Expositions of Holy Scripture: Psalms Part 36

I. We have here, first, the yearning and longing cry of the mortal for the beauty of the Eternal.

The word translated 'beauty' in my text is, like the Greek equivalent in the New Testament, and like the English word 'grace,' which corresponds to them both susceptible of a double meaning. 'Grace' means both _kindness_ and _loveliness_, or, as we might distinguish both graciousness and gracefulness. And that double idea is inherent in the word, as it is inherent in the attribute of G.o.d to which it refers. For that twofold meaning of the one word suggests the truth that G.o.d's lovingkindness and communicating mercy _is_ His beauty, and that the fairest thing about Him, notwithstanding the splendours that surround His character, and the flas.h.i.+ng lights that come from His many-sided glory, is that He loves and pities and gives Himself. G.o.d is all fair, but the central and substantial beauty of the divine nature is that it is a stooping nature, which bows to weak and unworthy souls, and on them pours out the full abundance of its manifold gifts. So the 'beauty of the Lord' means, by no quibble or quirk, but by reason of the essential loveliness of His lovingkindness, both G.o.d's loveliness and G.o.d's goodness; G.o.d's graciousness and G.o.d's gracefulness (if I may use such a word).

The prayer of the Psalmist that this beauty may be _upon_ us conceives of it as given to us from above and as coming floating down from heaven, like that white Dove that fell upon Christ's head, fair and meek, gentle and lovely, and resting on our anointed heads, like a diadem and an aureole of glory.

Now that communicating graciousness, with its large gifts and its resulting beauty, is the one thing that we need in view of mortality and sorrow and change and trouble. The psalm speaks about 'all our years'

being 'pa.s.sed away in Thy wrath,' about the very inmost recesses of our secret unworthiness being turned inside out, and made to look blacker than ever when the bright suns.h.i.+ne of His face falls upon them. From that thought of G.o.d's wrath and omniscience the poet turns, as we must turn, to the other thought of His gentle longsuffering, of His forbearing love, of His infinite pity, of His communicating mercy. As a support in view both of our dreary and yet short years, and our certain mortality, and in the contemplation of the evils within and suffering from without, that hara.s.s us all, there is but one thing for us to do--namely, to fling ourselves into the arms of G.o.d, and in the spirit of this great pet.i.tion, to ask that upon us there may fall the dewy benediction of His gentle beauty.

That longing is meant to be kindled in our hearts by all the discipline of life. Life is not worth living unless it does that for us; and there is no value nor meaning either in our joys or in our sorrows, unless both the one and the other send us to Him. Our gladness and our disappointments, our hopes fulfilled and our hopes dissipated and unanswered are but, as it were, the two wings by which, on either side, our spirits are to be lifted to G.o.d. The solemn pathos of the earlier portion of this psalm--the funeral march of generations--leads up to the prayerful confidence of these closing pet.i.tions, in which the sadness of the minor key in which it began has pa.s.sed into a brighter strain. The thought of the fleeting years swept away as with a flood, and of the generations that blossom for a day and are mown down and wither when their swift night falls, is saddening and paralysing unless it suggests by contrast the thought of Him who, Himself unmoved, moves the rolling years, and is the dwelling-place of each succeeding generation. Such contemplations are wholesome and religious only when they drive us to the eternal G.o.d, that in Him we may find the stable foundation which imparts its own perpetuity to every life built upon it. We have experienced so many things in vain, and we are of the 'fools' that, being 'brayed in a mortar,' are only brayed fools after all, unless life, with its sorrows and its changes, has blown us, as with a hurricane, right into the centre of rest, and unless its sorrows and changes have taught us this as the one aspiration of our souls: 'Let the beauty of the Lord our G.o.d be upon us,' and then, let what may come, come, let what can pa.s.s, pa.s.s, we shall have all that we need for life and peace.

And then, note further, that this gracious gentleness and long-suffering, giving mercy of G.o.d, when it comes down upon a man, makes him, too, beautiful with a reflected beauty. If the beauty of the Lord our G.o.d be upon us, it will cover over our foulness and deformity.

For whosoever possesses in any real fas.h.i.+on G.o.d's great mercy will have his spirit moulded into the likeness of that mercy. We cannot have it without reflecting it, we cannot possess it without being a.s.similated to it. Therefore, to have the grace of G.o.d makes us both gracious and graceful. And the true refining influence for a character is that into it there shall come the gift of that endless pity and patient love, which will transfigure us into some faint likeness of itself, so that we shall walk among men, able, in some poor measure, after the manner of our Master, to say, 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.' He said it in a sense and in a measure which we cannot reach, but the a.s.similation to and reflection of the divine character is our aim, or ought to be, if we are Christians. 'Let the beauty of the Lord our G.o.d be upon us,' and 'change us into the same image from glory to glory.'

II. We have here the cry of the worker in a fleeting world for the perpetuity of his work.

'Establish,' or make firm, 'the work of our hands upon us, yea the work of our hands establish Thou it.' The thought that everything is pa.s.sing away so swiftly and inevitably, as the earlier part of the psalm suggests, might lead a man to say, 'What is the use of my doing anything? I may just as well sit down here, and let things slide, if they are all going to be swallowed up in the black bottomless gulf of forgetfulness.' The contemplation has actually produced two opposite effects, 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,' is quite as fair an inference from the fact as is 'Awake to righteousness and sin not,'

if the fact itself only be taken into account. There is nothing religious in the clearest conviction of mortality, if it stands alone.

It may be the ally of profligate and cynical sensuality quite as easily as it may be the preacher of asceticism. It may make men inactive, from their sense of the insignificant and fleeting nature of all human works, or it may stimulate to intensest effort, from the thought, 'I must work the works of Him that sent me while it is day. The night cometh.' All depends on whether we link the conviction of mortality with that of eternity, and think of our perishable selves as in relations.h.i.+p with the unchanging G.o.d.

This prayer expresses a deep longing, natural to all men, and which yet seems incompatible with the stern facts of mortality and decay. We should all like to have our work exempted from the common lot. What pathetically futile attempts to secure this are pyramids, and rock-inscriptions, and storied tombs, and posthumous memoirs, and rich men's wills! Why should any of us expect that the laws of nature should be suspended for our benefit, and our work made lasting while everything beside changes like the shadows of the clouds? Is there any way by which such exceptional permanence can be secured for our poor deeds? Yes, certainly. Let us commit them to G.o.d, praying this prayer, 'Establish Thou the work of our hands upon us.'

Our work will be established if it is His work. This prayer in our text follows another prayer (verse 16)--namely, 'Let _Thy_ work appear unto Thy servants.' That is to say, My work will be perpetual when the work of my hands is G.o.d's work done through me. When you bring your wills into harmony with G.o.d's will, and so all your effort, even about the little things of daily life, is in consonance with His will, and in the line of His purpose, then your work will stand. If otherwise, it will be like some slow-moving and frail carriage going in the one direction and meeting an express train thundering in the other. When the crash comes, the opposing motion of the weaker will be stopped, reversed, and the frail thing will be smashed to atoms. So, all work which is man's and not G.o.d's will sooner or later be reduced to impotence and either annihilated or reversed, and made to run in the opposite direction. But if our work runs parallel with G.o.d's, then the rus.h.i.+ng impetus of His work will catch up our little deeds into the swiftness of its own motion, and will carry them along with itself, as a railway train will lift straws and bits of paper that are lying by the rails, and give them motion for a while. If my will runs in the line of His, and if the work of my hands is 'Thy work,' it is not in vain that we shall cry 'Establish it upon us,' for it will last as long as He does.

In like manner, all work will be perpetual that is done with 'the beauty of the Lord our G.o.d' upon the doers of it. Whosoever has that grace in his heart, whosoever is in contact with the communicating mercy of G.o.d, and has had his character in some measure refined and enn.o.bled and beautified by possession thereof, will do work that has in it the element of perpetuity.

And our work will stand if we quietly leave it in His hands. Quietly do it to Him, never mind about results, but look after motives. You cannot influence results, let G.o.d look after them; you can influence motives.

Be sure that they are right, and if they are, the work will be eternal.

'Eternal? What do you mean by eternal? how can a man's work be that?'

Part of the answer is that it may be made permanent in its issues by being taken up into the great whole of G.o.d's working through His servants, which results at last in the establishment of His eternal kingdom. Just as a drop of water that falls upon the moor finds its way into the brook, and goes down the glen and on into the river, and then into the sea, and is there, though undistinguishable, so in the great summing up of everything at the end, the tiniest deed that was done for G.o.d, though it was done far away up amongst the mountain solitudes where no eye saw, shall live and be represented, in its effects on others and in its glad issues to the doer.

In the highest fas.h.i.+on the Psalmist's cry for the perpetuity of the fleeting deeds of dying generations will be answered in that region in which his dimmer eye saw little but the sullen flood that swept away youth and strength and wisdom, but in which we can see the solid land beyond the river, and the happy company who rejoice with the joy of harvest, and bear with them the sheaves, whereof the seed was sown on this bank, in tears and fears. 'Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord. Their works do follow them.' 'The world pa.s.seth away, and the fas.h.i.+on thereof, but he that doeth the will of G.o.d abideth for ever.'

THE SHELTERING WING

'He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust: His truth shall be thy s.h.i.+eld and buckler.'

--PSALM xci. 4.

We remember the magnificent image in Moses' song, of G.o.d's protection and guidance as that of the eagle who stirred up his nest, and hovered over the young with his wings, and bore them on his pinions. That pa.s.sage may possibly have touched the imagination of this psalmist, when he here employs the same general metaphor, but with a distinct and significant difference in its application. In the former image the main idea is that of training and sustaining. Here the main idea is that of protection and fostering. _On_ the wing and _under_ the wing suggest entirely different notions, and both need to be taken into account in order to get the many-sided beauties and promises of these great sayings. Now there seems to me here to be a very distinct triad of thoughts. There is the covering wing; there is the flight to its protection; and there is the warrant for that flight. 'He shall cover thee with His pinions'; that is the divine act. 'Under His wings shalt thou trust'; that is the human condition. 'His truth shall be thy s.h.i.+eld and buckler'; that is the divine manifestation which makes the human condition possible.

I. A word then, first, about the covering wing.

Now, the main idea in this image is, as I have suggested, that of the expanded pinion, beneath the shelter of which the callow young lie, and are guarded. Whatever kites may be in the sky, whatever stoats and weasels may be in the hedges, the brood are safe there. The image suggests not only the thought of protection but those of fostering, downy warmth, peaceful proximity to a heart that throbs with parental love, and a mult.i.tude of other happy privileges realised by those who nestle beneath that wing. But while these subsidiary ideas are not to be lost sight of, the promise of protection is to be kept prominent, as that chiefly intended by the Psalmist.

This psalm rings throughout with the truth that a man who dwells 'in the secret place of the Most High' has absolute immunity from all sorts of evil; and there are two regions in which that immunity, secured by being under the shadow of the Almighty, is exemplified here. The one is that of outward dangers, the other is that of temptation to sin and of what we may call spiritual foes. Now, these two regions and departments in which the Christian man does realise, in the measure of his faith, the divine protection, exhibit that protection as secured in two entirely different ways.

The triumphant a.s.surances of this psalm, 'There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling,'--'the pestilence shall smite thousands and ten thousands beside thee, but not come nigh thee,'--seem to be entirely contradicted by experience which testifies that 'there is one event to the evil and the good,' and that, in epidemics or other widespread disasters, we all, the good and the bad, G.o.d-fearers and G.o.d-blasphemers, do fare alike, and that the conditions of exemption from physical evil are physical and not spiritual. It is of no use trying to persuade ourselves that that is not so. We shall understand G.o.d's dealings with us, and get to the very throbbing heart of such promises as these in this psalm far better, if we start from the certainty that whatever it means it does _not_ mean that, with regard to external calamities and disasters, we are going to be G.o.d's petted children, or to be saved from the things that fall upon other people.

No! no! we have to go a great deal deeper than that. If we have felt a difficulty, as I suppose we all have sometimes, and are ready to say with the half-despondent Psalmist, 'My feet were almost gone, and my steps had well-nigh slipped,' when we see what we think the complicated mysteries of divine providence in this world, we have to come to the belief that the evil that is in the evil will never come near a man sheltered beneath G.o.d's wing. The physical external event may be entirely the same to him as to another who is not covered with His feathers. Here are two partners in a business, the one a Christian man, and the other is not. A common disaster overwhelms them. They become bankrupts. Is insolvency the same to the one as it is to the other? Here are two men on board a s.h.i.+p, the one putting his trust in G.o.d, the other thinking it all nonsense to trust anything but himself. They are both drowned. Is drowning the same to the two? As their corpses lie side by side among the ooze, with the weeds over them, and the sh.e.l.l-fish at them, you may say of the one, but only of the one, 'There shall no evil befall thee, neither any plague come nigh thy dwelling.'

For the protection that is granted to faith is only to be understood by faith. It is deliverance from the evil in the evil which vindicates as no exaggeration, nor as merely an experience and a promise peculiar to the old theocracy of Israel, but not now realised, the grand sayings of this text. The poison is all wiped off the arrow by that divine protection. It may still wound but it does not putrefy the flesh. The sewage water comes down, but it pa.s.ses into the filtering bed, and is disinfected and cleansed before it is permitted to flow over our fields.

And so, brethren! if any of you are finding that the psalm is not outwardly true, and that through the covering wing the storm of hail has come and beaten you down, do not suppose that that in the slightest degree impinges upon the reality and truthfulness of this great promise, 'He shall cover thee with His feathers.' Anything that has come through _them_ is manifestly not an 'evil.' 'Who is he that will harm you if ye be followers of that which is good?' 'If G.o.d be for us who can be against us?' Not what the world calls, and our wrung hearts feel that it rightly calls, 'sorrows' and 'afflictions,'--these all work for our good, and protection consists, not in averting the blows, but in changing their character.

Then, there is another region far higher, in which this promise of my text is absolutely true--that is, in the region of spiritual defence.

For no man who lies under the shadow of G.o.d, and has his heart filled with the continual consciousness of that Presence, is likely to fall before the a.s.saults of evil that tempt him away from G.o.d; and the defence which He gives in that region is yet more magnificently impregnable than the defence which He gives against external evils. For, as the New Testament teaches us, we are kept from sin, not by any outward breastplate or armour, nor even by the divine wing lying above us to cover us, but by the indwelling Christ in our hearts. His Spirit within us makes us 'free from the law of sin and death,' and conquerors over all temptations.

I say not a word about all the other beautiful and pathetic a.s.sociations which are connected with this emblem of the covering wing, sweet and inexhaustible as it is, but I simply leave with you the two thoughts that I have dwelt upon, of the twofold manner of that divine protection.

II. And now a word, in the second place, about the flight of the shelterless to the shelter.

The word which is rendered in our Authorised Version, 'shalt thou trust,' is, like all Hebrew words for mental and spiritual emotions and actions, strongly metaphorical. It might have been better to retain its literal meaning here instead of subst.i.tuting the abstract word 'trust.'

That is to say, it would have been an improvement if we had read with the Revised Version, not, 'under His wings shalt thou trust,' but 'under His wings shalt thou take refuge.' For that is the idea which is really conveyed; and in many of the psalms, if you will remember, the same metaphor is employed. 'Hide me beneath the shadow of Thy wings'; 'Beneath Thy wings will I take refuge until calamities are overpast'; and the like. Many such pa.s.sages will, no doubt, occur to your memories.

But what I wish to signalise is just this, that in this emblem of flying into a refuge from impending perils we get a far more vivid conception, and a far more useful one, as it seems to me, of what Christian faith really is than we derive from many learned volumes and much theological hair-splitting. 'Under His wings shalt thou flee for refuge.' Is not that a vivid, intense, picturesque, but most illuminative way of telling us what is the very essence, and what is the urgency, and what is the worth, of what we call faith? The Old Testament is full of the teaching--which is masked to ordinary readers, but is the same teaching as the New Testament is confessedly full of--of the necessity of faith as the one bond that binds men to G.o.d. If only our translators had wisely determined upon a uniform rendering in Old and New Testament of words that are synonymous, the reader would have seen what is often now reserved for the student, that all these sayings in the Old Testament about 'trusting in G.o.d' run on all fours with 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.'

But just mark what comes out of that metaphor; that 'trust,' the faith which unites with G.o.d, and brings a man beneath the shadow of His wings, is nothing more or less than the flying into the refuge that is provided for us. Does that not speak to us of the urgency of the case? Does that not speak to us eloquently of the perils which environ us? Does it not speak to us of the necessity of swift flight, with all the powers of our will? Is the faith which is a flying into a refuge fairly described as an intellectual act of believing in a testimony? Surely it is something a great deal more than that. A man out in the plain, with the avenger of blood, hot-breathed and b.l.o.o.d.y-minded, behind him might believe, as much as he liked, that there would be safety within the walls of the City of Refuge, but unless he took to his heels without loss of time, the spear would be in his back before he knew where he was. There are many men who know all about the security of the refuge, and believe it utterly, but never run for it; and so never get into it. Faith is the gathering up of the whole powers of my nature to fling myself into the asylum, to cast myself into G.o.d's arms, to take shelter beneath the shadow of His wings.

And unless a man does that, and swiftly, he is exposed to every bird of prey in the sky, and to every beast of prey lurking in wait for him.

The metaphor tells us, too, what are the limits and the worth of faith.

A man is not saved because he believes that he is saved, but because by believing he lays hold of the salvation. It is not the flight that is impregnable, and makes those behind its strong bulwarks secure. Not my outstretched hand, but the Hand that my hand grasps, is what holds me up. The power of faith is but that it brings me into contact with G.o.d, and sets me behind the seven-fold bastions of the Almighty protection.

So, brethren! another consideration comes out of this clause: 'Under His wings shalt thou trust.' If you do not flee for refuge to that wing, it is of no use to you, however expanded it is, however soft and downy its underside, however sure its protection. You remember the pa.s.sage where our Lord uses the same venerable figure with modifications, and says: 'How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, _and ye would not_.' So our 'would not' thwarts Christ's 'would.' Flight to the refuge is the condition of being saved. How can a man get shelter by any other way than by running to the shelter? The wing is expanded; it is for us to say whether we will 'flee for refuge to the hope set before us.'

III. Now, lastly, the warrant for this flight.

'His truth shall be thy s.h.i.+eld.' Now, 'truth' here does not mean the body of revealed words, which are often called G.o.d's truth, but it describes a certain characteristic of the divine nature. And if, instead of 'truth,' we read the good old English word 'troth,' we should be a great deal nearer understanding what the Psalmist meant. Or if 'troth'

is archaic, and conveys little meaning to us; suppose we subst.i.tute a somewhat longer word, of the same meaning, and say, 'His faithfulness shall be thy s.h.i.+eld.' You cannot trust a G.o.d that has not given you an inkling of His character or disposition, but if He has spoken, then you 'know where to have him.' That is just what the Psalmist means. How can a man be encouraged to fly into a refuge, unless he is absolutely sure that there is an entrance for him into it, and that, entering, he is safe? And that security is provided in the great thought of G.o.d's troth.

'Thy faithfulness is like the great mountains.' 'Who is like unto Thee, O Lord! or to Thy faithfulness round about Thee?' That faithfulness shall be our 's.h.i.+eld,' not a tiny targe that a man could bear upon his left arm; but the word means the large s.h.i.+eld, planted in the ground in front of the soldier, covering him, however hot the fight, and circling him around, like a wall of iron.

G.o.d is 'faithful' to all the obligations under which He has come by making us. That is what one of the New Testament writers tells us, when he speaks of Him as 'a faithful Creator.' Then, if He has put desires into our hearts, be sure that somewhere there is their satisfaction; and if He has given us needs, be sure that in Him there is the supply; and if He has lodged in us aspirations which make us restless, be sure that if we will turn them to Him, they will be satisfied and we shall be at rest. 'G.o.d never sends mouths but He sends meat to fill them.' 'He remembers our frame,' and measures His dealings accordingly. When He made me, He bound Himself to make it possible that I should be blessed for ever; and He has done it.

G.o.d is faithful to His word, according to that great saying in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the writer tells us that by 'G.o.d's counsel,' and 'G.o.d's oath,' 'two immutable things,' we might have 'strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.' G.o.d is faithful to His own past. The more He has done the more He will do. 'Thou hast been my Help; leave me not, neither forsake me.' Therein we present a plea which G.o.d Himself will honour.

And He is faithful to His own past in a yet wider sense. For all the revelations of His love and of His grace in times that are gone, though they might be miraculous in their form, are permanent in their essence.

So one of the Psalmists, hundreds of years after the time that Israel was led through the wilderness, sang: 'There did _we_'--of this present generation--'rejoice in Him.' What has been, is, and will be, for Thou art 'the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.' We have not a G.o.d that lurks in darkness, but one that has come into the light. We have to run, not into a Refuge that is built upon a 'perhaps,' but upon 'Verily, verily! I say unto thee.' Let us build rock upon Rock, and let our faith correspond to the faithfulness of Him that has promised.

THE HABITATION OF THE SOUL

'Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.'--PSALM xci. 9, 10.

It requires a good deal of piecing to make out from the Hebrew the translation of our Authorised Version here. The simple, literal rendering of the first words of these verses is, 'Surely, Thou, O Lord!

art my Refuge'; and I do not suppose that any of the expedients which have been adopted to modify that translation would have been adopted, but that these words seem to cut in two the long series of rich promises and blessings which occupy the rest of the psalm. But it is precisely this interruption of the flow of the promises which puts us on the right track for understanding the words in question, because it leads us to take them as the voice of the devout man, to whom the promises are addressed, responding to them by the expression of his own faith.