2.04. Chapter 3. The Silence of God: How It Shall Be Broken

III. THE SILENCE OF GOD: HOW IT SHALL BE BROKEN–

1. In Relation to the Church “God, even God, the Lord, hath spoken, and called the earth from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof.

“Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined forth.

“Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence: a fire shall devour before Him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about Him.

“He shall call to the heavens above, and to the earth, that He may judge His people.

“Gather My saints unto Me; those that have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice.

“And the heavens shall declare His righteousness; for God is Judge Himself. Selah.

“Hear, O My people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify unto thee: I am God, even thy God.

“I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices; and thy burnt offerings are continually before Me.

“I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he-goats out of thy folds.

“For every beast of the forest is Mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.

“I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are Mine.

“If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is Mine and the fulness thereof.

“Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?

“Offer unto God the sacrifice of thanksgiving; and pay thy vows to the Most High:

“And call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.

“But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare My statutes, and that thou hast taken My covenant in thy mouth?

“Seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest My words behind thee.

“When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.

“Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit.

“Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother’s son.

“These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself:

“But I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.

“Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver:

“Whoso offereth the sacrifice of thanksgiving glorifieth Me; and to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I show the salvation of God.”

Psalms 50:1-23. (R.V.). The Second Advent in Relation to the Church, Israel, and Christendom 1. In Relation to the Church

IT must be obvious, even to the most superficial student of the Scriptures, that we have in the Old Testament two distinct series of prophecies referring to the coming and person of the Messiah; the one describing Him as coming in humiliation, “lowly and riding upon an ass”; “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; led as a lamb to the slaughter, and pouring out His soul unto death;” while the other series speak of Him as coming in visible power and great glory, and receiving dominion and a kingdom, so that “all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him.” “His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.” The Jews many centuries ago puzzled over the apparent discrepancies in the picture of Messiah, drawn by the prophets on the pages of Scripture, and at last invented a characteristic solution of their own. There must be two different persons, they said; and they called the one Messiah Ben-Joseph, who must suffer and die; and the other Messiah Ben-David, who should come in power and reign.* Of course this explanation is absurd, for there is no trace of two Messiahs or of a Messiah Ben-Joseph anywhere in the Old Testament. Christian commentators and theologians have had their own way of explaining the difference, and this has been by applying two different principles and methods of interpretation. The prophecies of Messiah’s suffering, they said, must be taken literally; but those speaking of His coming in manifest glory, and of a throne on Mount Zion, must be explained spiritually, or referred to the reign of Christ in heaven. But the system of the two principles is scarcely more satisfactory, and has even less consistency about it, than the Jewish one of the two persons; for if a prophecy of a glorious appearing of Messiah to reign over the earth is not to be taken literally, why should one describing an advent in suffering be so explained? The true solution which should commend itself to the minds of all God’s people is that there is but one person, Jesus Christ; one principle of interpretation for all prophecy, whether fulfilled or unfulfilled, to believe and take God’s Word as it stands, but that there are two advents one in humiliation, the other in glory; one to suffer and die, the other to take unto Himself His kingdom and reign.

* See on this subject of the Jewish doctrine of two Messiahs a note on p. 44 of my book, “Rays of Messiah’s Glory.” To the two distinct series of prophecies announcing two different advents, two well-known prophetic scriptures may be taken as key passages. The first is Micah 5:2, which tells us that “the Ruler in Israel,” whose origin is Divine, and whose goings forth are from the days of eternity, will be born as a child in Bethlehem Ephratha. The second is Daniel 7:13-14, where we see Him no longer as a child born on earth of a Jewish virgin, but as “the Son of Man,” coming with the clouds of heaven to receive the homage of the world.

These two scriptures, which are only representative, each in its line, of many others, cannot surely describe the same advent, and we may also ask the question how, as Son of Man, can Messiah come with clouds from heaven, except He was first taken up into heaven for the very name “Man” implies a human origin? The answer is simple and fully supplied by Scripture. Though “God blessed for ever,” He is made of a woman, and “took hold of the seed of Abraham,” and being found in fashion as a man, He, for our salvation, “humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” “He was buried according to the Scriptures,” but He was not left in Sheol, nor did God suffer His Holy One to see corruption. “On the third day He rose again,” also “according to the Scriptures,” and in accordance also with that which prophets and psalmists sang in advance, “He ascended on high, leading captivity captive,” and there as the God-man, at the right hand of the Majesty, He now sits as our blessed High Priest, waiting until His enemies shall be made His footstool, when He shall descend again in power and great glory. To this truth both apostles and prophets bear witness.

This, however, is only a word of introduction to the exposition of one of the most sublime scriptures in the Bible, with regard to which the testimony of the Church throughout the ages has been almost universally agreed that it refers to the second series of prophecies of which we have spoken, and describes the appearing in glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. In order to impress us with the power and majesty of the glorious Being whose advent the psalm announces, He is introduced by an array of Divine titles, the order and conjunction of which is only paralleled in one other passage in the Old Testament.* El Elohim Jehovah are the three august and blessed names with which this Psalm commences, and they are in keeping with the great subject it teaches, for while He is represented as appearing at last as the El and Elohim, the mighty and awful God of power and judgment, the terror of the ungodly, He also comes as the faithful covenant Jehovah of redemption, to gather His saints, and to consummate His everlasting purposes of love and mercy towards them.

* Twice repeated in solemn oath by the two and a half tribes in Joshua 22:22. This glorious Lord of Majesty “hath spoken.” It is from the mountain-top of prophetic vision that the inspired psalmist describes the certainties of the future. The Divine programme here unfolded is so certain of accomplishment, that in relation to the Church, to Israel, and the world, from the standpoint of God’s purpose it can already be announced as past, or in the very act of accomplishment. The first verse is His call of attention to the whole universe in reference to the great events which are about to take place. When He came the first time the words of Isaiah were fulfilled in Him, “He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause His voice to be heard in the street.” He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth; but now He comes speaking, and at His voice the earth trembles “from the rising of the sun until the going down thereof.” The chief and central act of the prophetic drama which is unfolded in this Psalm is that announced at the end of the second verse, “God hath shined!” And what is this but an Old Testament proclamation of the Epiphany, or shining forth of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ? In the Psalms this expression is found three times, and these are all based on that remarkable passage, in Deuteronomy 33:2, “Jehovah came from Sinai, burst forth (as the rising sun) from Seir unto them; He shined forth from Mount Paran, and He came from the myriads of His holy ones; from His right hand went forth a fiery law unto them.” The imagery of this passage is beautiful, the figure being borrowed from the breaking of the dawn and the progressive splendour of the sun rising. Oh, what a wonderful event in the history of the world and of Israel was the revelation of the glory of Jehovah on Sinai! What a bursting forth of light on the moral darkness of this earth! But alas! by reason of the weakness of the flesh it was not the light of life, but rather of death, for it revealed to us our sin and utter helplessness, and the perfect holiness of the God who is “a consuming fire.” But the law contained not only the promise, but was in itself also a preparation for the gospel; and, therefore, in the fulness of time, though not attended by outward splendour as on Sinai, another Epiphany (2 Timothy 1:10) of God our Saviour took place, bringing not “a fiery law,” but the gospel of His grace, which abolished death and brought life and immortality to light. The acceptable year of the Lord ushered in by that Epiphany is rapidly running to its close, and although for nigh nineteen centuries favour has been preached to the wicked, yet has he not learned righteousness, and men are beginning to ask if the faith founded by the Son of God has not already proved a failure,* Psalms 1:2, Psalms 80:1, Psalms 94:1, and scoffers boldly say, “Where is the promise of the coming, and what sign is there of any change or interruption of the present state of things?” Even the professing Church, lost for the most part in worldliness and error, seeks to strike its roots in the earth, crying peace and progress, and acting as if all things will for ever continue as they are.

* In my remarks on this sentence of the psalm, I take the liberty of making free use of notes made many years ago in my interleaved Bible of a powerful address, to which it was my privilege to listen, by that true father in Christ, the late Dr. Horatius Bonar, who, together with his two worthy brothers, Andrew and John, were the representatives in Scotland of those who waited for the Lord’s appearing.

But, as already shown, this earth shall yet again see the glory of the personal presence of theLord, and, as sure as there was an appearing of Christ in humiliation, so surely will there be a shining forth of the Son of God in glory and majesty, and this time in the combined character of Lawgiver, Judge, and Saviour. The centre of the future Epiphany of God’s glory will be “Zion,” even as Zion was the focus of all God’s revelations in the past. The earthly centre for the carrying out of His gracious purposes in relation to the nations, has never been, and never can be changed, for “Jehovah hath chosen Zion; He hath desired it for His habitation. This is My rest for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it” (Psalms 132:13-14). Yes, to Zion shall come the Redeemer, but from Zion, and Israel as the centre, His glory will radiate to earth’s utmost limits. And Zion shall then be “the perfection of beauty.” The word “Zion” comes from a root which means a dry, barren place or arid wilderness, and in this its original condition it is a type of Israel. If the renown of the moral beauty of Israel in the past went forth among the nations, there is no praise due to them, for in themselves they ever formed most unpromising material. “From Me is thy fruit found,” God says; and it is wholly owing to the power and skill of the great Husbandman that so barren a plot of ground was transformed into a fruitful garden. “Thy beauty is perfect through My comeliness which I put upon thee,” saith the Lord (Ezekiel 16:14). At present the land and the people are seen again in their naturally barren and desolate condition. “They called thee an outcast, saying, This is Zion (a barren, unpromising plot of ground), which no man seeketh after” (Jeremiah 30:17); but as surely as this has been fulfilled, so surely will Zion, covered once again with God’s glory, be the very “perfection of beauty,” and “a praise in the midst of the earth.” The Epiphany of the second verse is explained by the Parousia which is the subject of the third verse: “Our God shall come (or ‘cometh’), and shall not keep silence.” Oh, what a startling announcement to some! “Behold He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him, and all the tribes of the land shall wail because of Him. Even so. Amen!” But this verse chiefly describes the manner of the manifestation of the awful presence and majesty of God: “He shall not keep silence.”*

* There are notable pauses, during which God seemed to have withdrawn Himself from man in so far as visible interposition was concerned.

Compare this with what He says in Psalms 50:21, “This hast thou done, and I kept silence.” Or rather, contrast this announcement of a visible manifestation and inter-position on the part of the great God, with the present long period of silence. In looking back on the ages that are past we see that God has His times for speaking and His times also for keeping silence. In Eden we hear “the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day,” but soon that blessed converse ceases on account of the Fall. The last echoes of that voice die away, and there ensues a period of silence during which men lived and the world made progress, in the sense in which it always does, until the silence was broken, and Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying: “Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among men, of all their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly men have spoken against Him.” After Enoch another pause of long centuries set in, and the earth again went on developing in the old way, until the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and until it became manifest in the sight of the heavens that “every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually.”

Again God spoke, and again it was in judgment. He sent the Flood; but it was judgment blended with mercy, for a few that is to say eight souls, were saved by means of the ark, which He commanded Noah to build.

After the Deluge the world began anew; man had a fresh chance. God withdrew Himself from open interposition, and for a space of long centuries there was silence. But what was the result of the new test? The world again made progress, and man developed what was in him, until by the end of the time “darkness covered the earth and gross darkness the peoples.” But in the midst of the universal darkness the God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, saying, “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house.” From this point of time onward, from Abraham to Malachi, a period of more than fifteen hundred years, may preeminently be called a time of God’s speaking. There were, indeed, in the course of this age both longer and shorter spells of silence, but it nevertheless remains a fact that the chief characteristic of the period of Israel’s national history, up to the point when “the times of the Gentiles” set in with the destruction of the first Temple, was that it was a time of God’s self-revelation, and manifest interpositions. At sundry times and in divers portions and ways God spake unto the fathers by the prophets. Wonderful, astonishing fact! fifteen long centuries at one stretch bearing witness to the fact that the great God hath spoken! Was it a long successional lie? Was it a continual self-deception as infidels and rationalists would have us believe? Oh no; the whole history and continued existence of Israel, the Divine and wonderful character of the words preserved to us, and the consciousness of the Christian cry aloud against so monstrous a supposition. But after this long period of speaking there followed again a long interval of about four centuries which was suddenly broken by the cry, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” From this time there recommenced another period of revelation on the part of God, during which He spoke His most wonderful words of all through His Son, and through the apostles by the Spirit. But the period of New Testament history, lasting about ninety years, soon ends. The last echoes of that voice die away on the barren rock of Patmos in the words, “Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus,” and there sets in this long silence, the longest silence the world has yet experienced. How wonderful, how long, how deep, how mysterious is this silence! How often have the hearts of God’s people grown impatient under the long strain! How often has the Church cried, “How long, O Lord, how long?” but there is neither audible voice nor sound. Will this long silence never again be broken? Will God never again outwardly and manifestly interpose in the affairs of man and in the government of the world? The answer of this sublime scripture is, “Our God cometh, and shall not keep silence.” But before considering further this great and awful event, let me remind you that there is deep significance even in God’s silence.

(a) The silence of God is designed to drive man to that which He has spoken; He would remind us of His Word, which in His good providence is preserved to us, and which is sufficient and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. Out of it He still speaks by His Spirit, although not by audible voice, to all who have ears to hear. In it He tells thee, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of thee.

(b) The time of God’s silence is another testing-time for man under more favourable circumstances than in preceding ages. It is a time of opportunity for the full development of good and evil, so that when God again interposes it may be manifest to principalities and powers that “He is justified when He speaks, and clear when He judges.” And what has been the result? While God has been silent, man has taken the opportunity of speaking, and his words are ever more foolish, proud, and blasphemous against the Most High, as may be seen from the press and the literature of the present day. But out of his own mouth man shall be judged, and all his thoughts and words shall be “set in order” before him, and riseup in judgment against him.

(c) The period of God’s silence is the period of His longsuffering, which, in the riches of His goodness, is designed to lead men to repentance. The continued length of that period gives us a glimpse into the infinitude of the patience and forbearance of the everlasting God, but man should be the last to complain about it, since it lengthens the time in which God commendeth His love and undeserved favour to men, and in which peace and pardon is proclaimed to the vilest sinner. The Christian, too, becomes more reconciled to the long delay in his Master’s return by the thought that in the interval the acceptable year of the Lord is still running its course, and that by the preaching of the gospel multitudes of souls are being gathered into the company of the redeemed, to the praise and glory of Him who died to save them. But the time of God’s long-suffering, protracted as it is, has its limit. It is a set time appointed in the eternal counsel of God, and at the exact “day and hour,” known to the Father, it shall cease, the long silence shall be broken, and to the world the day of vengeance shall commence by the coming of our God. Then “Jehovah shall cause His glorious voice to be heard and shall show the lighting down of His arm, with the indignation of His anger, and with the flame of a devouring fire, with scatterings and tempest and hailstones” (Isaiah 30:30).

“A fire shall devour before Him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about Him.” This is explained in another scripture in Isaiah (Isaiah 66:15-16): “For, behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with His chariots like a whirlwind, to render His anger with fury and His rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by His sword will the Lord plead with all flesh: and the slain of the Lord shall be many” and forms also the basis of that sublime and terrible description of the descent of the Son of God “in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power” (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9). The main object of His coming is stated in the fourth verse: “He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth that He may judge His people.” In this term both His earthly and His heavenly people are included. In times past the heavens and the earth are often called upon as witnesses of Israel’s apostasy and consequent punishment.

Thus at the very beginning of their history Moses again and again says, “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day that ye shall soon utterly perish from off the land whereunto ye go over Jordan to possess it.” Thus Isaiah cries, “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for Jehovah hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me.” And the same heavens and earth which were witnesses of the commencement of God’s controversy with Israel, shall also behold both the climax of judgment on their apostasy, and also the faithfulness of the Righteous Judge in executing vengeance on their enemies in the day when their transgressions shall have an end, and His own covenant people be finally delivered. And professing Christendom shall then be judged too, for “when the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all nations, and He shall separate them one from another as a shepherd divideth his sheep from his goats. And He shall set His sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand, Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world . . . and to them on His left hand, Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels . . . and these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.” And the individual Christian also, though free from all condemnation in his person, shall then be judged in his works, “for we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in His body according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” (2 Corinthians 5:10). But the great and solemn event of His glorious appearing is viewed in this psalm in relation to three different sections of humanity, namely, the Church, Israel, and the apostate nations of Christendom. Indeed, the psalm divides itself into three almost equal parts, the key words of which are, “the saints” (Psalms 50:5), “Israel” (Psalms 50:7), and “the wicked” (Psalms 50:16).

2. In Relation to Israel Let us now briefly examine the section devoted to the Jewish nation, Psalms 50:7-16.

It begins with a solemn address: “Hear, O My people,” and in the very form of this address we can read the promise of grace, for it shows that the “Lo-Ammi” period (Hosea 1:9-10) is at an end, and that Israel has again become “Ammi” (“My people”). When God is displeased with them He says, “This people”; or speaking to Moses with reference to their sudden apostasy, He says, “thy people”; but whenever He speaks of them in grace, He always acknowledges the covenant indissoluble relationship that has been established between Him and the nation, and says, “My people.”

If we want to know the exact prophetic point of time when Israel as a nation will truly become “Ammi,” God’s own acknowledged people, we must go to the Book of Zechariah. There we read how that in the midst of their final great sorrow, when “it shall come to pass that in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts therein shall be cut off and die, but the third part shall be left therein,” and when even this third part shall be brought into the fire to be refined as silver is refined, and to be tried as gold is tried, then “he shall call on My name, and I will answer him; I will say, Ammi Hu (‘it is My people’); and he shall say, Jehovah Elohoi (‘Jehovah is my God.’)” The address continues, “O Israel, I will testify against thee,” or “protest unto thee.” The form of speech implies a strong desire on the part of the speaker, to obtain at last Israel’s ear and heart for His message. The words translated “I will testify against thee” is a form of speech used for God’s gracious reasonings with man with a view to bringing him to Himself. Thus we find the same words in Nehemiah 9:29, “And testifiedst against (or ‘to’) them that Thou mightest bring them again unto Thy law.” But the subject of His solemn testimony or protestation to them in this psalm is not the law, as in the passage just quoted, but chiefly and foremost concerning His own glorious Person. “I am God, even thy God,” or, as in the Hebrew, where the order of the words is more forcible, “God, thy God, I am.” But we might ask, What does it mean? Did not Israel know all along that God was God? Alas! no, never yet has Israel as a nation truly known or understood Him; never yet have they fully entered into the blessedness or responded to the obligations implied in the relationship, “Thy God.” This blessing of full knowledge and recognition of Jehovah or Elohim as their own, is ever held out in the prophets as the yet future experience of Israel. It is the constant refrain which runs through Ezekiel’s visions of the future: “And they shall know that I am the Lord”; even as it is the climax of the visions of the son of Amoz that in the day in the which the glory of Jehovah shall be revealed, Israel and all flesh “shall know that I Jehovah am thy Saviour, and thy Redeemer the Mighty One of Jacob.” But there is a special secret here which Israel in particular has yet to learn. He who appears here in Divine power and majesty is the long-rejected Messiah. It is the greater than Joseph discovering Himself at last to His own brethren, saying not only, “I am Joseph” (Genesis 45:3); not only in His human character, “I am Jesus”; but, “I am God.” In the days of His flesh, when He claimed to be the Son of God, or when He said, “I and My Father are one,” the Jews took up stones to stone Him, and when He appealed to them for which of His good works they were ready to stone Him, they replied, “For a good work we stone Thee not, but for blasphemy, and because Thou, being a man, makest Thyself God.” Alas! their eyes were holden then, and they knew not that His name was Immanuel, and that veiled in flesh there stood among them One whose goings forth are from of old, even from everlasting, and in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; but “in that day” when the spirit of grace and of supplications is poured upon them, and Messiah appears to them, saying, “God, even thy God, I am,” Israel will respond, “This is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us; this is Jehovah; we have waited for Him; we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.”

Yes, long-doubting Israel, like doubting Thomas, shall yet look up with adoration to the crucified, risen Jesus, and say, “My Lord and my God!”

Having revealed to them His glorious Person, He proceeds to instruct them in the subject of true spiritual worship and service. These two ever go together. Only He who knows God aright as Spirit, can worship Him in spirit and in truth. The temptation of Israel in the past, as alas! of so many in Christendom at the present day, was to trust to outward form and mere ceremonial. Now these God puts aside as secondary in their nature. “Not in reference to thy sacrifices,” He says, “will I reprove thee, and as to thy burnt offerings, they are ever before Me. I will take no bullock out of thine house, nor rams out of thy folds.” Do you think you put the great God under obligation to you because you bring Him an animal sacrifice? “Behold, every beast of the forest is Mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are ready at My hand.” Even that which by My appointment of grace you bring to My altar is out of Mine own bounty. Or, have you sunk to the degradation of the heathen, who thought that their gods needed to be supplied by them with food and drink? “Behold, if I were hungry I would not tell thee, for the inhabited world is Mine and the fulness thereof: will I eat the flesh of strong bulls, or drink the blood of rams?” The very idea of such a thing is blasphemous. Nay, I will tell thee the sacrifices which refresh the heart of God: “Sacrifice to God praise,” or thanksgiving in acknowledgment of His mercies, and “pay thy vows” of national obedience and loyalty to the Most High. Or in the words of another Messianic psalm, “Praise the name of God with a song, magnify Him with thanksgiving (or ‘by confessing’ His mercies);* this shall please Jehovah better than an ox or bull that hath horns and hoofs. ”These verses contain nothing against the truth, proclaimed by Moses and the prophets, of the Divine appointment of animal sacrifices as a means of approaching God; but they preach against the perversion and misuse of that blessed institution, and the trusting to mere outward form and ordinances, without exercise of heart, which is always a sign of apostasy from the living God a feature which is, as already remarked, noticeable in Christendom of the present day as it was in Israel of old.

* This is the significance of the Hebrew word. To do also means confession (Psalms 69:30-31). The significance which God intended that Israel should see in the Levitical sacrifices was a threefold one, i.e., a moral, a symbolical, and a typical one. Symbolically that animal led forth to death by the offerer, and slain on God’s altar, was meant to teach him that this is just what he himself deserved, but that God in His infinite mercy accepted the death of the innocent victim instead. And this again with a heart rightly exercised, would have the moral effect of impressing him with the holiness of God and the awfulness of sin. Apart from these there was also the great typical truth continually set forth by the whole sacrificial and ritual system of the sufferings and substitutionary death and the various aspects of the character and redeeming work of the Messiah, who, already in the Old Testament, is the Lamb who should be led to the slaughter, andwho by His righteousness would justify the many (Isaiah 53:1-12). But when these moral and spiritual truths were lost sight of, then sacrifices became a form of mere outward ritual, and in that case were “vain oblations,” and highly displeasing to God. But in the day when Israel shall recognise Christ, and in Him learn to know God, and the true meaning of the sacrificial system, they will also know what it is, with or without divinely instituted ritual, to worship God in the spirit and truth, and by Him they will offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is the fruit of their lips by giving thanks, or “confessing ” His name (Hebrews 13:15). The address to Israel concludes with an exhortation which is at the same time a prophecy and a promise: “And call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.” This is often used by Christians with reference to themselves, and with perfect right, for in principle the exhortation and promise is true to every child of God. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” No one who trusts Him has ever called on Him in trouble without being delivered or “succoured,” as the word in our psalm also means. It is true we may not always be delivered from the trouble, but, blessed be God, there is such a thing as being delivered in it; and to receive for an answer, “My grace is sufficient for thee” (even with the thorn in thy flesh) “for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” In view of the relation of the sufferings of this present time “to the glory which shall be revealed in us” by and by, we do not always know which is the greater deliverance, whether to have God specially near and present with us in the trouble (Psalms 91:15), or to have it removed from us. But He knoweth our frame and remembers the weakness of our flesh, and graciously permits us to ask that, “if it be possible,” the cup of suffering may pass from us, though, in the power of His Spirit we too should ever be ready to add, “O, my Father, if this cup may not pass from me, Thy will be done.” And He will deliver us, if not by removing the burden, by sending an angel from heaven to strengthen us to endure it, so that we shall be able all the more to glorify Him. But, though there is this general principle in this passage applicable to the saints of God in all ages, it has primary and special significance in relation to Israel at the climax of their national history, and is in strict harmony with all the rest of this sublime prophecy which deals with the great events of the time of the end. As we have shown elsewhere, there is a culminating sorrow for Israel after a representative section is back in the land. “For then shall be the great tribulation such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matthew 24:21). “Alas! for that day is great, for there is none like it; it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it” (Jeremiah 30:7). For, in the very midst of that great day of “trouble,” or “tribulation,” or “affliction,”* the spirit of grace and of supplications shall be poured on the saved remnant, and, as we have already seen, Israel shall call on the name of their Redeemer and “be saved” not only from outward trouble, but also from their sin and unbelief.

* The word is the same as in Deuteronomy 4:30, Hosea 5:15, and other scriptures which bring us up to the same prophetic point of time when Israel’s sorrows come to a climax after their restoration to the land.

It is to that blessed event that the prophecy and promise of this verse in our psalm primarily refers. Israel on the day of his greatest trouble, shall call on the name of Jesus and be delivered, and then from that “day” on, throughout the remaining years of their separate national existence on earth, “they shall glorify Him,” or, as the word literally means, “honour” Him with that filial loving regard that a son owes to his father.* * The word is the same as in the command “Honour thy father and mother.”

Then shall the chief end in Israel’s call as God’s first-born son among the nations be realised, and “this people” which He has “formed for Himself” shall in a special manner show forth His praise.

3. In Relation to Christendom

We now come to the last section of this psalm (Psalms 50:16-23), addressed to a third party which is distinct from “His saints” (Psalms 50:5) and “Israel” (Psalms 50:7). “But to the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare My statutes, or that thou shouldest take My covenant in thy mouth?” Who are these? Not the nations who have not heard of the fame or glory of Christ, but professors in Christendom who know in a manner God’s statutes, and who unworthily take His holy covenant in their mouth (Psalms 50:16). This feature marks them off at once from the heathen, and from those who are truly God’s. The distinguishing characteristic of those who are true subjects of the new covenant of grace is this: “I will put My law in their inward parts, and will write it in their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” (Jeremiah 31:33); but these have the covenant only in their mouth.

They cry indeed, “Lord, Lord,” and are often so like the real and true that it is impossible for man to distinguish (Matthew 13:24-30), but they are the tares among the wheat; the foolish virgins, who merely imitate the wise; the goats among Christ’s true sheep, to whom He shall say in that day, “I never knew you; depart from Me, ye workers of iniquity.” They are those represented by the evil servant who says in his heart, “My Lord delayeth His coming,” and begins to smite the true menservants and maidens in Christ’s Church, and to eat and drink and be drunken; to whom the Lord will “come in a day when he looketh not for Him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.” (Luke 12:45-46). They are the same of whom the apostle warns us as especially manifesting themselves in the perilous times of the “last days,” when “men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, ostentatious, arrogant, defamers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, irreligious, without natural affection, trucebreakers, intriguers, without self-control, fierce, despisers of good men, traitors, reckless, puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof” (2 Timothy 3:1-5). The very fact of their knowing and speaking of God’s statutes is an aggravation of their guilt, and will increase their condemnation, for they are like “that servant who knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, and who shall be beaten with many stripes.” (Luke 12:47). Better far had it been for them had they been born in heathen lands, and never heard of God’s grace or covenant faithfulness, instead of hearing it and responding only with their mouth. But the address continues: “And thou hatest instruction, and castest My words behind thee.” Here are other striking features of apostate professors. They have God’s statutes in their mouth, and it may be are very careful in chanting the responses as the solemn words of the Ten Commandments are read out to them in the church on a Sunday. They know also that “instruction in righteousness” is one of the chief ends for which these statutes were given by God, yet in their heart they hate instruction; nay, in wilful rebellion they cast God’s words behind their back in contemptuous disregard. This is no poetic fancy or exaggeration, but a graphic picture of what may already be seen even in Protestant Christendom, and what is becoming more and more manifest as the time of the end draws nigh.

Alas! Christendom is guilty of the very same things which characterised the last stages of Israel’s previous apostasy which culminated in judgment. They also were disobedient and rebelled against God by “casting His laws behind their back” (Nehemiah 9:26), wherefore they were given into the hands of their enemies, and wrath came upon them to the uttermost; and this to a more terrible degree will be the lot of Christendom. The casting God’s laws behind their back is naturally followed by definite breaches of the commandments, as is brought out in the following verses: “When thou sawest a thief then thou consentest with him, and with adulterers is thy portion. Thy mouth hast thou sent out to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit. Thou sittest down deliberately to speak against thy brother, and thine own mother’s son thou woundest by slander.” Here is the direct violation of the commands, “Thou shalt not steal”; “Thou shalt not commit adultery”; “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” Atheists and sceptics may insist that man can properly fulfil his obligations to his fellow-men without the recognition of the authority of God or His Word, and may attempt to separate faith from ethics, but Scripture, and also history and experience, testify to the contrary.

Men who turn their back upon the living God, and question the Divine authority of His revelation, are sure in time to break loose against their fellows. The commandments which the wicked are here accused of breaking, are all taken from the second table, on which is inscribed man’s duty to man, and their violation is traced to the fact of their first alienating their hearts from all allegiance to God and then casting His law behind their back.

It would seem almost incredible that such flagrant wickedness could exist alongside outward profession of religion, but experience of what is actually going on in our midst, and the world’s “progress” as chronicled even in the secular press of this Protestant country, where the Bible has been an open book for centuries, and where almost everybody takes God’s covenant in their mouth, proves the literalness and accuracy of this Divine forecast. Is it not but yesterday that we read of a prominent legislator being convicted of the vilest uncleanness only a few days after he had made a speech at the laying of the foundation-stone of a chapel? And still more recently have we not read of one guilty of defrauding the public presenting a gold communion service to the Cathedral Church of London?*

* While preparing these notes my eyes are directed to an article in the current number of a widely-circulated newspaper, the usual tone of which is rationalistic and abstract Unitarian. I quote a few sentences as a testimony from a mouth piece of the world concerning its morals: “The revelations of the past few weeks might well give pause to any one who strongly believes in the progress of the world. The case (then before the Courts), followed by an article in The Times, which it is not extravagant to term the most startling journalistic article of the year, revealed a deep-set corruption in our modern society more characteristic, we would fain hope, of old Rome, in its corrupt and licentious decay, than of modern England. . . . The Emperor Augustus vainly tried by law to stem the foul flood of gross degradation, which was the real cause of old Rome’s downfall. For that Niagara London society, or a portion of it which is called ‘smart’ seems to be steering straight. . . . If we turn from that sink of corruption to the financial world, the prospect is no brighter. . . . The race for wealth which characterises the present generation is not short of appalling.” And even among those who “declare God’s statutes” as teachers and preachers, are there not some, even as in the apostle’s time, who profess the truth in hypocrisy, and who, though transforming themselves as angels of light, and with feigned words make merchandise of many, are enemies of the Cross of Christ, “whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly,” and whose real care is for “earthly things”? Such are but samples and illustrations of “the wicked” in this solemn scripture to whom the words of warning are addressed. But what shall be said of the still more apostate “Christian” nations of the Continent, where the most shameless immoralities are often found hand in hand with the most incredible superstition, and where the name “Christian” to a pious Jew is the very synonym of lawless wickedness? But we proceed to the solemn closing words of the address to this class of “the wicked”: “These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest therefore that I am become one altogether like unto thee, but I will reprove thee (or convince thee by reasoning), and set (all thy deeds and words) in order before thine eyes.” The word translated “these things” is emphatic, as if to express, “To such lengths didst thou presume in thy wickedness, and I kept silence.” Man has always misunderstood and misinterpreted the marvellous patience and long-suffering of the everlasting God. “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil” (Ecclesiastes 8:1-17). Because the thunderbolts of God’s wrath do not immediately fall, even the righteous have been sometimes tempted to say, “How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the Most High?” The wicked, not knowing that it is infinite goodness which is the cause of infinite patience on the part of the Righteous and Holy One, have blasphemously insulted His majesty by lowering the standard of His absolute holiness, as the One who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and who cannot look upon evil except to abhor it. They think, or hope, that they will find God altogether like unto themselves in their abominable complacency and compromise with sin. But God, who takes note of what man thinks, as well as of his words and deeds, warns him that he is mistaken. Far from thinking lightly of, or overlooking “the ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him,” a full and minute record of them is kept in His book, and “in that day” when the book of God is opened, they will be “set in order” (or “in regular array”) before their eyes, and oh! what a terrible indictment of professing Christendom, both collectively and individually, that record will be found to contain! “The encouragement of anti-Christianity for the sake of gain, the coalition of Christian governments with the guilds of Mammon against justice, truth, religion, humanity, and liberty; their covenants made and broken; their rivalries and envies, highway robbery and rapacity; their greed of gold and lust of supremacy; their defiance of Christian sentiment and of every appeal to virtue; their despotism, pride, mis-government, duplicity, oppression of the weak, and guilty trade with the strong, and, most of all, their shedding of innocent blood all are here recorded with a pen unerring. No injustice is forgotten, no massacre or devastated homes, no crimsoned fields strewn with upturned faces of the dead. Nor is the name of one who took part in producing such scenes, or consented to the wrongs that begat them, misspelled, or his place of residence misread. The whole apostasy of Christendom, the Horn’s loud-mouthed arrogance, and the words of the cry, ‘We will not have this Man to reign over us,’ are written in the ‘Books,’ and judgment by the records must pass on the kingdoms whose boast was their Christianity, culture, civilisation.”* * “Daniel’s Great Prophecy,” by Dr. Nathaniel West. And not only these collective and national sins of Christendom, for which every member of the evil confederacy is more or less responsible, will then rise up in judgment against them, but remember, man’s individual open and secret sins, are recorded too, and will then be “set in order before his eyes,” so that the opened book of his own conscience may attest the faithful accuracy of the terrible record kept by God, for although, as has been well observed, “sin does not purpose to remember or be remembered, it registers itself with perfect and unfailing regularity in two books the book of God, which shall be opened in that day, and on our own character, mind, and imagination. Only the blood of Christ can blot out sin from the one book, only the Spirit of God from the other.”* * Adolph Saphir in “The Lord’s Prayer.”

We come now to the two last verses which form the epilogue to this wonderful psalm, and which are especially addressed to the last two classes dealt with, namely, “Israel” and “the wicked.” “Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.” This is God’s last word to the wicked, and it is a word of warning mixed with entreaty, for the first words of this verse might be properly rendered, “Consider, I entreat you,” and shows God’s heart of yearning even for the lost. Like the God of grace that He is, He cannot let them go on the way to perdition, even after they have spurned His authority, and cast His words behind their back, without a final appeal. “Consider,” or be wise and repent, “for as I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, Oh house of Israel?” And Oh sinners of all nations, “give glory to Jehovah your God before He cause darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and while ye look for light He turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness.” Oh, be wise and consider; flee for refuge to* the only hope set before you in the blood and righteousness of Christ, before God arises terribly to shake the earth, and to tear you in pieces with “none to deliver.” But if ye will not hear, “My soul shall weep in secret places for your pride, and Mine eye shall weep sore and run down with tears,” because of the hardness of your heart, and because of your deliberate choice of darkness rather than the light, and of death rather than life.

* This is the rendering of Delitzsch and the margin of the Revised Version, and I think it is the most satisfactory. The last words to Israel, which are also of application to us, are, “Whoso offereth (or ‘sacrificeth’) praise glorifieth Me, and prepareth a way in which I may show him the salvation of God.”*

* The first part of this verse is a condensation of what He has already taught them in verses Psalms 50:14-15, where, as we have seen, Israel’s deliverance and salvation will come when they turn from mere outward and lifeless form and ceremony to worship God in the spirit and truth, and to praise Him for redemption already accomplished. But thus also with hearts and souls humbled and attuned to God, a way will be prepared for more and more of the fulness of God’s grace and salvation to be revealed to them. In connection with the building of Solomon’s Temple we read: “It came to pass, as the trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord; and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music, and praised the Lord, saying, For He is good; for His mercy endureth for ever: that then the house was filled with a cloud, even the house of the Lord; so that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud: for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of God” (2 Chronicles 5:13-14). So also by and by, after Christ’s manifestation to them, when Israel with one heart and voice lift up their souls in praise and adoration to Jehovah, the God of their fathers, for all His wonderful dealings with them, and especially for His unspeakable gift of His only-begotten Son, and the individual and national blessings purchased by His precious blood, God’s glory will appear in their midst and the fulness and riches of His salvation be manifested to them.