As for God, His way is perfect; the Word of the Lord is tried; He is a Buckler to all them that trust in Him.
God’s way perfect, His Word tried, Himself the believer’s Buckler
We have, in the words of our text--first, the perfection of God’s way--next, the purity of God’s Word--and, lastly, the privilege of God’s people.
I. The essential perfection of a “way” is the accomplishment of its end; the contingent or relative perfection is the accomplishment of the end, with the utmost attainable extent of benefit, and with the least practicable amount of difficulty. Of the first, so far as both God and man are concerned, we are competent to judge; on the second, we can only form a judgment of beings endued and encumbered with like passions as ourselves. It is of the first that David speaks. He found himself, after the lapse of many years, after the endurance of many privations and persecutions, in full possession of all that the Lord had promised, delivered out of the hand of all His enemies, and exalted, from following the sheep, to be governor over God’s people Israel. He remembers and records, indeed, that “the waves of death compassed him, the floods of ungodly men made him afraid.” But this is a grateful commemoration, not an insinuated complaint. Hence, then, we infer, that we are in danger of falling into error, when we look upon the dispensations of God as an insulated or individual case. With the destinies of David, we cannot doubt, were interwoven those of many others, with whose instruction, deliverance, or confirmation in the faith, his trials and persecutions might be intimately and indissolubly connected. Whatever portion may be allotted to those who serve God, of that chastening, which “for the present seemeth not to be joyous, but grievous,” they possess, if not a clue to all God’s dealings, that which will be at least a balm, and a solace, and a support, under all trials, in the single emphatic assurance “As for God, His way is perfect.” He proportions the endurance to the issue, and adapts the way to the end--to many ends, for “we are members one of another.”
II. The purity of God’s word. We do not here speak, however, of moral purity in its application to man’s righteousness, but of the abiding excellence, the inviolable faithfulness of the Word, in reference to God Himself. None of God’s people will, on reflection, ever find cause to question the purity of His Word, the integrity of His promise. And the principle on which I ground the assertion, is simply this--“The end of faith “is” “the salvation of the soul;” this is the one great object, which must be pursued through all difficulties and accomplished at all sacrifices; a true believer, therefore, can only then begin to doubt--on reflection, at least--when he is placed in circumstances, of which he can positively say, “These cannot minister either to my salvation, or to the salvation of any other living soul.” Now, this cannot be affirmed even of entanglement in sin; for, “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another,” exhorted the apostle James, “that ye may be healed”--the inference from which is that the acknowledgment of a fault may instrumentally confer a great benefit upon another than the commission of it has inflicted injury upon the believer himself.
III. What is the necessary conclusion from such premises--the privilege of God’s people. “He is a buckler to all them that trust in Him.” Nothing, it would appear, could be more simple, nothing could be more reasonable than the essential condition, imposed on all such as would be saved, of an entire and implicit trust in God; nothing more simple, from the very nature of the case--nothing more reasonable, from the impossibility of the opposite. “Hath God said, and shall He not do it? or hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good?” Who can even conceive of a God all power, unable--or of a God all love, unwilling--to redeem His pledge, and to accomplish His purpose? We are called, however, on the present occasion to consider the gain, the incalculable gain of those who trust God. Trust is active. The proof of it lies in action. Action is the element which is essential to its existence. He who trusts God must try at least to serve Him; otherwise trust were nothing better than presumption. And there are some who do not trust because they do not try. Religion is with them no effort, no struggle, no conflict, no sacrifice. They recite articles of faith, they respond to the utterance of prayer, they listen to the preaching of the Gospel; and then they return into the world with undiminished relish of its vanities--not, as they ought, with a livelier perception of its emptiness, and an increased repugnance to its pollutions, and a more settled abhorrence of its sins. Such men do not trust God--men whose religion is but a Sabbath parade. They cannot trust Him. They have no right to trust Him; there are no portions of His Word on which to ground their trust; for the tenour of the Scripture promises supposes consistency of life. Let me, then, exhort you to settle at once the unspeakably momentous point whether you trust God; and not only so, but whether you are warranted in trusting Him--whether it is your endeavour to walk in His “perfect way,” and your desire to repose full confidence in His pure and inviolable Word. It is no time to commence all this when we are involved in calamity. Then is the time to profit by what we have already learnt--not to enter upon that lesson for the acquirement of which a whole life might be far too brief. It rests with every individual hearer to “examine himself whether he be in the faith,” to “prove his own self,” (T. Dale, M. A.)
The Lord the Christian’s Buckler
It suggests a perfect equipment. A soldier may be endowed with strength and robustness, and yet may have most ineffective armour. During the recent war our soldiers in South Africa were possessed by a spirit of splendid courage; their strength and nerve were irreproachable; but many of their weapons were comparatively useless. What is the use of a strong arm with a flimsy sword? Or what is the use of a keen eye with an imperfect gun? On the other hand, a soldier may have a perfect weapon, and yet be possessed of most inadequate strength. A besieged garrison may have splendid military equipment, and yet in the process of a long siege they may be so impoverished in body as to be reduced to absolute impotence, And so I say a soldier needs the two-fold gift; he requires health and armour, the strength and the shield. And so the Psalmist magnifies his God, because He endows the soul with a full sufficiency both of strength and armour. There is nothing which I require which I cannot find in God. In Him my defence and security are complete. (J. H. Jowett, M. A.)
God’s way
I. The “way” he prescribes is “perfect.” He prescribes a way, a course of action, for all the creatures He has made, animate and inanimate, rational and irrational. The stars, the oceans, insects, brutes, and souls of every kind, from the least to the greatest, have each their “way” marked out, and the highest science attests that the way is “perfect.” But the course or the way which is prescribed for man is what the writer refers to.
1. The way which is prescribed for our moral conduct is “perfect.”
2. The way that is prescribed for our spiritual restoration is “perfect.” What is the way? Here it is: “What the law could not do,” etc.; “God so loved the world,” etc. Faith in Christ is the prescribed way. This way is “perfect” in its wisdom; it is in every way adapted ”Perfect” in its justice; it honours the righteousness of God. “Perfect” in its sufficiency; it is adequate to the needs of each man, and all.
II. The way he pursues is “perfect.” God has a method of action. He acts not by caprice or impulse, but by a settled eternal plan.
1. His method of procedure is “perfect” in conception. We have not the full draft of this plan--an infinitesimal section only comes under our eye. The architect of the great building presents you with a whole plan, and you may understand it and see the superstructure on the paper. Thus God has not acted; and if He had given us the whole plan we could not have scanned the millionth part. What we see, however, we feel to be “perfect.”
2. His method of procedure is “perfect in execution.” What His infinite benevolence promoted and His infinite wisdom conceived, His almightiness carries out with almost perfection. A conviction of the perfection of God’s way
(1) Is essential to our well-being. Without this we cannot supremely love and trust Him.
(2) Is the most attainable of beliefs. Our reason,, conscience, Bible, observation, and experience all concur in urging on the soul this the grandest of all conclusions.
(3) Must flash on every sinner’s nature sooner or later. If not here in the day of grace, yonder in the period of retribution. This conviction flashing on the corrupt soul in eternity, is the hell of the lost. The soul burns with anguish as it rolls and rolls in the great thought, “As for God, His ways are perfect.” (Homilist.)
God’s way perfect
This chapter is almost identical word for word with the eighteenth psalm. We may regard this chapter, and the eighteenth Psalm, as a vocal Ebenezer; and in this way it is very touching to give heed to the testimonies of an aged saint of God as he thus erects his Ebenezer, and in the second and third verse pours forth the rapturous utterances of a grateful heart. Among the conclusions to which David had been drawn, is that which is presented to us in the simple but pregnant words of the text.
I. The works of god regarded as the creator. In this respect we hesitate not to affirm that the words of the Psalmist are fully applicable, and that “His way is perfect.” Now, of course, in affirming that God’s way as Creator is perfect, we must bear in mind that we are not in a position to see into the whole of this matter. Unquestionably, before we can utter this sentiment with our hearts we must have learned the lesson of faith. Our knowledge of creation is very limited. Our philosophers are still arguing as to the plurality or the non-plurality of worlds; they are still discussing such fundamental subjects as the antiquity of man and the origin of species; and with regard to our own world, it is a common proverb among us that nothing on earth is perfect. And yet the searches and the conclusions of modern science are only revealing, we hesitate not to affirm, greater wonders, and those wonders are increasingly exhibiting the perfection of God s laws. And thus, whether we take the eye or whether we take the hand, we have the meat striking evidences of design and of adaptation--evidences enough to lead us, if we are modest and candid and reverent, to this conclusion--that if we knew more, and if other organs of the body and if other elements of man’s nature were as clearly opened up to us as have been the organ of the eye, and the member of the hand, we should be still more strikingly and irresistibly brought to the conclusion with regard even to the creation, “As for God, His way is perfect.”
II. But the declaration of our text is not less true in reference to God as the God of Providence. In reference to His providential dealings, most unquestionably David’s testimony was that God’s way is perfect; and indeed this is the point in the psalm. Now consider this for a few moments in connection with the world. The aspect in which a man of faith and a man of this world regard all that is passing around them is as different as light can be from darkness. But “as for God, His way is perfect” in the Church. We do not see the bearing of the means upon the end. We do not, for instance, understand how it is that the tares and the wheat are permitted to grow together. We do not understand how it is that from the very beginning, from the very earliest years down to the days in which we live, whenever there has been the slightest activity or energy put forth on the part of God’s people, when the Church has not been fast asleep, there have arisen grave and deadly heresies, and the Church of Christ is constantly witnessing it. In our own land, even in the lifetime of most of the persons to whom I am preaching, at the very time when everything seemed ready for the Church to advance on her great aggressive work against the heathenism that was around her, to rise to her position as the evangelist of distant nations, and to delve into the courts and alleys, and to go down into the cellars and to climb the garrets in our own heathen England; when the Church seemed ready to gird herself to this work, and faithful ministers were raised up, there has come some blight, of deadly heresy upon us, and we have been constrained to enter into controversy even with our own brethren, with men bearing the ministry of our own Church. All this is most mysterious; we do not understand it; we cannot justify the ways of God to man fully. All we can say is this, that the anticipation of faith which enables us to bear a testimony even now in the words of David, is, that when all is wound up we shall assuredly discern that in dealing with His Church, as the God of Providence, the way of God has been perfect.
III. Lastly, His way is perfect as a way of salvation. Here again faith must come in. We are surrounded by depths on every side. What is the mystery at the bottom of it all? Archbishop Whately has said, and said truly, that the entrance of moral evil into the world is very nearly the only difficulty in theology. If you and I could understand how it is that there can be moral evil, and, as its result, physical evil, in the world of a perfect God, and an Almighty God, we should be able to cut pretty nearly every knot; but we cannot understand it. We do not understand the ruin; we do not understand the entrance of sin. But let faith lay hold of this; nothing but faith can lay hold of it; reason cannot defend it, reason can only put her hand upon her mouth. God’s salvation is provided, on the one hand, fully for the vindication of His own glory, while on the other hand He has adapted His salvation fully to the need of men. There is the fullest adaptation to the need of the sinner, and there is the most glorious illustration of the glory of God. (Canon Miller, D.D.)
God’s way inscrutable but right
The mind of a pious workman, named Thierney, was much occupied with the ways of God, which appeared to him full of inscrutable mysteries. The two questions, “How?” and “Why?” were constantly in his thoughts--whether he considered his own life, or the dispensations of Providence in the government of the world. One day, in visiting a ribbon manufactory, his attention was attracted by an extraordinary piece of machinery. Countless wheels and thousands of threads were twirling in all directions; he could understand nothing of its movements. He was informed, however, that all this motion was connected with the centre, where there was a chest which was kept shut. Anxious to understand the principle of the machine, he asked permission to see the interior. “The master has the key,” was the reply. The words were like a flash of light. Here was the answer to all the perplexed thoughts. Yes; the Master has the key. He governs and directs all. It is enough. What need I know more? “He hath also established them for ever and ever; He hath made a decree which shall not pass.” (Psa_118:6.)
God makes no mistakes
I once experienced a great bereavement, which tested my trust in God’s providence beyond any previous trial of my Life. One night I was seated, with my little boy on my knee, mourning over my loss, when my eye rested on a favourite text over the mantelpiece. The eye of the child also turned in the same direction, and, without any request on my part, he read the text aloud: “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.” As I heard the words from my dear boy’s lips, they seemed to sink into my heart with a power they had never done before. To my surprise, the child asked the question, “Papa, what does ‘perfect’ mean?” My heart was too full to make any reply for a few moments; and before I could break the silence, my little one supplied the answer by saying, “Papa, doesn’t it mean that God makes no mistakes?”
The Word of the Lord is tried.
The Word of God a proved word
Things of acknowledged and intrinsic value are ever liable to be counterfeited. Valueless things tempt no imitation. That which is excellent and of good report never lacks its counterfeit. This fact makes necessary tile application of some reliable test to those things, whether material, intellectual, or moral, that come to us with high claims of value, The gold or silver that has been tried and stamped as genuine is that which the jeweller alone accepts as genuine. The words, or works, or systems of thought of men come to be generally accepted only when tested and proved to be worthy. A man’s character and reputation only become established when in a variety of circumstances they have been found to be genuine and trustworthy. In the same way the Bible must be and has been “tried.” It comes to us, claiming to be “the Word of God,” to contain the highest revelation of God and His will, to give a “knowledge able to make wise unto salvation.” It is of the highest consequence, therefore, that it should be tested, and prove itself genuine, and so establish its high claims. That it has been subjected to the severest tests, few will doubt. It is “a tried Word.” Into all the manifold forms in which that trial has been successfully borne, we cannot now enter. But there are one or two lines of thought that will serve to show the Divine character of that revelation contained in the Holy Scriptures.
I. That we have in these records the genuine Word of God is seen when we subject their main teachings to the test of the highest standards of truth and duty among men. Outside the Scriptures themselves these are found in the human conscience, judgment, and reason. The Apostle Paul declares that by the light within even the heathen are capable of seeing the grand distinction between right and wrong, and of feeling the charm of moral beauty and truth. Even a race so utterly degraded as the Terra del Fuegians have proved to be not wholly devoid of moral instinct and power; while among heathen philosophers not a few have reached sublime moral conceptions and truths. Following the light within them, men like Socrates, Plato, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Buddha, arid Confucius have attained to marvellous views of truth, and have given utterance to teaching the moral beauty and Divine character of which we cannot deny. Now, when we test the teachings of the Bible by these, and ask, “What is the result?” the answer is ready and complete. Among the choicest, the flower of heathen philosophy and religious teaching there is nothing that is equal in sustained loftiness of character, in quantity and beauty, to that of the New Testament.
2. But we may look at it in another light. Tested by our own modern conceptions and ideas of what is truly noble and Divine, what is the result? We, living to-day, are the heirs of all the knowledge, civilisation, and religion of the past. At no previous age of the world’s history has knowledge of so universal a kind been possessed. Not only has science laid her treasures at our feet, but the stores of knowledge gathered and garnered of old by such nations of antiquity as the Babylonian, Egyptian, Chaldean, Hindu, Grecian, and Roman have been opened to us in wonderful ways. We know far more of the religious teaching and moral ideas of these great peoples than was possible before. Our civilisation and knowledge, based upon and including all that was best in these byegone ages, is richer than any previous. Moreover, we have come into possession of eighteen hundred years of Christian thought and influence, and all that means in raising the tone of moral feeling and judgment. Judging, then, of the character of Biblical teaching as a whole, what is the verdict? Simply this-, men all admit that the precepts of Christ embodied in daily life would regenerate the world; the golden age would no longer be a dream, but a sober reality; and Jesus Christ enthroned as King would make a worm of purity, moral glory, and blessedness.
3. There is another point of view from which we may look at and test this subject in the present connection. Not only is the Bible proved to be Divine in view of our best judgment, but also according to the evidence of the greatest among sceptical writers. What is the testimony of many of these, men of sceptical, but deeply, reverent minds? While they reject the Bible as the supreme and all-commanding revelation of God and religious truth, they all agree that in the records of the life and character of Jesus Christ in the Gospels we have the grandest and most complete presentation of moral beauty the world has seen.
II. One of the severest tests of the value of a thing is the way in which it withstands the effects of time and change. If it he spurious, time, sooner or later, will show it. If it be genuine, time will only make its true character the more manifest. The false jewel, the counterfeit coin, the imitation bric-a-brac, the insincere character, the false teaching or unsound reasoning, needs only time to discover the worthlessness that attaches to it. But that which is the “truth and of the truth” becomes more and more clearly revealed as genuine and precious. In nothing has this been more fully shown than in the history of the sacred Scriptures. See how long and severe the trial to which they have been subjected! Age after age has rolled away, many things have passed out of mind and existence since many parts of the Bible were first spoken or written, but its records and teachings remain. In the darkest days of the Middle Ages, when the Church became a great world-power, its greatest foes became those of its own household, and every effort was made to destroy the Book, and to consign to oblivion its glorious, life-giving, liberty-producing truth, and to substitute a system of ecclesiastical tyranny and tradition. In still more modern days its teachings and records have been assailed by the fierce fire of criticism, hostile and mighty. Battery after battery of the most powerful and perfected artillery has been placed in position, and threatened by its presence and force to destroy the fortress of truth. So certain has been the issue in the estimation of some that they have boldly avowed that the days of Christianity were numbered. Voltaire declared that ten years after his attack on the Christian system it would cease to be. But, instead of such an issue, Christianity has come forth as from a refining furnace, like gold purified seven times. The dross and alloy have been destroyed; the precious gold of truth shines the more brightly.
III. The method by which almost everything may be surely tested is that of experience. It seldomfails. In ordinary life and with some of the most material things it is of highest value. The article we purchase, the word era neighbour, the work of the artisan, the professed friendship of an acquaintance, the soundness of a theory, the wisdom or folly of any step taken in business--all are proved and their true worth discovered by experience. The manner in which they stand the wear and tear of actual life is the infallible sign of their genuineness. It is perfectly scientific. It is the only safe method. Now, the Scriptures have been subject, during thousands of years, to this conclusive test. Their teachings are proved to be genuine and Divine because they bear infallibly the critical force of experience. The unbelief and sinful disregard of Christ and His Gospel, the rebellion against conscience and morality, against Christian light and leading, in their consequences and effects fulfil the utterances of Holy Writ. Men’s experience of sin and its penalty is but a testimony to the reality and Divine character of that Book that declares: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” But equally true is the opposite experience: What is the testimony of those who have put its teachings to the test of practice--who have not merely tried them by reason and the moral judgment, but subjected them to the experiment of actual obedience? They have proved the truth of the Divine Master’s statement: “If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God.” It has verified itself to them by its power over their hearts, consciences, characters, and lives. It has brought peace, hope, comfort, strength, purity, and quickening of soul. The “Gospel has” proved “the power of God unto salvation.” They have found: ‘Great peace have they that love Thy law.” (W. Bishop.)
The tried word
We usually do not trust anything until it is tried. Boys dare not skate across the river until they have tried the new ice. The swing just put up on the tree is not deemed safe for the children until the rope is tried. A tried friend is a friend worth having. The Bible tells us, “The Word of the Lord is tried.” It declares that “God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” It promises, “Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out.” John Bunyan, the wild, wicked tinker-boy, went and found it so. John Newton, the swearing slave captain, went and found it so, and thousands are ready to testify that they went to the Son of God and found Him to be a precious Saviour.
The word of God tried in the crucible of personal experience
The famous singer, Jenny Lind (Madame Goldschmidt), writing after her retirement from public life to one of her friends, said: “My Bible was never more necessary to me than now; never more truly mystay. I drink therein rest, self-knowledge, hope, faith, love, carefulness (circumspection), and the fear of God, so that I look at life and the world in quite another fashion than what I did before. Would that all men came to this knowledge, and that we all daily feasted on that Divine Book! Then should we all know how to taste the true life.”
