Now, the main idea in this image is, as I have suggested, that of the
expanded pinion, beneath the shelter of which the callow young lie, and
are guarded. Whatever kites may be in the sky, whatever stoats and
weasels may be in the hedges, the brood are safe there. The image
suggests not only the thought of protection but those of fostering,
downy warmth, peaceful proximity to a heart that throbs with parental
love, and a multitude of other happy privileges realised by those who
nestle beneath that wing. But while these subsidiary ideas are not to be
lost sight of, the promise of protection is to be kept prominent, as
that chiefly intended by the Psalmist.
This psalm rings throughout with the truth that a man who dwells 'in the
secret place of the Most High' has absolute immunity from all sorts of
evil; and there are two regions in which that immunity, secured by being
under the shadow of the Almighty, is exemplified here. The one is that
of outward dangers, the other is that of temptation to sin and of what
we may call spiritual foes. Now, these two regions and departments in
which the Christian man does realise, in the measure of his faith, the
divine protection, exhibit that protection as secured in two entirely
different ways.
The triumphant assurances of this psalm, 'There shall no evil befall
thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling,'--'the pestilence
shall smite thousands and ten thousands beside thee, but not come nigh
thee,'--seem to be entirely contradicted by experience which testifies
that 'there is one event to the evil and the good,' and that, in
epidemics or other widespread disasters, we all, the good and the bad,
God-fearers and God-blasphemers, do fare alike, and that the conditions
of exemption from physical evil are physical and not spiritual. It is of
no use trying to persuade ourselves that that is not so. We shall
understand God's dealings with us, and get to the very throbbing heart
of such promises as these in this psalm far better, if we start from the
certainty that whatever it means it does _not_ mean that, with regard to
external calamities and disasters, we are going to be God's petted
children, or to be saved from the things that fall upon other people.
No! no! we have to go a great deal deeper than that. If we have felt a
difficulty, as I suppose we all have sometimes, and are ready to say
with the half-despondent Psalmist, 'My feet were almost gone, and my
steps had well-nigh slipped,' when we see what we think the complicated
mysteries of divine providence in this world, we have to come to the
belief that the evil that is in the evil will never come near a man
sheltered beneath God's wing. The physical external event may be
entirely the same to him as to another who is not covered with His
feathers. Here are two partners in a business, the one a Christian man,
and the other is not. A common disaster overwhelms them. They become
bankrupts. Is insolvency the same to the one as it is to the other? Here
are two men on board a ship, the one putting his trust in God, the other
thinking it all nonsense to trust anything but himself. They are both
drowned. Is drowning the same to the two? As their corpses lie side by
side among the ooze, with the weeds over them, and the shell-fish at
them, you may say of the one, but only of the one, 'There shall no evil
befall thee, neither any plague come nigh thy dwelling.'
For the protection that is granted to faith is only to be understood by
faith. It is deliverance from the evil in the evil which vindicates as
no exaggeration, nor as merely an experience and a promise peculiar to
the old theocracy of Israel, but not now realised, the grand sayings of
this text. The poison is all wiped off the arrow by that divine
protection. It may still wound but it does not putrefy the flesh. The
sewage water comes down, but it passes into the filtering bed, and is
disinfected and cleansed before it is permitted to flow over our fields.
And so, brethren! if any of you are finding that the psalm is not
outwardly true, and that through the covering wing the storm of hail has
come and beaten you down, do not suppose that that in the slightest
degree impinges upon the reality and truthfulness of this great promise,
'He shall cover thee with His feathers.' Anything that has come through
_them_ is manifestly not an 'evil.' 'Who is he that will harm you if ye
be followers of that which is good?' 'If God be for us who can be
against us?' Not what the world calls, and our wrung hearts feel that it
rightly calls, 'sorrows' and 'afflictions,'--these all work for our
good, and protection consists, not in averting the blows, but in
changing their character.
Then, there is another region far higher, in which this promise of my
text is absolutely true--that is, in the region of spiritual defence.
For no man who lies under the shadow of God, and has his heart filled
with the continual consciousness of that Presence, is likely to fall
before the assaults of evil that tempt him away from God; and the
defence which He gives in that region is yet more magnificently
impregnable than the defence which He gives against external evils. For,
as the New Testament teaches us, we are kept from sin, not by any
outward breastplate or armour, nor even by the divine wing lying above
us to cover us, but by the indwelling Christ in our hearts. His Spirit
within us makes us 'free from the law of sin and death,' and conquerors
over all temptations.
I say not a word about all the other beautiful and pathetic associations
which are connected with this emblem of the covering wing, sweet and
inexhaustible as it is, but I simply leave with you the two thoughts
that I have dwelt upon, of the twofold manner of that divine protection.
II. And now a word, in the second place, about the flight of the
shelterless to the shelter.
The word which is rendered in our Authorised Version, 'shalt thou
trust,' is, like all Hebrew words for mental and spiritual emotions and
actions, strongly metaphorical. It might have been better to retain its
literal meaning here instead of substituting the abstract word 'trust.'
That is to say, it would have been an improvement if we had read with
the Revised Version, not, 'under His wings shalt thou trust,' but 'under
His wings shalt thou take refuge.' For that is the idea which is really
conveyed; and in many of the psalms, if you will remember, the same
metaphor is employed. 'Hide me beneath the shadow of Thy wings';
'Beneath Thy wings will I take refuge until calamities are overpast';
and the like. Many such passages will, no doubt, occur to your memories.
But what I wish to signalise is just this, that in this emblem of flying
into a refuge from impending perils we get a far more vivid conception,
and a far more useful one, as it seems to me, of what Christian faith
really is than we derive from many learned volumes and much theological
hair-splitting. 'Under His wings shalt thou flee for refuge.' Is not
that a vivid, intense, picturesque, but most illuminative way of telling
us what is the very essence, and what is the urgency, and what is the
worth, of what we call faith? The Old Testament is full of the
teaching--which is masked to ordinary readers, but is the same teaching
as the New Testament is confessedly full of--of the necessity of faith
as the one bond that binds men to God. If only our translators had
wisely determined upon a uniform rendering in Old and New Testament of
words that are synonymous, the reader would have seen what is often now
reserved for the student, that all these sayings in the Old Testament
about 'trusting in God' run on all fours with 'Believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ and thou shalt be saved.'
But just mark what comes out of that metaphor; that 'trust,' the faith
which unites with God, and brings a man beneath the shadow of His wings,
is nothing more or less than the flying into the refuge that is provided
for us. Does that not speak to us of the urgency of the case? Does that
not speak to us eloquently of the perils which environ us? Does it not
speak to us of the necessity of swift flight, with all the powers of our
will? Is the faith which is a flying into a refuge fairly described as
an intellectual act of believing in a testimony? Surely it is something
a great deal more than that. A man out in the plain, with the avenger of
blood, hot-breathed and bloody-minded, behind him might believe, as much
as he liked, that there would be safety within the walls of the City of
Refuge, but unless he took to his heels without loss of time, the spear
would be in his back before he knew where he was. There are many men who
know all about the security of the refuge, and believe it utterly, but
never run for it; and so never get into it. Faith is the gathering up of
the whole powers of my nature to fling myself into the asylum, to cast
myself into God's arms, to take shelter beneath the shadow of His wings.
And unless a man does that, and swiftly, he is exposed to every bird of
prey in the sky, and to every beast of prey lurking in wait for him.
The metaphor tells us, too, what are the limits and the worth of faith.
A man is not saved because he believes that he is saved, but because by
believing he lays hold of the salvation. It is not the flight that is
impregnable, and makes those behind its strong bulwarks secure. Not my
outstretched hand, but the Hand that my hand grasps, is what holds me
up. The power of faith is but that it brings me into contact with God,
and sets me behind the seven-fold bastions of the Almighty protection.
So, brethren! another consideration comes out of this clause: 'Under His
wings shalt thou trust.' If you do not flee for refuge to that wing, it
is of no use to you, however expanded it is, however soft and downy its
underside, however sure its protection. You remember the passage where
our Lord uses the same venerable figure with modifications, and says:
'How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen
doth gather her brood under her wings, _and ye would not_.' So our
'would not' thwarts Christ's 'would.' Flight to the refuge is the
condition of being saved. How can a man get shelter by any other way
than by running to the shelter? The wing is expanded; it is for us to
say whether we will 'flee for refuge to the hope set before us.'