'His righteousness endureth for ever.'--PSALMS cxi. 3; cxii. 3.
These two psalms are obviously intended as a pair. They are identical in
number of verses and in structure, both being acrostic, that is to say,
the first clause of each commences with the first letter of the Hebrew
alphabet, the second clause with the second, and so on. The general idea
that runs through them is the likeness of the godly man to God. That
resemblance comes very markedly to the surface at several points in the
psalms, and pervades them traceably even where it is less conspicuous.
The two corresponding clauses which I have read as my text are the first
salient instances of it. But I propose to deal not only with them, but
with a couple of others which occur in the course of the psalms, and
will appear as I proceed.
The general underlying thought is a noteworthy one. The worshipper is to
be like his God. So it is in idolatry; so it should be with us. Worship
is, or should be, adoration of and yearning after the highest
conceivable good. Such an attitude must necessarily lead to imitation,
and be crowned by resemblance. Love makes like, and they who worship God
are bound to, and certainly will, in proportion to the ardour and
sincerity of their devotion, grow like Him whom they adore. So I desire
to look with you at the instances of this resemblance or parallelism
which the Psalmist emphasises.
I. The first of them is that in the clauses which I have read as our
starting-point, viz. God and the godly are alike in enduring
righteousness.
That seems a bold thing to say, especially when we remember how lofty
and transcendent were the Old Testament conceptions of the righteousness
of God. But, lofty as these were, this Psalmist lifts an unpresumptuous
eye to the heavens, and having said of Him who dwells there, 'His
righteousness endureth for ever,' is not afraid to turn to the humble
worshipper on this low earth, and declare the same thing of him. Our
finite, frail, feeble lives may be really conformed to the image of the
heavenly. The dewdrop with its little rainbow has a miniature of the
great arch that spans the earth and rises into the high heavens. And so,
though there are differences, deep and impassable, between anything that
can be called creatural righteousness, and that which bears the same
name in the heavens, the fact that it does bear the same name is a
guarantee to us that there is an essential resemblance between the
righteousness of God in its lustrous perfectness, and the righteousness
of His child in its imperfect effort.
But how can we venture to run any kind of parallelism between the
eternity of the one and that of the other? God's righteousness we can
understand as enduring for ever, because it is inseparable from His very
being; because it is manifested unbrokenly in all the works that for
ever pour out from that central Source, and because it and its doings
stand fast and unshaken amidst the passage of ages, and the 'wreck of
matter and the crash of worlds.' But may there not be, if not an
eternity, yet a perpetuity, in our reflection of the divine
righteousness which shall serve to vindicate the application of the same
mighty word to both? Is it not possible that, unbroken amidst the stress
of temptation, and running on without interruptions, there may be in our
hearts and in our lives conformity to the divine will? And is it not
possible that the transiencies of our earthly doings may be sublimed
into perpetuity if there is in them the preserving salt of
righteousness?
'The actions of the just
Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust.'
And may it not be, too, that though this Psalmist may have had no clear
articulate doctrine of eternal life beyond, he may have felt, and
rightly felt, that there were things that were too fair to die, and that
it was inconceivable that a soul which had been, in some measure, tinged
with the righteousness of God could ever be altogether a prey to the law
of transiency and decay which seizes upon things material and corporeal?
That which is righteous is eternal, be it manifested in the acts of the
unchanging God or in the acts of a dying man, and when all else has
passed away, and the elements have melted with fervent heat, 'he that
doeth the will of God,' and the deeds which did it, 'shall abide for
ever.' 'His righteousness endureth for ever.'
Now, brethren! there are two ways in which we may look at this
parallelism of our text: the one is as containing a stringent
requirement; the other as holding forth a mighty hope. It contains a
stringent requirement. Our religion does not consist in assenting to any
creed. Our religion is not wholly to consist of devout emotions and
loving and joyous acts of communion and friendship with God. There must
be more than these; these things there must be. For if a man is to be
guided mainly by reason, there must, first of all, be creed; then there
must be corresponding emotions. But creed and emotions are both meant to
be forces which shall drive the wheels of life, and conduct is, after
all, the crown of religion and the test of godliness. They that hold
communion with God are bound to mould their lives into the likeness of
His. 'Little children, let no man deceive you,' and let not your own
hearts deceive you. You are not a Christian because you believe the
truths of the Gospel. You are not such a Christian as you ought to be,
if your religion is more manifest in loving trust than in practical
obedience which comes from trust. 'He that doeth righteousness is
righteous,' and he is to be righteous 'even as He is righteous.' If you
are God's, you will be like God. Apply the touchstone to your lives, and
test your Christianity by this simple and most stringent test.
But again, we may look at the thought as holding forth a great hope. I
do not wish to force upon Old Testament writers New Testament truth. It
would be an anachronism and an absurdity to make this Psalmist
responsible for anything like a clear evangelistic statement of the way
by which a man may be made righteous. That waited for coming days, and
eminently for Jesus Christ. But it would be quite as great a mistake to
eviscerate the words of their plain implications. And when they put side
by side the light and the reflection, God and the godly, it seems to me
to be doing violence to their meaning for the sake of trying to make
them mean less than they do, if we refuse to recognise that they have at
any rate an inkling of the thought that the Original and Pattern of
human righteousness was likewise the Source of it. This at least is
plain, that the Psalmist thought that 'the fear of the Lord' was not
only, as he calls it at the close of the former of the two psalms, 'the
beginning of wisdom,' but also the basis of goodness, for he begins his
description of the godly with it.
I believe that he felt, what is assuredly true, that no man, by his own
unaided effort, can ever work out for himself a righteousness which will
satisfy his own conscience, and that he must, first of all, be in touch
with God, in order to receive from Him that which he cannot create. Ah,
brethren! the 'fine linen, clean and white, which is the righteousness
of saints,' is woven in no earthly looms; and the lustrous light with
which it glistens is such as 'no fuller on earth can white' men's
characters into. Another Psalmist has sung of the man who can stand in
the holy place, 'He shall _receive_ the blessing from the Lord, even
righteousness from the God of his salvation,' and our psalms hint, if
they do not articulately declare, how that reception is possible for us,
when they set forth waiting upon God as the condition of being made like
Him. We translate the Psalmist's feeling after the higher truth which we
know, when we desire 'that we may be found in Him, not having our own
righteousness which is of the law, but that which is of God by faith.'
So much, then, for the first point of correspondence in these two
psalms.