On the one hand the true path is Jesus Christ, on the other hand the
means by which we walk upon that path is our faith. The Apostle puts it
all in a nutshell when he says that his prayer for the Ephesian Church
is that 'Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith,' and then, by a
linked chain which we have not now to consider, leads up to the final
issues of that faith in that indwelling Christ--'that ye may be filled
with all the fulness of God.' So to draw near and to possess that good,
that only good which is God, all that is needed is--and it is
needed--that we should turn with the surrender of our hearts, with the
submission of our wills, with the outgoing of our affections, and with
the conformity of our practical life, to Jesus. Seeing Him, we see the
Father, and having Him near us, we feel the touch of the divine hand,
and being joined to the Lord, we are separated from the vanities of
life, and united to the Supreme Good.
Dear brethren! this Psalmist shows us how hard it is for us to keep up
that continual attitude of faith, how many difficulties there are in
daily life, in the way of our continually being true to our deepest
convictions, and seeking after Him amidst all the distracting whirl and
perplexities of our daily lives. But he shows us, too, how possible it
is, even for men constituted as we are, moment by moment, day by day,
task by task, to keep vivid the consciousness of our dependence upon
Him, and the blessed consciousness of our being beside Him, and how, if
we do, strength will come to us for everything. The secret of a joyous
walk lies in this, 'I have set the Lord always before me. Because He is
at my right hand I shall not be moved.' We draw near to God when we
clutch Christ in faith. Our faith manifests itself, not merely by a lazy
reliance upon what He once did, long ago, on the Cross for us; but by
daily, effortful revivifying of our consciousness of His presence, of
our consciousness of our dependence upon Him, and by the continual
reference of thoughts, desires, plans, and actions to Himself.
Keep God beside you so, and then there will follow what this Psalmist
reached at last, a peaceful insight into what else are full of
perplexity and difficulty, the ways of God in the world.
To myself, to my dear ones, to the nation, to the Church, to the world,
there come many perplexing riddles as to God's dealings, that cannot be
solved except by getting close to Him. Just as a little child nestling
on its mother's bosom, with its mother's arm around it, looks out with
peaceful eye and a bright smile, upon everything beyond the safe nest,
so they who are near to God can bear to look at difficulties and
perplexities, and the mysteries of their own sorrows and of the world's
miseries, and say, 'All things work together for good'; 'I have put my
trust in the Lord, that I may declare _all_ Thy works.' Stand in the
sun, and all the planets move around it manifestly in order. Take your
place anywhere else, and there is confusion. Get beside God, and look
out on the world, and you will see it as He saw it when, 'Behold! it was
very good.'
Now, dear friends! my text in its first part may become the description
of our death. One man holds on to the world as it is slipping away from
him. I remember a story about a coast-guardsman that was flung over the
cliffs once, and when they picked up his dead body, all under the nails
was full of chalk that he had scraped off the cliffs in his desperate
attempts to clutch at something to hold by. That is like one kind of
death. But another kind may be: 'It is good for me to draw near to God.'
And when we reach His side, and see all the past from the centre, and in
the light of the Eternal Present, to which it has led, we shall be able
to declare all His works, and to give thanks 'for all the way by which
the Lord our God hath led us' and the world 'these many years in the
wilderness.'