1 Samuel 2:2 There is none holy as the LORD: for there is none beside you: neither is there any rock like our God.… I. GOD IS HERE DESCRIBED AS A ROCK. God frequently compares himself to a rock, and that for his people's encouragement. 1. He is compared to a rock, because, as a shelter, defence, refuge, every perfection of His nature is as their bulwark round about His people. 2. He is likewise spoken of as a rock, because in ancient days also they oftentimes made rocks their habitation. There are the inhabitants of the rocks (Jeremiah 48:28). "I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge, and my fortress: my God, in Him will I trust." They dwell in His love and in his attributes, and find them the place of abode and the place of happiness too. 3. But He also bears the name of a rock because He is the shade of His people. Thus we read in the fifth verse of the one hundred and twenty-first Psalm, "The Lord is thy keeper; the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand." So are God's perfections the shade of His people, which preserveth them from the searching heat; and they are just as grateful to their souls. II. IN WHAT PECULIAR SENSE IS IT, THAT GOD STANDS RELATED TO HIS PEOPLE AS THEIR ROCK, AS THEY PASS THROUGH THIS POOR DESERT WORLD. 1. I might first of all say, it is because of His everlasting love towards them, in that He has made Himself to be their rock — in that He has given Himself to be their portion — in that He has made Himself over them to be their God, even unto death. 2. And as the Spirit of God leadeth the soul onwards, then it begins to see the great mystery of justice in salvation. Thus we see in what point of view it is that the Lord God Almighty is the rock of His people, and how He becomes so in their passage through this poor vale of tears. First of all, by the sovereign gift of Him. self, according to His everlasting love, and then by the effectual power of the Holy Spirit in drawing poor souls out of the world's population through His beloved One, that they may take rest in Himself. III. THERE IS NO ROCK LIKE OUR GOD, "neither is there any rock like our God." A Socinian's God cannot be compared to our God — a God that forgives from mere pity — A God that suffers His own law to be trampled on, and His own justice to be set at nought, in order to make way for the display of His own mercy — that God cannot be compared to our God. The man who talks about the gospel, and liven in sin, who talks of being happy in God, and mistakes accurate notions for conversion of heart, and a well-balanced creed for the love of Christ to the soul, that man's God cannot be compared to our God; for our God is holy. The self-righteous Pharisee in looking to his God, cannot think that he can be compared to our God. The God that can take his poor formal services — the very idea at once not only shows his folly, but exhibits the tow character of the God he worships. Oh, there is no rock like our God! 1. There is no rock so secure as is this rock. Oh, how blessed is that security which does not admit of one crevice, of one opening for the storm to enter! 2. Oh, the breadth of this blessed rock! Is there one case now so bad, is there one circumstance in itself so desperate, that we cannot say there is in that rock a breadth for all comers? 3. And oh, who shall say what there is inside this rock? The God of our salvation is a satisfying portion. (J. H. Evans.) Parallel Verses KJV: There is none holy as the LORD: for there is none beside thee: neither is there any rock like our God. |
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