Bible Commentaries

GOOD CHEER FOR BAD TIMES

‘Now will I arise, saith the Lord.’

Psalms 12:5

I. Times were bad.—All society was tainted. Truth was nowhere: falseness everywhere. Men’s hearts were double. Flattering lips spoke slander, hypocrisy, and lies, and were full of proud boastings. Shamelessly, too, did they justify it all with the impious saying: ‘Our lips are our own: who is lord over us?’ It is loss of character, rather than loss of trade, that makes times really bad—when there is a general decay of piety and honesty.

II. The godly man’s comfort in view of the badness of the times.—(1) In prayer, in the cry, ‘Help, Lord!’ Just because things are so desperate, ‘Help, Lord!’ Few indeed are the good and faithful. Dark is the present, but darker, far darker, the future; therefore, ‘Lord, help—help!’ Is there not much of gloom and fear in our outlook of to-day? And is it not high time to arouse ourselves, and one another—time to change our speech one to another about the disquieting symptoms around us, into one great, purposeful and persistent cry of ‘Help, Lord’? (2) In God’s words. David comforted himself and others, not with his own words, but with God’s. ‘The words of the Lord are pure words’ (Psalms 12:6). He revels in the contrast—man’s speech so foul with heartless selfishness and guile: God’s so perfectly pure in its unselfish lovingness and truth! The more the former vexes, the more should we magnify, and rest upon, and glory in the latter, the promises of God.

Illustrations

(1) ‘With what a delightful cry this psalm begins! So short, so comprehensive, so appropriate! Between a question and our answer, between a temptation and our yielding, between a proposal and our acceptance, we may launch this arrow from our bow, directing our prayer, and looking up. How often in the midst of a sermon, or an argument, or a rain of hailstones of critical sarcastic taunts, may we send up the cry, “Help, Lord!”’

(2) ‘An old writer tells that a ship, with exiles for religion, was driven on the coast of Barbary in a night of fearful storm, and they had nothing before them but death or captivity among the Moors. They sang together the twelfth Psalm, and when they reached the fifth verse the ship went to pieces and most of them perished in the waves—through the sea, to life and liberty.’