Bible Commentaries

PALM-TREE CHRISTIANS

‘The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree.’

Psalms 92:12

The characteristic thing about the palm-tree Christian, mentioned three times, is that he ‘shall flourish.’ To flourish means four things in such a connection: To grow luxuriantly, to increase and enlarge; to thrive and to be prosperous; to be prominent; and to be in a state of activity or production.

I. The palm-tree Christian grows luxuriantly.—In sandy wastes, arid, where other vegetation fails, the palm-tree flourishes. In spite of howling and devastating storms the cedar in Lebanon grows. The palm-tree Christian flourishes in circumstances that seem barren and hopeless to the worldly and the half-way Christian. His flourishing does not depend at all upon varying circumstances, but upon something that changes not.

II. The palm-tree Christian thrives and is prosperous.—The seasons run their changing round; but the palm-tree steadily, through all seasons, flourishes. The worldly and half-hearted Christians have seasons of flourishing and seasons of deadness; the palm-tree Christian grows steadily on, in revivals or when others wither, whether men commend or persecute, when fortune smiles and when fortune frowns.

III. The palm-tree Christian is prominent.—The palm overtops all other vegetation of its vicinage. So do palm-tree Christians stand out among their contemporaries and in history. The tall ones of history are either very wicked or else palm-tree saints. Half-devoted hearts, though numerous, are inconspicuous. A grove of palms in the desert, with tall, straight stems and fronded heads, looks like a temple of divinity.

IV. Palm-tree Christians are in a state of activity or production.—The Hindus say that the palm serves 360 different uses. A good date-palm will yield 300 pounds a year, besides the value of its leaves, its bark, its stem, its roots. The worldling and the worldly Christian have some good points, and many not so good. The palm-tree Christian is good through and through, and all his uses to the world are valuable. He is the light of the world and its saving salt and its fountain of life-giving water; God comes to men through all His words and ways, to bless them. He lasts. The date palm bears best when from thirty to one hundred years old, and perhaps a half-century more. The true child of God flourishes and brings forth fruit, even in old age.

V. Why are these things so?—Four reasons are given.

(1). The palm-tree Christian is planted, ‘trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord.’ He is born again, transplanted from darkness to light.

(2) He is protected, ‘planted in the house of the Lord, flourish in the courts of our God.’ As Solomon planted palm-trees all about the temple walls, so God sets His friends in protection from destruction; He is around about them, their defence.

(3) He is deep-rooted. The palm grows where other vegetation withers, because it strikes its roots down thirty feet, if need be, to find water. So the saint, deep-rooted and grounded in the love of God and man, finding living water when all earthly springs run dry.

(4) ‘To show that the Lord is upright.’ He is, of all men, most like his Maker, upright among the fallen and depraved and selfish, glorifying thus his God.

Illustration

‘As trees planted in the courts of the Oriental houses flourished under their shelter, so those who abode in God, and made a house of Him, should bring forth fruit in old age. The Bible takes hold of the crises of life, and lays down the challenge to try God by these. He is King at the flood-overwhelming periods, and trying times. When George Müller spoke in Carr’s-lane pulpit, over ninety years of age, the general remark was that he was full of sap—expecting all things, hoping all things, young in spirit.’