Bible Commentaries

Self-communion

Psalm 62:8

What good comes of believing in the God of the Bible? What are the practical effects of such faith? Is it. some thing which so remotely and inappreciably affects life as to be a matter of very small concern to us? or is it a faith which touches life at every point; the very sunshine of being, which brings its morning, its summer, its autumnal mellowness and satisfaction? The answer is suggested in the text,—"Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us."

You believe in God; that is to say, he has a place in your intellectual notions; you could not on any consideration allow his name to be blotted out of your creed; you are intellectually sure that he lives. Now, be true to your own creed, and trust in him. You believe that the river runs to the sea, and that the sea is large enough to sustain your ship,—then act upon your faith and launch the vessel. If you keep your vessel on the stocks when she is finished, then all your praises of the ocean go for nothing; better never have built the ship than leave her unlaunched—a monument of your scientific belief, but also a testimony of your practical infidelity. This figure will serve us still further. This faith in God is truly as a sea-going ship. It is not a little craft meant for river uses, nor a toy-boat to play upon the shore even of the sea, when the sun is shining, and the south wind is as the sweet breath of a sleeping child; this faith is meant for the wide waters of the great deep, where storms have scope for their fury, where the stars are as guide-posts, and where the sun tells the voyager where he is and gives him the time of heaven. You have this great ship; she is well-built; you know her preciousness,—but there you are, hesitating on the river, running down to the harbour-bar and coming back again aghast as if you had seen a ghost: have faith; pass the bar; leave the headlands behind; make the stars your counsellors, and ride upon the great sea by the guidance of the greater sun. This is faith: not a mere nodding of the assenting head, but the reverent risking of the loving, clinging heart. To have a God in your belief is to sit in a ship which is chained upon the stocks; but to have a God in the heart, ruling the understanding, the conscience, and the will, is to sail down the river, enter upon the great ocean, and pass over the infinite waters into the haven of rest.

"Trust in him at all times." This is a practical religion. "What time I am afraid, I will trust in God. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress; my God; in him will I trust." Religion is not to be occasional, but continuous. In the daytime our faith is to shine as the sun; in the nighttime it is to fill the darkness with stars; at the wedding-feast it is to turn the water into wine; in the hour of privation it is to surround the impoverished life with angels of hope and promise; in the day of death it is to take the sword from the destroyer and to give the victory to him who is apparently worsted in the fight. It is not easy to do this. All this holy and happy issue does not come in uninterrupted sequence; great fights of affliction have to be endured, daily discipline has to be undergone; but, blessed be God, the issue is not a mere conjecture, a shining possibility which may or may not be attained; it has actually been realised by countless numbers of holy men, and upon their testimony we build the doctrine, that what the grace of God has once done it can repeat in full and abiding miracles.

In exercising this trust there are two things to be remembered. First: We get some of the highest benefits of life through our most painful discipline. The very act of trust is a continual strain upon the understanding, the affections, and the will. The trust is not an act accomplished once for all, something that was written down in a book long ago and may be made matter of reference and verification; religious trust is the daily condition of the soul, the state in which the soul lives and moves and has its being, the source, so to say, from which it draws all its inspirations, the feast at which it sustains its confidence, and the whole condition which underlies and ennobles the best life. We must remember, too, that the time of full explanation is not until by-and-by. No doubt our lives are surrounded by what may be called dead trusts; a thousand blighted hopes strew our path with ghastly figures and images: it is impossible for us to say that every trust has been verified or every hope has been realised; as Christian men we have suffered the sharpness and the bitterness of innumerable disappointments; hardly anything has happened as we wished it to occur; even when promises have been fulfilled they have come to us in unexpected ways, and have surprised us by relations and influences which had never entered into our reckoning. Amidst all these disappointments, we simply remember that the time of explanation will come when the whole drama of life is closed; then we shall see why the prayer was unanswered, why the child whose life we desired was taken away from us, why the one ewe lamb was removed, why the brightest flower in the garden was blighted. A mother may have prayed, for example, for her child's recovery, but the agony of her prayer met with no response from Heaven; the child died, and the mother's heart became an open tomb. The Christian belief is that this may be so explained in the upper worlds and the longer days, as to give occasion for still further praise to him who rules the land and the sea, in whose hand is every appointment, and whose dominion is over all as a perpetual benediction. We may have to thank God that many of our prayers were not replied to. It is hardly to be questioned that our disappointments may one day come to be reckoned amongst our blessings. We need thus to be taught the lesson of patience, to be chastened, mellowed, and subdued, and to be taught how good a thing it Psalm 62:8

The emphasis must be upon the continuousness of the trust. Occasional trust is continual infidelity. Spasmodic religion is but a variety of unbelief. In the regularity, the continuousness, it may be even the monotony, of our religious sacrifices we find their genuine worth. It is difficult for some minds to distinguish between that which is regular and that which is monotonous. We may so live as to make sunshine itself a monotony; or we may so use it as to find every day a poem, every season a vision and an apocalypse. Jo said, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." We are called upon to trust God where we cannot praise him. It is in the Garden of Gethsemane that we best can show the reality and force of our trust in God. Fair-weather religion is a mockery, a variety of selfishness, a mere sentiment that comes and goes with the sunshine. It is when our heart is overwhelmed within us that we should desire to be led to the Rock that is high and infinite. It is when our souls are filled with bitterness that we should declare we will not leave the strong tower of God. Here it is that the Christian has a constant opportunity for showing the completeness, the tenderness, and the practical value of faith. Even infidels may laugh at midday, and fools be glad in the time of abounding harvest; only he who lovingly trusts in God can be calm in the darkness, and sing songs of trust when the fig tree does not flourish. Trust of this kind amounts to an argument. It compels the attention of those who study the temper and action of our lives. Naturally they ask how is it that we are so sustained and comforted, and that when other men are complaining and repining we can repeat our prayer and sing the same song of trust, though sometimes, indeed, in a lower tone. We are watched when we stand by the graveside, and if there Christian faith can overcome human sorrow a tribute of praise is due to our principles. And many men may be prepared to render that tribute, and so bring themselves nearer to the kingdom of God. A beautiful refrain is this to our life-song, "Trust in him at all times"—in youth, in age, in sorrow, in joy, in poverty, in wealth; at all times, in good harvests and in bad harvests, in the wilderness and in the garden, on the firm earth and on the tumultuous sea; at all times, until time itself has mingled with eternity.