Where, O Lord, is Your loving devotion of old, which You faithfully swore to David? Sermons
I. First argument: BECAUSE LIFE IS SO FRAIL, DO NOT OVER TRY IT WITH PERPLEXING DEALINGS. The psalmist says, "How fleeting and frail life is!" It is a poor thing, very weak; it cannot stand over-much strain. He deprecates too severe trial in the Divine discipline; afraid of himself, lest faith should fail. The calamities falling upon David's nation seemed more than he could bear. He thought about them day and night; they suggested painful doubts. So he pleads his frailty before God, begging that the calamities may not be carried to extremes, and the faith in God, which he longs to keep, be quite overwhelmed. We can sympathize with Ethan. The strain of modern conflict often seems as if it would overwhelm us. We are too weak, we think, to bear any more. Learn of Ethan that we may plead our frailty with God, and ask for gracious limitations of the strain under which we are put. II. Second argument: BECAUSE LIFE IS SO SHORT, FINISH THE COURSE OF DISCIPLINE SPEEDILY, SO THAT I MAY UNDERSTAND THY DEALINGS, AND REJOICE IN THE ISSUES. It is the argument of one who intensely longs for the honour of God to be manifested, and for the highest well being of God's people to be secured. Indeed, his very intensity puts his faith in peril; for he wants to see for himself, while he lives, God's honour vindicated, and God's word fulfilled; he cannot be quite content with the assurance that God is jealous of his own honour, and supremely concerned in his people's well being. It is impatience, but it is the impatience of a thoroughly earnest soul. God's work will go on, God's glory will be advanced, whether we die or live. - R.T.
Lord, where are Thy former lovingkindnesses, which Thou swarest unto David in Thy truth? Of Ethan the Ezrahite we may form a much more complete conception than of Heman, his colleague and friend. Like Heman, he was born in the age of David, but moulded chiefly by the influences, literary and religious, which characterized the time of Solomon. Like Heman, he was one of the four pages who were deemed so wise that it was held a compliment to pay of Solomon himself that he was even wiser than they (1 Kings 4:31). Like Heman, too, he was one of the three singers set over the service of song in the house of the Lord (1 Chronicles 6:44), one of the leaders, or conductors, of the Temple orchestra, who marked time for the singers and players on instruments, not with a baton, but, as the fashion then was, by the clash of his brazen cymbals (1 Chronicles 15:19). He must have been, therefore, a man of high culture, of large and varied experience, of trained and practised wisdom, as well as a poet, and a musician of the most approved skill. In his psalm he gives us the last results of a long life of observation and experience. This psalm could not have been written until the fifth year of Rehoboam's reign. The occasion which prompted it was, probably, that memorable invasion of Palestine by Shishak, the reigning Pharaoh of Egypt, which is recorded in 2 Chronicles 12, and to the result of which allusion has been found in the sculptures of Karnac. If you read the psalm with the facts of this invasion, and its effect on Rehoboam, full in mind, it will become wholly new to you. The King of Judah, the Lord's anointed, the psalmist wails (vers. 38-45), has been dishonoured, his crown has been hurled to the ground and defiled in the dust; his frontier-fortresses have been broken down; all his strongholds reduced; his glory has passed away; a haggard old age has come upon him in early manhood; he is covered with shame. Ethan meditates on these facts; he sets himself to understand them, to get at their inmost meaning, their Divine intention, and to learn the lesson with which they are fraught. He raises this problem — the apparent opposition between faith and fact, between the events of human life and the declarations of Divine will. He remembers the assurance given to David, "Thy seed will I establish for ever," and yet David's grandson lost ten of the tribes — lost, indeed, his own kingdom, and became a vassal of Egypt. What ground was left for faith and hope? He asks himself, Is not God able, is He not strong enough to keep His word, and to carry out the purposes of His love and compassion? And then he asks, Is He not good enough, is He not true and faithful to the word He has spoken, to the purpose He has framed and announced? His answer is untinged by doubt or hesitation (ver. 8). Obviously Ethan is a man of more robust temperament than Heman. As meditative, as experienced, as wise, but not fretted into pessimistic misgivings by doubt, he can face the facts of life unalarmed, and the contradictions of thought which those facts are apt to breed in those who reflect on them. On what ground did he take his stand? One refuge, in which many take shelter, was closed against him. He could not admit, with Mill, that God was limited in goodness or in power. Nor could he admit that men have no claim on the God who made them. Ethan found ground for trust and hope by cherishing the conviction that God had sent these calamities in mercy, for correction, for discipline, and not in anger, for destruction. He cherished the belief and hope that God was keeping His covenant with the seed of David, not breaking it. Hence he could plead with God: "How long, O Lord? Wilt Thou hide Thyself for ever?" It is this indomitable trust in the power and goodness of God; it is this resolute and unyielding conviction that all the apparent contradictions between the facts of experience and the declared will of God are only discords which will make the ultimate harmony more profound and sweet. This conviction we, too, need. We have to face the problem which pressed on the mind of the Hebrew sage. God has declared His will to us; He has entered into covenant with us. And yet is the world saved? The wise and much-experienced Ethan steps in to our help. Without in any manner seeking to abate our sense of sin, or our shame for sin, he teaches us that all our sorrow and shame, so far from proving that God has forgotten to be gracious to us, is a proof that He is correcting us for our transgressions and purging us from our iniquity. He affirms that by this discipline God is once more drawing us to Himself.(Samuel Cox, D.D.) (Canon Liddon.) I. THE CONTENTS OF THE INQUIRY. 1. The fact of an inquiry being made argues an acquaintance, either personal or by report, between the inquirer and the one sought for. 2. It implies an imagined temporary cessation of intercourse. 3. It exhibits an ardent desire for a renewal of the intercourse. 4. It breathes a spirit of sincerity. II. THE CHEERING REPLIES TO THE INQUIRY. 1. Mercy still exists. Many of her former gifts are now no more; many of the instruments by whose means, in former days, she performed mighty deeds have been laid aside; many of her former messengers to you have become silent in death (Zechariah 1:5). No; a race that some of you still remember have passed away. But Mercy is still alive. 2. She is with the Lord, and is always to be found at home. 3. She is still in possession of all her faculties. She has sufficient strength of arm for the hardest undertaking, while she retains a firmness of hand and delicacy of touch for the most intricate work. 4. She is still equally well disposed toward you. III. THE PROBABLE RESULTS OF SUCH INQUIRY MADE IN A PROPER SPIRIT. 1. It will gain the Divine approbation 2. Every probability of a renewal of the intercourse. (D. Roberts.). Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. The propriety of the title is confirmed by the psalm's unique simplicity and grandeur; its appropriateness to his times and circumstances at the close of the error in the wilderness; its resemblance to the law in urging the connection between sin and death; its similarity of diction to the poetical portions of the Pentateuch (Exodus 15; Deuteronomy 32:1; Deuteronomy 33), without the slightest trace of imitation or quotation; its marked unlikeness to the psalms of David, and still more to those of later date; and finally the proved impossibility of plausibly assigning it to any other age or author.I. THE GREAT CONTRAST (vers. 1-6). The poet says what God has been, but he implies what He still was, and would continue to be. His Divine being reaches from an unlimited past to an unlimited future. Far otherwise is it with man's days. He has no independent existence. The Being who made him turns him back to the dust from which he came (Genesis 3:19), and when He say, Return, there is none to refuse obedience. He whose existence is timeless endures, but men soon perish. He swoops them away as with a driving storm which carries everything before it. Their life consequently is as unsubstantial as a dream. II. DEATH IS THE WAGES OF SIN (vers. 7-12). The psalmist is a stranger to the fond notion that man is the victim of circumstances; that he deserves compassion rather than penalty. His brief life and swift death may seem mysterious, but they are not an accident. Like the flower he does not simply fade away, but is cut down. Various instrumental agencies may be employed to terminate man's existence, but the real cause is God's wrath against sin. How must iniquity take on a dreadful hue when contrasted with the unsullied purity of heaven, the resplendent glory of the Holy One of Israel? This dark shadow extends over the whole of life, and not only its close. "All our days" bear the same stamp, and even when they stretch out into years, still they fly away "as a thought," a comparison used by Homer and Theognis, yet without the underlying thought of Moses that the flight is retributive (ver.10). The best comment on this sad confession is the statement of Goethe made near the close of his long life. "Men have always regarded me as one especially favoured by fortune Yet after all it has been nothing but pains and toil." But besides this there is no permanence. An end does come, must come, even to the longest term of years. As the man of God looks over the record of the forty years' error, he cries out, "who knoweth," who regards and feels "the force of Thine anger"? Who has such a conception of it as befits a becoming reverence for God? The implication is that there is none. Hence the devout entreaty, "So teach us," etc. Such is the power of sin, the seductive influence of a worldly mind, that we shall not know the link between God's wrath and our own mortality unless we get instruction from above. III. PRAYER FOR THE RETURN OF GOD'S FAVOUR (vers. 13-17). Here Moses returns to the starting point of the psalm. Whither should the contemplation of mortality as related to sin, and of Divine wrath against .sin, cause us to turn but to God, our eternal home? The loss of His favour is, as usual, represented as His absence, and hence the entreaty for His return. The fervour of this request is well set forth by the abbreviated question, "How long?" i.e. How long wilt Thou retain Thine anger? Calvins letters show that this "Domine quousque" was his favourite ejaculation in his times of suffering and anxiety. The literal version of the other member of the couplet is, "Let it repent thee concerning," i.e. so change Thy dealing with them as if Thou didst repent of afflicting them — a bold form of speech used by Moses elsewhere (Exodus 32:12; Deuteronomy 32:36). The next verse asks to be sated, abundantly supplied, with the lovingkindness of Jehovah in the morning, i.e. early, speedily; and the object of this prayer is stated to be that the offerers may have reason to sing for joy and be glad during the whole remainder of their lives. But if this be true of the Old Testament, that an early experience of grace gladdens all one's subsequent course, much more must it be of the New Testament with its fuller light, better covenant and larger promises. The next couplet is an affecting reminder of past trials, which are here made to be the measure of future blessings. The desire is that former sorrows may be compensated by proportionate enjoyments in time to come. The weary sojourn in the desert, where each halting-place was a graveyard and their march was marked by the tombs they left behind them, they desire to forget in the enjoyment of a permanent home in a land flowing with milk and honey. The same request is renewed in asking for the manifestation of God's work, that is, His gracious care for His chosen, the course of His providential dealings on their behalf. A beautiful and suggestive variation of this wish is given in the next clause where the term "work" is exchanged for "majesty," intimating (Romans 9:23) that the glory of God shines conspicuously in His grace. This display of the sum of the Divine perfections is asked on behalf of the children of generations yet unborn, God being the God not only of His people, but of their seed and their seed's seed (Isaiah 59:2). The closing verse of the psalm comprehends both the Divine and the human side of the work given to God's people. First, the psalmist prays for the beauty of Jehovah, that is, all that which renders Him an object of affection, His wondrous graciousness, to be revealed to them in the way of experience. But this, so far from superseding rather implies their own activity. Hence the next petition mentions "the work of our hands," a favourite Mosaic phrase for all that we do or undertake, which God is requested to establish, i.e. to confirm and bring to a favourable issue. The repetition of the words is not merely a rhetorical beauty, but an expression of the importance, the necessity of such Divine aid. (T. W. Chambers, D.D.) Throughout this psalm two threads are twisted, the one sombre with gloom, the other bright with golden light. We will not dwell on the former. There is plenty of that already in the lives of most of us. Suffice it to say that to Moses the plaintive chords of sorrow appears to have been composed of three notes — the rapid flight of the ages, the anger of God incurred by sin, and the afflictions which beset human life. But opposite to these the aged lawgiver gives three thoughts, on which he rested his soul.I. GOD. What great thoughts Moses had of God. 1. As Creator. To God he ascribes the birth of the mountains, which in their grandest aspects and in magnificent confusion were heaped in that Sinaitic peninsula. To God also he ascribes the moulding touch which shaped the universe of matter, and gave form to the earth. What though seas and rivers, glacier action and earthquake, were his graving tools, yet the maker and former of all things was God. 2. As eternal. He is not only God, El, the strong. He is Lord, Jehovah, the I AM. And he labours hard to give us some true conception of His everlastingness. He speaks of the eighty years of human life as being, in comparison with it, short and soon; much in the same way as we should describe the duration of an insect's life, which passes through all the stages of existence from youth to age, between dawn and sunset in comparison with the life of man. He recites the generations of mankind, and describes their passing in to God like guests into a hostelry, their life to His being brief and transitory as a night-sojourn when compared with the permanence of the building in which it is spent. He goes back through the long process of creation, and says that God comprehends it in the extent of his being as a very little thing. 3. But the thought that helps us most is the conception of God as the dwelling-place, the asylum, the home of the soul. Moses needed it, if ever a man did. II. GLADNESS-MAKING MERCY. As Moses reviewed the desert pilgrimage it seemed one long line of transgression, each halting-place marked by its special graves, the monuments of some sad outbreak. He pined for gladness; he knew that there was gladness in the heart of the blessed God, enough to make him glad, and not him alone but all who were weary and heavy laden throughout the precincts of the camp; and having confessed their sins he now turned to God his exceeding joy and said, "Make us glad." And his demand for gladness was not a small one. He asked that it might be according to the days in which they had been affiliated and the years in which they had seen evil. It was a great request, but not unreasonable, for days and years of sorrow often give us capacity for receiving blessing. Let us, too, ask Him to put gladness into our hearts. Let us believe that it will honour and please Him if we dare to lay claim to blessedness, such as He alone can give, and when He gives does so with full measure, pressed down, and running over. The plea must be made to His mercy. We have no claim on any other attribute of God. And beyond that we must ask Him to satisfy us. We have sought satisfaction in all beside: in health and flow of spirits, in success and friendship, in books and affairs; but we have found it nowhere, and we shall never find it unless in Himself. III. WORK, OR CO-OPERATION BETWEEN GOD AND MAN. Moses' complaint about the shortness of life indicates that he was no idler. The days were not long enough for all he had to do, and therefore life seemed to pass so quickly through his hands. Amid all that made him sad, he found solace in the thought that what he did would last. The leaves fall, but each, ere it finds a grave in the damp autumn soil, has done something to the tree that bore it, which will be a permanent gain for summers yet unborn. The preacher dies, but his words have furnished impulses to souls which have become part of their texture and will be part for ever. The workman finds a nameless grave beneath the shadow of the great unfinished minister, but the fabric rises still and will rise; his work will be part of it for ever, a joy and beauty for coming generations. But after all our work in itself is not sufficient to resist the disintegrating forces of time, which, more than all else, tries and tests its quality. And, therefore, we need to ask that God's work may become manifest through ours. In my work let Thine appear; through my weak endeavours may that hand achieve which made the worlds and built cosmos out of chaos. "Let Thy work appear." And in asking that God's work may appear, we make. a request which involves His glory. The one cannot appear without the other, so that in all coming time children and children's children may behold it, and as that glory shines upon their faces it must transform and transfigure them so that the beauty of the Lord our God will be upon them. (F. B. Meyer, B.A.) There was a tradition among the Jews, although these traditions are not altogether trustworthy, that Moses, the man of God, wrote this psalm or prayer. And it has always been felt that the psalm seemed to have some special connection with, or reference to, the experience and the impressions of the children of Israel in the days that they were doomed to wander up and down in the wilderness without being allowed to enter into the promised land. And there is much in the psalm that corroborates that view. It is the psalm of a generation of men who felt themselves to be wasting away under God's wrath, consumed by His anger. They are spending their years as a tale that is told. The vanity and emptiness of life are pressed home upon them with great severity. At the same time, it is not a psalm of mere wailing and lamentation. There is the exercise of faith in it, not only in the first verse, but in the appeal to God to come and dwell with them as their case requires, and make them experience His mercy. Now, if we are to take this idea, and see.how far it will carry us through this psalm, we must remember this, that when the children of Israel were leaving Egypt they were very much exercised about the hope of a habitation. They were leaving one habitation — the land of Egypt. It was a house of bondage; still, a house is a house, even if it be a house of bondage, and it is wonderful how men often shrink from breaking up some accustomed state of things, not discerning well what is to replace it. But the objections of the Egyptian rulers and the hesitations of the people were mightily overcome, and by and by they found themselves on that famous march through the wilderness towards the land which God had sworn to give them for an inheritance. It was to be their habitation, and it was not only to be their habitation, but also God's habitation. The value of it was that He was to dwell in it with them, watching over them; and accordingly at the Red Sea they sang: "Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of Thine inheritance, in the place, O Lord, which Thou hast made for Thee to dwell in." Many thoughts about this wonderful habitation, many expectations about what it should prove to be, must have been in their minds. By and by there fell out that rebellion upon the report of the spies, which carried away the people as will a flood. One or two stood out against it, but the general cry of the people was to go back to Egypt. They despaired of that promised land, of that goodly inheritance. I think it would be a mistake for us to take it for granted that all those who had joined in this defection, all those who were involved in this unbelieving revolt from God, wore even then mere carnal and unbelieving men. It may have been the case that some of them were men and women who had some good thing in them towards the Lord God of Israel. It is not such a rare thing, unfortunately, it is not such a surprising thing, to find persons Who have the root of the matter in them and are believers, carried away by a stream of defection and by a sentiment of unbelief, as if they could not stand against it. And certainly we may suppose, when we look to the ends that God has in chastening, which is not for our destruction but for our salvation, that among those who were visited by this great disappointment some were brought to faith by the very chastening which was inflicted upon them. That agrees with the ends which God has in chastening. We are told that the people mourned greatly. They strove, as it were, to reverse the sentence which could not be reversed; but I should be disposed to believe that there might be among them persons who either were or came to be men of desire and men of faith towards the Lord God of their fathers. But if we are to open our minds to an idea of that kind, then what a tremendous disappointment fell upon those who belonged to this class, and how difficult it must have been for them to know what to say or do. As to the mere unbelievers, they were disappointed, of course; but they would perhaps turn to the ordinary avocations of the camp in the wilderness, prepared to make the best of it until the end of their pilgrimage had come. But those who had any trust in God and any longing for the experience of God's favour, how must it have been with them? All hope was over now of that habitation to which they had set out to go. No more dwelling with God in the land of which their fathers told them. Their children should go in; the very bones of Joseph should go in; but they were to be shut out. Indeed, one would say that they would turn to the duties that fell upon them in connection with daily life, unable to speak to any man the thoughts that were in them. It was so hard the feeling that all was over; and yet the deep longing in the heart protesting against its being all over. Yes, and yet, when we come to think of it, we may see how such souls were visited, and how they found their way to God through that experience. We may see how God brought good out of evil and light out of darkness. For still they were under God's care; still the manna was supplied to them and still the waters ran to satisfy their thirst. Still in the midst of their tents one tent arose which was God's tent, who was dwelling in the midst of them. He was providing for them, caring for them, and they could go to Him in His tabernacle with their vows and their free-will offerings; and no doubt in the month Abib they would draw together and remember that they were God's firstborn whom He had brought out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and with a stretched-out arm. To those who had no care about God, all that would be nothing, but it might be a great deal to these who were ready to say with Jonah, "I am cast out of Thy sight, yet I will look again towards Thy holy temple." For what did it come to, after all? That God was their dwelling-place even now. In His shadow they dwelt, His food they ate, His protection was extended to them, and if He chastened them, might they not remember that as a man chastenteth his own son, so the Lord God chasteneth them? And if they were enabled to get so far, if they were enabled to look upward out of that desolate condition of theirs and to claim a relation to God in which He was their dwelling-place, then they would not only be able to look upward, but to look forward too. I dare say it was one of the thoughts in their hearts, when they set their faces to go out of Egypt to that promised land, that when they came to die, as die they must, their tombs would be in that land on which God looked from the one year's end to the other. That was over now; there was nothing for them now but to leave their bones lying anywhere, wherever they might drop in the wilderness. Yet even so, they might believe that God's promise would hold and that God's goodness would not fail, and that when the great days of the fulfilling should come, they also, wherever their nameless grave might be, should not be altogether forgotten or left out of the blessedness of His people. And if God was their dwelling-place, how natural that their prayer should take this course of appealing to God to make them feel their interest in Him, to make them feel God's interest in them. The pledges that they had once looked to see fulfilled had been swept away, and they stood face to face with God, and if they were to live a life of faith in God they required help. "O satisfy us early with Thy mercy, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days wherein Thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants, and Thy glory unto their children." How that sentence on their lives expressed the vanity of their lives, they could make nothing of them; they would lead to no result. "And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us; and establish Thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it." We also are passing through our pilgrimage to the land which God has set before us, and in the case of many of us our experiences are very different from those of which we have been thinking in connection with this psalm. But there are others of us whose experience prepares them to join in some of the reflections and especially in some of the prayers of this psalm. Perhaps there are some who cannot see the use of their lives. Their expectations in life have been crossed; sorrows have come where they hoped to have prosperous and progressive times. They have difficulty in understanding any Divine purpose in their lives, or any human purpose that a person could follow out with cheerfulness, with a sense of accomplishment and success. And they are apt to feel that God is not thinking about them. Such persons deserve the sympathy of all those who have not been so tried as they have been. Perhaps there have been circumstances in their lives, temptations and failures that lead them to feel that this failure of their lives, this want of an outlook and an upward prospect before them, has been duo to their own sin, and their own foolishness, which has perplexed their heart, and which has brought upon them the experiences which often do follow sin and folly — and it may be so. But it is true that you need a dwelling-place, and so also it is true that through these many experiences of yours you may be enabled to find your way to the faith that God is your dwelling-place; that He has not been forsaking you, but has been sweeping away treasures that were too lightly contemplated, and too lightly held, to make room for His coming in Himself into your lives, with a new manifestation of His grace, with a new sense of your own sin and unworthiness, and at the same time a new experience of His goodness. We have all homes, or have had homes, and what idea do we associate with the home, the dwelling-place to which we naturally belong? First of all the idea is of protection. A little child feels sure of protection in its own home, and it is right; there are people there who would die rather than let it come to harm. Then there is provision — wants met; forethought exercised that we may be provided for. Then there is a sense of peace, a sense of familiar surroundings, of being at home, at peace with all that is around you. There is also a sense of enjoyment, a sense of love and gladness that make a cheerful and happy place. We need this, and in a measure it comes to us in our own homes, but they may pass away. They are to teach us that we need the true home, and the Lord must be our dwelling-place, in whom is protection — "He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep"; in whom there is provision, "Bread shall be given him; his waters shall be sure." And then there is gladness. Some of us, perhaps, cannot realize true, simple, childlike gladness in connection with religious faith or experience, but that is not because there is any doubt about the gladness, but because we are not far enough on. And, therefore, if I speak to any who find a difficulty in the experiences of their life is recognizing the Divine care and goodness, I would say to you, Is your case worse than the case of those men and women of whom I have been speaking? And if this was the very way in which God taught them what He was and what He could be to them, and enable them to say, "Lord, Thou art our dwelling-place," then should we not learn the same lesson; learn it when sorrows and perplexities and troubles come to us, to go to God for deliverance, and for a knowledge of what it is to yield ourselves to God, and our members as instruments of righteousness unto God. It is a sad business to think of those who are living in happy homes, in homes which have much happiness, and many elements of good about them, and yet have no outlook further; as if when by and by the materials of that earthly home fall away, they will pass out into eternity houseless and homeless. That will not do; we are very clearly told that if we are to find that blessedness we must seek it now.(R. Rainy, D.D.) Homilist. I. IN THE SAFE GUARDIANSHIP OF GOD (ver. 1).1. In other places God is represented as the dwelling-place of human souls (Isaiah 4:6; Deuteronomy 33:27; Psalm 91:9). Human souls want a home, a place where they can rest in confidence, sheltered from the storm, protected from the burning rays, and shielded from every danger and every foe. 2. What a dwelling-place is God!(1) How safe! The combined armies of hell cannot enter it; the strongest storm in the universe cannot affect it.(2) How happy! In it there is everything to charm the imagination, gratify the love, delight the conscience, transport the whole soul in raptures of joy.(3) How accessible. Its doors are open to all. Untold millions have entered it, and yet there is room.(4) How enduring! The strongest castles rumble before the breath of time, and the material universe may be dissolved, but this "dwelling-place" will stand for ever. II. IN PHYSICAL CONTRAST TO GOD (vers. 2-6). Here is the Eternal in antithesis with man the evanescent, the absolute in contrast with man the dependent. 1. Man is mortal. Dust we are and to dust we must return. But this event occurs not by accident, or disease or fate. No. "Thou turnest man to destruction." There are no accidental deaths in the world. 2. Emblems of the brevity of human life.(1) A "watch." This, according to Hebrew chronology, was only one-third of the nocturnal season. Life is spoken of, not as a year or a month, but as a third part of a night, so brief it is.(2) "Sleep," "Sleep ceases," says Luther, "ere we can perceive it or mark it; before we are aware we have slept, sleep is gone." When the oldest man, as he is about passing away, looks back on his past life, the whole seems only as a vision of the night.(3) "Grass." What are men? Merchants, warriors, emperors, armies? Grass, nothing more. The wind passeth over them and they are gone. Oh, what is man to God? (Homilist.) It is the oldest of stories, sung in this oldest of psalms; of human weakness, turning in dismay from the change and decay about it, to find refuge in the eternity of God. We are not suffered to waste time in the attempt to comprehend the abstract truth of God's eternity. We are lifted for the moment, in order that we may descend; suffered to grasp a few of the treasures of the Divine glory, that we may carry them back to glorify our earthly life.1. This splendid thought of the Divine eternity is made to touch the shifting and inconstant character of our earthly state, by the single word "dwelling-place." I am a wanderer on earth, there is an eternal home for me; I am sick of confusion and change, there is eternal abiding in Him who is "the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever," and only a change "into the same image from glory to glory." 2. But a correct view of the eternity of God conveys warning as well as comfort. The more it is studied, the stronger is the contrast into which it throws the brevity and uncertainty of human life.(1) The eternal power of God convicts us of helplessness. Notice the sharp contrast. "From everlasting to everlasting, O God," Thy life is self-sustained — in Thine own power: man's life, that gift in which he so exults and on which he presumes to play "such fantastic tricks before high heaven," — that which flowers out in his pride and high endeavour, in his ambitions, plans, and grand enterprises, is a thing so little in his power, that Thou turnest him even unto the finest dust with a word; and, with another word, — "Return, ye children of men" — callest others into being to fill his place.(2) The eternal being of God is used to convict us of delusion. We measure life by false standards. The psalm brings us back to the true rule of measurement (vers. 4, 12). 3. These suggestions are enforced by the figures which follow. Each of them sets forth a truth of its own.(1) There is, first, the fact that man passes swiftly from life. "Thou carriest them away as with a flood." "Thou carriest men away from life, as a mountain torrent, rising in an hour, sweeps away the frail but that man has built."(2) Take the next figure: and to the same thought of the swift passage of life, we have added that of its unsubstantial, unreal character, and of man's unconsciousness of its passage. "They are as a sleep in the morning."(3) Again, look at the third image: the grass which flourisheth in the morning and is cut down at evening. Here still is the old key-note — the quick passing of the life; but with a new thought, namely, how the beauty and strength and aspiration of life are disregarded in the swift flight of time. It is cut down. Why this strong expression, as if it were not left to wither of itself, but were destroyed by violence? 4. The question marks the transition to the next portion of the psalm, embraced in the next four verses. This matter of brief life and swift death is a mystery, is it also an accident? Then, as now, men were prone to say, "Man is to be pitied: man is the victim of circumstances: man is not guilty, but unfortunate: man is not depraved, but fettered: man deserves not punishment, but compassion: sin is no ground for wrath, but for tolerance." True it is that the Bible is an evangel of love, and pardon, and compassion; true that "like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him"; but also true that the Bible, from beginning to end, blazes like Sinai with God's hatred of sin, resounds with warnings of man's danger from sin, and sets forth as in letters of fire that man is responsible for sin, and liable to its penalties; true that history, and prophecy, and psalm, and gospel, and epistle are grouped round one definite purpose, to save him from the power, dominion, and consequences of sin. In view of these terrible facts, and of men's persistent blindness to the power of God's anger then, as now, is it strange that Moses prayed, is there not good cause for us to pray, "Teach us to number our days"? Whither shall a sinful, short-lived man flee, but to a holy and eternal God? Thither turns the prayer of these last five verses, and turns with hope and confidence. Man is the subject of God's wrath, but there is mercy with Him to satisfy him who flees from the wrath to come. Man is a pilgrim and a stranger, with no continuing city, but there is gladness and rejoicing in God for all his brief days. Man's beauty consumes as the moth, but "the beauty of the Lord our God" shall be upon him, and that beauty is immortal, untouched by time and change. Man's work is fragmentary, his plans often disconcerted, his grandest enterprises nipped in the bud by death, but God's touch upon human work imparts to it the fixedness of eternity; and if He establish the work of our hands, it shall abide though the world pass away and the lust thereof. He will make good the sufferings of sin by the joys of Holiness. (M. R. Vincent, D.D.) I. THE ETERNITY OF GOD.1. The existence of God never had a beginning. 2. The existence of God will never have an end; it stretches into futurity further than our minds can follow it or angels trace it; it is an everlasting life, a deep and mysterious stream which never began, and will never cease, to flow. II. IN WHAT RELATION THIS EVERLASTING BEING STANDS TO OURSELVES. We are reminded of the power by which He formed the earth and the worlds; we are reminded of the eternity in which He dwelt before there was a creature to know and adore Him; and for what end? — that a world of destitute sinners may be encouraged to consign themselves to His care and to trust in His love. He is "our dwelling-place," our refuge, our habitation, our home. 1. A refuge from dangers. 2. The seat of our comforts. 3. The place of our abode. III. WHAT FEELINGS THE CONTEMPLATION OF GOD IN THIS LIGHT OUGHT TO EXCITE. 1. Grateful acknowledgment. 2. Satisfaction. 3. Humility. 4. Confidence. 5. To the careless and ungodly — terror.Other enemies may be incensed against us, but while they are preparing to execute their purposes of wrath, "their breath goeth forth"; they die; and there is an end of their terror. But an avenging God never dies. The weapons of His indignation are as lasting as they are strong. (C. Bradley, M.A.) I. EXPLANATION.1. The dwelling-place of man is the place where he can unbend himself, and feel himself at home, and speak familiarly. With God you can be always at home; you need be under no restraint. The Christian at once gives God the key of his heart, and lets Him turn everything over. The more God lives in the Christian, the better the Christian loves Him; the oftener God comes to see him, the better he loves his God. And God loves His people all the more when they are familiar with Him. 2. Man's home is the place where his affections are centred. Christian man, is God your habitation in that sense? Have you given your whole soul to God? 3. My next remark is concerning the lease of this dwelling-place. Sometimes, you know, people get turned out of their houses, or their houses tumble down about their ears. It is never so with ours; God is our dwelling-place throughout all generations. Christian, your house is indeed a venerable house, and you have long dwelt there. You dwelt there in the person of Christ long before you were brought into this sinful world; and it is to be your dwelling-place throughout all generations. You are never to ask for another house; you will always be contented with that one you have, you will never wish to change your habitation. II. IMPROVEMENT. 1. Self-examination. It is remarkable that almost the only scriptural writer who speaks of God as a dwelling-place is that most loving apostle, John. He gives us (1 John 4:12) one means of knowing whether we are living in God: "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us." And again, further on, he says, "And we have known and believed the love that God is to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him." You may then tell whether you are a tenant of this great spiritual house by the love you have towards others. In the 13th verse is another sign: "Hereby know we that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit." Have you actually the Spirit of God within you? If so, you dwell in God. But the apostle gives another sign in the 15th verse: "Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God." The confession of our faith in the Saviour is another sign that we live in God. But there is one more sign whereby: we ought to examine ourselves, in the third chapter 24th verse: "He that keepeth His commandments dwelleth in Him, and He in him." Obedience to the Commandments of God is a blessed sign of a dwelling in God. Some of you have a deal of religious talk, but not much religious walk; a large stock of outside piety, but not much real inward piety, which develops itself in your actions. 2. Congratulation to those who dwell in God. I congratulate you, Christians, first, that you have such a magnificent house to dwell in. You have not a palace that shall be as gorgeous as Solomon's, — a mighty place as immense as the dwellings of the kings of Assyria, or Babylon; but you have a God that. is more than mortal creatures can behold, you dwell in an immortal fabric, you dwell in the Godhead — something which is beyond all human skill. I congratulate you, moreover, that ye live in such a perfect house. There ne'er was a house on earth that could not be made a little better; but in God you have all you require. I congratulate you, moreover, that you live in a house that shall last for ever, a dwelling-place that shall not pass away; when all this universe shall have died out like a spark from an expiring brand, your house shall live and stand more imperishable than marble, self-existent as God, for it is God! Be happy then. 3. One word by way of warning. Do you know, poor soul, that you have not a house to live in? You have a house for your body but no house for your soul. Have you ever seen a poor girl at midnight sitting down on a doorstep crying? Somebody passes by, and says, "Why do you sit here? I have no house, sir. I have no home." "Where is your father? My father's dead, sir." "Where is your mother? I have no mother, sir." "Have you no friends? No friends at all." "Have you no house? No; I have none. I am houseless." And she shivers in the chill air, and gathers her poor ragged shawl around her, and cries again, "I have no house — I have no home." Would you not pity her? Would you blame her for her tears? Ah! there are some of you that have houseless souls here this morning. It is something to have a houseless body; but to think of a houseless soul! ( C. H. Spurgeon.) There is pathos in the fact that the author of this psalm never had an earthly home in the truest sense. For the first fifty years of his life he was the foster son of an alien; for the next, a fugitive; and for the last, a wanderer in the wilderness. But God is the best home, after all. How one feels the blessing of a pleasant home after long travel. What should a home be?I. A PLACE OF SHELTER. And God is that, from wrath, sin, sorrow. II. A PLACE OF SUPPLY. There we go for " our daily bread." And it is God who gives us that. III. OF ENJOYMENT. Those do not know God who have never found delight in Him. IV. REST. V. LOVE. (M. B. Riddle, D. D.) Homilist. I. MAN NEEDS A HOME. Like the climbing plant, without the strongest stem to support it, the sensibilities of our frail but wonderful nature trail in the dust.II. GOD REVEALS HIMSELF AS HUMANITY'S HOME. The perfection of our home in God is seen in three particulars. 1. Physical adaptation. This world is fitted up for man's accommodation; fitted to engage energy and repay toil. It is not for the idler's comfort. 2. Intellect finds a home in God. Never talk of religious dulness. Our Father spreads out for the education of His children the grandly-illustrated page of nature, and the letter of His love. 3. Heart and soul — our moral being — find a home in God. "In all generations." Religion, under every different form, and with every varied accompaniment: patriarchal simplicity, Mosaic picture, Christian manhood — has ever been the same, ever fitted to man's heart. III. OUR HOME IN GOD IS INVIOLABLE. Out of God, there is no resting-place for the jaded spirits of men. IV. GOD OUR HOME: THEN IT IS ETERNAL. V. THIS HOME IS TO BE REACHED THROUGH CHRIST. (Homilist.) I. HOW DID MOSES COME TO WIN THIS FOIL AGAINST HIS SENSE OF THE BREVITY OF LIFE? He sought to purge his vision of every film, and he trained his mind to detect a presence of God underneath the veils of nature and behind the masks of history, till the very earth around him was haunted ground. God was quite as invisible to him as to you or me, and yet, according to the apostle, he lived as seeing Him. God had become a dwelling-place to Moses, because thought and desire had made a well-worn path toward Him, and He was a refuge to which he continually resorted. Such realization of God cannot be extemporized. A solid and substantial fabric which shall afford thought and feeling, all the repose and solace of a home, can be ours only as we acquaint ourselves with God, and enter into such familiarity with Him that He shall grow to be as definite and real to us as any of the daily facts of our common world.II. WHAT IT MEANT TO MOSES THAT GOD SHOULD APPEAR AS A "DWELLING-PLACE." Through all the years of his earthly career he had never had a permanent home. He had been a pilgrim and sojourner on the earth, and learned the full meaning of the word "homelessness." But, as one weary with long marches behold afar some stately mansion where love and welcome wait to greet him, so on the thought of Moses dawned the great vision of a quiet and enduring home, where his tired limbs and aching spirit should find balm and ease. His life had been driven hither and thither at the caprice of circumstances; in no sunny nook or sequestered vale of peace could he stay; goaded on, he had to leave behind him whatever engaged his interest, and where he fain would tarry. But from that gleaming dwelling-place yonder he should go out no more for ever. Instead of change there would be permanency; instead of the vicissitudes and fluctuations of fickle fortune there would be the constancy of unharassed tranquillity. You say, such a faith is an experience to be coveted. You sigh, and wish that it might be yours. But note that he had no monopoly of such a dwelling-place. He says that it is just as available, just as accessible, to us as to him. God is a Dwelling-place for His people in all generations. And, in spite of the murky vapours which hide our heavens, many a one since has found it true that it is possible to have in God all the security and rest of a dwelling-place. "In all generations" the great fact stands; it has never been annulled; its wide doors are sealed against the approach of none. We may conceive of the glorious attributes of our God as so many various chambers or retiring-rooms, places of security, of gratification, or of repose, to which it is our present privilege to resort. When disconcerted with the mysteries of life, we will rest in the omniscience of God, and remember that the all-knowing One cannot err. When our desires seem to fail, we will rest in His fidelity who will never break His word of promise. When life grows bitter, we will resort to Him, like the sobbing child that pillows its head on a mother's bosom, because He has sent us this message: "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort thee." As I close, I want to ask whether or not you, any of you, feel "at home" with God. I have read of some "who remembered God and were troubled." If it is thus with you, He cannot be your Dwelling-place. You may have paid Him occasional visits at distant intervals, but "he that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High abides under the shadow of the Almighty." (J. G. Van Slyke, D.D.) (with Isaiah 57:15): — Here are two homes. In the one case, God is a home for the human heart. In the other, the heart becomes a home for God. This double doctrine has in it the very soul and marrow of real religion. The most complete description of man the sinner is that he is "without God." The most complete description of man the saved is that he is "in God," "he dwells in God and God in him." I once heard a man bid "good-bye" to the missionary who had found a way into his heart for Jesus and himself too. "You lib here," said he, putting his hand upon his heart. "You lib right in my heart. You came to me, an' you say, ' I love you, John,' I open the door and you come right in, an' I say, you'se welcome to all I'se got. You say, 'John, do this;' 'John, don't do that;' an' you love poor John; till my heart warm through and through. Master, good-bye; but you lib here all same till I die." Verily the man of God was in John's heart. Jesus wants to come into the contrite heart! To you He says, "Come down; for to-day I must abide in thy house!" But when God dwells in us by His Spirit, and "makes our heart His home," He becomes our dwelling-place and our home. It is not possible to retain in perpetuity any earthly home, but this home, the heart of God, can never fail through all the years. These walls can never crumble; this roof-tree can never decay; these foundations can never fail. From everlasting to everlasting He is God. Neither is there any eviction possible; nor any room for alarm at the approach of hostile foot or invading arm. The Lord is my fortress, my strong tower. "A safe stronghold our God is still!" That was the thunderous victor-song of Luther and his fellows, and all the armies of Pope and devil could not dislodge them. The Christian's dwelling-place is a safe home! For the eternal God is his refuge, and around him are the everlasting arms. Only cross the threshold, and you shall go out no more for ever. The Lord our dwelling-place. That speaks to us of shelter. When the cold winds blow, and the tempest beats, and the storm of rain or snow goes driving through the streets, how sweet to cross the threshold and gain the shelter of our home. We can hear the hurly-burly outside — the noise of the rain against the window-pane; the moaning of the blast; but none of these things move us — we are safe at home. "Our dwelling-place." How the word tells us of comfort; of content; of rest and home delights. By the ingle and the hearth we are able to forget the tedious toil and moil of the day. The toil-worn limb, the tired hand, the weary foot, the aching head, the jaded brain find at home a welcome quiet, a refreshing rest, a comforting repose. To dwell in God is to win that refreshment and obtain that rest. And does not the word speak to us also of supplies? Our dwelling-place, God. Food lies on His table; the finest of bread; honey in the combs; wines well refined, fatlings of the flock; all this and more tells the story of the bountiful provision, the sumptuous fare provided for every one who dwells in God, housed and homed in the loving heart of Jesus Christ.(J. J. Wray.) Perhaps the noblest form of dwelling-place, and the one most akin to Moses' meaning, is that of human friendship. As little children, when taken among strangers, we looked all around for mother, and if only she were there we rushed to her, and hid in her, covering our face, but feeling safe, and able presently to look out on the guests as from a window in a house on a crowd. Or, in later life, it has been our lot to be misrepresented and misunderstood by all except by one man of noblest fashion. And it has seemed as if we were almost indifferent to all beside, so long as He is pleased and satisfied. "Let the cruel winds of slander come," we have cried, "and reproach, and hate; He understands and appreciates me; judged by His standard, I am true; tested by His opinion, I am right against a world in arms, I am content to abide in His approval and be at peace." Or, in other circumstances still, you have learnt to love, with all your heart and soul, so that your existence seems almost to have passed into that of another, and to be safe, restful, almost careless of all else, so long as that house stands unsmitten by the tempest which whirls around. All these are dwelling-places to which souls betake themselves, destined, alas! all of them, to perish, except that human love which, in so far as it is threaded with the Divine, partakes of the nature of God Himself, and is eternal. But none of them can give to the soul such blessed rest as to be able to say to God, "Thou, O Lord, art my rock, and my fortress, my shield, and my high tower." It was thus that the apostles made their dwelling-place in the nature of their Lord. Their life was hid with Christ in God. So our blessed Lord lived in God His Father. Just as a child looks out on a mob in the streets from the security of the strong castellated dwelling, where it sits on its father's knee, so did Jesus look out on the malice and hatred of men from His rest in the very heart of God. This is the true life, which, thank God! is within the reach of us all. Put God between yourself and men with their strife, or sorrow with its fret and care, chafing like the perpetual wash of the wave which retreats only to return. Ask what God says of you. measure yourself only by His standards. Seek only His well-done. Dwell deep in God. And because thou shelf have made the Lord, even the Most High, thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. As the cathedral of Cologne rears itself in incomparable majesty beyond the trailer houses around, offering a permanence which storms and time cannot impair, so does God rear Himself as our all-sufficient dwelling-place amid the passage of creation, of generations, and of centuries.(F. B. Meyer, B.A.) Heinrich Heine, a Jew by birth, not by conviction, professed Christianity in 1825. This profession, however, was merely formal, a necessary preliminary to his practising as a lawyer in Germany. Compelled to leave Germany, he lived in Paris, where he was one of the most brilliant figures in the brilliant society of his day. During many years his wittiest gibes were directed against religion; irreverence was rife in the world around him, and he never hesitated to give it sparkling utterance. But towards the end of his life came a change. A few years before death he wrote, "Yes! I have returned to God like the prodigal son, after my long swineherdship... Is it misery that sends me home? Perhaps a less miserable reason. A heavenly homesickness overtook me." Still later: "I die believing in God one and eternal, Creator of the world. I implore His mercy upon my immortal soul."People David, Ethan, Psalmist, RahabPlaces JerusalemTopics David, Earlier, Faith, Faithfulness, Former, Hast, Kindnesses, Love, Loving, Lovingkindnesses, Loving-kindnesses, Mercies, O, Oath, Steadfast, Swarest, Swear, Swore, Sworn, Truth, UnchangingOutline 1. The psalmist praises God for his covenant5. For his wonderful power 15. For the care of his church 19. For his favor to the kingdom of David 38. Then complaining of contrary events 46. He expostulates, prays, and blesses God. Dictionary of Bible Themes Psalm 89:48 5288 dead, the Library Continual Sunshine'Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall walk, O Lord, in the light of Thy countenance.'--PSALM lxxxix. 15. The Psalmist has just been setting forth, in sublime language, the glories of the divine character--God's strength, His universal sway, the justice and judgment which are the foundation of His Throne, the mercy and truth which go as heralds before His face. A heathen singing of any of his gods would have gone on to describe the form and features of the god or goddess who … Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture December the Ninth National Blessedness September the Sixteenth the Steadfastness of the Lord The People's Christ The Blessing of God. A vision of the King. The City of God. Index of Subjects. Unity of Moral Action. Letter Lv. Replies to Questions of Januarius. The Promised King and Temple-Builder "He is the Rock, his Work is Perfect. For all his Ways are Judgment. A God of Truth, and Without Iniquity, Just and Right is He. Atonement. Second Sunday in Lent The Justice of God Covenanting Provided for in the Everlasting Covenant. His Future Work Assurance Of the Name of God The Poetical Books (Including Also Ecclesiastes and Canticles). How Shall one Make Use of Christ as the Life, when Wrestling with an Angry God Because of Sin? The Firstborn. The First Commandment The Call of Matthew - the Saviour's Welcome to Sinners - Rabbinic Theology as Regards the Doctrine of Forgiveness in Contrast to the Gospel of Christ The Being of God Links Psalm 89:49 NIVPsalm 89:49 NLT Psalm 89:49 ESV Psalm 89:49 NASB Psalm 89:49 KJV Psalm 89:49 Bible Apps Psalm 89:49 Parallel Psalm 89:49 Biblia Paralela Psalm 89:49 Chinese Bible Psalm 89:49 French Bible Psalm 89:49 German Bible Psalm 89:49 Commentaries Bible Hub |
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