'Good and upright is the Lord; therefore will He teach sinners in
the way. 9. The meek will He guide in judgment; and the meek will He
teach His way.'--PSALM xxv. 8, 9.
The Psalmist prays in this psalm for three things: deliverance,
guidance, and forgiveness. Of these three petitions the central one is
that for guidance. 'Show me Thy ways, O Lord,' he asks in a previous
verse; where he means by 'Thy ways,' not God's dealings with men, but
men's conduct as prescribed by God. In my text he exchanges petition for
contemplation; and gazes on the character of God, in order thereby to be
helped to confidence in an answer to his prayer. Such alternations of
petition and contemplation are the very heartbeats of devotion, now
expanding in desire, now closing on its treasure in fruition. Either
attitude is incomplete without the other. Do _our_ prayers pass into
such still contemplation of the face of God? Do _our_ thoughts of His
character break into such confident petition? My text contains a
striking view of the divine character, a grand confidence built
thereupon, and a condition appended on which the fulfilment of that
confidence depends. Let us look at these in turn.
I. First, then, we have here the Psalmist's thought of God. 'Good and
upright is the Lord.'
Now it is clear that the former of these two epithets is here employed,
not in its widest sense of moral perfectness, or else 'upright,' which
follows, would be mere tautology, but in the narrower sense, which is
familiar too, to us, in our common speech, in which _good_ is tantamount
to _kind_, _beneficent_, or to say all in a word, _loving_. _Upright_
needs no explanation; but the point to notice is the decisiveness with
which the Psalmist binds together, in one thought, the two aspects of
the divine nature which so many people find it hard to reconcile, and
the separation of which has been the parent of unnumbered misconceptions
and errors as to Him and to His dealings. 'Good _and_ upright, loving
_and_ righteous is the Lord,' says the Psalmist. He puts in no
qualifying word such as, loving _though_ righteous, righteous and _yet_
loving. Such phrases express the general notions of the relation of
these two attributes. But the Psalmist employs no such expressions. He
binds the two qualities together, in the feeling of their profoundest
harmony.
Now let me remind you that neither of these two resplendent aspects of
the divine nature reaches its highest beauty and supremest power, except
it be associated with the other. In the spectrum analysis of that great
light there are the two lines; the one purest white of righteousness,
and the other tinged with a ruddier glow, the line of love. The one
adorns and sets off the other. Love without righteousness is flaccid, a
mere gush of good-natured sentiment, impotent to confer blessing,
powerless to evoke reverence. Righteousness without love is as white as
snow, and as cold as ice; repellent, howsoever it may excite the
sentiment of awe-struck distance. But we need that the righteousness
shall be loving, and that the love shall be righteous, in order that the
one may be apprehended in its tenderest tenderness and the other may be
adored in its loftiest loftiness.
And yet we are always tempted to wrench the two apart, and to think that
the operation of the one must sometimes, at all events on the outermost
circumference of the spheres, impinge upon, and collide with, the
operations of the other. Hence you get types of religion--yes! and two
types of Christianity--in which the one or the other of these two
harmonious attributes is emphasised to such a degree as almost to blot
out the other. You get forms of religion in which the righteousness has
swallowed up the love, and others in which the love has destroyed the
righteousness. The effect is disastrous. In old days our fathers fell
into the extreme on the one hand; and the pendulum has swung with a
vengeance as far from the vertical line, to the other extreme, in these
days as it ever did in the past. The religion which found its
centre-point and its loftiest conception of the divine nature in the
thought of His absolute righteousness made strong, if it made somewhat
stern, men. And now we see renderings of the truth that God is love
which degrade the lofty, noble, sovereign conception of the righteous
God that loveth, into mere Indulgence on the throne of the universe. And
what is the consequence? All the stern teachings of Scripture men recoil
from, and try to explain away. The ill desert of sin, and the necessary
iron nexus between sin and suffering--and as a consequence the
sacrificial work of Jesus Christ, and the supreme glory of His mission
in that He is the Redeemer of mankind--are all become unfashionable to
preach and unfashionable to believe. God is Love. We cannot make too
much of His love, unless by reason of it we make too little of His
righteousness.
The Psalmist, in his childlike faith, saw deeper and more truly than
many would-be theologians and thinkers of this day, when he proclaimed
in one breath 'Good _and_ upright is the Lord.' Let us not forget that
the Apostle, whose great message to the world was, as the last utterance
completing the process of revelation, 'God is Love,' had it also in
charge to 'declare unto us that God is Light, and in Him is no darkness
at all.'
II. And so, secondly, mark the calm confidence builded on this
conception of the divine character.
What a wonderful 'therefore' that is!--the logic of faith and not of
sense. 'Good and upright is the Lord; _therefore_ will He teach sinners
in the way.' The coexistence of these two aspects in the perfect divine
character is for us a guarantee that He cannot leave men, however guilty
they may be, to grope in the dark, or keep His lips locked in silence.
The Psalmist does not mean guidance as to practical advantages and
worldly prosperity. That may also be looked for, in a modified degree.
But what he means is guidance as to the one important thing, the
sovereign conception of duty, the eternal law of right and wrong. God
will not leave a man without adequate teaching as to that, just because
He is loving and righteous.
For what _is_ love, in its loftiest, purest, and therefore in its divine
aspect? What is it except an infinite desire to impart, and that the
object on which it falls shall be blessed. So because 'the Lord is good,
and His tender mercies are over all His works,' certainly He must
desire, if one may so say, as His deepest desire, the blessedness of His
creatures. He is a God whose nature and property it is to love, and His
love is the infinite and ceaseless welling out of Himself, in all forms
of beauty and blessedness, according to the capacity and contents of His
recipient creatures. He is 'the giving God,' as James in his epistle
eloquently and wonderfully calls Him, whose very nature it is to give.
And that is only to say, in other words, 'good _is the Lord_.'
But then 'good _and_ upright'--that combination determines the form
which His blessings shall assume, the channel in which by preference
they will flow. If we had only to say, 'good is the Lord,' then our
happiness, as we call it, the satisfaction of our physical needs and of
lower cravings, might be the adequate expression of His love. But if God
be righteous, then because Himself is so, it must be His deepest desire
for us that we should be like Him. Not our happiness but our rectitude
is God's end in all that He does with us. It is worth His while to make
us, in the lower sense of the word, 'happy,' but the purpose of joy as
of sorrow is to make us pure and righteous. We shall never come to
understand the meaning of our own lives, and will always be blindly
puzzling over the mysteries of the providences that beset us, until we
learn that not enjoyment and not sorrow is His ultimate end concerning
us, but that we may be partakers of His holiness. Since He is righteous,
the dearest desire of His loving heart, and that to which all His
dealings with us are directed; and that, therefore, to which all our
desires and efforts should be directed likewise, is to make us righteous
also.
'Therefore will He teach sinners in the way.' If the righteousness
existed without the love it must 'come with a rod,' and the sinners who
are out of the way must incontinently be crushed where they have
wandered. But since righteousness is blended with love, therefore He
comes, and must desire to bring all wanderers back into the paths which
are His own.
I need not do more than in a word remind you how strong a presumption
there lies in this combination of aspects of the divine nature, in
favour of an actual revelation. It seems to me that, notwithstanding all
the objections that are made to a supernatural and objective revelation,
there is nothing half so monstrous as it would be to believe, with the
pure deist or theist, that God, being what He is, righteous and loving,
had never rent His heavens to say one word to man to lead him in the
paths of righteousness. I can understand Atheism, and I can understand a
revealing God, but not a God that dwells in the thick darkness, and is
yet Love and Righteousness, and looks down upon this world and never
puts out a finger to point the path of duty. A silent God seems to me no
God but an Almighty Devil. Revelation is the plain conclusion from the
premisses that 'good and upright is the Lord!'
I speak not, for there is no time to do so, of the various manners in
which this divine desire to bring sinners into the way fulfils itself.
There are our consciences; there are His providences; there is the
objective revelation of His word; there are the whispers of His Spirit
in men's hearts. I do not know what you believe, but I believe that God
can find His way to my heart and infuse there illumination, and move
affections, and make my eye clear to discern what is right. 'He that
formed the eye, shall He not see?' He that formed the eye, shall He not
send light to it? Are we to shut out God, in obedience to the dictates
of an arbitrary psychology, from access to His own creature; and to say,
'Thou hast made me, and Thou canst not speak to me. My soul is Thine by
creation, but its doors are close barred against Thee; and Thou canst
not lay Thy hand upon it?' 'Good and upright is the Lord, therefore will
He teach sinners in the way.'
III. Now notice, again, the condition on which the fulfilment of this
confidence depends.
'The meek will He guide in judgment, and the meek will He teach His
way.' The fact of our being sinful only makes it the more imperative
that God should speak to us. But the condition of our hearing and
profiting by the guidance is meekness. By meekness the Psalmist means, I
suppose, little else than what we might call docility, of which the
prime element is the submission of my own will to God's. The reason why
we go wrong about our duties is mainly that we do not supremely want to
go right, but rather to gratify inclinations, tastes, or passions. God
is speaking to us, but if we make such a riot with the yelpings of our
own kennelled desires and lusts, and listen to the rattle and noise of
the street and the babble of tongues, He
'Can but listen at the gate,
And hear the household jar within.'
'The meek will He guide in judgment; the meek will He teach His way.'
Some of us put our heads down like bulls charging a gate. Some of us
drive on full speed, and will not shut off steam though the signals are
against us, and the end of that can only be one thing. Some of us do not
wish to know what God wishes us to do. Some of us cannot bear suspense
of judgment, or of decision, and are always in a hurry to be in action,
and think the time lost that is spent in waiting to know what God the
Lord will speak. If you do not clearly see what to do, then clearly you
may see that you are to do _nothing_.
The ark was to go half a mile in front of the camp before the foremost
files lifted a foot to follow, in order that there should be no mistake
as to the road. Wait till God points the path, and wish Him to point it,
and hush the noises that prevent your hearing His voice, and keep your
wills in absolute submission; and above all, be sure that you act out
your convictions, and that you have no knowledge of duty which is not
expressed in your practice, and you will get all the light which you
need; sometimes being taught by errors no doubt, often being left to
make mistakes as to what is expedient in regard to worldly prosperity,
but being infallibly guided as to the path of duty, and the path of
peace and righteousness.
And now, before I close, let me just remind you of the great fact which
transcends the Psalmist's confidence whilst it warrants it.
Because God is Love, and God is Righteousness, He cannot but speak. But
this Psalmist did not know how wonderfully God was going to speak by
that Word who has called Himself the Light of men; and who has said, 'He
that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light
of life.' He 'teaches sinners in the way,' by Jesus Christ; for we have
Him for our Pattern and Example. We have His love for our impelling
motive. We have His Spirit to speak in our hearts, and to 'guide us into
all truth.' And this Shepherd, 'when He putteth forth His own sheep,
goeth before them; and the sheep follow Him and know His voice.' The
Psalmist's confidence, bright as it is, is but the glow of the morning
twilight. The full sunshine of the transcendent fact to which God's
righteous love impelled and bound Him is Christ, who makes us know the
will of the Father. But we want more than knowledge. For we all know our
duty a great deal better than any of us do it. What is the use of a
guide to a lame man? But our Guide says to us, 'Arise and walk,' and if
we clasp His hand we receive strength, and 'the lame man leaps as a
hart.'
So, dear brethren! let us all cleave to Him, the Guide, the Way, and the
Life which enables us to walk in the way. If we thus cleave, then be
sure that He will lead us in the paths of righteousness, which are paths
of peace. He is the Way; He is the Leader of the march; He gives power
to walk in the light, and His one command, 'Follow Me,' unfolds into all
duty and includes all direction, companionship, perfection, and
blessedness.