Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all
generations. We must consider the whole psalm as
written for the tribes in the desert, and then we shall see the primary meaning
of each verse. Moses, in effect, says—wanderers though we be in the howling
wilderness, yet we find a home in thee, even as our forefathers did when they
came out of Ur and dwelt in tents among the Canaanites. To the saints the Lord
Jehovah, the self-existent God, stands instead of mansion: he shelters,
comforts, protects, preserves, and cherishes all his own. It is wise to draw
from the Lord’s eternal condescensions reasons for expecting present and future
mercies, as the psalmist did in the next psalm wherein he describes the safety
of those who dwell in God.
2. Before the mountains were brought forth. Mountains to him are young things whose birth was but
yesterday. Or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world. Earth was
born but the other day, and her solid land was delivered from the Flood but a
short while ago. Even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God, or,
“thou art, O God.” God was, when nothing else was. He was God when the earth
was not a world but a chaos. If God himself were of yesterday, he would not be
a suitable refuge for mortals. The eternal existence of God is here mentioned
to set forth, by contrast, the brevity of human life.
3. Thou hast turned man to destruction, or, “to dust.” The human body is resolved into its
elements, as though it had been ground to powder. And sayest, Return, ye
children of men, that is, return to the dust out of which you were taken.
Human frailty is thus forcibly set forth; God creates us out of the dust, and
back to the dust we go at the word of our Creator. Observe how the action of
God is recognized: man is not said to die because of the decree of fate, or the
action of inevitable law, but the Lord is made the agent of all.
4. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday
when it is past. A thousand years! How much may be
crowded into it—the rise and fall of empires, the glory and obliteration of
dynasties, countless events, all important to household and individual. Yet
this period is to the Lord as nothing. In comparison with eternity, the most
lengthened reaches of time are mere points; there is, in fact, no possible
comparison between them. And as a watch in the night, a time which is no
sooner come than gone.
5. Thou carriest them away as with a flood. As when a torrent bears all before it, so does the Lord
bear away by death the succeeding generations. They are as a sleep. Not
only are our plans like a sleep, but we ourselves are such. In the morning
they are like grass which groweth up. As grass is green in the morning and
hay at night, so people are changed from health to corruption in a few hours.
6. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up. The grass has a golden hour, as man in his youth has a
heyday of flowery glory. In the evening it is cut down, and withereth.
Natural decay would put an end both to us and the grass; few, however,
experience the full result of age, for death comes with his scythe.
7. This
mortality is not accidental, neither was it inevitable in the original of our
nature, but sin has provoked the Lord to anger, and therefore thus we die. For
we are consumed by thine anger. This is the scythe which mows and the
scorching heat which withers. This was specially the case in reference to the
people in the wilderness. As well might grass grow in an oven as people
flourish when the Lord is angry with them. And by thy wrath are we troubled,
or terror-stricken. A sense of divine anger confounded them, so that they lived
as people who knew that they were doomed. This is true of us in a measure, but
not altogether, for now that immortality and life are brought to light by the
Gospel, death has changed its aspect, and, to believers in Jesus, it is no more
a judicial execution. Anger and wrath are the sting of death, and in these
believers have no share; love and mercy now conduct us to glory by way of the
tomb. It is not seemly to read these words at a Christian’s funeral without
words of explanation, and a distinct endeavor to show how little they belong to
believers in Jesus. To apply an ode written by the leader of the legal
dispensation under circumstances of particular judgment, in reference to a
people under penal censure, to those who fall asleep in Jesus seems to be the
height of blundering. We may learn much from it, but we ought not to misapply
it by taking to ourselves, as the beloved of the Lord, that which was chiefly
true of those to whom God had sworn in his wrath that they should not enter
into his rest. When, however, a soul is under conviction of sin, the language
of this psalm is highly appropriate to his case, and will naturally suggest
itself to the distracted mind. No fire consumes like God’s anger, and no
anguish so troubles the heart as his wrath.
8. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee. Sin seen by God must work death; it is only by the covering
blood of atonement that life comes to any of us. When God was overthrowing the
tribes in the wilderness he had their iniquities before him, and therefore
dealt with them in severity. He could not have their iniquities before him and
not smite them. Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. There
are no secrets before God. If by his countenance is here meant his love and
favor, it is not possible for the heinousness of sin to be more clearly
manifested than when it is seen to involve ingratitude to one so infinitely
good and kind. Rebellion in the light of justice is black, but in the light of
love it is devilish. How can we grieve so good a God? The children of Israel
had been brought out of Egypt with a high hand, fed in the wilderness with a
liberal hand, and guided with a tender hand, and their sins were especially
atrocious. We, too, having been redeemed by the blood of Jesus, and saved by
abounding grace, will be verily guilty if we forsake the Lord. What manner of
persons ought we to be? How ought we to pray for cleansing from secret faults?
It is to us a wellspring of delights to remember that our
sins, as believers, are now cast behind the Lord’s back, and will never be
brought to light again: therefore we live, because, the guilt being removed,
the death-penalty is removed also.
9. For all our days are passed away in thy wrath. Justice shortened the days of rebellious Israel; each
halting place became a graveyard; they marked their march by the tombs they
left behind them. Because of the penal sentence their days were dried up, and
their lives wasted away. We spend our years as a tale that is told. Not
their days only, but their years flew by them, rapid and idle as a
gossip’s story. Sin had cast a shadow over all things, and made the lives of
the dying wanderers both vain and brief. The first sentence is not intended for
believers to quote, as though it applied to themselves, for our days are all
passed amid the lovingkindness of the Lord. Neither is the life of gracious
people unsubstantial as a story-teller’s tale; they live in Jesus, they have
the divine Spirit within them; the simile only holds good if we consider that our
lives are illustrations of heavenly goodness, parables of divine wisdom. Happy
are we whose lives are such tales.
10. The days of our years are threescore years and ten. It is nothing when contrasted with eternity. Yet is life
long enough for virtue and piety, and all too long for vice and blasphemy.
Moses here in the original writes in a disconnected manner, as if he would set
forth the utter insignificance of hurried human existence. His words may be
rendered, “The days of our years! In them seventy years”; as much as to say,
“The days of our years? What about them? Are they worth mentioning? The
account is utterly insignificant; their full tale is but seventy.” And if
by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and
sorrow. The strength of old age, its very prime and pride, is a weariness
and sorrow; what must its weakness be? Yet mellowed by hallowed experience, and
solaced by immortal hopes, the latter days of aged Christians are not so much
to be pitied as envied. The mortal fades to make room for the immortal; the old
man falls asleep to wake up in the region of perennial youth. For it is soon
cut off, and we fly away. The chain is snapped, and the eagle mounts to its
native air above the clouds. Moses mourned for people as he thus sang; and well
he might, as all his comrades fell at his side. His words are more nearly
rendered, “He drives us fast and we fly away.” As the quails were blown along
by the strong west wind, so are people hurried before the tempests of death. To
us, however, as believers, the winds are favorable. Who wishes it otherwise?
Wherefore should we linger here? What has this poor world to offer us that we
should tarry on its shores? This is not our rest. Let the Lord’s winds drive
fast if so he ordains, for they waft us the more swiftly to himself.
11. Who knoweth thine anger? Moses saw people dying all around him: he lived among
funerals, and was overwhelmed at the terrible results of the divine
displeasure. He felt that none could measure the might of the Lord’s wrath. Even
according to thy fear, so is thy wrath. Good people dread that wrath beyond
conception, but they never ascribe too much terror to it: bad people are
dreadfully convulsed when they awake to a sense of it, for it is a fearful thing
to fall into the hands of an angry God. Who is able to stand against this
justly angry God? Be it ours to submit ourselves as dying sinners to this
eternal God, who can, even at this moment, command us to the dust, and thence
to hell.
12. So teach us to number our days. Instruct us to set store by time, mourning for that time
past wherein we have wrought the will of the flesh, using diligently the time
present, which is the accepted hour and the day of salvation, and reckoning the
time which lies in the future to be too uncertain to allow us safely to delay
any gracious work or prayer. That we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
People are led by reflections upon the brevity of time to give their earnest
attention to eternal things; they become humble as they look into the grave.
But this is only the case when the Lord himself is the teacher; he alone can
teach to real and lasting profit. We have not enough time at our disposal to
justify us in misspending a single quarter of an hour. Neither are we sure of
enough of life to justify us in procrastinating for a moment.
13. Return, O Lord,
how long? Come in mercy to us again. Do not
leave us to perish. As sin drives God from us, so repentance cries to the Lord
to return to us. When people are under chastisement they are allowed to
expostulate, and ask, how long? Our fault in these times is not too
great boldness with God, but too much backwardness in pleading with him. And
let it repent thee concerning thy servants. They had rebelled, but they had
not utterly forsaken the Lord; they owned their obligations to obey his will,
and pleaded them as a reason for pity. Will a man not spare his own servants?
Though God smote Israel, yet they were his people, and he had never disowned
them; therefore is he intreated to deal favorably with them.
14. O satisfy us with thy mercy. He who has but the heart to pray need never be without
pleas in prayer. The only satisfying food for the Lord’s people is the favor of
God. Our day is short, and the night hastens on. O give us in the early morning
of our days to be satisfied with thy favor, that all through our little day we
may be happy. That we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Being filled
with divine love, their brief life on earth would become a joyful festival, and
would continue so as long as it lasted. When the Lord refreshes us with his
presence, our joy is such that no one can take it from us. Apprehensions of
speedy death are not able to distress those who enjoy the present favor of God;
though they know that the night is coming they see nothing to fear in it.
15. None can
gladden the heart as thou canst, O Lord; therefore as thou hast made us sad be
pleased to make us glad. The prayer is original, childlike, and full of
meaning; it is moreover based upon a great principle in providential goodness,
by which the Lord puts the good over against the evil. Great trial enables us
to bear great joy, and may be regarded as the herald of extraordinary grace.
Small lives are small throughout; and great histories are great both in sorrow
and happiness. Where there are high hills there are also deep valleys. If we
have fierce afflictions we may look for overflowing delights, and our faith may
boldly ask for them. God who is great in justice when he chastens will not be
little in mercy when he blesses; he will be great all through. Let us appeal to
him with unstaggering faith.
16. Let thy work appear unto thy servants. See how he dwells upon that word servants. It is as far as
the law can do, and Moses goes to the full length permitted him; henceforth
Jesus calls us not servants but friends, and if we are wise we shall make full
use of our wider liberty. Moses asks for displays of divine power and
providence conspicuously wrought, that all the people might be cheered thereby.
And thy glory unto their children. While their sons were growing up
around them, they desired to see some outshinings of the promised glory
gleaming upon them. We are content with the work if our children may but see
the glory which will result from it: we sow joyfully if they may reap.
17. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us.
Even upon us who must not see thy glory in the land of Canaan; it will suffice
us if in our characters the holiness of God is reflected, and if over all our
camp the lovely excellencies of our God cast a sacred beauty. Sanctification
should be the daily object of our petitions. And establish thou the work of
our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it. Let what
we do be done in truth, and last when we are in the grave; may the work of the
present generation minister permanently to the building up of the nation. We
come and go, but the Lord’s work abides. We are content to die, so long as
Jesus lives and his kingdom grows.
Excerpt from:
The Treasury of David
By Charles H Spurgeon
