1 Samuel 25:29 Yet a man is risen to pursue you, and to seek your soul… The imagery, of course, is Oriental. It is very true that the life of man is bounded up with the Divine; "bound up in the bundle of life," how expressive it is — tied to Him. The soul and life of man is in the bundle with the life of God. 1. This is the beginning of human history. There is but one life in the world, and that life pours itself out and becomes the life of man. And man's life is like the life of God, and it is, in its measure, the life of God. This life is very realistically described as being breathed out from the lips of the Almighty into the muscles of man. 2. Now this is something that gives us not only a very exalted idea of God, but a very exalted idea of man. I do not know of anything that needs to be more impressed upon us today than the dignity of human nature — let me change the word — the divinity of human nature. Nothing can exalt a man above the greatness of his nature, the greatness that is his because his life is a Divine life, his life is in the bundle of life with God. Let us remember this, that whatever happens, we are made of God's will, that God wanted us to be made, that He wanted us to be here. There is something we can do that nobody else could do, and that God's wealth in the world is the wealth of men and women who can meet Him, answering love with love, answering with wisdom and confidence and obedience. 3. It is very easy to see what comes out of this. There comes out of it on the one side God's great delight in us. "The Lord's portion is His people." As long as God is rich, we are rich, as long as God is happy we can be happy if we want to be. As long as God is wise we are wise if we want to be. We are in the bundle with Him. You are bound up in the bundle of life, whatever happens to you happens to Him, and if you choose to have it so, whatever happens to Him, according to the measure of your day, will happen to you. And God likes this trust, this confidence. The more we trust Him the more He is delighted in us. God depends upon us. We are in the bundle of life, and when we drop out of the bundle of life and leave God alone — well, did you ever have a child go out of your house and leave you? That is a little bit of the feeling that God has when we get out of the bundle of life, when we seek after pleasures which he has forbidden, when there is anything in our business that He does not approve. It is so ordained that while we are in the bundle of life with God we are free perfectly. We are not compelled to be there. You can get out of the bundle of life any time you want to. We find a great deal going on in the world that does not seem to be consistent with the bundle of God. How can there be all this misery if London is in the bundle with God? But all London is not in the bundle with God. It ought to be, it can be, but it has slipped away. Yet it is pretty plain that a good many of us have got outside the bundle of God. How does God regard it? How do you regard it? I would like to ask what would happen to God if you get out of the bundle. What would happen if your boy, whom you love a hundred times more than you love Him, got out of your bundle? From the first of Genesis we find how man slipped out of God's bundle. One day they came to Christ and found fault with Him because they said He ate and drank with publicans and sinners, and He turned and said, "You do just the same." "Oh, no," they said, "we never do such a thing." "Do you not? You have a hundred sheep and lose one — what do you do?" "I go after it to bring it back." "Why do you do that? Why do you not send someone else after it? Because it is my sheep." "Precisely. That publican, he is not 'a' publican; he is 'My' publican, 'My' sinner, 'My' boy." God is trying to get you back into the bundle. Every man who is unhappy, every man who does not love Christ and confess Him has dropped out of the bundle. Christ is trying to get him back into the bundle. (A. Mckenzie, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Yet a man is risen to pursue thee, and to seek thy soul: but the soul of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of life with the LORD thy God; and the souls of thine enemies, them shall he sling out, as out of the middle of a sling. |
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