Spring as the grass. In Eastern countries, after a time of drought, the grass responds with marvellous suddenness to the refreshing rains. But the grass which grows so swiftly is as swiftly cut down by the blazing sunshine or the scorching wind. The sudden success of the ungodly was a surprise and distress to God's people, who looked on temporal success as a special sign of Divine approval. It seemed to them as if, after all, God was practically on the side of the wicked. In drearier moments they might even think that God made fair promises to the good, but gave the actual blessings to the ungodly. The relief which the saints of olden time found for this their distress is not just the relief which we should provide now. They, like Asaph, went into the sanctuary of God, and there they came to understand the end of the wicked. Really, their high places were slippery places; and in God's time they were "cast into destruction." There is a certain measure of comfort in the thought that things gained by unrighteousness are insecure. But it is a higher standpoint that enables us to see that no success is worth having that has no righteousness at the heart of it. God is the secret of all stability, and God is not in a thing, unless goodness is the characteristic of the thing. Goodness always tends to permanency. Bible history is full of illustrations of the instability of all success attained by the ungodly. If a man's gains are secure for his own life, they are squandered by his sons. In the north of England the uncertainty of sudden prosperity is enshrined in a popular saying, "The first generation buys the carriage; the second generation rides in the carnage; the third generation pawns the carriage." See the cases of Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Haman, Herod; and note also our Lord's parable of the "rich fool."
I. THE SUCCESS OF THE WICKED IS UNSTABLE IN THE NATURE OF THINGS.
1. They who overreach are always in danger of being overreached.
2. The wicked are always making enemies, who are quick to avenge themselves, if opportunity offers.
3. The wicked make mistakes which dissipate all their gains.
II. THE SUCCESS OF THE WICKED IS UNSTABLE BECAUSE, SOONER OR LATER, GOD IS SURE TO DEAL WITH IT. He tests foundations; if they are not found righteous, the grandest houses of attainment will surely fall. - R.T.
But Thou, Lord, art most high for evermore.
Mr. G. F. Watts, the spiritual seer amongst our modern masters of art, was asked by an enterprising editor to quote the motto which had been most influential in his artistic life. He replied, "I have invented a motto for myself, 'The Utmost for the Highest.'" There is a matchless inspiration for life, as for art, in Mr. Watts' characteristic message. The Divine election of youth is vision, and its grace is the passion for the highest. Longfellow recognizes it when he makes the typical climber a youth:
" A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner, with the strange device, Excelsior!"And one of the latest additions to the roll of climbers of the Matterhorn, the Alpine peak last to be conquered because most inaccessible, is a young French girl of seventeen, who, by a happy coincidence, rejoices in the name Felicite. it is the youngest of the modern nations to enter the concert of great world powers whose citizens urge their growing race to "hitch their wagon to a star." Economists have discussed of late the interesting phenomenon in business life that the most successful men are mostly young. The spectacle of millionaires under forty has perplexed them. The secret probably comes nearest to revealing itself in the suggestion that it is the ambition of youth for the highest, and the willingness, unfettered by maxims of prudence, to venture everything in its attainment that explains their success. Emerson penetrates the arcana of the same mystery with his saying, "The hero is one who takes risks." The excelsior spirit is by nature a prerogative of the young. They are in a peculiar sense "children of the highest." But the earliest of the grave perils that await the young is the danger and discouragement of disillusionment; the peril of seeing the highest and becoming content with less than the highest — of settling into inglorious ease with the best undone and the utmost untried. Less than the utmost is sacrilege in the sanctuary of the highest. "She hath done what she could" is the test of the service of duty as well as of the sacrifice of love. To do our best is the proof of talent in the ethical sphere, for the pursuit of the highest, and not its attainment alone, is the hallowing of work. This is the pursuit that Michael Angelo reverently expounds: "Nothing makes the soul so pure, so religious, as the endeavour to create something perfect; for God is perfection, and whosoever strives for it strives for something that is godlike." It is the strife for the best that matures and enriches character, whether the joy of triumph is added or withheld. It is not the song alone, but the spirit of the singer, that perfects the utmost for the highest. It is said of Jenny Lind that in conversation one day with Mr. John Addington Symonds, she said of her life-work, "I sing to God." There is a memorial brass in the chapel of Balliol College, Oxford, to the late Mr. Lewis Nettleship, who a few years ago was lost in an ascent of Mont Blanc, with an inscription that has been to many an abiding inspiration: "He loved great things and thought little of himself; desiring neither fame nor influence, he won the devotion of men, and was a power in their lives; and, seeking no disciples, he taught to many the greatness of the world and of man's mind." Life's greatness of privilege and of responsibility meets and mingles in the inscrutable sense that our "utmost" lives and moves in others. And lest we should imagine that the utmost for the highest is merely an artistic euphemism for the eager strife for fame and prestige, we need day by day to guard any noble ambition within us from depreciating into the pursuit of the paltry boons of self-seeking by holding it back from
"The longing for ignoble things,
The strife for triumph more than truth."To do this successfully we must watch also lest
"We wind ourselves too high
For mortal man below the sky."To remember the sanctity of common life, and that obedience to simple dues simply fulfilled are ladders on which we climb to our highest things, will be to most of us the way of enduring conquest over meaner modes of the soul. We cannot serve the lower within us and reach the higher beyond us. Weighted with self, the wings of the strongest weary. There is no gain except by loss. Perhaps a beautiful converse of Mr. Watts' motto might be found in Michael Angelo's suggestive saying, "As the marble wastes, the image grows." Waste and growth, how they correlate themselves in all progress towards the highest; their very correspondence, indeed, is life's law of progress.
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Behold, Death, Enemies, Evil, Evildoers, Flight, Haters, Iniquity, O, Perish, Scattered, Separate, Surely, Themselves, WorkersOutline
1. The prophet exhorts to praise God4. For his great works6. For his judgments on the wicked10. And for his goodness to the godly.Dictionary of Bible Themes
Psalm 92:1-8 1090 God, majesty of
Library
December 3. Thy Thoughts are Very Deep (Ps. Xcii. 5).
Thy thoughts are very deep (Ps. xcii. 5). When a Roman soldier was told by his guide that if he insisted on taking a certain journey it would probably be fatal he answered, "It is necessary for me to go, it is not necessary for me to live." That was depth. When we are convicted like that we shall come to something. The shallow nature lives in its impulses, its impressions, its intuitions, its instincts, and very largely in its surroundings. The profound character looks beyond all these and moves …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth God Alone the Salvation of his People
Look on yon rocks and wonder at their antiquity, for from their summits a thousand ages look down upon us. When this gigantic city was as yet unfounded they were grey with age; when our humanity had not yet breathed the air, tis said that these were ancient things; they are the children of departed ages. With awe we look upon these aged rocks, for they are among nature's first-born. You discover, embedded in their bowels, the remnants of unknown worlds, of which, the wise may guess, but which, nevertheless, …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 2: 1856
The Majesty of God. --Ps. Xcii.
The Majesty of God.--Ps. xcii. The Lord is King:--upon His throne, He sits in garments glorious: Or girds for war His armour on, In every field victorious: The world came forth at his command; Built on His word its pillars stand; They never can be shaken. The Lord was King ere time began, His reign is everlasting: When high the floods in tumult ran, Their foam to heaven up-casting, He made the raging waves His path; The sea is mighty in its wrath, But God on high is mightier. Thy testimonies, …
James Montgomery—Sacred Poems and Hymns
Dialogue i. --The Immutable.
Orthodoxos and Eranistes. Orth.--Better were it for us to agree and abide by the apostolic doctrine in its purity. But since, I know not how, you have broken the harmony, and are now offering us new doctrines, let us, if you please, with no kind of quarrel, investigate the truth. Eran.--We need no investigation, for we exactly hold the truth. Orth.--This is what every heretic supposes. Aye, even Jews and Pagans reckon that they are defending the doctrines of the truth; and so also do not only the …
Theodoret—The Ecclesiastical History of Theodoret
Sweet is the Work, My God, My King
[167]Canonbury: Robert Schumann, 1839 Arr. Psalm 92 Isaac Watts, 1719 Sweet is the work, my God, my King, To praise thy Name, give thanks and sing; To show thy love by morning light, And talk of all thy truth at night. Sweet is the day of sacred rest; No mortal cares shall seize my breast; O may my heart in tune be found, Like David's harp of solemn sound. My heart shall triumph in my Lord, And bless his works, and bless his word; Thy works of grace, how bright they shine! How deep thy counsels, …
Various—The Hymnal of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA
Reprobation.
In discussing this subject I shall endeavor to show, I. What the true doctrine of reprobation is not. 1. It is not that the ultimate end of God in the creation of any was their damnation. Neither reason nor revelation confirms, but both contradict the assumption, that God has created or can create any being for the purpose of rendering him miserable as an ultimate end. God is love, or he is benevolent, and cannot therefore will the misery of any being as an ultimate end, or for its own sake. It is …
Charles Grandison Finney—Systematic Theology
Period ii. The Church from the Permanent Division of the Empire Until the Collapse of the Western Empire and the First Schism Between the East and the West, or Until About A. D. 500
In the second period of the history of the Church under the Christian Empire, the Church, although existing in two divisions of the Empire and experiencing very different political fortunes, may still be regarded as forming a whole. The theological controversies distracting the Church, although different in the two halves of the Graeco-Roman world, were felt to some extent in both divisions of the Empire and not merely in the one in which they were principally fought out; and in the condemnation …
Joseph Cullen Ayer Jr., Ph.D.—A Source Book for Ancient Church History
Man's Chief End
Q-I: WHAT IS THE CHIEF END OF MAN? A: Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever. Here are two ends of life specified. 1: The glorifying of God. 2: The enjoying of God. I. The glorifying of God, I Pet 4:4: That God in all things may be glorified.' The glory of God is a silver thread which must run through all our actions. I Cor 10:01. Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.' Everything works to some end in things natural and artificial; …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity
The Knowledge of God Conspicuous in the Creation, and Continual Government of the World.
1. The invisible and incomprehensible essence of God, to a certain extent, made visible in his works. 2. This declared by the first class of works--viz. the admirable motions of the heavens and the earth, the symmetry of the human body, and the connection of its parts; in short, the various objects which are presented to every eye. 3. This more especially manifested in the structure of the human body. 4. The shameful ingratitude of disregarding God, who, in such a variety of ways, is manifested within …
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion
The Resemblance Between the Old Testament and the New.
1. Introduction, showing the necessity of proving the similarity of both dispensations in opposition to Servetus and the Anabaptists. 2. This similarity in general. Both covenants truly one, though differently administered. Three things in which they entirely agree. 3. First general similarity, or agreement--viz. that the Old Testament, equally with the New, extended its promises beyond the present life, and held out a sure hope of immortality. Reason for this resemblance. Objection answered. 4. …
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion
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
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