Bible Commentaries

A Faithful Witness

Psalm 37:3-7).

We know the right answer when we hear it. Instantly about some replies we say, They lack dignity; they are sharp, not broad; they are clever, not inspired; they will serve for a momentary satisfaction, but because there is no deepness of earth they will soon wither away. The suddenness of this man's action is pleasing when the agony is so acute. He does not proceed slowly. He no sooner states his case than he instantly surrounds it with all heaven's light and grace. To have kept us waiting would have been to have increased our misery. We must know in the very first sentence the tone which the man is going to adopt and the doctrine which he is about to establish by illustration. So far we are satisfied. He invokes the Lord's name—not as a name significant of leisurely contemplation, but as associated with infinite activity, and as pledged to certain issues. The Psalmist does not hesitate to pledge God's name to the conclusion, so not only will he be convicted of a slip in logic, he will be convicted of a crime in religion, if his predictions be falsified by events. But how is the Lord to be treated? Granted that he is in heaven, and granted that his eyes are upon the children of men, and granted that there will be a final judgment—when, no one can forecast,—how is God to be treated amid all this tumult, darkness, difficulty, and horrible stress? First of all the Psalmist says he is to be trusted:—"Trust in the Lord": lean upon him; do not touch him with one finger, as if by way of symbol, or acknowledgment, or temporary lien, but cast thyself upon him—body, soul, and spirit,—the full weight, no ounce taken out of the heavy burden. That is a summons to faith; that is a challenge to reason. We must take time to consider that: the demand is so exhaustive and imperative. Who can all at once relinquish himself, and cast his whole personality and estate upon the divine name? Not only trust him,—God must be enjoyed:—"Delight thyself also in the Lord" ( Psalm 37:4). Do not let the trusting be a discipline, a hard work of penance, a hard and severe thing to do, but a positive joy, delight, passion of gladness. Who can answer that daring challenge? It tears us to pieces; it shakes us in our fancied securities; it bids us look at and trust and enjoy him who is not seen. Not only so. God must not only be trusted and enjoyed, he must be waited for:—"Wait patiently for him" ( Psalm 37:7). Are we prepared for these conditions? They all go dead against us; they are not in the line of usage; they are not in the line of desire. We are impatient, petulant, self-asserting,—we cannot wait. All this is a sign of incompleteness. The mature person can wait longer than the little child. The little child must have what it wants at once. The man can smile at the little child's impatience; he can wait a day or two, but even his power of endurance is soon exhausted. Impatience becomes unbelief; unbelief becomes disbelief; disbelief becomes atheism. There is a short course to the devil!

What does the Psalmist proceed to teach? Having laid down certain great principles, he sets up certain positive standards of reckoning. He says in effect: We must call time into this judgment: we must alter the whole field of vision. Some things are not to be seen if they are too near. You must stand back from some pictures before you will see all their meaning and all their music and mystery. In some instances you must let time elapse before you form a judgment. So we are told that history will judge the time in which we ourselves are living; in other words, men who are not now born, but who will be born a century hence, will pronounce a judgment upon the century in which we now live. If we allow that in history, surely we cannot disallow it in morals and theology. Wise men say, This is not the time to judge the events which are going on around us; there is a great tumult, a great excitement; political passion is roused; religious feeling is irritated: we must commit the issue to history; posterity will tell the value of what we are now doing. When the same claim is set up on the part of providence, surely it cannot be haughtily disallowed or frivolously rejected. The Psalmist, therefore, says in ver10 , "A little while"; and in ver16 , "A little that a righteous man hath." He has altered the weights and standards of the country. He has come in with a great authority to say, What you have been counting much is little: you are wrong in your theory of weights and measures; your standards need rectification: you must take the whole of your mechanical judgments into the sanctuary to be rectified by God; you must bring your chronometers into the temple to be adjusted by the eternal and infinite meridian. Now we begin to see a little light upon the bad man's prosperity. To be told, first of all, that it is for a little while, alters the entire complexion of the case. The spendthrift says: I have ten pounds a week income, that is five hundred and twenty a year; let me spend fifty pounds the first week, and see what it is like to live at the rate of two thousand six hundred a year. The fool is burning the candle at both ends; he is eating up his seed-corn—the very corn that he ought to be garnering to throw into the arid soil at the next sowing-time. "A little while"—a flash, and all is dark again; a bubble bursting in a moment, and leaving nothing behind but a frail reflection of its hue and tint; a little flutter, and all is over. A most ingenuous reply, and as profound as ingenuous. The Psalmist fixes upon the evanescence of all worldly pomp, and says: Really it is not worth fighting for; it perishes in the using; it is a momentary gilt which will soon peel off, or it will be cankered and destroyed.

Now he turns aside to the righteous man's "little," and taking it up in his hand he says: This outweighs the riches of many wicked. So then, if men have been proceeding by a false arithmetic, what is the value of all their numerical reasoning? Though they may have carried out their cubing and squaring and extraction of roots to a thousand decimal points, they were wrong at the start, and the further they have carried their decimals the further they have prolonged their condemnation. The unit was wrong, the method of multiplication was wrong, and therefore to continue it is to aggravate the guilt which will be charged upon the mistaken calculator. Some "littles" cannot be exhausted; some sovereigns cannot be changed; they are always growing into more and more, not in arithmetical value, but in some sense in real practical uses. Many a time we have seen the end of our barrel of flour; we have put our thin fingers through the meal; we have said, This cannot last more than two days; and behold the next time we have gone to it, it is still sufficient to last two days longer; and again we have returned, after having satisfied our hunger amply, and we have said, Really we must have made a mistake in the first instance; there is quite a week's meal left now. If this were fancy we have common-sense enough to despise it; but having lived it we have honesty enough to avow it.

So the Psalmist is encompassing his case in a masterly way. Having set up certain great principles, and shown how God is to be treated in the midst of providential mysteries, and having changed the whole scheme of weights, measures, and standards, he next pledges his word as an eye-witness. He says ( Psalm 37:23), "The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and he delighteth in his way"; and again ( Psalm 37:35-36), "I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found"; and again ( Psalm 37:37), "I have marked the perfect Psalm 37:3), not only "trust in the Lord," but "do good"; then ( Psalm 37:27) he says, "depart from evil, and do good." This is no fancy heaven; this is no poetic paradise: those who are serving God have coats off and both hands stretched out in labour, and how to be good in God's sight without attracting the attention of men is the supreme inquiry of the soul. So then, the Christian religion is no pastime. We are to be faithful, watchful, painstaking. The Apostle says: I keep my body under, lest, having published the names of intending competitors in the race or wrestle—lest, after having acted as a herald, saying, so-and-so will run today, wrestle today, I myself having heralded them should become a castaway—not in the list at all myself, a mere announcer of other athletes, but an outcast myself. From the beginning of the Bible to the end the great exhortation is: Cease from evil; learn to do well; wash you, make you clean; do good; be watchful; observe the laws of discipline; for only in so doing is there safety. The idle man is caught at odds; the sleeping man is slain in his slumber; only the watchful servant will be ready, come when his Lord may, at the cock-crowing, at the dawn, at high noon, or in solemn midnight

Prayer

Almighty God, our souls thirst for thee: thou art the living water: the river of God is full of water! We know that thou alone canst quench the thirst of the soul; we hear the voice of Jesus Christ thy Son saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink: we hear the voice of the prophets crying, Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters: we hear many voices saying, Come: the Spirit and the Bride say, Come; let him that heareth say, Come; let him that is athirst come; yea, come, let him drink freely of the water of life. We bless thee for this burning thirst; we thank thee that having drunk up all the rivers of time and pleasure we are still athirst for water beyond. It is for the living water that we thirst; if any man drink of the wells of earth he shall thirst again, but if any man drink of the water of Christ he shall never thirst, but the water which Christ giveth the man shall be in him a well of water springing up unto everlasting life. Lord, give unto us this spring water, this water that comes up from the rocks, and which never can be dried by scorching suns. Even in the wilderness thou wilt find water for us, and pools in desert places. Regard us as those who are now subjected to the wear and tear of life. Thou knowest how cruel this life of ours must needs be, chased and hunted and persecuted, and affrighted by evil presences every hour, tested by loss and pain, and brought oftentimes into utterest despair: Lord Jesus, help us; Saviour of the world, open our eyes, open our ears, that we may see and hear the living messenger of God. Specially help those to whom life is a daily burden; hold thou the lamp above the page when they read of whom thou hast elected to be thy ministers and evangels. Be with those who have to find what joy they can in loneliness, for the world knoweth them not. The Lord heal our afflictions, dry our tears, direct our way, and at the end cause us to say, Blessed be God for sorrow, because but for this sorrow we had not known the truest, tenderest joy. Behold us at the Cross, where no man ever prayed in vain. Amen.