Man is God's temple.
"Judah became his sanctuary." Though neither the author nor the occasion of this psalm can be definitely known, it clearly belongs to the time of the returned exiles, when the remaking of the nation was the matter most prominent in the interests of the people. It was quite a familiar thing to compare the remaking of the nation with the first making of it; and to get the comforting assurance that God was presiding over the remaking, by realizing, in as forcible a manner as possible, how he had presided over the making. In the making there had indeed been very remarkable, truly miraculous, outward and visible signs of the Divine presence—the dividing of the Red Sea at the beginning, the quaking mountains in the earlier part, the smitten rock and flowing water in the latter part, the divided Jordan at the end. After these signs had fixed their impressions, the people could act as a nation.
I. GOD'S PRESENCE AND POWER WERE THE GLORIES OF THE NATION FROM THE FIRST. This truth was impressed by the marvels which were wrought in connection with their deliverance from Egypt. The plagues were indeed judgments; but they were, even more truly, teachings, sanctifying impressions made upon the people of Israel. They taught them God, and helped them to realize what God with them would involve. The truth was impressed by such signs as dividing the sea; but this only illustrated God's presence as the Ruler, Rewarder, and Judge of the people. From all material signs of the Divine relations, we should rise to discern the far more important moral signs. God himself moulding the national life; God himself directly ruling the moral and religious life of the nation;—these are the marvels of grace and wisdom which the Jews never tired of contemplating.
II. GOD'S PRESENCE AND POWER WERE THE GLORIES OF THE RESTORED NATION. But what a moral advance had been made when men could discern God's working in ordinary providences, and no longer needed miracles of astonishment! To the restored exiles common providences became signs of direct working on their behalf. And they were right in so thinking. God was making things work together to work out the fulfillment of his promise.
III. GOD'S PRESENCE AND POWER ARE THE GLORIES OF THE CHURCH TO-DAY. But we have risen above the reach of the restored exiles. To us God is present and working—not in miraculous act, not specially even in providential orderings, but in the spiritual indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Then we may be reminded that there are conditions of this abiding in us, and that jealousy of our supreme possession is our fitting attitude of mind and feeling.—R.T.
Nature made to serve God's purposes.
These verses are poetical representations of three actual facts which are recorded in the history of God's people. We may see facts in their bare, bald nakedness, or we may see them with the color on them which poetical genius can put. It may be disputed whether bald history or suggestive poetry is really the truer to nature, just as it may be disputed whether the realistic or the idealistic picture is the truer to life. If nature is to suggest thoughts to men, then men only see Nature aright when they know what she says as well as what she is. The poet tells us what Nature says. In these verses we are made to understand that the sea felt God working in it, and yielded to his touch. Jordan felt God working in it, and stopped its flowing. Sinai felt God working in it, and responded with a trembling of reverence and holy joy. The response of Nature is a lesson for man. God would work in his higher powers and his higher spheres; and his response should be more prompt than the hurrying waves, more complete than the check of the river's flowing, and more joyous than the trembling and dances of the divinely honored hills. The psalmist was the moral teacher of his times, and had a definite purpose before him in thus recalling the most impressive events of the national history. His point may be thus briefly stated: Nature does respond to God and serve his purposes,—and man should.
I. NATURE DOES RESPOND TO GOD AND SERVE HIS PURPOSES. This may be illustrated from the usual and the unusual. Pagans peopled the woods and streams and hills with fairies; Wordsworth poetically conceived of Nature as a living being. Religion finds God working out his thought everywhere, and everything responsive to his use. Nature is not God; it is distinct from him. But it is so kin with him that, unhindered, his thought finds expression in it. And so responsive is Nature to God, that it readily yields itself to the unusual, to the miraculous, when these are necessary to God's purposes. Seas will part, rivers will stop, mountains will tremble, in response to him. "The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof."
II. MAN SHOULD RESPOND TO GOD AND SERVE HIS PURPOSES. He should, because he is a part of Nature, and ought to be in harmony with her. But man is a higher being than any thing or being in Nature—a being with a will, a being made in God's image. It is his willing response, it is his loving and obedient outworking of the Divine purposes, that God asks of restored exiles and of us.—R.T.