a confession of impotent emptiness, a lifting up of expectant hands to be filled with the gift from G.o.d. And, says this Psalmist, 'Because I bring nothing in my hand, Thou dost accept me, as if I came laden with offerings.' That is just a picturesque way of putting a familiar, threadbare truth, which, threadbare as it is, needs to be laid to heart a great deal more by us, that our true worship and truest honour of G.o.d lies not in giving but in taking. 'He is not worshipped with men's hands, as though He needed anything, seeing that He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things.' That one truth, Paul felt on Mars Hill, was sure enough to make all the temples and statues by which he was surrounded crumble into nothingness. But it does not merely destroy idolatry. It cuts up by the root much of what we call Christian worship. How many people worship because they think they ought? How many people talk about Christian worship as being a duty--'Our duty we have now performed'? How many have never had a glimpse of this thought, that G.o.d wills us to draw near to Him, not because it pleases Him but because it blesses us, and that we are to worship, not in order that we may bring anything, either the sacrifices of bulls and goats, or the more refined ones that we bring nowadays, but in order that, bringing our emptiness into touch with His infinite fulness, as much of that fulness as we need to make us full, and as much of that blessedness as we need to make us blessed, may pa.s.s into our lives. Oh! if we understand 'the giving G.o.d,' as James calls Him in his letter; and if we had learned the old lesson of that fiftieth Psalm, 'If I were hungry I would not tell thee.... Will I eat the flesh of bulls and drink the blood of goats? He that offereth praise glorifieth Me, and to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I show the salvation of G.o.d'--if we had learned that, and laid it to heart, and applied it to our own worship and our lives, mountains of misconception would be lifted away from many hearts. In our service we do not need to bring any merit of our own. This great principle destroys not only the gross externalities of heathen sacrifice, and the notion that worship is a duty, but it destroys the other notion of our having to bring anything to deserve G.o.d's gifts. And so it is an encouragement to us when we feel ourselves to be what we are, and what we should always feel ourselves to be, empty-handed, coming to Him not only with hearts that aspire like incense, but with pet.i.tions that confess our need, and cast ourselves upon His grace. See that you desire what G.o.d wishes to give; see that you go to Him for what He does give. See that you give to Him the only thing that He does wish, or that it lies in your power to give, and that is yourself.

Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to Thy Cross I cling.

'Let the lifting of my hands be as the evening sacrifice'; as the Psalmist has it in another place, 'What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits?'--it is not a question of rendering, but 'I will _take_ the cup of salvation.' Taking is our truest worship, and the lifting up of empty, expectant hands is, in G.o.d's sight, as the evening sacrifice.

THE PRAYER OF PRAYERS

'Teach me to do Thy will; for Thou art my G.o.d! Thy spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness.'--PSALM cxliii. 10.

These two clauses mean substantially the same thing. The Psalmist's longings are expressed in the first of them in plain words, and in the second in a figure. 'To do G.o.d's will' is to be in 'the land of uprightness.' That phrase, in its literal application, means a stretch of level country, and hence is naturally employed as an emblem of a moral or religious condition. A life of obedience to the will of G.o.d is likened to some far stretching plain, easy to traverse, broken by no barren mountains or frowning cliffs, but basking, peaceful and fruitful, beneath the smile of G.o.d. Into such a garden of the Lord the Psalmist prays to be led.

In each case his prayer is based upon a motive or plea. 'Thou art my G.o.d'; his faith apprehends a personal bond between him and G.o.d, and feels that that bond obliges G.o.d to teach him His will. If we adopt the reading in our Bibles of our second clause a still deeper and more wonderful plea is presented there. 'Thy Spirit is good,' and therefore the trusting spirit has a right to ask to be made good likewise. The relation of the believing spirit to G.o.d not only obliges G.o.d to teach it His will, but to make it partaker of His own image and conformed to His own purity. So high on wings of faith and desire soared this man, who, at the beginning of his psalm, was crushed to the dust by enemies and by dangers. So high we may rise by like means.

I. Notice, then, first, the supreme desire of the devout soul.

We do not know who wrote this psalm. The superscription says that it was David's, and although its place in the Psalter seems to suggest another author, the peculiar fervour and closeness of intimacy with G.o.d which breathes through it are like the Davidic psalms, and seem to confirm the superscription. If so, it will naturally fall into its place with the others which were pressed from his heart by the rebellion of Absalom.

But be that as it may, whosoever wrote the psalm, was a man in extremest misery and peril, and as he says of himself, 'persecuted,'

'overwhelmed,' 'desolate.' The tempest blows him to the Throne of G.o.d, and when he is there, what does he ask? Deliverance? Scarcely. In one clause, and again at the end, as if by a kind of after-thought, he asks for the removal of the calamities. But the main burden of his prayer is for a closer knowledge of G.o.d, the sound of His lovingkindness in his inward ear, light to show him the way wherein he should walk, and the sweet sunshine of G.o.d's face upon his heart. There is a better thing to ask than exemption from sorrows, even grace to bear them rightly. The supreme desire of the devout soul is practical conformity to the will of G.o.d. For the prayer of our text is not 'Teach me to _know_ Thy will.'

The Psalmist, indeed, has asked _that_ in a previous clause--'Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk.' But knowledge is not all that we need, and the gulf between knowledge and practice is so deep that after we have prayed that we may be caused to know the way, and have received the answer, there still remains the need for G.o.d's help that knowledge may become life, and that all which we understand we may do. To such practical conformity to the will of G.o.d all other aspects of religion are meant to be subservient.

Christianity is a revelation of truth, but to accept it as such is not enough. Christianity brings to me exemption from punishment, escape from h.e.l.l, deliverance from condemnation and guilt, and by some of us, that is apt to be regarded as the whole Gospel; but pardon is only a means to an end. Christianity brings to us the possibility of indulgence in sweet and blessed emotions, and a fervour of feeling which to experience is the ante-past of heaven, and for some of us, all our religion goes off in vaporous emotion; but feeling alone is not Christianity. Our religion brings to us sweet and gracious consolations, but it is a poor affair if we only use it as an anodyne and a comfort. Our Christianity brings to us glorious hopes that flash l.u.s.tre into the darkness, and make the solitude of the grave companionship, and the end of earth the beginning of life, but it is a poor affair if the mightiest operation of our religion be relegated to a future, and flung on to the close. All these things, the truth which the Gospel brings, the pardon and peace of conscience which it ensures, the joyful emotion which it sets loose from the ice of indifference, the sweet consolations with which it pillows the weary head and bandages the bleeding heart, and the great hopes which flash light into glazing eyes, and make the end glorious with the rays of a beginning, and the western heaven bright with the promise of a new day--all these things are but subservient means to this highest purpose, that we should do the will of G.o.d, and be conformed to His image. They whose religion has not reached that apex have yet to understand its highest meaning. The river of the water of life that proceeds from the Throne of G.o.d and the Lamb is not sent merely to refresh thirsty lips, and to bring music into the silence of a waterless desert, but it is sent to drive the wheels of life. Action, not thought, is the end of G.o.d's revelation, and the perfecting of man.

But, then, let us remember that we shall most imperfectly apprehend the whole sweep and blessedness of this great supreme aim of the devout soul, if we regard this doing of G.o.d's will as merely the external act of obedience to an external command. Simple doing is not enough; the deed must be the fruit of love. The aim of the Christian life is not obedience to a law that is recognised as authoritative, but joyful moulding of ourselves after a law that is felt to be sweet and loving.

'I delight to do Thy will, yea! Thy law is within my heart.' Only when thus the will yields itself in loving and glad conformity to the will of G.o.d is true obedience possible for us. Brother! is that your Christianity? Do you desire, more than anything besides, that what He wills you should will, and that His law should be stamped upon your hearts, and all your rebellious desires and purposes should be brought into a sweet captivity which is freedom, and an obedience to Christ which is kingship over the universe and yourselves?

II. Note, secondly, the divine teaching and touch which are required for this conformity.

The Psalmist betakes himself to prayer, because he knows that of himself he cannot bring his will into this att.i.tude of harmonious submission.

And his prayer for 'teaching' is deepened in the second clause of our text into a pet.i.tion, which is substantially the same in meaning, but yet sets the felt need and the coveted help in a still more striking light, in its cry for the touch of G.o.d's good spirit to guide, as by a hand grasping the Psalmist's hand, into the paths of obedience.

We may learn from this prayer, then, that practical conformity to G.o.d's will can never be attained by our own efforts. Remember all the hindrances that rise between us and it; these wild pa.s.sions of ours, this obstinate gravitating of tastes and desires towards earth, these animal necessities, these spiritual perversities, which make up so much of us all--how can we coerce these into submission? Our better selves sit within like some prisoned king, surrounded and 'fooled by the rebel powers' of his revolted subjects; and our best recourse is to send an emba.s.sy to the Over-lord, the Sovereign King, praying Him to come to our help. We cannot will to will as G.o.d wills, but we can turn ourselves to Him, and ask Him to put the power within us which shall subdue the evil, conquer the rebels, and make us masters of our own else anarchic and troubled spirits. For all honest attempts to make the will of G.o.d our wills, the one secret of success is confident and continual appeal to Him. A man must have gone a very little way, very superficially and perfunctorily, on the path of seeking to make himself what he ought to be, unless he has found out that he cannot do it, and unless he has found out that there is only one way to do it, and that is to go to G.o.d and say, 'O Lord! I am baffled and beaten. I put the reins into Thy hand; do Thou inspire and direct and sanctify.'

That practical conformity to the will of G.o.d requires divine teaching, but yet that teaching must be no outward thing. It is not enough that we should have communicated to us, as from without, the clearest knowledge of what we ought to be. There must be more than that. Our Psalmist's prayer was a prophecy. He said, 'Teach me to do Thy will.' And he thought, no doubt, of an inward teaching which should mould his nature as well as enlighten it; of the communication of impulses as well as of conceptions; of something which should make him love the divine will, as well as of something which should make him know it.

You and I have Jesus Christ for our Teacher, the answer to the psalm.

His teaching is inward and deep and real, and answers to all the necessities of the case. We have His example to stand as our perfect law. If we want to know what is G.o.d's will, we have only to turn to that life; and however different from ours His may have been in its outward circ.u.mstances, and however fragmentary and brief its records in the Gospels may sometimes seem to us, yet in these little booklets, telling of the quiet life of the carpenter's Son, there is guidance for every man and woman in all circ.u.mstances, however complicated, and we do not need anything more to teach us what G.o.d's will is than the life of Jesus Christ. His teaching goes deeper than example. He comes into our hearts, He moulds our wills. His teaching is by inward impulses and communications of desire and power to do, as well as of light to know. A law has been given which can give life. As the modeller will take a piece of wax into his hand, and by warmth and manipulation make it soft and pliable, so Jesus Christ, if we let Him, will take our hard hearts into His hands, and by gentle, loving, subtle touches, will shape them into the pattern of His own perfect beauty, and will mould all their vagrant inclinations and aberrant distortions into 'one immortal feature of loveliness and perfection.' 'The _grace of G.o.d_ that bringeth salvation hath appeared unto all men _teaching_ that, denying unG.o.dliness and worldly l.u.s.ts, we should live soberly,' controlling ourselves, 'righteously,' fulfilling all our obligations to our fellows, 'and G.o.dly,' referring everything to Him, 'in this present world.'

That practical conformity to the divine will requires, still further, the operation of the divine Spirit as our Guide. 'Thy Spirit is good lead me into the land of uprightness.' There is only one power that can draw us out of the far-off land of rebellious disobedience, where the prodigals and the swine's husks and the famine and the rags are, into the 'land of uprightness,' and that is, the communicated Spirit of G.o.d, which is given to all them that desire Him, and will lead them in paths of righteousness for His name's sake. It is He that works in us, the willing and the doing, according to His own good pleasure. 'He shall guide you,' said the Master, 'into all truth'--not merely into its knowledge, but into its performance, not merely into truth of conception, but into truth of practice, which is righteousness, and the fulfilling of the Law.

III. Lastly, note the divine guarantee that this practical conformity shall be ours.

The Psalmist pleads with G.o.d a double motive--His relation to us and His own perfectness, 'Thou art my G.o.d; therefore teach me.' 'Thy Spirit is good; therefore lead me into the land of uprightness.' I can but glance for a moment at these two pleas of the prayer.

Note, then, first, G.o.d's personal relation to the devout soul, as the guarantee that that soul shall be taught, not merely to know, but also to do His will. If He be 'my G.o.d,' there can be no deeper desire in His heart, than that His will should be my will. And this He desires, not from any masterfulness or love of dominion, but only from love to us. If He be my G.o.d, and therefore longing to have me obedient, He will not withhold what is needed to make me so. G.o.d is no hard Taskmaster who sets us to make bricks without straw. Whatsoever He commands He gives, and His commandments are always second and His gifts first. He bestows Himself and then He says, 'For the love's sake, do My will.' Be sure that the sacred bond which knits us to Him is regarded by Him, the faithful Creator, as an obligation which He recognises and respects and will discharge. We have a right to go to Him and to say to Him, 'Thou art my G.o.d; and Thou wilt not be what Thou art, nor do what Thou hast pledged Thyself to do, unless Thou makest me to know and to do Thy will.'

And on the other hand, if we have taken Him for ours, and have the bond knit from our side as well as from His, then the fact of our faith gives us a claim on Him which He is sure to honour. The soul that can say, 'I have taken Thee for mine,' has a hold on G.o.d which G.o.d is only too glad to recognise and to vindicate. And whoever, humbly trusting to that great Father in the heavens, feels that he belongs to G.o.d, and that G.o.d belongs to him, is warranted in praying, 'Teach me, and make me, to do Thy will,' and in being confident of an answer.

And there is the other plea with Him and guarantee for us, drawn from G.o.d's own moral character and perfectness. The last clause of my text may either be read as our Bible has it, 'Thy Spirit is good; lead me,'

or 'Let Thy good Spirit lead me.' In either case the goodness of the divine Spirit is the plea on which the prayer is grounded. The goodness here referred to is, as I take it, not merely beneficence and kindliness, but rather goodness in its broader and loftier sense of perfect moral purity. So that the thought just comes to this--we have the right to expect that we shall be made partic.i.p.ant of the divine nature for so sweet, so deep, so tender is the tie that knits a devout soul to G.o.d, that nothing short of conformity to the perfect purity of G.o.d can satisfy the aspirations of the creature, or discharge the obligations of the Creator.

It is a daring thought. The Psalmist's desire was a prophecy. The New Testament vindicates and fulfils it when it says 'We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.' Since He now dwells in 'the land of uprightness,' who once dwelt among us in this weary world of confusion and of sin, then we one day shall be with Him. Christ's heart cannot be satisfied, Christ's Cross cannot be rewarded, the divine nature cannot be at rest, the purpose of redemption cannot be accomplished, until all who have trusted in Christ be partakers of divine purity, and all the wanderers be led by devious and yet by right paths, by crooked and yet by straight ways, by places rough and yet smooth, into 'the land of uprightness.' Where and what He is, there and that shall also His servants be.

My brother! if to do the will of G.o.d is to dwell in the land of uprightness, disobedience is to dwell in a dry and thirsty land, barren and dreary, horrid with frowning rocks and jagged cliffs, where every stone cuts the feet and every step is a blunder, and all the paths end at last on the edge of an abyss, and crumble into nothingness beneath the despairing foot that treads them. Do you see to it that you walk in ways of righteousness which are paths of peace; and look for all the help you need, with a.s.sured faith, to Him who shall 'guide us by His counsel and afterwards receive us to His glory.'

THE SATISFIER OF ALL DESIRES

'Thou openest Thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing ... 19. He will fulfil the desire of them that fear Him: He also will hear their cry, and will save them.'--PSALM cxlv. 16, 19.

You observe the recurrence, in these two verses, of the one emphatic word 'desire.' Its repet.i.tion evidently shows that the Psalmist wishes to run a parallel between G.o.d's dealings in two regions. The same beneficence works in both. Here is the true extension of natural law to the spiritual world. It is the same teaching to which our Lord has given immortal and inimitable utterance, when He says, 'Your heavenly Father feedeth them.' And so we are ent.i.tled to look on all the wonders of creation, and to find in them b.u.t.tresses which may support the edifice of our faith, and to believe that wherever there is a mouth G.o.d sends food to fill it. 'Thou openest Thine hand'--that is all--'and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.' But to fulfil the desires of them who are not only 'living things,' but 'who fear' Him, is it such a simple task? Sometimes more is wanted than an open hand before that can be accomplished. So, looking not only at the words I have read, but at the whole of their setting, which is influenced by the thought of this parallelism, we see here two sets of pensioners, two kinds of wants, two forms of appeal, two processes of satisfaction.

I. Two kinds of pensioners.

'Every living thing--' life makes a claim on G.o.d, and whatever desires arise in the living creature by reason of its life, G.o.d would be untrue to Himself, a cruel Parent, an unnatural Father, if He did not satisfy them. We do not half enough realise the fact that the condescension of creation lies not only in the act of creating, but in the willing acceptance by the Creator of the bonds under which He thereby lays Himself; obliging Himself to see to the creatures that He has chosen to make. And so, as one of the New Testament writers puts it, in his simple way, with a profound truth, 'He is a faithful Creator'; and wherever there is a creature that He has made to need anything, He has thereby said, 'As I live, that creature shall have what it needs.'

Then, take the other cla.s.s, 'them that fear Him'; or as they are described in the context--by contrast with 'the wicked who are destroyed'--'the righteous.' That is to say, whilst, because we are living things, like the bee and the worm, we have a claim on G.o.d precisely parallel with theirs for what we may need by reason of His gift, which we never asked for, His gift of life, we shall have a similar but higher claim on Him if we are 'they that fear Him' with that loving reverence which has no torment in it, and that love Him with that reverential affection which has no presumption in it, and whose love and fear coalesce in making them long to be righteous like the Object of their love, to be holy like the Object of their fear. And just as the fact of physical life binds G.o.d to care for it, and to give all that is needed for its health, growth, blessedness, so the fact of man's having in his heart the faintest tremor of reverential dread, the feeblest aspiration of outgoing affection, the most faltering desire after purity of life and conduct, binds G.o.d to answer these according to the man's need. Of all incredibilities in the world, there is nothing more incredible, because there is nothing more contrary to the very depths of the divine nature, than that desires, longings, expectations, which are the direct result of the love and fear of G.o.d, and the hunger and thirst after righteousness, should not be answered.

Now that is a very wide principle, and I do not believe that it is trusted enough by many. It comes to this--wherever you find in people a confidence which grows with their love of G.o.d, be sure that there is, somewhere or other in the universe of things, that which answers it.

Take a case. If there was not a word in the New Testament about Jesus Christ's resurrection, the fact that just in proportion as men grow in devotion, in love of G.o.d, in fear of Him, in longing to be good and to appear like Him, in that same proportion does their conviction that there must be a life beyond the grave become firm and certain--that fact would be enough to make any one who believed in G.o.d sure that the hope thus rooted in love to Him, and fed by everything that draws us nearer to Him, could not be a delusion, nor be destined to be left unfulfilled.

And we might go round the whole circle of dim religious aspirations and desires, and find in all of them ill.u.s.trations of the principle so profoundly and so simply put in our psalm, that the same Love which, in the realm of the physical world, binds itself to satisfy the life which it imparts, is at work in the higher regions, and will 'fulfil the desires of them that fear Him.'

II. Again, there are two sets of needs.

The first of them is very easily disposed of. 'The eyes of all wait upon Thee, and Thou givest them their meat.' That is all. Feed the beast, and give it the other things necessary for its physical existence, and there is no more to be done. But there is more wanted for the desires of the men that love and fear G.o.d. These are glanced at in the context, 'He also will hear their cry, and will save them'; 'the Lord preserveth all them that love Him.' That is to say, there are deeper needs in our hearts and lives than any that are known amongst the lower creatures.

Evils, dangers inward and outward, sorrows, disappointments, losses of all sorts shadow our lives, in a fashion which the happy, careless life of field and forest knows nothing about. Give them their meat, and they curl themselves up and lie down to sleep, satisfied. Man longs for something more and needs something more.