The 'wicked' man, in the psalm from which our first text comes, said a
good many wrong things 'in his heart.' The tacit assumptions on which a
life is based, though they may never come to consciousness, and still
less to utterance, are the really important things. I dare say this
'wicked man' was a good Jew with his lips, and said his prayers all
properly, but in his heart he had two working beliefs. One is thus
expressed: 'As for all his enemies, he puffeth at them. He hath said in
his heart, I shall not be moved.' The other is put into words thus: 'He
hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten, He hideth His face. He will
never see it.'
That is to say, the only explanation of a godless life, unless the man
is an idiot, is that there lie beneath it, as formative principles and
unspoken assumptions, guiding and shaping it, one or both of these two
thoughts: either 'There is no God,' or 'He does not care what I do, and
I am safe to go on for evermore in the present fashion.' It might seem
as if a man with the facts of human life before him, could not, even in
the insanest arrogance, say, 'I shall not be moved, for I shall never be
in adversity.' But we have an awful power--and the fact that we
exercise, and choose to exercise, it is one of the strange riddles of
our enigmatical existence and characters--of ignoring unwelcome facts,
and going cheerily on as though we had annihilated them, because we do
not reflect upon them. So this man, in the midst of a world in which
there is no stay, and whilst he saw all round him the most startling and
tragical instances of sudden change and complete collapse, stands
quietly and says, 'Ah! _I_ shall never be moved'; 'God doth not require
it.'
That absurdity is the basis of every life that is not a life of
consecration and devotion--so far as it has a basis of conviction at
all. The 'wicked' man's true faith is this, absurd as it may sound when
you drag it out into clear, distinct utterance, whatever may be his
professions. I wonder if there are any of us whose life can only be
acquitted of being utterly unreasonable and ridiculous by the
assumption, 'I shall never be moved'?
Have you a lease of your goods? Do you think you are tenants at will or
owners? Which? Is there any reason why any of us should escape, as some
of us live as if we believed we should escape, the certain fate of all
others? If there is not, what about the sanity of the man whose whole
life is built upon a blunder? He is convicted of the grossest folly,
unless he be assured that either there is no God, or that He does not
care one rush about what we do, and that consequently we are certain of
a continuance in our present state.
Do you say in your heart, 'I shall never be moved'? Then you must be
strong enough to resist every tempest that beats against you. Is that
so? 'I shall never be moved'--then nothing that contributes to your
well-being will ever slip from your grasp, but you will be able to hold
it tight. Is that so? 'I shall never be moved'--then there is no grave
waiting for you. Is that so? Unless these three assumptions be
warranted, every godless man is making a hideous blunder, and his
character is the sentence pronounced by the loving lips of Incarnate
Truth on the rich man who thought that he had 'much goods laid up for
many years,' and had only to be merry--'Thou fool! Thou fool!'
If an engineer builds a bridge across a river without due calculation of
the force of the winds that blow down the gorge, the bridge will be at
the bottom of the stream some stormy night, and the train piled on the
fragments of it in hideous ruin. And with equal certainty the end of the
first utterer of this speech can be calculated, and is foretold in the
psalm, 'The Lord is King for ever and ever.... The godless are perished
out of the land.'
II. We have in our second text the mistake of a good man who has been
lulled into false confidence.
The Psalmist admits his error by the acknowledgment that he spoke 'in my
prosperity'; or, as the word might be rendered, 'in my _security_.' This
suggests to us the mistake into which even good men, lulled by the quiet
continuance of peaceful days, are certain to fall, unless there be
continual watchfulness exercised by them.
It is a very significant fact that the word which is translated in our
Authorised Version 'prosperity' is often rendered 'security,' meaning
thereby, not safety, but a belief that I am safe. A man who is
prosperous, or at ease, is sure to drop into the notion that 'to-morrow
will be as this day, and much more abundant,' unless he keeps up
unslumbering watchfulness against the insidious illusion of permanence.
If he yields to the temptation, in his foolish security, forgetting how
fragile are its foundations, and what a host of enemies surround him
threatening it, then there is nothing for it but that the merciful
discipline, which this Psalmist goes on to tell us he had to pass
through by reason of his fall, shall be brought to bear upon him. The
writer gives us a page of his own autobiography. 'In my security I said,
I shall never be moved.' 'Lord! by Thy favour Thou hast made my mountain
to stand strong. Thou didst hide Thy face.' What about the security
then? What about 'I shall never be moved' then? 'I was troubled. I cried
to Thee, O Lord!'--and then it was all right, his prayer was heard, and
he was in 'security'--that is, safety--far more really when he was
'troubled' and sore beset than when he had been, as he fancied, sure of
not being moved.
Long peace rusts the cannon, and is apt to make it unfit for war. Our
lack of imagination, and our present sense of comfort and well-being,
tend to make us fancy that we shall go on for ever in the quiet jog-trot
of settled life without any very great calamities or changes. But there
was once a village at the bottom of the crater of Vesuvius, and great
trees, that had grown undisturbed there for a hundred years, and green
pastures, and happy homes and flocks. And then, one day, a rumble and a
rush, and what became of the village? It went up in smoke-clouds. The
quiescence of the volcano is no sign of its extinction. And as surely as
we live, so sure is it that there will come a 'to-morrow' to us all
which shall _not_ be as this day. No man has any right to calculate upon
anything beyond the present moment, and there is no basis whatever,
either for the philosophical assertion that the order of nature is
fixed, and that therefore there are no miracles, or for the practical
translation of the assertion into our daily lives, that we may
reasonably expect to go on as we are without changes or calamities.
There is no reason capable of being put into logical shape for believing
that, because the sun has risen ever since the beginning of things, it
will rise to-morrow, for there will come a to-morrow when it will _not_
rise. In like manner, the longest possession of our mercies is no reason
for forgetting the precarious tenure on which we hold them all.
So, Christian men and women! let us try to keep vivid that consciousness
which is so apt to get dull, that nothing continueth in one stay, and
that we _shall_ be moved, as far as the outward life and its
circumstances are concerned. If we forget it, we shall need, and we
shall get, the loving Fatherly discipline, which my second text tells us
followed the false security of this good man. The sea is kept from
putrefying by storms. Wine poured from vessel to vessel is purified
thereby. It is an old truth and a wholesome one, to be always
remembered, 'because they have no changes therefore they fear not God .'
III. Lastly, we have the same thing said by another man in another key.
'Because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.' The prelude to
the assertion makes all the difference. Here is the warranted confidence
of a simple faith.
The man who clasps God's hand, and has Him standing by his side, as his
Ally, his Companion, his Guide, his Defence--that man does not need to
fear change. For all the things which convict the arrogant or mistaken
confidences of the other men as being insanity or a lapse from faith
prove the confidence of the trustful soul to be the very perfection of
reason and common sense.
We may be confident of our power to resist anything that can come
against us, if He be at our side. The man that stands with his back
against an oak-tree is held firm, not because of his own strength, but
because of that on which he leans. There is a beautiful story of some
heathen convert who said to a missionary's wife, who had felt faint and
asked that she might lean for a space on her stronger arm, 'If you love
me, lean hard.' That is what God says to us, 'If you love Me, lean
hard.' And if you do, because He is at your right hand, you will not be
moved. It is not insanity; it is not arrogance; it is simple faith, to
look our enemies in the eyes, and to feel sure that they cannot touch
us, 'Trust in Jehovah; so shall ye be established.' Rest on the Lord,
and ye shall rest indeed.
In like manner the man who has God at his right hand may be sure of the
unalterable continuance of all his proper good. Outward things may come
or go, as it pleases Him, but that which makes the life of our life will
never depart from us as long as He stands there. And whilst He is there,
if only our hearts are knit to Him, we can say, 'My heart and my flesh
faileth, but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. I
shall not be moved. Though all that can go goes, He abides; and in Him I
have all riches.' Trust not in the uncertainty of outward good, but in
the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy.
The wicked man was defiantly arrogant, and the forgetful good man was
criminally self-confident, when they each said, 'I shall not be moved.'
We are only taking up the privileges that belong to us if, exercising
faith in Him, we venture to say, 'Take what Thou wilt; leave me Thyself;
I have enough.' And the man who says, 'Because God is at my right hand,
I shall not be moved,' has the right to anticipate an unbroken
continuance of personal being, and an unchanged continuance of the very
life of his life. That which breaks off all other lives abruptly is no
breach in the continuity, either of the consciousness or of the
avocations of a devout man. For, on the other side of the flood, he does
what he does on this side, only more perfectly and more continually. 'He
that doeth the will of God abideth for ever,' and it makes comparatively
little difference to him whether his place be on this or on the other
side of Jordan. We 'shall not be moved,' even when we change our station
from earth to heaven, and the sublime fulfilment of the warranted
confidence of the trustful soul comes when the 'to-morrow' of the skies
is as the 'to-day' of earth, only 'much more abundant.'