Now there are difficulties about the rendering and precise significance
of the first verse of my text with which I do not need to trouble you.
The Authorised Version, and still more perhaps the Revised Version,
give substantially, as I take it, the prophet's meaning; and the margin
of the Revised Version is still more literal and accurate than the
text, 'A steadfast mind Thou keepest in perfect peace, because it
trusteth in Thee.' If this, then, be the true meaning of the words, you
observe that it is the steadfast mind, steadfast because it trusts,
which God keeps In the deep peace that is expressed by the
reduplication of the word.
And if we break up that complex thought into its elements, it just
comes to this, first, that trust makes steadfastness. Most men's lives
are blown about by winds of circumstance, directed by gusts of passion,
shaped by accidents, and are fragmentary and jerky, like some ship at
sea with nobody at the helm, heading here and there, as the force of
the wind or the flow of the current may carry them. If my life is to be
steadied, there must not only be a strong hand at the tiller, but some
outward object which shall be for me the point of aim and the point of
rest. No man can steady his life except by clinging to a holdfast
without himself. Some of us look for that stay in the fluctuations and
fleetingnesses of creatures; and some of us are wiser and saner, and
look for it in the steadfastness of the unchanging God. The men who do
the former are the sport of circumstances, and the slaves of their own
natures, and there is no consistency in noble aim and effort throughout
their lives, corresponding to their circumstances, relations, and
nature. Only they who stay themselves upon God, and get down through
all the superficial shifting strata of drift and gravel, to the
base-rock, are steadfast and solid.
My brother, if you desire to govern yourself, you must let God govern
you. If you desire to be firm, you must draw your firmness from the
unchangingness of that divine nature which you grasp. How can a willow
be stiffened into an iron pillar? Only--if I might use such a violent
metaphor--when it receives into its substance the iron particles that
it draws from the soil in which it is rooted. How can a bit of
thistledown be kept motionless amidst the tempest? Only by being glued
to something that is fixed. What do men do with light things on deck
when the ship is pitching? Lash them to a fixed point. Lash yourselves
to God by simple trust, and then you will partake of His serene
immutability in such fashion as it is possible for the creature to
participate in the attributes of the Creator.
And then, still further, the steadfast mind--steadfast because it
trusts--is rewarded in that it is kept by God. It is no mere mistake in
the order of his thought which leads this prophet to allege that it is
the steadfast mind which God keeps. For, though it is true, on the one
hand, that the real fixity and solidity of a human character come more
surely and fully through trust in God than by any other means, on the
other hand it is true that, in order to receive the full blessed
effects of trust into our characters and lives, we must persistently
and doggedly keep on in the attitude of confidence. If a man holds out
to God a tremulous hand with a shaking cup in it, which Le sometimes
presents and sometimes twitches back, it is not to be expected that God
will pour the treasure of His grace into such a vessel, with the risk
of most of it being spilt upon the ground. There must be a steadfast
waiting if there is to be a continual flow.
It is the mind that cleaves to God which God keeps. I suppose that
there was floating before Paul's thoughts some remembrance of this
great passage of the evangelical prophet when he uttered his words,
which ring so strikingly with so many echoes of them, when he said,
'The peace of God which passeth understanding shall keep your hearts
and minds in Christ Jesus.' It is the steadfast mind that is kept in
perfect peace. If we 'keep ourselves,' by that divine help which is
always waiting to be given,' in the' faith and 'love of God,' He will
keep us in the hour of temptation, will keep us from falling, and will
garrison our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
And then, still further, this faithful, steadfast heart and mind, kept
by God, is a mind filled with deepest peace. There is something very
beautiful in the prophet's abandoning the attempt to find any adjective
of quality which adequately characterises the peace of which he has
been speaking. He falls back upon the expedient which is the confession
of the impotence of human speech worthily to portray its subject when
he simply says, 'Thou shalt keep in peace, peace ... because he
trusteth in Thee.' The reduplication expresses the depth, the
completeness of the tranquillity which flows into the heart, Such
continuity, wave after wave, or rather ripple after ripple, is possible
even for us. For, dear brethren, the possession of this deep, unbroken
peace does not depend on the absence of conflict, on distraction,
trouble, or sorrow, but on the presence of God. If we are in touch with
Him, then our troubled days may be calm, and beneath all the surface
tumult there may be a centre of rest. The garrison in some high
hill-fortress looks down upon the open where the enemy's ranks are
crawling like insects across the grass, and scarcely hears the noise of
the tumult, and no arrow can reach the lofty hold. So, up in God we may
dwell at rest whate'er betide. Strange that we should prefer to live
down amongst the unwalled villages, which every spoiler can harry and
burn, when we might climb, and by the might and the magic of trust in
the Lord bring round about ourselves a wall of fire which shall consume
the poison out of the evil, even whilst it permits the sorrow to do its
beneficent work upon us!
III. Note again the worthiness of the divine Name to evoke, and the
power of the divine character to reward, the trust.
We pass to the last words of _my_ text:--'In the Lord Jehovah is
everlasting strength.'
Now I suppose we all know that the words feebly rendered in the
Authorised Version 'everlasting strength' are literally 'the Rock of
Ages'; and that this verse is the source of that hallowed figure which,
by one of the greatest of our English hymns, is made familiar and
immortal to all English-speaking people.
But there is another peculiarity about the words on which I dwell for a
moment, and that is, that here we have, for one of the only two times
in which the expression occurs in Scripture, the great name of Jehovah
reduplicated. 'In Jab Jehovah is the Rock of Ages.' In the former verse
the prophet had given up in despair the attempt to characterise the
peace which God gave, and fallen back upon the expedient of naming it
twice over. In this verse, with similar eloquence of reticence, he
abandons the attempt to describe or characterise that great Name, and
in adoration, contents himself with twice taking it upon his lips, in
order to _impress_ what he cannot _express_, the majesty and the
sufficiency of that name.
What, then, is the force of that name? We do not need, I suppose, to do
more than simply remind you that there are two great thoughts
communicated by that self-revelation of God which lies in it.
_Jehovah_, in its literal grammatical signification, puts emphasis upon
the absolute, underived, and therefore unlimited, unconditioned,
unchangeable, eternal being of God. 'I AM THAT I AM.' Men and creatures
are what they are made, are what they become, and some time or other
cease to be what they were. But God is what He is, and is because He
is. He is the Source, the Motive, the Law, the Sustenance of His own
Being; and changeless and eternal He is for ever. In that name is the
Rock of Ages.
That mighty name, by its place in the history of Revelation, conveys to
us still further thoughts, for it is the name of the God who entered
into covenant with His ancient people, and remains bound by His
covenant to bless us. That Is to say, He hath not left us in darkness
as to the methods and purpose of His dealings with us, or as to the
attitude of His heart towards us. He has bound Himself by solemn words,
and by deeds as revealing as words. So we can reckon on God. To use a
vulgarism which is stripped of its vulgarity if employed reverently, as
I would do it--we know where to have Him. He has given us the elements
to calculate His orbit; and we are sure that the calculation will come
right. So, because the name flashes upon men the thought of an absolute
Being, eternal, and all-sufficient, and self-modified, and changeless,
and because it reveals to us the very inmost heart of the mystery, and
makes it possible for us to forecast the movements of this great Sun of
our heavens, therefore in the name '_Jab Jehovah_ is the Bock of Ages.'
The metaphor needs no expansion. We understand that it conveys the idea
of unchangeable defence. As the cliffs tower above the river that
swirls at their base, and takes centuries to eat the faintest line upon
their shining surface, so the changeless God rises above the stream of
time, of which the brief breakers are human lives, 'sparkling,
bursting, borne away.' They who fasten themselves to that Rock are safe
in its unchangeable strength, God the Unchangeable is the amulet
against any change, that is not growth, in the lives of those who trust
Him. Some of us may recall some great precipice rising above the
foliage, which stands to-day as it did when we were boys, unwasted in
its silent strength, while generations of leaves have opened and
withered at its base, and we have passed from childhood to age. Thus,
unaffected by the transiency that changes all beneath, God rises, the
Bock of Ages in whom we may trust. 'The conies are a feeble folk, but
they make their houses in the rocks.' So our weakness may house itself
there and be at rest.