James Nisbet Commentary - Psalms 119:18 - 119:18

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James Nisbet Commentary - Psalms 119:18 - 119:18


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WONDROUS THINGS

‘Wondrous things out of Thy law.’

Psa_119:18

The life of the soul has its wonders as well as the life of the body and the life of nature. It is a complex and mysterious thing. None but ‘opened eyes’ can discern its marvellous treasures; and with them the further we see the greater is the wonder. God’s discipline, God’s patience, God’s adjustment of men’s powers and defects, God’s method of answering prayer or seeming to be deaf to it—in these and similar dealings we can, if we will, find ever-fresh food for wonder, if only He grant us the gift of a teachable heart and an open eye.

I. Think of the phenomenon, so well known to all Christians, God’s strength made perfect in weakness.—Sometimes it is in spite of men’s weakness; sometimes it is actually in consequence of it. The wonderful thing is to see how God’s strength often takes hold of a weak character, and works upon it His miracles of purification. Where the worldly critic despairs, the instructed Christian hopes.

II. Consider another phenomenon in God’s discipline: the use which He makes of disappointment.—Is there no room for wonder here? To a very young boy disappointment is crushing and blinding. Everything and everybody seem set against him. But when growing years or a riper Christian experience has at last opened his eyes, he begins to discern ‘wondrous things’ in the Divine law of disappointment. He sees, and others perhaps see still more plainly, that that was the rock on which his character was built.

III. Notice another wondrous thing of God’s law: His permission of sin.—Sin is overruled into a trainer of righteousness. There are few more wondrous things in the moral world than to trace how a good man has been trained by his own sins, or rather trained by the Holy Spirit of God through the permitted instrumentality of his own personal sins.

IV. Once more, if we look at the method by which God works His plans of improvement, may we not find abundant cause for reverent wonder?—Think of His patience; His choice of feeble instruments; His choice, too, of unexpected and, as we should have thought, inappropriate means to work out His own ends; His discouragement sometimes of the higher agencies, and apparent preference for the lower. ‘O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!’

Rev. Dr. H. M. Butler.