The day is Yours, and also the night; You established the moon and the sun. Sermons
It is said that there were five signs in the first temple which the second had not - the ark of the covenant, the fire from heaven, the Shechinah, the Urim and Thummim, and the spirit of prophecy. So in the Church of Christ there are signs which are very blessed for us to see. I. SIGNS OF WHAT? it will be asked. Of the presence, the power, the love of the Lord in our midst. This was what the signs in the first temple told of. II. WHAT ARE THESE SIGNS? 1. The attention of men around. 2. The work of conversion going on. 3. Witness of believers. 4. Their love to one another and to their fellow men, because of their love to God. 5. Their peace and joy in God. III. THE DIFFERENT RELATIONS BETWEEN THE SEEING AND THESE SIGNS. 1. There tray be neither. It is better there should be no fancied seeing, if the reality be not there. For: 2. There may be the seeing, and not the signs. 3. There may be the signs, and yet not the seeing. 4. There may be both. This is most blessed of all. - S.C. The day is Thine, the night also is Thine. I. GOD'S ORDINANCES. 1. Day is a Divine institution, and is strongly characterized by that wisdom and goodness which are over all God's works. In its principal feature — light — light over all, filling the heavens, flushing the earth, mantling over hill and valley, meadow and plain, kindling the great face of the ocean into a mirror, till it reflects on its bosom all that is above it, and repeats in shadow all that is upon it — it may even be regarded as the similitude of God, for "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all." 2. But if the day is God's institution, so also is the night, which is not less closely written over with the characters of His wisdom and goodness. If day unto day uttereth speech, night unto night showeth knowledge. They are parts and counterparts of each other. The day makes us ready to welcome the night, and the night furnishes us with a standard by which to measure and estimate the splendours of the day. II. GOD'S SERVANTS. Neither of these two servants of God ever rests. There is always day somewhere, and there is always night somewhere. Continually the night is laying down one half the world to repose, and continually the day is leading forth the other half of the world to work. The night receives the world weary from the hands of the day, and puts it to rest; and the day receives the world refreshed from the hands of the night, and lights it to action. And all the time also they are otherwise doing for man what man cannot do for himself. They are growing his food. They are weaving his raiment. They are enriching his dwelling-place with beauty and verdure. And in all this multiform kindness to us they are serving God, fulfilling His pleasure, doing what He meant them to do, when He set them in the heavens to be for signs and for seasons, for days and for years. So that, in point of fact, this manifold service of nature is just God's kindness to us through the ministry of His two great servants, the day and the night. III. GOD'S ABSOLUTE POSSESSION. That is to say, we are not at liberty to do what we choose with them. For the manner in which we deal, with the possibilities of good which they contain, we are strictly and constantly under law to God. In ministering to us as He has ordained, they are serving Him. But in the use we make of them we must serve Him too. What they do unconsciously we must do consciously, in the exercise of those higher faculties which render us capable of a higher service. God has always been jealous of the treatment His servants have received at the hands of those whom He has appointed them to serve. "Touch not Mine anointed, nor do My prophets any harm." And even these unconscious and inanimate servants, the Day and the Night, have a voice in His ears which He does not disregard, calling for judgment on those who treat them ill, who turn them to purposes of selfishness and sin; who degrade them to be the ministers of unworthy pleasures, or even slothful ease, and who do not rather send them back to their Proprietor laden with the fruits of righteousness unto life everlasting. () We have lost that immediate vision which is the peculiar privilege and gift of those religious Easterns, who see God in the undeviating realities of experience. The Jew sees God with the seeing of the eye, sees Him in the mighty activities of nature, sees Him in the concrete facts of experience. God is present to him there, attesting His validity, disclosed as the supreme and only actuality. In the roar of the storm, in the rush of the rain, in the splendour of the sun, in the obedience of the moon, in the steady fixities of rock and tree and cliff, he and his God come face to face and commune together. There is the dominion where his God never fails him. Tossed and afflicted as he may be in his spiritual experiences, he still holds fast to this abiding consolation. Anyhow "the day is Thine, the night also is Thine: Thou hast prepared the light and the sun." We have to learn to see with his eyes. That is what we mean by taking the Bible as our authority in revelation. And then we have one other lesson to learn from him. Not only did he find absolute certainty of evidence of God in nature, but he was also prepared to be loyal to a revelation which for long dark periods may fail to accord him that clear security of God's close presence, that regularity of order and seemliness in God's workmanship which he found so constant in the natural world, It is his revelation which is disturbed by such strange perplexities. It is his special privileges, sealed to him by God, which is open to such terrible insecurities. It is the holy Church which seems to be emptied of God, deserted, forgotten, left to the scorn of adversaries who make havoc of its fair delights. Outside there the great order of nature proclaims aloud God's mighty name, "The day is thine; the night is thine." They never languish or grow troubled. But inside the Church he cannot understand what God is about; and yet it is His congregation. It is His inheritance. Nothing shakes the Jew's loyal belief in the peculiar favours which were shown to him. He never dreams of arguing, "If it is a revelation it is bound to be clear, decided, protected against all possible doubts and uncertainties. God would never give a revelation and then leave it open to perplexities." The Jew answers, "That is just what God has done. It is a revelation which He gives. We are His flock, His inheritance, His Church. That is certain, and yet look at our actual situation, how we are troubled, and tossed, and agonized, not knowing which way to turn. Nature is calm, but we are disturbed. And yet we will not fail the word given us, for all that. We are the Divine society, the holy congregation, even though God seems absent from us so long." And we must possess ourselves of a like loyalty to his. The extraordinary assumption that a revelation, if it be a revelation, must be free from difficulties, must be clear-cut, logical, complete, must leave no problem unsolved, must secure itself against every possible misunderstanding, is flatly contradicted by everything that we know of the only revelation of which we have any experience at all. It is the mark of heresy — it was always the mark in old years — to aim at logical completeness, at clear-cut consistency. Surely we will take courage from this Israelite in our psalm. We may desire, as he did, that God's revelation in Jesus Christ might work with the even, smooth, unbroken regularity of natural law. We may painfully contrast, as he did, the comfortable certainty of the one with the perplexity of the other. But God will not have it so. And we know too little of the end He has in view to criticize or complain. Therefore, as the Jew of old, so we at all costs will surrender ourselves to the truth as it is in Christ Jesus, however strange its adverse fortunes, however belated its victory. () The night also is Thine Regard night —I. AS A DIVISION OF TIME. And as such it is — 1. The first. 2. Natural. 3. Universal. 4. Beneficent. "The dews of the night heal the wounds of the day." II. AS THE PRODUCT AND POSSESSION OF GOD. Of storm as well as of calm, of night as well as of day. God is at once the Source and Sovereign. Therefore — III. LEARN. 1. A lesson for the regulation of conduct. Take care to wisely and rightly use the night time. 2. A message for the consolation of human sorrows. For our nights of pain and sorrow are ordained, relieved and terminated by God. ()
People Asaph, PsalmistPlaces JerusalemTopics Established, Giver, Hast, Luminaries, Luminary, Moon, Prepared, YoursOutline 1. The prophet complains of the desolation of the sanctuary
10. He moves God to help in consideration of his power
18. Of his reproachful enemies, or his children and of his covenant.
Dictionary of Bible Themes Psalm 74:16 4212 astronomy
4251 moon
4284 sun
4810 darkness, natural
4834 light, natural
4921 day
4937 fate, fatalism
4957 night Psalm 74:1-23 6115 blame Psalm 74:10-18 8817 ridicule, objects of Psalm 74:12-17 8724 doubt, dealing with Psalm 74:16-17 1347 covenant, with Noah
4970 seasons, of year
8438 giving, of time Library The Meaning
Of the Red Dragon with Seven Heads fighting with Michael about the new-born Child. The first vision of the little book, of which we treated in the eleventh chapter, ran through the whole Apocalyptical course, from the beginning to the end, and that, as we elsewhere observed, to point out its connexion with the seals and trumpets. Now to that vision the remaining prophecies of the same interval, and of the affairs of the Church are to be accommodated, in order to complete the system of the little …
Joseph Mede—A Key to the ApocalypseThe Prophet of the Highest.
(LUKE I.) "Ye hermits blest, ye holy maids, The nearest heaven on earth, Who talk with God in shadowy glades, Free from rude care and mirth; To whom some viewless Teacher brings The secret love of rural things, The moral of each fleeting cloud and gale, The whispers from above, that haunt the twilight vale." KEBLE. Formative Influences--A Historical Parallel--The Burning of the Vanities--"Sent from God" "Thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Most High"--thus Zacharias addressed his infant …
F. B. Meyer—John the Baptist How those are to be Admonished who Abstain not from the Sins which they Bewail, and those Who, Abstaining from Them, Bewail them Not.
(Admonition 31.) Differently to be admonished are those who lament their transgressions, and yet forsake them not, and those who forsake them, and yet lament them not. For those who lament their transgressions and yet forsake them not are to be admonished to learn to consider anxiously that they cleanse themselves in vain by their weeping, if they wickedly defile themselves in their living, seeing that the end for which they wash themselves in tears is that, when clean, they may return to filth. …
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great The Wisdom of God
The next attribute is God's wisdom, which is one of the brightest beams of the Godhead. He is wise in heart.' Job 9:9. The heart is the seat of wisdom. Cor in Hebraeo sumitur pro judicio. Pineda. Among the Hebrews, the heart is put for wisdom.' Let men of understanding tell me:' Job 34:44: in the Hebrew, Let men of heart tell me.' God is wise in heart, that is, he is most wise. God only is wise; he solely and wholly possesses all wisdom; therefore he is called, the only wise God.' I Tim 1:17. All …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity Balaam's Prophecy. (Numb. xxiv. 17-19. )
Carried by the Spirit into the far distant future, Balaam sees here how a star goeth out of Jacob and a sceptre riseth out of Israel, and how this sceptre smiteth Moab, by whose enmity the Seer had been brought from a distant region for the destruction of Israel. And not Moab only shall be smitten, but its southern neighbour, Edom, too shall be subdued, whose hatred against Israel had already been prefigured in its ancestor, and had now begun to display Itself; and In general, all the enemies of …
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament Synagogues: their Origin, Structure and Outward Arrangements
It was a beautiful saying of Rabbi Jochanan (Jer. Ber. v. 1), that he who prays in his house surrounds and fortifies it, so to speak, with a wall of iron. Nevertheless, it seems immediately contradicted by what follows. For it is explained that this only holds good where a man is alone, but that where there is a community prayer should be offered in the synagogue. We can readily understand how, after the destruction of the Temple, and the cessation of its symbolical worship, the excessive value attached …
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life Jesus Makes a Preaching Tour through Galilee.
^A Matt. IV. 23-25; ^B Mark I. 35-39; ^C Luke IV. 42-44. ^b 35 And in the morning, a great while before day, he rose up went out [i. e., from the house of Simon Peter], and departed into a desert place, and there prayed. [Though Palestine was densely populated, its people were all gathered into towns, so that it was usually easy to find solitude outside the city limits. A ravine near Capernaum, called the Vale of Doves, would afford such solitude. Jesus taught (Matt. vi. 6) and practiced solitary …
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel The Sun Rising Upon a Dark World
The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon then hath the light shined. C ontrasts are suited to illustrate and strengthen the impression of each other. The happiness of those, who by faith in MESSIAH, are brought into a state of peace, liberty, and comfort, is greatly enhanced and heightened by the consideration of that previous state of misery in which they once lived, and of the greater misery to which they were justly exposed. …
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 1 The Justice of God
The next attribute is God's justice. All God's attributes are identical, and are the same with his essence. Though he has several attributes whereby he is made known to us, yet he has but one essence. A cedar tree may have several branches, yet it is but one cedar. So there are several attributes of God whereby we conceive of him, but only one entire essence. Well, then, concerning God's justice. Deut 32:4. Just and right is he.' Job 37:23. Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out: he is excellent …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity Psalms
The piety of the Old Testament Church is reflected with more clearness and variety in the Psalter than in any other book of the Old Testament. It constitutes the response of the Church to the divine demands of prophecy, and, in a less degree, of law; or, rather, it expresses those emotions and aspirations of the universal heart which lie deeper than any formal demand. It is the speech of the soul face to face with God. Its words are as simple and unaffected as human words can be, for it is the genius …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament Links Psalm 74:16 NIV
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