GLORIOUS ATTRIBUTES AND WAYS
"This is the resting place, let the weary rest; and this
is the place of repose"—
"Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens, Your
faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,
Your justice like the great deep. How priceless is Your unfailing love! Both
high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of Your wings. For with You
is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light." Psalm 36:5, 6, 7, 9)
These verses sound like the rustling of many palm-leaves
around the wells of the desert.
The King of Israel, himself a prince among pilgrims, when
he wrote this psalm, was probably in the wilderness, not of Sinai, but of
Judah—near the Dead Sea, from the margin of whose waters wild cliffs rose to
the height of 1500 feet. As he gazes up to the heavens, he sees written on
their blue vault, "God is mercy," "God is love." He looks to the clouds as
they gather, gradually dimming and darkening the azure; but he sees them
spanned with the rainbow of "faithfulness." He looks to the mountains, their
tops resting amid these clouds and rainbow-tints; and beholds them radiant
with "justice"—stable, immutable uprightness. He gazes down into the depths
of the lake, sleeping at their base, and reflecting their forms in its calm
mirror. He sinks his plummet-line, but in vain! It is too deep to be
measured. "Your judgments (Your providential dealings) are "a great
mystery." Jehovah's righteousness, like the great mountains, is visible;
plain to see. But His judgments are often like the lake beneath. Their
unsounded mysteries lie beyond mortal understanding, far down below!
Next (ver. 7), as a saint of God, he flees for refuge
"under the shadow of the Almighty's wings"—a beautiful emblem of security;
one used by the Savior Himself, many centuries later, on the occasion of His
weeping over Jerusalem—"How excellent is Your loving-kindness, O God,
therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Your
wings."
Then, he adds, "You shall make them drink of the river of
Your pleasures; For with You is the fountain of life." Another figure
still, perhaps, also suggested by a well-known spring which survives to this
day in that desolate waste, amid the rocks of the wild goats, bursting from
a shelf or cleft in the mountain—"For with You," as it has been rendered, is
the "spring of immortality"—"in Your light we shall see light." He here
speaks not of his present blessings, but of his future prospects. He looks
forward, anticipating the time when all the past irregularities in God's
moral government shall be explained. "We shall see light!" we shall behold
Him, not in a glass, darkly; not as now, "through the lattice;" but "face to
face"—knowing experimentally the reality of His own divine beatitude,
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
The psalm begins with a minor note—"The sinfulness of the
wicked" (ver. 1). It describes the pang with which the upright believer
witnesses the unblushing sin and godlessness around him—speculative
infidelity, practical atheism—the iniquity, the deceit, the "devising of
evil"—hatching schemes of ambition and sin in their very beds—the world's
crooked policy, tortuous ways, and unprincipled ends. All this may well fill
the righteous with painful care and sadness. But he looks from man, to
God. He looks from this surging sea, troubled and restless by waves of
human passion and discord, to the giant mountains of the Divine faithfulness
towering grandly overhead. Dominating all, he sees the Divine mercy
"in the heavens." Jehovah's mercy in Christ, as a Covenant God, is high
above the great flood, and the great mountains and the great clouds.
In this sublime contemplation he rests. He knows—though
at times "deep may call to deep;" though these hilltops be muffled in angry
tempests, those heavens darkened with murky vapors—yet the day is
coming—"the morning without clouds," when all shall be made bright like "the
clear shining after the rain." "Righteousness and justice are the foundation
of His throne."
The impersonation of justice, in the Greek and
Roman mythology, with bandaged eyes and equally-balanced scales, was the
faint image of a grander truth. "He judges righteous judgment." "Commit your
way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will do this: He will make your
righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the
noonday sun!" "By faith," says one who is now experiencing the sublime
reality, "you are enabled to say 'All is well!' and if a voice could reach
you from the Everlasting, would it not re-echo back, 'All is well'?"
May this lofty psalm, of which these are the keynotes, be
sung by us, not in the Church of earth alone, but in the Church of the
firstborn: when its beautiful and magnificent imagery will come to be truly
fulfilled—resting under the shadow of the Heavenly Palm, the shelter and
sanctuary of Jehovah's wings; 'feasting on the abundance of His house,' and
'drinking of the river of His pleasures;' taking up, through all eternity,
the joyous strain these opening words suggest—"O give thanks to the Lord for
He is good, for His Mercy endures forever!"
"Blessed day, which hastens fast,
End of conflict and of sin;
Death itself shall die at last,
Heaven's eternal joys begin.
Then eternity shall prove,
God is Light, and God is Love!"
"Continue Your love to those who know You, Your
righteousness to the upright in heart."