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TOPIC: MacDuff, John - The Deer and the Water-Brooks (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 07 The Taunt
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THE TAUNT
'Will you leave me thus,' I cried,
'Whelmed beneath the rolling tide?'
Ah! return and love me still;
See me subject to Your will;
Frown with wrath, or smile with grace,
Only let me see Your face!
Evil I have none to fear,
All is good, if You are near.
King, and Lord, whom I adore,
Shall I see Your face no more?'—Madame Guyon.
"There is a persecution sharper than that of the axe. There is an iron that goes into the heart deeper than the knife. Cruel sneers, and sarcasms, and pitiless judgments, and cold-hearted calumnies—these are persecution."
"My tears have been with me day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is your God?"—Verse 3.
We are called, in this chapter, to contemplate a new experience—David in tears! These, his tears, brought sin to his remembrance. As, in looking through the powerful lens of a microscope, the apparently clear drop of water is found to be the swarming haunt of noxious things—fierce animalcules devouring one another; so the tears of the Exile formed a spiritual lens, enabling him to see into the depths of his own soul, and disclosing, with microscopic power, transgressions that had long been consigned to oblivion.
Ten years of regal prosperity had elapsed since the prophet Nathan, the minister of retribution, stood before him, in his Cedar Palace, with heavy tidings regarding himself and his house. Time may have dimmed the impressions of that meeting. He may have vainly imagined, too, that it had modified the Divine displeasure. Now that his head was white with sixty winters, he may have thought that God would exempt him from further merited chastisement, and allow him to go down to his grave in peace. But the day of reckoning, which the Divine patience had long deferred, had now come. He was called to see the first gleamings of that sword which the anointed prophet had told him would "never depart from his house." (2 Sam. 12:10.) The voice of long averted judgment is at last heard amid the thickets and caves of Gilead,"These things have you done, and I kept silence; you thought that I was altogether such an one as yourself: but I will reprove you, and set them in order before your eyes." (Ps. 50:21.) Nature, in her august solitudes, echoed the verdict! The waters murmured it—the winds chanted it—the forest wailed it—the thunders rolled it—and the tears of the lonely Exile himself wept it—"Be sure your sin will find you out!" As he sat by the willows of Jordan, with his crownless head and aching heart, he could say, in the words of an older Psalmist, "We are consumed by Your anger, and by Your wrath are we troubled. You have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your countenance." (Ps. 90:7, 8.)
How apt are we to entertain the thought that God will wink at sin; that He will not be rigidly faithful to His denunciations—unswervingly true to His word. Time's oblivion-power succeeds in erasing much from the tablets of our memories. We measure the Infinite by the standard of the finite, and imagine something of the same kind regarding the Great Heart-Searcher. Sin, moreover, seldom is, in this world, instantaneously followed with punishment; "sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily;" and the patience and forbearance of the Almighty is presumptuously construed by perverse natures into alteration or fickleness in the Divine purpose. But "God is not a man that he should lie!" Even in this our present probation state, (oftener than we suppose,) the time arrives for solemn retribution; when He makes bare His arm to demonstrate by what an inseparable law in His moral government He has connected sin with suffering.
A new dart pierces this panting, wounded Deer on the mountains of Israel. One of those who hurled the Javelin is specially mentioned in the sacred narrative. His poisoned dart must have been rankling in David's soul when he penned this Psalm.
When the King was descending the eastern slopes of Olivet, on his way to the Valley of Jordan, we read, "As David and his party passed Bahurim, a man came out of the village cursing them. It was Shimei son of Gera, a member of Saul's family. He threw stones at the king and the king's officers and all the mighty warriors who surrounded them. 'Get out of here, you murderer, you scoundrel!" he shouted at David. "The Lord is paying you back for murdering Saul and his family. You stole his throne, and now the Lord has given it to your son Absalom. At last you will taste some of your own medicine, you murderer!' So David and his men continued on, and Shimei kept pace with them on a nearby hillside, cursing as he went and throwing stones at David and tossing dust into the air." (2 Sam. 16:5-8, 13.) Besides this son of Gera, there were many servile flatterers at Jerusalem—men once his cringing adherents, loud with their hosannahs in the time of his prosperity—who had now turned against him in his adversity, and become the adherents of the usurper. They exulted over his downfall, and followed him to the place of exile with the taunting cry, "Where is now your God?" "My enemies," said he, "speak against me; and those who lay wait for my soul take counsel together, saying, GOD has forsaken him: persecute and take him; for there is none to deliver him." (Psalm 71:10, 11.)
There is no trial keener, no anguish of soul intenser than this. Let not any talk of taunt and ridicule being a trivial and insignificant thing—unworthy of thought. Let not any say that the believer, entrenched in a lordly castle—the very fortress of God—should be above the shafts hurled from the bow of envy, or the venomous arrows from the tongue of the scoffer. It is often because the taunt is contemptible that it is hardest to bear. The sting of the adder rouses into fury the lordly lion. The tiniest insect blanches the color of the loveliest flower, and causes it to hang its pining head. Sorrow is in itself difficult of endurance, but bitter is the aggravation when others are ready to make a jest of our sorrows. No water is bad enough to the fainting pilgrim, but worse is it when he is mocked by the mirage or bitter pool.
All the more poignant, too, were these taunts in the case of David, because too well did he know that such reproaches were merited—that he himself had furnished his enemies with the gall and the wormwood that had been mingled in his cup. The dark, foul blots of his past life, he had too good reason to fear, were now emboldening them to blaspheme. He had for years been "the Sweet Singer of Israel;"—his future destiny was the Psalmist of the universal Church. His sublime appeals, and fervent prayers, and holy musings, were to support, and console, and sustain until the end of time. Millions on millions, on beds of pain, and in hours of solitude and times of bereavement, were to have their faith elevated, their hopes revived, their love warmed and strengthened by listening to the harp of the Minstrel King. And now, as his faith begins to languish, now as a temporary wave of temptation sweeps him from his footing on the Rock, and the "Beloved of God" wanders an exile and outcast—a shout is raised by those who were strangers to all his sublime sources of consolation—"Where is now your God? Where is He whom you have sung of as the help of the godly, the refuge of the distressed? Where, uncrowned one! is the answer to your prayers? Where is He of whom you did boast as being known in all your Zion palaces as a refuge? You have taught others and taught yourself to believe a lie. O Lucifer, son of the morning! how are you fallen!"
For the moment, this crushing sarcasm can be answered by nothing but a flood of anguished tears. He was below the wave; and though he was soon to know that below that wave there was an Arm lower still, yet for the present he was silent under the averment. There was no light in the cloud. He was unable to lay hold of a former comforting experience—"YOU have known my soul in adversities." (Psalm 31:7.)
Oh, how jealous we should be of anything that would reduce us so low as this, and give a handle to the adversary! Beware of religious inconsistency. One fatal step, one unguarded word may undo a lifetime of hallowed influence. One scar on the character, one blot on the page of the living epistle is indelible. It may be washed away, indeed, by the blood of sprinkling, so that nothing of it will remain against you in the book of God; but the eye and memory of the world, keen to watch and treasure the inconsistencies of God's people, will not so easily forgive or forget! The Deer laid itself open to the aim of the huntsman. It was hit by the archers. One fierce dart of temptation sped with unerring aim. It has left the track of blood behind it in the glades of the forest—the unbelieving world bounds in remorseless pursuit, and the taunting cry will follow to the grave!
Are there any who feel that the experience of David is their own—who either by reason of religious inconsistency or religious declension have laid themselves open to the upbraiding question, "Where is your God?"—Perhaps religious declension is the more common of the two. You are not, as we have surmised in a previous chapter, what once you were. You have not the same love of the Savior as once you had—the same confidence in His dealings—the same trust in His faithfulness—the same zeal for His glory. Affliction, when it comes, does not lead you, as once it did, to cheerful acquiescence—to the cherishing of a meek, unmurmuring submissive spirit under God's sovereign will and discipline, but rather to a hasty, misgiving frame—fretting and repining when you should be prostrate at the mercy-seat, saying, "The will of the Lord be done!"
Not in scorn, but in sober seriousness, in Christian affection and fidelity, we ask, "Where is now your God?" "You did run well; who has hindered you?" What is the guilty cause, the lurking evil, that has dragged you imperceptibly down from weakness to weakness, and has left you a poor, baffled thing, with the finger of irreligious scorn pointed at you, and whose truthfulness is echoed back from the lonely voids of your desolate heart? Return, O backsliding children! Remain no longer as you are, at this guilty distance from that God who, amid all the fitfulness of your love to Him, remains unaltered and unalterable in His love to you. Be not absorbed in tears, wringing your hands in moping melancholy—abandoning yourself to unavailing remorse and despair. The past may be bad enough! You may have done foul dishonor to your God. By some sad and fatal inconsistency, you may have given occasion to the ungodly to point at you the finger of scorn. The fair alabaster pillar may be stained with some crimson transgression. Or if there be no special blot to which they can point, there may be a lamentable spiritual deterioration in your daily walk. They may have observed your love to God waxing cold—your love of the world waxing strong. They may have heard you murmur at your Lord's dealings, question His faithfulness, and refuse to hear and to bear the rod—manifesting tempers, or indulging in pursuits sadly and strangely unlike what would be sanctioned by the example of your Divine Redeemer. Up! and with determined energy resolve henceforth to repair the breach—henceforth to make a new start in the heavenly life. The shrill trumpet sounds—"Awake, you that sheep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you life!" We cannot say, like the King of Nineveh, "Who can tell if God will turn and repent?" He has never turned! You have turned from Him, not He from you. "Where is now your God?" He is the same as ever He was—boundless in His compassion—true to His covenant—faithful to His promises; "the same yesterday, and today, and forever!"
Reader! if He be afflicting you as He did David—if with an exile spirit you be roaming some moral wilderness, the flowers of earth faded on your path, and the bleak winds of desolation and calamity sweeping and sighing around, let these times of affliction lead to deep searchings of heart. Let your tears be as the dewdrops of the morning on the tender leaves, causing you to bend in lowly sorrow and self-abasement, only to be raised again, refreshed, to inhale new fragrance in the summer sun. If, like the weeping woman of Galilee, you are saying, through blinding tears, "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him,"—if, like the Spouse in the Canticles, you are going about the city in search of your Beloved—seeking Him, He will be found of you. The watchmen may smite you—repel you—tear off your veil—and load you with reproaches—but "fear not! you seek Jesus who was crucified!" He will meet you as He did the desponding Magdalene, and, listening like her to His own tones of ineffable love, you will cast yourself at His feet, and exclaim, "Rabboni! Master!"