Expositions of Holy Scripture: PsalmsMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Psalms
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Psalms -- Commentaries
Then, too, there is the other thought. God will help us so that no
temptations shall have power to make us rob _ourselves_ of our treasure.
None can take it from us but ourselves, but we are so weak and
surrounded by temptations so strong that we need Him to aid us if we are
not to be beguiled by our own treacherous hearts into parting with our
highest good. A handful of feeble Jews were nothing against the gigantic
might of Assyria, or against the compacted strength of civilised Egypt;
but there they stood, on their rocky mountains, defended, not by their
own strength, but by the might of a present God. And so, unfit to cope
with the temptations round us as we are, if we cast ourselves upon His
power and make Him our supreme delight, nothing shall be able to rob us
of that possession and that sweetness.
And there is just one last point that I would refer to here on this
matter of our stable possession of God. It is very beautiful to observe
that this psalm, which, in the language of my text, rises to the very
height of spiritual and, in a good sense, mystical devotion, recognising
God as the One Good for souls, is also one of the psalms which has the
clearest utterance of the faith in immortality. Just after the words of
my text we read these others, in which the Old Testament confidence in a
life beyond the grave reaches its very climax: 'Thou wilt not leave my
soul in Sheol, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine holy one to see
corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life; in Thy presence is
fulness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.'
That connection teaches us that the measure in which a man feels his
true possession of God here and now, is the measure in which his faith
rises triumphant over the darkness of the grave, and grasps, with
unfaltering confidence, the conviction of an immortal life. The more we
know that God is our portion and our treasure, the more sure, and calmly
sure, we shall be that a thing like death cannot touch a thing like
that, that the mere physical fact is far too small and insignificant a
fact to have any power in such a region as that; that death can no more
affect a man's relation to God, whom he has learned to love and trust,
than you can cut thought or feeling with a knife. The two belong to two
different regions. Thus we have here the Old Testament faith in
immortality shaping itself out of the Old Testament enjoyment of
communion with God, with a present God. And you will find the very same
process of thought in that seventy-third psalm, which stands in some
respects side by side with this one as attaining the height of mystical
devotion, joined with a very clear utterance of the faith in
immortality: 'Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there is none upon
earth that I desire beside Thee! Thou wilt guide me with Thy counsel,
and afterwards receive me to glory.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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