The rocks are rent with an earthquake. The sky is lurid with
lightnings. Fragments of these awful precipices are torn and
dislocated by the fury of the tempest, and go thundering down the
Valley. Nature testifies to the presence, and majesty, and power of
her God: but He is not in any of these! "The Lord is not there!" The
Prophet waits for a further disclosure. He is not satisfied with
seeing the skirts of God's garment. He must see the hand, and hear
(though it be in gentle whispers) the voice of Him who sits behind the
elements He has awoke from their sleep. Hence this formed the closing
scene in that wild drama of the desert. "_After the fire there came a
still small voice._" _The Lord is there!_ He is proclaiming Himself
the prophet's God! with him in the depths of that howling wilderness,
as He had been with him on the heights of Carmel. "_And it was so,
when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and
went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave._" (1 Kings xix.
12, 13.)
Shall we go for illustration of the same truth to New Testament and
gospel times?
The disciples are tossed with storm in the Sea of Tiberias. The voice
of a _living_ Saviour proclaims His _name_. "_It is I_ (lit. I AM);
_be not afraid!_" The assurance, in that night of gloom and tempest,
lulls their trembling spirits to rest.
John, in Patmos, beheld, in a vision of surpassing brightness, his
Lord arrayed in the lustres of exalted humanity. Overpowered by the
glory which unexpectedly burst upon him, "he fell at His feet as one
dead." His misgivings are stilled; his confidence and hope restored,
by the proclamation of a _living_ Saviour-God. "_I am He that_ LIVETH"
(lit. THE LIVING ONE)--and a similar comforting symbol was given him
in a subsequent vision, when he saw that same covenant angel
"ascending from the east, having the seal of the _Living_ God." (Rev.
i. 18, and vii. 2.)
This was "the _living_ Jehovah" whom David now sought in the
forest-depths of Gilead. He goes out to that solitude to meditate and
pray. But it is no dream of earthly conquest that occupies him.
Deeper thoughts have taken possession of his soul than the loss of a
kingdom and the forfeiture of a crown! A fiercer battle engrosses his
spirit than any mortal conflict. "Let me have God," he seems to say,
"as the strength of my heart and my portion for ever, and I heed not
other portions besides." At another time that lover of nature would
have caught inspiration from the glories of the impressive sanctuary
around. He would have sung of the water-brooks at his side, the trees
bending in adoration, the rocky gorges through which Jordan fretted
his tortuous way, the everlasting hills of Hermon and Lebanon,--the
silent guardians of the scene,--"the wild beasts of the forest
creeping forth" and "seeking their meat from God." But now he has but
one thought--one longing--"THOU _art more glorious and excellent than
the mountains of prey_." (Ps. lxxvi. 4.) None was more dependent on
the realised consciousness of the Divine favour than he. His Psalms
seem to utter the language of one who lived in God's presence, and to
whom the withdrawal of that endearing intercourse and communion would
be death indeed. His expressions, in these holy breathings of his
soul to the Father of spirits, seem like those of one loving friend to
another. God, the abstraction of the Philosopher, has no place in his
creed. He speaks of "the Lord thinking upon him," "putting his tears
into His bottle," "guiding him with His eye," "His right hand
upholding him," he himself "rejoicing under the shadow of His wings;"
and as if he almost beheld some visible, tangible form, such as Peter
gazed upon when the question was put to him on the shore of
Gennesaret, "Lovest thou me?" we hear this warm, impulsive Peter of
Old Testament times thus avowing his personal attachment--"_I will
love thee, O Lord my strength;_" "_I love the Lord, because He hath
heard my voice and my supplications;_" "_The Lord_ LIVETH_; and
blessed be my rock; and let the God of my salvation be exalted_."
Reader, do you know what it is thus to exult in God as a _living God_?
Not to think of Him as some mysterious Essence, who, by an Almighty
fiat, impressed on matter certain general laws, and, retiring into the
solitude of His own being, left these to work out their own processes.
But is there joy to you in the thought of God ever nigh, compassing
your path and your lying down? Do you know of ONE, brighter than the
brightest radiance of the visible sun, visiting your chamber with the
first waking beam of the morning; an eye of infinite tenderness and
compassion following you throughout the day; a hand of infinite love
guiding you, shielding you from danger, and guarding you from
temptation--the "Keeper of Israel," who "neither slumbers nor sleeps?"
And if gladdening it be, at all times, to hear the footsteps of this
living God, more especially gladdening is it, as, with the Exile-King
of Israel, in the season of trial, to think of Him and to own Him, in
the midst of mysterious dealings, as One who personally loves you, and
who chastises you _because_ He loves you. The world, in their cold
vocabulary, in the hour of adversity, speak of _Providence_, "the wil
of _Providence_," "the strokes of _Providence_." PROVIDENCE! What is
that? Why dethrone a living God from the sovereignty of His own world?
Why substitute a cold, death-like abstraction in place of a living
One, an acting One, a controlling One, and (to as many as He loves) a
rebuking One and a chastening One? Why forbid the angel of
bereavement to drop from his wings the balmy fragrance, "Thy Father
hath done it?" How it would take the sting from many a goading trial
thus to see, as Job did, nothing but the hand of God--to see that hand
behind the gleaming swords of the Sabeans, the flash of the lightning,
and the wings of the whirlwind--and to say like David, on the occasion
of his mournful march to these very wilds of Gilead, "_I was dumb, I
opened not my mouth; because_ THOU _didst it_." (Psalm xxxix. 9.)
The thought of a living God forms the happiness of Heaven. It is the
joy of Angels. It forms the essence and bliss of glorified Saints. The
redeemed multitude, while on earth, "_thirsted_" for the living God,
but they had then only some feeble foretastes of His presence. They
sipped only some tiny rills flowing from the Everlasting Fountain; now
they have reached the living spring; and the long-drawn sigh of the
earthly valley is answered--"When shall we come and _appear before
God_?"
And what this living God is to the Church above, He is also to the
Church below. In one sense we need Him more! The drooping, pining
plant, battered down by rain, and hail, and tempest, stands more in
need of the fostering hand and genial sunbeam than the sturdy tree
whose roots are firmly moored in the soil, or sheltered from the sweep
of the storm. Pilgrims in the Valley of Tears! seek to live more under
the habitual thought of God's presence. In dark passages of our
earthly history we know how supporting it is to enjoy the sympathy of
kindred _human_ friends. What must it be to have the consciousness of
the presence, and support, and nearness of the Being of all beings;
when some cherished "light of the dwelling" is put out, to have a
better light remaining, which sorrow cannot quench! All know the story
of the little child who, in simple accents, quieted its own fears and
that of others in the midst of a storm. When the planks were creaking
beneath them--the hoarse voice of the thunder above mingling with that
of the raging sea;--his tiny finger pointed to the calm visage of the
pilot, who was steering with brawny arm through the surge, "_My
father_," said he, "_is at the helm_!" Would you weather the tempests
of life, and sit calm and unmoved amid "the noise of its many waters,"
let your eye rest on a _living God_--a loving Father--a heavenly
Pilot. See Him guiding the Vessel of your temporal and eternal
destinies! Let Faith be heard raising her triumphant accents amid the
pauses of the storm--"_O Lord our God, who is a strong Lord like unto
Thee? Thou rulest the raging of the sea; when the waves thereof arise,
Thou stillest them._" (Psalm lxxxix. 9.)
Above all, be it yours to enjoy what David knew imperfectly, the
conscious nearness of a living SAVIOUR,--a Brother on the throne of
Heaven--"_Christ our life_"--God in our nature--"the man Christ
Jesus,"--susceptible of every human sympathy--capable of entering,
with infinite tenderness, into every human want and woe--bending over
us with His pitying eye--marking out for us our path--ordering our
sorrows--filling or emptying our cup--providing our pastures, and
"making all things work together for our good!" The words at this
moment are as true as when, eighteen hundred years ago, they came
fresh from His lips in Patmos--"I am _the living_ One!--Behold, I am
_alive_ for evermore!" (Rev. i. 18.)
* * * * *
What is the great lesson from this meditation? Is it not to strive to
_be like God_? What does "thirsting" for God mean, but a longing of
the soul after likeness and conformity to the Divine image? Let us
not lose the deep truth of the text under the material emblem. To
thirst for God is to desire His fellowship; and we can only hold
fellowship with a congenial mind. No man is ever found to covet the
companionship of those whose tastes, likings, pursuits, are opposed to
his own. Place one whose character is scarred with dishonour and his
life with impurity, introduce him into the company of high-souled
men--spirits of sterling integrity and unblemished virtue, who would
recoil from the contaminating touch of vice, who would scorn a lie as
they would a poisoned dart--he _could_ not be happy; he would long to
break away from associates and associations so utterly distasteful and
uncongenial. No man can thirst after God who is not aiming after
assimilation to His character. God is HOLY. He who thirsts for God
must be athirst for _holiness_--he must scorn impurity in all its
forms, in thought, word, and deed. He who longs for the pure cistern
must turn with loathing from the muddy pools of earth and sin. Again,
God is LOVE. Love is pencilled by Him on every flower, and murmured in
every breeze. The world is resonant with chimes of love, and Calvary
is love's crowning triumph and consummation. He who "thirsts for God"
"in him verily is the _love_ of God perfected." He must have the
lineaments in outline, at least, of a loving nature. He must hate all
that is selfish, delight in all that is beneficent, and seek an
elevating satisfaction in being the minister of love to others. "_He
that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him._"
* * * * *
And what shall be said to those who know nothing of this thirst for
God,--to whom all that is here written is but as an idle tale? You may
pant not for Him. You may have no spiritual thirst for Him--no longing
for His presence--no aspiration after His likeness. But still He is to
you, as to the believer, a LIVING God. Yes--scorner of His mercy!
ignore the truth as you may, the God to whom you are responsible,--the
God with whom you will yet have "to do," _that_ God LIVES! His eye is
upon you--His book is open--His pen is writing--the indelible page is
filling! You may see no trace of His footstep. You may hear no tones
of His voice. His very mercy and forbearance may be misconstrued by
you, as if it indicated on His part indifference to His word and
forgetfulness of your sin. You may lull yourselves into the atheist
dream, that the world is governed by blind chance and fate, that His
heaven and His hell are the forged names and nullities of credulity
and superstition. As you see the eternal monuments of His power and
glory on rock and mountain, you may affect to see in these only the
dead hieroglyphics of the past--the obsolete tool-marks of the God of
primeval chaos, who welded into shape the formless mass, but having
done so, left it alone. The scaffolding is removed, the Architect has
gone to uprear other worlds, and abandoned the completed globe to the
control of universal laws!
Nay--GOD LIVES! "He is not far from any one of us." He is no Baal
divinity, "asleep or taking a journey." The volume of every heart is
laid open to the eye of the great Heart-searcher, and vainly do you
seek to elude His scrutiny. Terrible thought! this _living_ God
_against_ you! _You_ living, and content to live His enemy! rushing
against the bosses of His buckler! and if you were to die, it would be
in the attitude of one _fighting against God_!
No longer scorn His grace or reject His warnings. He is living; but,
blessed be His name, He is living and waiting to be gracious! You may
be as stranded vessels on the sands of despair; but the tide of His
ocean-love is able to set you floating on the waters. Repair, without
delay, to His mercy-seat. Cast yourselves on His free forgiveness.
Every attribute of His nature which you have now armed against you, is
stretching out its hand of welcome and entreaty. Each is like a branch
of the tree of life, inviting you to repose under its shadow. Each is
a rill from the everlasting fountain, inviting you to drink of the
unfailing stream.
See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. He who unlocked that
fountain is even now standing by it, and saying, as He contrasts it
with all earth's polluted cisterns, "_Whosoever drinketh of_ THIS
_water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I
shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him
shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life_."
IV.
The Taunt.
"'Wilt thou leave me thus,' I cried,
'Whelm'd beneath the rolling tide?'
Ah! return and love me still;
See me subject to Thy will;
Frown with wrath, or smile with grace,
Only let me see Thy face!
Evil I have none to fear,
All is good, if THOU art near.
King, and Lord, whom I adore,
Shall I see Thy face no more?"
--_Madame Guyon._
"There is a persecution sharper than that of the axe. There is an iron
that goes into the heart deeper than the knife. Cruel sneers, and
sarcasms, and pitiless judgments, and cold-hearted calumnies--these
are persecution."
"My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say
unto me, Where is thy God?"--_Verse 3._
IV.
THE TAUNT.
We are called, in this chapter, to contemplate a new experience--David
in tears! These, his tears, brought sin to his remembrance. As, in
looking through the powerful lens of a microscope, the apparently
pellucid drop of water is found to be the swarming haunt of noxious
things,--fierce animalculæ devouring one another; so the tears of the
Exile formed a spiritual lens, enabling him to see into the depths of
his own soul, and disclosing, with microscopic power, transgressions
that had long been consigned to oblivion.
Ten years of regal prosperity had elapsed since the prophet Nathan,
the minister of retribution, stood before him, in his Cedar Palace,
with heavy tidings regarding himself and his house. Time may have
dimmed the impressions of that meeting. He may have vainly imagined,
too, that it had modified the Divine displeasure. Now that his head
was white with sixty winters, he may have thought that God would
exempt him from further merited chastisement, and suffer him to go
down to his grave in peace. But the day of reckoning, which the Divine
patience had long deferred, had now come. He was called to see the
first gleamings of that sword which the anointed prophet had told him
would "never depart from his house." (2 Sam. xii. 10.) The voice of
long averted judgment is at last heard amid the thickets and caves of
Gilead,--"_These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou
thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will
reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes_." (Ps. l. 21.)
Nature, in her august solitudes, echoed the verdict! The waters
murmured it--the winds chanted it--the forest wailed it--the thunders
rolled it--and the tears of the lonely Exile himself wept it,--"_Be
sure your sin will find you out_!" As he sat by the willows of Jordan,
with his crownless head and aching heart, he could say, in the words
of an older Psalmist, "_We are consumed by Thine anger, and by Thy
wrath are we troubled. Thou has set our iniquities before Thee, our
secret sins in the light of Thy countenance._" (Ps. xc. 7, 8.)
How apt are we to entertain the thought that God will wink at sin;
that He will not be rigidly faithful to His denunciations--unswervingly
true to His word. Time's oblivion-power succeeds in erasing much from
the tablets of _our_ memories. We measure the Infinite by the standard
of the finite, and imagine something of the same kind regarding the
Great Heart-Searcher. Sin, moreover, seldom is, in this world,
_instantaneously_ followed with punishment; "sentence against an evil
work is not executed speedily;" and the long-suffering patience and
forbearance of the Almighty is presumptuously construed by perverse
natures into alteration or fickleness in the Divine purpose. But "_God
is not a man that He should lie_!" Even in this our present probation
state, (oftener than we suppose,) the time arrives for solemn
retribution; when He makes bare His arm to demonstrate by what an
inseparable law in His moral government He has connected _sin_ with
_suffering_.
A new missile pierces this panting, wounded Hart on the mountains of
Israel. _One_ of those who hurled the Javelin is specially mentioned
in the sacred narrative. His poisoned dart must have been rankling in
David's soul when he penned this Psalm.
When the King was descending the eastern slopes of _Olivet_, on his
way to the Valley of Jordan, Shimei a Benjamite of Bahurim, of the
house of Saul, came out against him, "_and_," we read, "_cursed still
as he came. And he cast stones at David, and at all the servants of
King David: and all the people and all the mighty men were on his
right hand and on his left. And thus said Shimei when he cursed, Come
out, come out, thou bloody man, and thou man of Belial: the Lord hath
returned upon thee all the blood of the house of Saul, in whose stead
thou hast reigned; and the Lord hath delivered the kingdom into the
hand of Absalom thy son: and, behold, thou art taken in thy mischief,
because thou art a bloody man. And as David and his men went by the
way, Shimei went along on the hill's side over against him, and cursed
him as he went, and threw stones at him, and cast dust._" (2 Sam. xvi
5-8, 13.) Besides this son of Gera, there were many obsequious
flatterers and sycophants at Jerusalem--men once his cringing
adherents, loud with their hosannahs in the time of his
prosperity--who had now turned against him in his adversity, and
become the partisans of the usurper. They exulted over his downfall,
and followed him to the place of exile with the taunting cry, "Where
is now thy God?" "_Mine enemies_," said he, "_speak against me; and
they that lay wait for my soul take counsel together, saying,_ GOD
_hath forsaken him: persecute and take him; for there is none to
deliver him_." (Ps. lxxi. 10, 11.)
There is no trial keener, no anguish of soul intenser than this. Let
not any talk of taunt and ridicule being a trivial and insignificant
thing--unworthy of thought. Let not any say that the believer,
entrenched in a lordly castle--the very fortress of God--should be
above the shafts hurled from the bow of envy, or the venomous arrows
from the tongue of the scoffer. It is often _because_ the taunt is
contemptible that it is hardest to bear. The sting of the adder rouses
into fury the lordly lion. The tiniest insect blanches the colour of
the loveliest flower, and causes it to hang its pining head. Sorrow is
in itself difficult of endurance, but bitter is the aggravation when
others are ready to make a jest of our sorrows. _No water_ is bad
enough to the fainting pilgrim, but worse is it when he is mocked by
the mirage or bitter pool.
All the more poignant, too, were these taunts in the case of David,
because too well did he know that such reproaches were merited,--that
he himself had furnished his enemies with the gall and the wormwood
that had been mingled in his cup. The dark, foul blots of his past
life, he had too good reason to fear, were now emboldening them to
blaspheme. He had for years been "the Sweet Singer of Israel;"--his
future destiny was the Psalmist of the universal Church. His sublime
appeals, and fervent prayers, and holy musings, were to support, and
console, and sustain till the end of time. Millions on millions, on
beds of pain, and in hours of solitude and times of bereavement, were
to have their faith elevated, their hopes revived, their love warmed
and strengthened by listening to the harp of the Minstrel King. And
now, as his faith begins to languish, now as a temporary wave of
temptation sweeps him from his footing on the Rock, and the "Beloved
of God" wanders an exile and outcast,--a shout is raised by those who
were strangers to all his sublime sources of consolation--"_Where is
now thy God?_ Where is He whom thou hast sung of as the help of the
godly, the refuge of the distressed? Where, uncrowned one! is the
answer to thy prayers? Where is He of whom thou didst boast as being
known in all thy Zion palaces as a refuge? Thou hast taught others and
taught thyself to believe a lie. O Lucifer, son of the morning! how
art thou fallen!"
For the moment, this crushing sarcasm can be answered by nothing but a
flood of anguished tears. He was below the wave; and though he was
soon to know that below that wave there was an Arm lower still, yet
for the present he was dumb under the averment. There was no light in
the cloud. He was unable to lay hold of a former comforting
experience--"THOU _hast known my soul in adversities_." (Ps. xxxi. 7.)
Oh, how jealous we should be of anything that would reduce us so low
as this, and give a handle to the adversary! Beware of religious
inconsistency. _One_ fatal step, one unguarded _word_ may undo a
lifetime of hallowed influence. One scar on the character, one blot on
the page of the living epistle is indelible. It may be washed away,
indeed, by the blood of sprinkling, so that nothing of it will remain
against you in the book of God; but the eye and memory of the world,
keen to watch and treasure the inconsistencies of God's people, will
not so easily forgive or forget! The Hart laid itself open to the
toils of the huntsman. It was hit by the archers. One fierce dart of
temptation sped with unerring aim. It has left the track of blood
behind it in the glades of the forest--the unbelieving world hounds in
remorseless pursuit, and the taunting cry will follow to the grave!
Are there any who feel that the experience of David is their own,--who
either by reason of religious inconsistency or religious declension
have laid themselves open to the upbraiding question, "_Where is thy
God?_"--Perhaps _religious declension_ is the more common of the two.
You are not, as we have surmised in a previous chapter, what once you
were. You have not the same love of the Saviour as once you had--the
same confidence in His dealings--the same trust in His faithfulness--the
same zeal for His glory. Affliction, when it comes, does not lead you,
as once it did, to cheerful acquiescence--to the cherishing of a
meek, unmurmuring submissive spirit under God's sovereign will and
discipline, but rather to a hasty, misgiving frame--fretting and
repining when you should be prostrate at the mercy-seat, saying, "_The
will of the Lord be done_!"