Bible Commentaries

Psalms 7:8

I. Notice: (1) How the Scriptures speak of integrity, how manifold and bold the forms in which they commend it, and how freely the good men of the Scripture times testify their consciousness of it in their appeals to God. And lest we should imagine that the integrity is only a crude and partial conception, belonging to the piety of the Old Testament, the Christian disciples of the New Testament are testifying also in a hundred ways to the integrity, before God and man, in which they consciously live. (2) What integrity means, or what is the state intended by it. As an integer is a whole, in distinction from a fraction, which is only a part, so a man of integrity is a man whose aim in the right is a whole aim, in distinction from one whose aim is divided, partial, or unstable. It is such a state of right intention as allows the man to be consciously right-minded, and to firmly rest in the singleness of his purpose. There is a kind of integrity which goes far beyond the mere integrity of trade, and which is the only real integrity. This higher and only real integrity is the root of all true character, and must be the condition somehow of Christian character itself. (3) Let us inquire in what manner this is so. There is no redeeming efficacy in right intent; taken by itself, it would never vanquish the inward state of evil at all. And yet it is just that by which all evil will be vanquished under Christ and by grace, because it puts the soul in such a state as makes the great power of Christ, co-working with it, effectual. Integrity is presupposed in all true faith, and enters in that manner into all true Gospel character.

II. Notice some of the practical relations of the subject. (1) Consider what it is that gives such peace and loftiness of bearing to the life of a truly righteous man. What an atmosphere of serenity does it create for him that he is living in a conscience void of offence! Who can understand like him the meaning of that word, "The work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever "? (2) Here, too, is the ground of all failures and all highest successes in religion, or the Christian life. Only to be an honest man, in the highest and genuinely Christian sense, signifies a great deal more than most of us ever conceive. Here is the spot where you are to make your revision, find what your intent is, whether it is honest, and whole, and clean, warped by no ambiguities, divided and stolen away by no idols. Here the Achan will be hid if anywhere. Make sure of his dislodgment, and the way is clear. (4) Every man who comes into a state of right intent, or is set to be a real integer in the right, will forthwith also be a Christian.

H. Bushnell, Christ and His Salvation, p. 157.

Reference: Psalms 7:8.—C. Kingsley, The Good News of God, p. 100.

Psalms 7:11

Consider how patience comes, and especially how it arises from a study of the Scriptures, and what the nature of it is.

I. First, patience is a distinctly human quality, for it is a state of waiting, expecting, looking out, and thus implies periods and distinctions of time. Patience has no place in eternity. As man's love, and pity, and justice, and truth, and holiness, and wisdom are mere reflections of the corresponding attributes in God, so patience also can only find its perfect archetype in Him. How can we reconcile the facts that God is almighty and yet declines to act; that He is perfectly just, yet leaves His justice still unsatisfied? By what other attribute can we describe Him who seems to contradict Himself but by the attribute of patience? This thought reconciles the difficulty.

II. Notice illustrations of God's patience given in Holy Scripture. (1) Conceive the love of the Almighty manifesting itself in creation. Weigh well the sense of the words, "God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good," and then the disappointment and overthrow of this plan of infinite benevolence, the ordainment of new plans for the punishment of sin, with mercy for the mitigation of pain, for the ultimate recovery of man's first estate. What a state of waiting, expecting, looking out, is here! (2) Again, imagine the patience which waited from the hour of the first promise of the Saviour, made before the gates of Paradise were shut, until those "last days" when the Eternal Father "spoke unto us by His Son." (3) Revelation gives us one more signal instance of the patience of the Eternal God: His "suffering the manners" of the Christian world for these eighteen hundred years, during which Christ has waited for the gathering in of His elect.

III. It is by looking into the face of this patience of God that we can become like-minded with Him. Not only will it make us hate our sins and love Him more, but we shall have grace to be patient also. But indifference is not patience. The patient soul is that which feels acutely, but waits on, expecting the perfect end. The suspense before enjoyment is patience. The bride waits patiently for the bridegroom's voice, because she has faith and love; she is sure that he is coming. So does the soul look out in patience for that which faith and love anticipate in Christ.

C. W. Furse, Richmond Sermons, p. 1.

References: Psalms 7:12.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ii., No. 106; F. E. Paget, Sermons for Special Occasions, p. 247.

Psalms 7:13

I. Consider from this instance how often there lurk meanings of mercy and of love in the Psalms when upon the surface of them all seems to breathe (like Saul on the road to Damascus) of threatening and slaughter. For so it is in this verse that David only thought of the arrows of judgment and of wrath, but all the Christian commentators and preachers love rather to think of those arrows of conviction and love which God hath often discharged against the persecutors of His Church, and notably against Saul. When Jesus appeared to Saul, He did not say anything about arrows, but He did make mention of something similar. "It is hard for thee," He said (quoting a common proverb), "to kick out against the goads," as the stubborn oxen do when men would drive them to a quicker pace, and they, lashing out against the goads, only hurt themselves the worse. It is easy to see what these goads must have been. Many a time must Saul have felt in his inmost soul the bitter assurance that he was only doing the devil's work; yet he hardened himself, and stiffened his neck, and kicked out against the goads of conscience, and went on madly persecuting Jesus.

II. The great and obvious lesson of the text is that no persecutor will be allowed to proceed too far. In one way or other it will be said to him unmistakably, "Thus far shalt thou go, but no further." But there is a special triumph about the overthrow of Saul, because the arrow of conviction which struck him down was the arrow of the Lord's deliverance for him as well as for the Church; it delivered the brethren from grievous fear, but him from yet more grievous error. It was like the golden arrows of the rising sun, which pierce the stubborn darkness through and through, and change it into smiling day.

R. Winterbotham, Sermons and Expositions, p. 75.

References: Psalm 7—J. Hammond, Expositor, 1st series, vol. iv., p. 59; A. Maclaren, Life of David, p. 111; I. Williams, The Psalms Interpreted of Christ, p. 160. Psalms 8:1.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. x., p. 207; A. Fletcher, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 65. Psalms 8:2.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvi., No. 1545; S. Cox, An Expositor's Notebook, p. 131.