'Be Thou to me a Rock ... for Thou art a Rock.' Is that not illogical?
No, for notice that little word, 'to me'--be Thou _to me_ what Thou art
in Thyself, and hast been to all generations.' That makes all the
difference. It is not merely 'Be what Thou art,' although that would be
much, but it is 'be it to me,' and let _me_ have all which is meant in
that great Name.
But then, beyond that, let me point out to you how this prayer suggests
to us that all true prayer will keep itself within God's revelation of
what He is. We take His promises, and all the elements which make up His
name or manifestation of His character to the world, whether by His acts
or by the utterances of this Book, or by the inferences to be drawn from
the life of Jesus Christ, the great Revealer, or by what we ourselves
have experienced of Him. The ways by which God has revealed Himself to
the world define the legitimate subjects, and lay down the firm
foundation, of our petitions. In all His acts God reveals Himself, and
if I may so say, when we truly pray, we catch these up, and send them
back again to heaven, like arrows from a bow. It is only when our
desires and prayers foot themselves upon God's revelation of Himself,
and in essence are, in various fashions, the repetition of this prayer
of my text: 'Be ... for Thou art,' that we can expect to have them
answered. Much else may call itself prayer, but it is often but petulant
and self-willed endeavour to force our wishes upon Him, and no answer
will come to that. We are to pray about everything; but we are to pray
about nothing, except within the lines which are marked out for us by
what God has told us, in His words and acts, that He Himself is. Catch
these up and fling them back to Him, and for every utterance that He has
made of Himself, 'I am' so-and-so, let us go to Him and say 'Be Thou
that to me,' and then we may be sure of an answer.
So then two things follow. If we pray after the pattern of this prayer,
'Be Thou to me what Thou art,' then a great many foolish and
presumptuous wishes will be stifled in the birth, and, on the other
hand, a great many feeble desires will be strengthened and made
confident, and we shall be encouraged to expect great things of God.
Have you widened your prayers, dear friend!--and I do not mean by that
only your outward ones, but the habitual aspiration and expectation of
your minds--have you widened these to be as wide as what God has shown
us that He is? Have you taken all God's revelation of Himself, and
translated it into petition? And do you expect Him to be to you all that
He has ever been to any soul of man upon earth? Oh! how such a prayer as
this, if we rightly understand it and feel it, puts to shame the
narrowness and the poverty of our prayers, the falterings of our faith,
and the absence of expectation in ourselves that we shall receive the
fulness of God.
God owns that plea: 'Be ... what Thou art.' He cannot resist that. That
is what the Apostle meant when he said, 'He abideth faithful, He cannot
deny Himself.' He must be true to His character. He can never be other
than He always has been. And that is what the Psalmist meant when he
goes on, after the words that I have taken for my text, and says, 'For
Thy Name's sake lead me and guide me,' What is God's Name? The
collocation of letters by which we designate Him? Certainly not. The
Name of God is the sum total of what God has revealed Himself as being.
And 'for the sake of the Name,' that He may be true to that which He has
shown Himself to be, He will always endorse this bill that you draw upon
Him when you present Him with His own character, and say 'Be to me what
Thou art.'
III. Lastly, we have here the plea with God drawn from what we have
taken Him to be to us.
That is somewhat different from what I have already been dwelling upon.
Mark the words: 'Be Thou to me a strong Rock, for Thou art _my_ Rock and
_my_ Fortress.' What does that mean? It means that the suppliant has, by
his own act of faith, taken God for his; that he has appropriated the
great divine revelation, and made it his own. Now it seems to me that
that appropriation is, if not _the_ point, at least one of the points,
in which real faith is distinguished from the sham thing which goes by
that name amongst so many people. A man by faith encloses a bit of the
common for his very own. When God says that He 'so loved the world that
He gave His ... Son,' I should say, 'He loved _me_, and gave Himself for
_me_.' When the great revelation is made that He is the Rock of Ages, my
faith says: '_My_ Rock and _my_ Fortress.' Having said that, and claimed
Him for mine, I can then turn round to Him and say, 'Be to me what I
have taken Thee to be.'
And that faith is expressed very beautifully and strikingly in one of
the Old Testament metaphors, which frequently goes along with this one
of the Rock. For instance, in a great chapter in Isaiah we find the
original of that phrase 'the Rock of Ages.' It runs thus, 'Trust ye in
the Lord for ever, for in the Lord JEHOVAH is the _Rock of Ages_.' Now
the word for trust there literally means, to flee into a refuge, and so
the true idea of faith is 'to fly for refuge,' as the Epistle to the
Hebrews has it, 'to the Hope set before us,'--that is (keeping to the
metaphor), to the cleft in the Rock.
That act of trust or flight will make it certain that God will be to us
for a house of defence, a fortress to save us. Other rock-shelters may
crumble. They may be carried by assault; they may be riven by
earthquakes. 'The mountains shall depart, and the hills shall be
removed,' but this Rock is impregnable, and all who take refuge in it
are safe for ever.
And so the upshot of the whole matter is that God will be to us what we
have faith to believe that He is, and our faith will be the measure of
our possession of the fulness of God. If we can only say in the fulness
of our hearts--and keep to the saying: 'Be Thou to me a Rock, for Thou
art my Rock,' then nothing shall ever hurt us; and 'dwelling in the
secret place of the Most High' we shall be kept in safety; our 'abode
shall be the munitions of rocks, our bread shall be given us, and our
water shall be made sure.'
'INTO THY HANDS'
'Into Thine hand I commit my spirit: Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord
God of truth.'--PSALM xxxi. 5.
The first part of this verse is consecrated for ever by our Lord's use
of it on the Cross. Is it not wonderful that, at that supreme hour, He
deigned to take an unknown singer's words as His words? What an honour
to that old saint that Jesus Christ, dying, should find nothing that
more fully corresponded to His inmost heart at that moment than the
utterance of the Psalmist long ago! How His mind must have been
saturated with the Old Testament and with these songs of Israel! And do
you not think it would be better for us if ours were completely steeped
in those heart-utterances of ancient devotion?
But, of course, the Psalmist was not thinking about his death. It was an
act for his life that he expressed in these words:--'Into Thine hands I
commit my spirit.' If you will glance over the psalm at your leisure,
you will see that it is the heart-cry of a man in great trouble,
surrounded by all sorts of difficulties, with his very life threatened.
He was down in the very depths of darkness, and ringed about by all
sorts of enemies at that moment, not sitting comfortably, as you and I
are here, but in the midst of the hurly-burly and the strife, when by a
dead lift of faith he flung himself clean out of his disasters, and, if
I might so say, pitched himself into the arms of God. 'Into Thine hands
I commit my spirit,' as a man standing in the midst of enemies, and
bearing some precious treasure in his hand might, with one strong cast
of his arm, fling it into the open hand of some mighty helper, and so
baulk the enemies of their prey. That is the figure.