Psalm 43:4 Then will I go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy: yes, on the harp will I praise you, O God my God. This is the expression of a twofold desire, a desire for communion with God, and for communion with God through public worship. There is a great wail of sorrow in the psalm, but it is not a sorrow without hope; faith struggles with despondence, and gets the victory. The authorship of the psalm we cannot be certain of. Nor of the occasion, whether some event in David's reign, or in Ahaz's, or in the captivity, or yet some other. held that the psalm is the proper expression of the Church while she is an exile in this world. They are unquestionably words for all individual souls who feel that something intervenes between them and God — whether it be exile of the body or of the heart only. Often we are separated from the house of God, from the worship that we love, and which has been so precious because so helpful to us, and we yearn for restoration to our privileges. Or it may be the yearning of the heart for spiritual joy, for delight in worship, for the kindling inspiration, the answering voice, the holy rapture which once we knew but now do not, though all the outward service is still ours. Or it may be the longing of the holy soul for God's heaven, that presence of God in which there is fulness of joy and of which sometimes in our holiest hours we have visions and foretastes. Thus in different experiences and moods we make these precious words our own. But to the psalmist they told — I. OF HIS STRONG DESIRE FOR RESTORATION TO THE PUBLIC WORSHIP OF GOD. It is of the very essence of the religious heart that it should yearn for God. Let a man's religious life be full and fervent, and the use of what are termed "the means of grace" may be safely left to the instincts of his own soul. But does not every pious heart sympathize with David's delight in the house of the Lord? Who of us has not realized there a fuller and more fervent feeling of His presence than anywhere else? Who of us neglects or disparages God's house without coldness and dulness creeping over our whole devotional life? Its services are the festivals of our piety, it is the place where His honour dwelleth. But the psalmist speaks of worship before God's altar. Why the altar rather than the mercy-seat? It is not enough to say that he spake the language of his dispensation, which was one in which sacrifice was prominent. Why was it so? There is but one satisfactory answer — that it was an institution prophetical and preparatory to the great sacrifice of Christ. By no satisfactory process, at least to minds like my own, can it be explained away or reduced to a mere symbol of self-sacrifice. The facts and instincts of our moral consciousness all agree to the doctrine of sacrifice as it is set forth in the Bible. II. THE PSALMIST'S SUPERLATIVE JOY IN SUCH WORSHIP. Why have we not more joy? It is absent almost everywhere. In all churches and services, in hymns and prayers. It is because we fail of the personal character essential to it, and because we think hard and false thoughts of God. (H. Allen, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy: yea, upon the harp will I praise thee, O God my God. |
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