'Keep back Thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not
have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be
innocent from the great transgression.'--PSALM xix. 13.
Another psalmist promises to the man who dwells 'in the secret place of
the Most High' that' he shall not be afraid for the terror by night, nor
for the arrow that flieth by day, nor for the pestilence that walketh at
noonday,' but shall 'tread upon the lion and adder.' These promises
divide the dangers that beset us into the same two classes as our
Psalmist does--the one secret; the other palpable and open. The former,
which, as I explained in my last sermon, are sins hidden, not from
others, but from the doer, may fairly be likened to the pestilence that
stalks slaying in the dark, or to the stealthy, gliding serpent, which
strikes and poisons before the naked foot is aware. The other resembles
the 'destruction that wasteth at noonday,' or the lion with its roar and
its spring, as, disclosed from its covert, it leaps upon the prey.
Our present text deals with the latter of these two classes.
'Presumptuous sins' does not, perhaps, convey to an ordinary reader the
whole significance of the phrase, for it may be taken to define a single
class of sins--namely, those of pride or insolence. What is really meant
is just the opposite of 'secret sins'--all sorts of evil which, whatever
may be their motives and other qualities, have this in common, that the
doer, when he does them, knows them to be wrong.
The Psalmist gets this further glimpse into the terrible possibilities
which attach even to a servant of God, and we have in our text these
three things--a danger discerned, a help sought, and a daring hope
cherished.
I. Note, then, the first of these, the dreaded and discerned
danger--'presumptuous sins,' which may 'have dominion over' us, and lead
us at last to a 'great transgression.'
Now the word which is translated 'presumptuous' literally means _that
which boils or bubbles_; and it sets very picturesquely before us the
movement of hot desires--the agitation of excited impulses or
inclinations which hurry men into sin in spite of their consciences. It
is also to be noticed that the prayer of my text, with singular pathos
and lowly self-consciousness, is the prayer of 'Thy servant,' who knows
himself to be a servant, and who therefore knows that these glaring
transgressions, done in the teeth of conscience and consciousness, are
all inconsistent with his standing and his profession, but yet are
perfectly possible for him.
An old mediaeval mystic once said, 'There is nothing weaker than the
devil stripped naked.' Would it were true! For there is one thing that
is weaker than a discovered devil, and that is my own heart. For we all
know that sometimes, with our eyes open, and the most unmistakable
consciousness that what we are doing was wrong, we have set our teeth
and done it, Christian men though we may profess to be, and may really
be. All such conduct is inconsistent with Christianity; but we are not
to say, therefore, that it is incompatible with Christianity. Thank God!
that is a very different matter. But as long as you and I have two
things--viz. strong and hot desires, and weak and flabby wills--so long
shall we, in this world full of combustibles, not be beyond the
possibility of a dreadful conflagration being kindled by some
devil-blown sparks. There are plenty of dry sticks lying about to put
under the caldron of our hearts, to make them boil and bubble over! And
we have, alas! but weak wills, which do not always keep the reins in
their hands as they ought to do, nor coerce these lower parts of our
nature into their proper subordination. Fire is a good servant, but a
bad master; and we are all of us too apt to let it become master, and
then the whole 'course of nature' is 'set on fire of hell.' The servant
of God may yet, with open eyes and obstinate disregard of his better
self and of all its remonstrances, go straight into 'presumptuous sin.'
Another step is here taken by the Psalmist. He looks shrinkingly and
shudderingly into a possible depth, and he sees, going down into the
abyss, a ladder with three rungs on it. The topmost one is wilful,
self-conscious transgression. But that is not the lowest stage; there is
another step. Presumptuous sin tends to become despotic sin. 'Let them
not _have dominion_ over me.' A man may do a very bad thing once, and
get so wholesomely frightened, and so keenly conscious of the disastrous
issues, that he will never go near it again. The prodigal would not be
in a hurry, you may depend upon it, to try the swine trough and the far
country, and the rags, and the fever, and the famine any more. David got
a lesson that he never forgot in that matter of Bathsheba. The bitter
fruit of his sin kept growing up all his life, and he had to eat it, and
that kept him right. They tell us that broken bones are stronger at the
point of fracture than they were before. And it is possible for a man's
sin--if I might use a paradox which you will not misunderstand--to
become the instrument of his salvation.
But there is another possibility quite as probable, and very often
recurring, and that is that the disease, like some other morbid states
of the human frame, shall leave a tendency to recurrence. A pin-point
hole in a dyke will be widened into a gap as big as a church-door in ten
minutes, by the pressure of the flood behind it. And so every act which
we do in contradiction of our standing as professing Christians, and in
the face of the protests, all unavailing, of that conscience which is
only a voice, and has no power to enforce its behests, will tend to
recurrence once and again. The single acts become habits, with awful
rapidity. Just as the separate gas jets from a multitude of minute
apertures coalesce into a continuous ring of light, so deeds become
habits, and get dominion over us. 'He sold himself to do evil.' He made
himself a bond-slave of iniquity. It is an awful and a miserable thing
to think that professing Christians do often come into that position of
being, by their inflamed passions and enfeebled wills, servants of the
evil that they do. Alas! how many of us, if we were honest with
ourselves, would have to say. 'I am carnal, sold unto sin.'
That is not the lowest rung of the slippery ladder. Despotic sin ends in
utter departure.
The word translated here, quite correctly, 'transgression,' and
intensified by that strong adjective attached, 'a _great_
transgression,' literally means _rebellion_, _revolt_, or some such
idea; and expresses, as the ultimate issue of conscious transgression
prolonged and perpetuated into habit, an entire casting off of
allegiance to God. 'No man can serve two masters.' 'His servants ye are
whom ye obey,' whomsoever ye may call your master. The Psalmist feels
that the end of indulged evil is going over altogether to the other
camp. I suppose all of us have known instances of that sort. Men in my
position, with a long life of ministry behind them, can naturally
remember many such instances. And this is the outline history of the
suicide of a Christian. First secret sin, unsuspected, because the
conscience is torpid; then open sin, known to be such, but done
nevertheless; then dominant sin, with an enfeebled will and power of
resistance; then the abandonment of all pretence or profession of
religion. The ladder goes down into the pit, but not to the bottom of
the pit. And the man that is going down it has a descending impulse
after he has reached the bottom step and he falls--Where? The first step
down is tampering with conscience. It is neither safe nor wise to do
anything, howsoever small, against that voice. All the rest will come
afterward, unless God restrains--'first the blade, then the ear, then
the full corn in the ear,' and then the bitter harvest of the poisonous
grain.