The blessing of God.
The psalm is in keeping with that prevalent piety which led the devout Israelite to trace God's hand in everything, and ascribe both good and evil, both joy and sorrow, to his directing power.
I. UNBLESSED LABOR.
1. We can do nothing at all without the Divine co-operation. We constantly depend on the presence of his material, on the action of his laws, on the activity of the forces he keeps in play. We all recognize this in agriculture; that it is vain for the husbandman to sow his seed, unless God sends his rain and wind and sunshine, etc. It is also true of our other occupations. The sailor and the builder depend on the constancy and regularity of Divine laws and forces. We are always assuming their existence, though we may think nothing of their Author.
2. We can effect nothing without the Divine permission. If God means that the guilty city shall fall, the watchman will wake and the soldier will fight in vain. If God intends to humble a man whose pride needs to be brought down, his utmost exertions in his trade or in his profession will not bring success. Many a man has found, as he at first thought to his cost, but as he afterwards knew to his great advantage, that when God's wise and faithful providence is against his prosperity, he wakes early and works hard in vain. But how much more blessed is he in a corrective adversity, than he would be in a hardening prosperity! We do well to ask that God's blessing may wait upon and crown all our activities; we do well, also, to remember that it may happen that, for our own sake, God will not grant us our desire in the form of temporal success.
3. We find no blessedness in a prosperity which is not hallowed by devotion. It is a vain thing for a man to strive hard and to attain the immediate object of his pursuit, if he is not making his life a life of holy service. Even if the bread he eats is not "bread of sorrows" in the sense that it is scanty, yet it will be such in the sense that it yields no abiding joy; for it is abundantly clear that a life of even prosperous labor, apart from the service and without the friendship of God, selfish and earthbound, is a life of dissatisfaction and practical defeat. The springs of pure and lasting joy do not rise on that lower ground.
II. NEEDLESS ANXIETY. "It is vain that ye rise up early," etc.; "for he giveth to his beloved in sleep and without labor, 'so,' i.e. just as, even as to those who vainly harass themselves with labor and think not of him" ('Speaker's Commentary'). To those who serve God and are beloved of him he will grant sufficiency, though they do not turn labor into hard toil, but take the rest they need. It is not godless struggle, but reverent activity, that attains the goal and receives the prize of happy life. The two elements of success are
III. THE FULNESS AND OVERFLOW OF DIVINE BLESSING. "So he giveth to his beloved in sleep."
1. What great things God does for our bodily well-being in sleep! Every night he lays his restoring hand upon us, refreshes us, renews our muscular and mental powers, gives back to us the vitality and strength which had been exhausted. Every morning we owe to him a "new song" of praise.
2. What great things God does for us in the outside world during our unconsciousness! Our Lord reminds us that, while we are otherwise occupied, "night and day," the seed we have sown springs and grows, we "know not how." Many things God does for us when we are as unconscious of his action as if we were "in sleep." It is an unseen hand, working with such silence that no ear hears the sound, that is carrying on those wonderful operations by which he "satisfies the wants of every living thing."
3. What great things he does for us in the human world in which we take no part! His hand was working and overruling in all the toil and strife of the nations of the earth, leading the world up to, and making it ready for, the great advent of the Redeemer. Unknown to us, while we are practically "in sleep," he is directing all our strife and all our labor to a beneficent result.
4. We are hoping that God will make our past life effective for good in many hearts and through many generations when we "fall on sleep." When our body rests in the grave, the influences he enabled us to exert in life will, under his gracious guidance, be telling and bearing fruit. To those who love and serve him now he will give the blessing of the workman whose labor is producing and reproducing long after he has left the field.
IV. THE BLESSING OF PARENTAGE. (See next psalm.)
HOMILIES BY S. CONWAY