The one pure light of the divine nature is broken up, in the prism of
the psalm, into various rays, which theologians call, in their hard,
abstract way, divine attributes. These are 'mercy, faithfulness,
righteousness.' Then we have two sets of divine acts--'judgments,' and
the 'preservation' of man and beast; and finally we have again
'lovingkindness,' as our version has unfortunately been misled, by its
love for varying its translation, to render the same word which begins
the series and is there called 'mercy.'
Now that 'mercy' or 'lovingkindness' of which my text thus speaks, is
very nearly equivalent to the New Testament 'love'; or, perhaps, still
more nearly equivalent to the New Testament 'grace.' Both the one and
the other mean substantially this--active love communicating itself to
creatures that are inferior and that might have expected something else
to befall them. Mercy is a modification of love, inasmuch as it is love
to an inferior. The hand is laid gently upon the man, because if it were
laid with all its weight it would crush him. It is the stooping goodness
of a king to a beggar. And mercy is likewise love in its exercise to
persons that might expect something else, being guilty. As a general
coming to a body of mutineers with pardon and favour upon his lips,
instead of with condemnation and death; so God comes to us forgiving and
blessing. All His goodness is forbearance, and His love is mercy,
because of the weakness, the lowliness, and the ill desert of us on whom
the love falls.
Now notice that this same 'quality of mercy' stands here at the
beginning and at the end. All the attributes of the divine nature, all
the operations of the divine hand lie within the circle of His
mercy--like diamonds set in a golden ring. Mercy, or love flowing out in
blessings to inferior and guilty creatures, is the root and ground of
all God's character; it is the foundation and impulse of all His acts.
Modern science reduces all modes of physical energy to one, for which it
has no name but--energy. We are taught by God's own revelation of
Himself--and most especially by His final and perfect revelation of
Himself in Jesus Christ--to trace all forms of divine energy back to one
which David calls 'mercy,' which John calls 'love.'
It is last as well as first, the final upshot of all revelation. The
last voice that speaks from Scripture has for its special message 'God
is Love.' The last voice that sounds from the completed history of the
world will have the same message, and the ultimate word of all
revelation, the end of the whole of the majestic unfolding of God's
purposes will be the proclamation to the four corners of the universe,
as from the trump of the Archangel, of the name of God as Love. The
northern and the southern poles of the great sphere are one and the
same, a straight axle through the very heart of it, from which the
bounding lines swell out to the equator, and towards which they converge
again on the opposite side of the world. So mercy is the strong
axletree, the northern pole and the southern, on which the whole world
of the divine perfections revolves and moves. The first and last, the
Alpha and Omega of God, beginning and crowning and summing up all His
being and His work, is His mercy, His lovingkindness.
But next to mercy comes faithfulness. 'Thy faithfulness reacheth unto
the clouds.' God's faithfulness is in its narrowest sense His adherence
to His promises. It implies, in that sense, a verbal revelation, and
definite words from Him pledging Him to a certain line of action. 'He
hath said, and shall He not do it?' 'He will not alter the thing that is
gone out of His lips.' It is only a God who has actually spoken to men
who can be a 'faithful God.' He will not palter with a double sense,
'keeping His word of promise to the ear, and breaking it to the hope.'
But not only His articulate promises, but also His own past actions,
bind Him. He is always true to these; and not only continues to do as He
has done, but discharges every obligation which His past imposes on Him.
The ostrich was said to leave its eggs to be hatched in the sand. Men
bring men into positions of dependence, and then lightly shake
responsibility from careless shoulders. But God accepts the cares laid
upon Him by His own acts, and discharges them to the last jot. He is a
'faithful Creator.' Creation brings obligations with it; obligations for
the creature; obligations for the Creator. If God makes a being, God is
bound to take care of the being that He has made. If He makes a being in
a given fashion, He is bound to provide for the necessities that He has
created. According to the old proverb, if He makes mouths it is His
business to feed them. And He recognises the obligation. His past binds
Him to certain conduct in His future. We can lay hold on the former
manifestation, and we can plead it with Him. 'Thou hast been, and
therefore Thou must be.' 'Thou hast taught me to trust in Thee;
vindicate and warrant my trust by Thy unchangeableness.' So His word,
His acts, and His own nature, bind God to bless and help. His
faithfulness is the expression of His unchangeableness. 'Because He
could swear by no greater, He sware by Himself.'
Take, then, these two thoughts of God's lovingkindness and of God's
faithfulness and weave them together, and see what a strong cord they
are to which a man may cling, and in all His weakness be sure that it
will never give nor break. Mercy might be transient and arbitrary, but
when you braid in 'faithfulness' along with it, it becomes fixed as the
pillars of heaven, and immutable as the throne of God. Only when we are
sure of God's faithfulness can we lift up thankful voices to Him,
'because His mercy endureth for ever.' A despotic monarch may be all
full of tenderness at this moment, and all full of wrath and sternness
the next. He may have a whim of favour to-day, and a whim of severity
to-morrow, and no man can say, 'What doest thou?' But God is not a
despot. He has, so to speak, 'decreed a constitution.' He has limited
Himself. He has marked out His path across the great wide region of
possibilities of the divine action; He has buoyed out His channel on
that ocean, and declared to us His purposes. So we can reckon on God, as
astronomers can foretell the motions of the stars. We can plead His
faithfulness along with His love, and feel that the one makes sure that
the other shall be from everlasting to everlasting.
The next beam of the divine brightness is righteousness. 'Thy
righteousness is like the great mountains.' Righteousness is not to be
taken here in its narrow sense of stern retribution which gives to the
evildoer the punishment that he deserves. There is no thought here,
whatever there may be in other places in Scripture, of any opposition
between mercy and righteousness, but the notion of righteousness here is
a broader and greater one. It is just this, to put it into other words,
that God has a law for His being to which He conforms; and that
whatsoever things are fair and lovely, and good, and pure down here,
those things are fair, and lovely, and good, and pure up there; that He
is the Archetype of all excellence, the Ideal of all moral completeness:
that we can know enough of Him to be sure of this that what we call
right He loves, and what we call right He practises.
Brethren! unless we have that for the very foundation of our thoughts of
God, we have no foundation to rest on. Unless we feel and know that 'the
Judge of all the earth doeth right,' and is right, and law and
righteousness have their home and seat in His bosom, and are the
expression of His inmost being, then I know not where our confidence can
be built. Unless 'Thy righteousness, like the great mountains,'
surrounds and guards the low plain of our lives, they will lie open to
all foes.
Then, next, we pass from the divine character to the divine acts. Mercy,
faithfulness, and righteousness all converge and flow into the great
river of the divine 'judgments.'
By judgments are not meant merely the acts of God's punitive
righteousness, the retributions that destroy evildoers, but all God's
decisions and acts in regard to man. Or, to put it into other and
briefer words, God's judgments are the whole of the 'ways,' the methods
of the divine government. So Paul, alluding to this very passage when he
says 'How unsearchable are Thy judgments!' adds, as a parallel clause,
meaning the same thing, 'and Thy ways past finding out.' That includes
all which men call, in a narrower sense, judgments, but it includes,
too, all acts of kindness and loving gifts. God's judgments are the
expressions of His thoughts, and these thoughts are thoughts of good and
not of evil.
But notice, in the next place, the boundlessness of all these
characteristics of the divine nature.
'Thy mercy is in the heavens,' towering up above the stars, and dwelling
there, like some divine ether filling all space. The heavens are the
home of light, the source of every blessing, arching over every head,
rimming every horizon, holding all the stars, opening into abysses as we
gaze, with us by night and by day, undimmed by the mist and smoke of
earth, unchanged by the lapse of centuries; ever seen, never reached,
bending over us always, always far above us. So the mercy of God towers
above us, and stoops down towards us, rims us all about and arches over
us all, sheds down its dewy benedictions by night and by day; is filled
with a million stars and light-points of duty and of splendour; is near
us ever to bless and succour and help, and holds us all in its blue
round.
'Thy faithfulness reacheth to the clouds.' Strange that God's fixed
faithfulness should be compared to the very emblems of mutation. The
clouds are unstable, they whirl and melt and change. Strange to think of
the unalterable faithfulness as reaching to them! May it not be that the
very mutability of the mutable may be the means of manifesting the
unalterable sameness of God's faithful purpose, of His unchangeable
love, and of His ever consistent dealings? May not the apparent
incongruity be a part of the felicity of the bold words? Is it not true
that earthly things, as they change their forms and melt away, leaving
no track behind, phantomlike as they are, do still obey the behests of
that divine faithfulness, and gather and dissolve and break in brief
showers of blessing, or short, sharp crashes of storm, at the bidding of
that steadfast purpose which works out one unalterable design by a
thousand instruments, and changeth all things, being in itself
unchanged? The thing that is eternal, even the faithfulness of God,
dwells amid, and shows itself through, the things that are temporal, the
flying clouds of change.
Again, 'Thy righteousness is like the great mountains.' Like these, its
roots are fast and stable; like these, it stands firm for ever; like
these, its summits touch the fleeting clouds of human circumstance; like
these, it is a shelter and a refuge, inaccessible in its steepest peaks,
but affording many a cleft in its rocks, where a man may hide and be
safe. But, unlike these, it knew no beginning, and shall know no end.
Emblems of permanence as they are, though Olivet looks down on Jerusalem
as it did when Melchizedek was its king, and Tabor and Hermon stand as
they did before human lips had named them, they are wearing away by
winter storms and summer heats. But, as Isaiah has taught us, when the
earth is old, God's might and mercy are young; for 'the mountains shall
depart and the hills be removed, but My kindness shall not depart from
thee.' 'The earth shall wax old like a garment, but My righteousness
shall not be abolished.' It is more stable than the mountains, and
firmer than the firmest things upon earth.
Then, with wonderful poetical beauty and vividness of contrast, there
follows upon the emblem of the great mountains of God's righteousness
the emblem of the 'mighty deep' of His judgments. Here towers Vesuvius;
there at its feet lie the waters of the bay. So the righteousness
springs up like some great cliff, rising sheer from the water's edge,
while its feet are laved by the sea of the divine judgments,
unfathomable and shoreless. The mountains and the sea are the two
grandest things in nature, and in their combination sublime; the one the
home of calm and silence, the other in perpetual motion. But the
mountain's roots are deeper than the depths of the sea, and though the
judgments are a mighty deep, the righteousness is deeper, and is the bed
of the ocean.
The metaphor, of course, implies obscurity, but what sort of obscurity?
The obscurity of the sea. And what sort of obscurity is that? Not that
which comes from mud, or anything added, but that which comes from
depth. As far as a man can see down into its blue-green depths they are
clear and translucent; but where the light fails and the eye fails,
there comes what we call obscurity. The sea is clear, but our sight is
limited.
And so there is no arbitrary obscurity in God's dealings, and we know as
much about them as it is possible for us to know; but we cannot see to
the bottom. A man on the cliff can look much deeper into the ocean than
a man on the level beach. The higher you climb the further you will see
down into the 'sea of glass mingled with fire' that lies placid before
God's throne. Let us remember that it is a hazardous thing to judge of a
picture before it is finished; of a building before the scaffolding is
pulled down, and it is as hazardous for us to say about any deed or any
revealed truth that it is inconsistent with the divine character. Wait a
bit; wait a bit! 'Thy judgments are a great deep.' The deep will be
drained off one day, and you will see the bottom of it. 'Judge nothing
before the time.'
But as an aid to patience and faith hearken how the Psalmist finishes up
his contemplations: 'O Lord! Thou preservest man and beast.' Very well
then, all this mercy, faithfulness, righteousness, judgment, high as the
heavens, deep as the ocean, firm as the hills, it is all working for
this--to keep the millions of living creatures round about us, and
ourselves, in life and well-being. The mountain is high, the deep is
profound. Between the mountain and the sea there is a strip of level
land. God's righteousness towers above us; God's judgments go down
beneath us; we can scarcely measure adequately the one or the other. But
upon the level where we live there are the green fields where the cattle
browse, and the birds sing, and men live and till and reap and are fed.
That is to say, we all have enough in the plain, patent facts of
creation and preservation of man and animal life in this world to make
us quite sure of what is the principle that prevails up to the very top
of the inaccessible mountains, and down to the very bottom of the
unfathomable deep. What we know of Him, in the blessings of His love and
providence, ought to interpret for us all that is perplexing. What we
understand is good and loving. Let us be sure that what we do not yet
understand is good and loving too. The web is of one texture throughout.
The least educated ear can catch the music of the simpler melodies which
run through the Great Composer's work. We shall one day be able to
appreciate the yet fuller music of the more recondite parts, which to us
at present seem only jangling and discord. It is not His melody but our
ears that are at fault. But we may well accept the obscurity of the
mighty deep of God's judgment, when we can see plainly that, after all,
the earth is full of His mercy, and that 'the eyes of all things wait on
God, and He giveth them their meat in due season.'
II. So much, then, for the great picture here of these boundless
characteristics of the divine nature. Now let us look for a moment at
the picture of man sheltering beneath God's wings.
'How excellent is Thy lovingkindness, O God! therefore the children of
men put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings.' God's
lovingkindness, or mercy, as I explained the word might be rendered, is
_precious_, for that is the true meaning of the word translated
'excellent.' We are rich when we have that for ours; we are poor without
it. Our true wealth is to possess God's love, and to know in thought and
realise in feeling and reciprocate in affection His grace and goodness,
the beauty and perfectness of His wondrous character. That man is
wealthy who has God on his side; that man is a pauper who has not God
for his.
'How precious is Thy lovingkindness, _therefore_ the children of men put
their trust.' There is only one thing that will ever win a man's heart
to love God, and that is that God should love him first, and let him see
it. 'We love Him because He first loved us,' is the New Testament
teaching. Is it not all adumbrated and foretold in these words: 'How
precious is Thy loving-kindness, O God! therefore the children of men
put their trust'?
We may be driven to worship after a sort by power; we may be smitten
into some cold admiration, into some kind of reluctant subjection and
trembling reverence, by the manifestation of divine perfections. But
there is only one thing that wins a man's heart, and that is the sight
of God's heart; and it is only when we know how precious His
lovingkindness is that we shall be drawn towards Him.
And then this last verse tells us how we can make God our own: 'They put
their trust under the shadow of Thy wings.' The word here rendered, and
accurately rendered, 'put their trust,' has a very beautiful literal
meaning. It means to flee for refuge, as the manslayer might flee into
the strong city, or as Lot did out of Sodom to the little city on the
hill, or as David did into the cave from his enemies. So, with such
haste, with such intensity, staying for nothing, and with the effort of
your whole will and nature, flee to God. That is trust. Go to Him for
refuge from all evil, from all harm, from your own souls, from all sin,
from hell, and death, and the devil.
Put your trust under 'the shadow of His wings.' That is a beautiful
image, drawn, probably, from the grand words of Deuteronomy, where God
is likened to the 'eagle stirring up her nest, fluttering over her
young,' with tenderness in her fierce eye, and protecting strength in
the sweep of her mighty pinion. So God spreads the covert of His wing,
strong and tender, beneath which we may all gather ourselves and nestle.
And how can we do that? By the simple process of fleeing unto Him, as
made known to us in Christ our Saviour; to hide ourselves there. For let
us not forget how even the tenderness of this metaphor was increased by
its shape on the tender lips of the Lord: 'How often would I have
gathered thy children together, as a hen gathereth her chickens under
her wings!' The Old Testament took the emblem of the eagle, sovereign,
and strong, and fierce; the New Testament took the emblem of the
domestic fowl, peaceable, and gentle, and affectionate. Let us flee to
that Christ, by humble faith with the plea on our lips--
'Cover my defenceless head
With the shadow of Thy wing';
and then all the Godhead in its mercy, its faithfulness, its
righteousness, and its judgments will be on our side; and we shall know
how precious is the lovingkindness of the Lord, and find in Him the home
and hiding-place of our hearts for ever.