Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJohn Macduff Collection: MacDuff, John - The Deer and the Water-Brooks: 06 The Living God
TOPIC: MacDuff, John - The Deer and the Water-Brooks (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 06 The Living God
Other Subjects in this Topic:
THE LIVING GOD
"Hear me! To You my soul in suppliance turns;
Like the lorn pilgrim on the sands accursed.
For life's sweet waters, God! my spirit yearns:
Give me to drink. I perish here of thirst."
"Oh, it is His own self I pant after. Fellowship—living, constant, intimate fellowship with Him, is the cry He often hears from the desolate void of my unloving heart. How do I loathe the sin which makes the atmosphere so misty—the clouds so thick and dark!"—Life of Adelaide Newton, p. 246.
"My soul thirsts for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?"—Verse 2.
In the two former chapters, we listened to the first sigh of the exile—the first strain of his plaintive song. It was the groping and yearning of his soul after God, as the alone object of happiness.
You may have watched the efforts of the plant, tossed amid rack and weed in some dark cellar, to climb to the light. Like the captive in the dungeon longing to cool his fevered brow in the air of heaven, its sickly leaves seem to struggle and gasp for breath. They grope, with their blanched colors, towards any chink or crevice or grated window, through which a broken beam is admitted. Or garden flowers choked amid rank weeds, or under the shade of tree or wall, how ambitious to assert their freedom, and pay homage to the parent sun, lifting their pendant leaves or petals as a target for his golden arrows!
The soul, away from the great Sun of its being, frets and pines and mourns! Every affection droops in languor and sadness when that light is away. Its abortive efforts to obtain happiness in other and lower joys, and its dissatisfaction with them, is itself a testimony to the strength and loftiness of its aspiration—a manifesto of its real grandeur! The human affections must be fastened on something! They are like the clinging ivy which creeps along the ground, and grasps stones, rocks, weeds, and unsightly ruins, if it can find nothing else on which to fix its tendrils; but when it reaches the root of the tree, or base of the castle wall, it spurns its groveling existence, and climbs its upward way until it hangs in graceful festoons from the topmost branch or turret.
We are to contemplate, now, a second breathing of this exiled supplicant—a new element in his God-ward aspiration.
"My soul thirsts for God, FOR THE LIVING GOD: when shall I come and appear before God?"
This is no mere repetition of the former verse. It invests the believer's relationship to the object of his faith and hope with a new and more solemn interest.
For David's present condition and experience in the land of his exile—the feeling of utter isolation throbbing through the pulses of his soul—there were required some extraordinary and peculiar sources of comfort. The old conventional dogmas of theology, at such seasons, are insufficient. Who has not felt, in some great crisis of their spiritual being, similar to his, when all the hopes and joys of existence rock and tremble to their foundations; when, by some sudden reverse of fortune, the pride of life becomes a shattered ruin; or, by some appalling bereavement, the hope and solace of the future is blighted and withered like grass—who has not been conscious of a longing desire to know more of this infinite God, who holds the balances of Life and Death in His hands, and who has come forth from the inscrutable recesses of His own mysterious being, and touched us to the quick? What of His character, His attributes, His ways! There is a feeling, such as we never had before, to draw aside the veil which screens the Invisible. It may be faith in its feeblest form, awaking as from a dream; lisping the very alphabet of Divine truth, and asking, in broken and stammering accents, "Does God really live?—Is it, after all, Deity, or is it Chance, that is ruling the world? Is this great Being near, or is He distant? Does He take cognizance of all events in this world; or are minute, trivial occurrences, contingent on the accidents of nature or the caprice of man? Is He THE LIVING ONE?"
God, a distant abstraction shrouded in the dreadful mystery of His own attributes, will not do—we must realize His presence; our cry, at such a time, is that of the old patriarch at the brook Jabbok, or of his descendant at the brooks of Gilead—"Tell me your NAME." (Gen. 32:29.) Is it merely love, or is it the loving ONE? Is it omnipotence, or is it the almighty ONE? Is it some mysterious, impalpable principle, some property of matter or attribute of mind—or is it a personal Jehovah, one capable of loving and of being loved? Have the lips of incarnate truth and wisdom deceived us by a mere figure of speech, when, in the great Liturgy of the Church universal, in the prayer which is emphatically "His own," He has taught us, in its opening words, to say, "Our FATHER who is in heaven, hallowed be your NAME!"
How earnestly do the saints in former times, and especially in their seasons of trial, cleave to the thought of this personal presence; in other words, a thirst for "the living God!" What was the solace of the patriarch Job, as he was stretched on his bed of sackcloth and ashes, when other friends had turned against him in bitter derision, and were loading him with their reproaches? It was the realization of a living defender who would vindicate his integrity—"I know that my Redeemer lives." (Job 19:25.)
God appeared to Moses in a burning bush. The symbol taught him encouraging truths—that the Hebrew race, after all their experience of fiery trial, would come forth unscathed and unconsumed. But the shepherd-leader desired more than this: he craved the assurance of a LIVING GOD—an ever-present guardian, a pillar to guide by day, and a column of defense by night. It was the truth that was borne to his ear from the desert's fiery oracle. There could be no grander watchword for himself, or for the enslaved people—"God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM!" No comment is subjoined—nothing to diminish the glory of that majestic utterance. The Almighty Speaker does not qualify it by adding, "I am light, power, wisdom, glory;" but He simply declares His being and existence—He unfolds Himself as "the living God!" It is enough!
Elijah is in his cave at Horeb. All nature is convulsed around him. The rocks are rent with an earthquake. The sky is lurid with lightnings. Fragments of these dreadful precipices are torn and dislocated by the fury of the tempest, and go thundering down the Valley. Nature testifies to the presence, and majesty, and power of her God: but He is not in any of these! "The Lord is not there!" The Prophet waits for a further disclosure. He is not satisfied with seeing the skirts of God's garment. He must see the hand, and hear (though it be in gentle whispers) the voice of Him who sits behind the elements He has awoke from their sleep. Hence this formed the closing scene in that wild drama of the desert. "After the fire there came a still small voice." The Lord is there! He is proclaiming Himself the prophet's God! with him in the depths of that howling wilderness, as He had been with him on the heights of Carmel. "And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entrance in of the cave." (1 Kings 19:12, 13.)
Shall we go for illustration of the same truth to New Testament and gospel times? The disciples are tossed with storm in the Sea of Tiberias. The voice of a living Savior proclaims His name. "It is I (lit. I AM); be not afraid!" The assurance, in that night of gloom and tempest, lulls their trembling spirits to rest.
John, in Patmos, beheld, in a vision of surpassing brightness, his Lord arrayed in the lusters of exalted humanity. Overpowered by the glory which unexpectedly burst upon him, "he fell at His feet as one dead." His misgivings are stilled; his confidence and hope restored, by the proclamation of a living Savior-God. "I am He that LIVES" (lit. the Living One)—and a similar comforting symbol was given him in a subsequent vision, when he saw that same covenant angel "ascending from the east, having the seal of the Living God." (Rev. 1:18, and 7:2.)
This was "the living Jehovah" whom David now sought in the forest-depths of Gilead. He goes out to that solitude to meditate and pray. But it is no dream of earthly conquest that occupies him. Deeper thoughts have taken possession of his soul than the loss of a kingdom and the forfeiture of a crown! A fiercer battle engrosses his spirit than any mortal conflict. "Let me have God," he seems to say, "as the strength of my heart and my portion forever, and I need not other portions besides." At another time that lover of nature would have caught inspiration from the glories of the impressive sanctuary around. He would have sung of the water-brooks at his side, the trees bending in adoration, the rocky gorges through which Jordan fretted his tortuous way, the everlasting hills of Hermon and Lebanon—the silent guardians of the scene—"the wild beasts of the forest creeping forth" and "seeking their food from God." But now he has but one thought—one longing—"YOU are more glorious and excellent than the mountains of prey." (Ps. 76:4.) None was more dependent on the realized consciousness of the Divine favor than he. His Psalms seem to utter the language of one who lived in God's presence, and to whom the withdrawal of that endearing communion and communion would be death indeed. His expressions, in these holy breathings of his soul to the Father of spirits, seem like those of one loving friend to another. God, the abstraction of the Philosopher, has no place in his creed. He speaks of "the Lord thinking upon him," "putting his tears into His bottle," "guiding him with His eye," "His right hand upholding him," he himself "rejoicing under the shadow of His wings;" and as if he almost beheld some visible, tangible form, such as Peter gazed upon when the question was put to him on the shore of Gennesaret, "Do you love me?" we hear this warm, impulsive Peter of Old Testament times thus avowing his personal attachment—"I love you, O Lord my strength;" "I love the Lord, because He has heard my voice and my supplications;" "The Lord LIVES; and blessed be my rock; and let the God of my salvation be exalted."
Reader, do you know what it is thus to exult in God as a living God? Not to think of Him as some mysterious Essence, who, by an Almighty fiat, impressed on matter certain general laws, and, retiring into the solitude of His own being, left these to work out their own processes. But is there joy to you in the thought of God ever near, compassing your path and your lying down? Do you know of ONE, brighter than the brightest radiance of the visible sun, visiting your chamber with the first waking beam of the morning; an eye of infinite tenderness and compassion following you throughout the day; a hand of infinite love guiding you, shielding you from danger, and guarding you from temptation—the "Keeper of Israel," who "neither slumbers nor sleeps?"
And if gladdening it be, at all times, to hear the footsteps of this living God, more especially gladdening is it, as, with the Exile-King of Israel, in the season of trial, to think of Him and to own Him, in the midst of mysterious dealings, as One who personally loves you, and who chastises you because He loves you. The world, in their cold vocabulary, in the hour of adversity, speak of Providence, "the will of Providence," "the strokes of Providence." PROVIDENCE! What is that? Why dethrone a living God from the sovereignty of His own world? Why substitute a cold, death-like abstraction in place of a living One, an acting One, a controlling One, and (to as many as He loves) a rebuking One and a chastening One? Why forbid the angel of bereavement to drop from his wings the balmy fragrance, "Your Father has done it?" How it would take the sting from many a goading trial thus to see, as Job did, nothing but the hand of God—to see that hand behind the gleaming swords of the Sabeans, the flash of the lightning, and the wings of the whirlwind—and to say like David, on the occasion of his mournful march to these very wilds of Gilead, "I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because YOU did it." (Psalm 39:9.)
The thought of a living God forms the happiness of Heaven. It is the joy of Angels. It forms the essence and bliss of glorified Saints. The redeemed multitude, while on earth, "thirsted" for the living God, but they had then only some feeble foretastes of His presence. They sipped only some tiny rills flowing from the Everlasting Fountain; now they have reached the living spring; and the long-drawn sigh of the earthly valley is answered—"When shall we come and appear before God?"
And what this living God is to the Church above, He is also to the Church below. In one sense we need Him more! The drooping, pining plant, battered down by rain, and hail, and tempest, stands more in need of the fostering hand and genial sunbeam than the sturdy tree whose roots are firmly moored in the soil, or sheltered from the sweep of the storm. Pilgrims in the Valley of Tears! seek to live more under the habitual thought of God's presence. In dark passages of our earthly history we know how supporting it is to enjoy the sympathy of kindred human friends. What must it be to have the consciousness of the presence, and support, and nearness of the Being of all beings; when some cherished "light of the dwelling" is put out, to have a better light remaining, which sorrow cannot quench! All know the story of the little child who, in simple accents, quieted its own fears and that of others in the midst of a storm. When the planks were creaking beneath them—the hoarse voice of the thunder above mingling with that of the raging sea—his tiny finger pointed to the calm visage of the pilot, who was steering with brawny arm through the surge, "My father," said he, "is at the helm!" Would you weather the tempests of life, and sit calm and unmoved amid "the noise of its many waters," let your eye rest on a living God—a loving Father—a heavenly Pilot. See Him guiding the Vessel of your temporal and eternal destinies! Let Faith be heard raising her triumphant accents amid the pauses of the storm—"O Lord our God, who is a strong Lord like unto You? You rule the raging of the sea; when the waves thereof arise, You still them." (Psalm 89:9.)
Above all, be it yours to enjoy what David knew imperfectly, the conscious nearness of a living SAVIOR—a Brother on the throne of Heaven—"Christ our life"—God in our nature—"the man Christ Jesus,"—susceptible of every human sympathy—capable of entering, with infinite tenderness, into every human need and woe—bending over us with His pitying eye—marking out for us our path—ordering our sorrows—filling or emptying our cup—providing our pastures, and "making all things work together for our good!" The words at this moment are as true as when, eighteen hundred years ago, they came fresh from His lips in Patmos—"I am the living One: Behold, I am alive for evermore!" (Rev. 1:18.)
What is the great lesson from this meditation? Is it not to strive to be like God? What does "thirsting" for God mean, but a longing of the soul after likeness and conformity to the Divine image? Let us not lose the deep truth of the text under the material emblem. To thirst for God is to desire His fellowship; and we can only hold fellowship with a congenial mind. No man is ever found to covet the companionship of those whose tastes, likings, pursuits, are opposed to his own. Place one whose character is scarred with dishonor and his life with impurity, introduce him into the company of high-souled men—spirits of sterling integrity and unblemished virtue, who would recoil from the contaminating touch of vice, who would scorn a lie as they would a poisoned dart—he could not be happy; he would long to break away from associates and associations so utterly distasteful and uncongenial. No man can thirst after God who is not aiming after assimilation to His character. God is HOLY. He who thirsts for God must be athirst for holiness—he must scorn impurity in all its forms, in thought, word, and deed. He who longs for the pure cistern must turn with LOVE. Love is pencilled by Him on every flower, and murmured in every breeze. The world is resonant with chimes of love, and Calvary is love's crowning triumph and consummation. He who "thirsts for God" "in him verily is the love of God perfected." He must have the lineaments in outline, at least, of a loving nature. He must hate all that is selfish, delight in all that is beneficent, and seek an elevating satisfaction in being the minister of love to others. "He that dwells in love dwells in God, and God in him."
And what shall be said to those who know nothing of this thirst for God—to whom all that is here written is but as an idle tale? You may pant not for Him. You may have no spiritual thirst for Him—no longing for His presence—no aspiration after His likeness. But still He is to you, as to the believer, a LIVING God. Yes—scorner of His mercy! ignore the truth as you may, the God to whom you are responsible, the God with whom you will yet have "to do," that God LIVES! His eye is upon you—His book is open—His pen is writing—the indelible page is filling! You may see no trace of His footstep. You may hear no tones of His voice. His very mercy and forbearance may be misconstrued by you, as if it indicated on His part indifference to His word and forgetfulness of your sin. You may lull yourselves into the atheist dream, that the world is governed by blind chance and fate, that His heaven and His hell are the forged names and nullities of credulity and superstition. As you see the eternal monuments of His power and glory on rock and mountain, you may affect to see in these only the dead hieroglyphics of the past—the obsolete tool-marks of the God of primeval chaos, who welded into shape the formless mass, but having done so, left it alone. The scaffolding is removed, the Architect has gone to uprear other worlds, and abandoned the completed globe to the control of universal laws!
No—GOD LIVES! "He is not far from any one of us." He is no Baal divinity, "asleep or taking a journey." The volume of every heart is laid open to the eye of the great Heart-searcher, and vainly do you seek to elude His scrutiny. Terrible thought! this living God against you! You living, and content to live His enemy! rushing against His shield! and if you were to die, it would be in the attitude of one fighting against God!
No longer scorn His grace or reject His warnings. He is living; but, blessed be His name, He is living and waiting to be gracious! You may be as stranded vessels on the sands of despair; but the tide of His ocean-love is able to set you floating on the waters. Repair, without delay to His mercy-seat. Cast yourselves on His free forgiveness. Every attribute of His nature which you have now armed against you, is stretching out its hand of welcome and entreaty. Each is like a branch of the tree of life, inviting you to repose under its shadow. Each is a rill from the everlasting fountain, inviting you to drink of the unfailing stream.
See that you refuse not Him that speaks. He who unlocked that fountain is even now standing by it; and saying, as He contrasts it with all earth's polluted cisterns, "Whoever drinks of THIS water shall thirst again: but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life."