Bible Commentaries

MAN’S ACCEPTANCE OR REJECTION OF GOD

‘They thought scorn of that pleasant land: and gave no credence unto His word.’

Psalms 106:24 (Prayer Book Version)

Whatever diversity of opinion upon the sacred significance of life may be represented in this congregation, there is at least one thing upon which all serious-minded souls will agree, and that is, that there is nothing more important in the moral order than man’s acceptance or rejection of God.

I. Causes of man’s rejection of God.—In the Bible there are many causes for man’s rejection of God.

(a) Dissatisfaction with the invisible.—The first of these seems to be the incapacity of man to rest satisfied with the invisible. He doubts the invisible. Hence it was that in early days when Moses, the man of God, was in the mount with the Father of us all, receiving from Him a revelation, the privileged people were dissatisfied with his absence and with that which the absence represented; they longed for the visible. They thought that the visible was the real.

(b) Evil associations.—But this is not at all the only reason. We come down the stream of Hebrew history. Solomon became associated with heathen women, and his heart strayed from God Who made him what he was. And thus we are enabled to see that evil associates, forbidden by God and known to men, will come between God and man, and will produce the same result in the moral order that is produced by man’s impatience with a religion that has in its centre the invisible.

(c) Thinking scorn of religion.—But in our text you have not to do with either of these. Here the cause that leads to separation between man and God is in the field of fancy. It is in the realm of the imagination. ‘They thought scorn of that pleasant land.’ The children of Israel wondered why they had been brought up from Egypt. Their insurrection took the practical form of trying to stone Moses. And the cause of this was that not one of them knew anything about the land. They refused the evidence, and they were in a state of open hostility to God their Father.

II. An everyday experience.—That spirit is not quite extinct. There are a large number of persons who first think scorn of religion, and then become not only disobedient to God’s Word, but apparently they lose the power to grasp the weight of its increasing evidence. To bring this subject up to everyday life, we do not say that God gives us a land flowing with milk and honey, we do not adorn this land with all the fertility with which God was pleased to stimulate the spiritual life of the Israelitish nation. But we have our Canaan. What Canaan was to the Israelites Christ is to us, Christ in all the majesty of His Person, Christ in all the potentiality of His office, Christ in all the catholicity of His love, Christ in all His unchanging, undying sympathy with suffering humanity.

III. Factors in coming to Christ.—But in our invitations to men to come to our Canaan, that is, to Christ, there are three factors that must not be omitted:

(a) A sense of sin.—The first of these is sin. Let men be as optimistic as they may about the advancement of education, about the spread of order, sin cannot be excluded from the body politic nor from the individual nor from the race.

(b) Repentance.—The sacred factor in our message is Repentance. Man needs this if he desires to have perpetual affinity and association with God. A bad, unpardoned soul in heaven would make it hell. There must be affinity between those who dwell together, and the only way in which this affinity can be ours is announced to us by Him Who has made it absolutely certain, that is, Christ. He gives us His righteousness, and when we are in Christ God beholds us as in Him. We are one with His righteousness.

(c) Power.—And there is the third great factor that we may not be without. I need not only that my sins be forgiven, I want power to resist sin. I want freedom, and freedom consists in the power to master sin that will otherwise master me. Why do men commit sin at all? Because sin is stronger than man. Christ makes man stronger than his sin. Young men, carry away that sentence with you, love it, translate it into the moral rhetoric of your everyday life, and when you are tempted again, remember that Christ makes you stronger than your sin.

IV. What is our response?—What is our response to the appeal? Is there nobody here who thinks ‘scorn of the pleasant land,’ and then gives ‘no credence’ to the Word of God Almighty? Is there no one who thinks scorn? Why, there are crowds of men who gather their ideas of religion not from their Bible, not from the character of people who love the Bible and God, but from some caustic publication or novel that seems to make light of truths that God holds dear, and of religion by which we are to live and without which we dare not die. You think scorn of the pleasant land and of those who think anything of it. No, you will say, that is hard, that is uncharitable—we do not think scorn, but we will act scorn. God expects every soul baptized into the Church and who rejoices in the association with Christ, to work and to labour. He has purchased to Himself ‘a peculiar people, zealous of good works.’ How many here are addicted to any form of moral work? Spiritual levity precedes spiritual unbelief, and spiritual unbelief means spiritual sterility. The man that is frivolous about religion will soon disbelieve it, and the man who disbelieves will not only not aid God’s work, but will hinder it. All this is very serious and sorrowful. Now, what are we to do? The first thing, I say, and especially to the young, is this: In all my reading I have never yet read of one experience, and that is that any soul who gave himself to Christ ever regretted having done so. You will never find a nobler religion than the one presented to you. Whoever discovered a better? Frivolity is such a peril to the English nation at the present time. Who would have his spirit tossed upon the torrent of the stream, and in the end find himself without possibility of returning, without capacity to believe? There are dangers in the world of the imagination, dangers in the world of fancy, dangers which God has immortalised for our learning in these well-known words: ‘They thought scorn of that pleasant land, and gave no credence unto His Word.’

Dean Wickham.