Psalms 119:31

Psalms 119:31

It is difficult to tell men what being confounded means, difficult and almost needless, for there are those who know what it means without being told, and those who do not know what it means without being told are not likely to know by any man's telling.

I. The Psalmist who wrote Psalm cxix. was a man, on his own showing, intensely open to the feeling of shame, and felt intensely what men said of him, felt intensely slander and insult. Isaiah was such a man; Jeremiah was such a man; Ezekiel was such a man: their writings show that they felt intensely the rebukes and the contempt which they had to endure from those whom they tried to warn and save. St. Paul, as may be seen from his own Epistles, was such a man, a man who was intensely sensitive of what men thought and said of him, yearning after the love and approbation of his fellow-men, and above all of his fellow-countrymen, his own flesh and blood. Of all men the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of man, had that feeling, that longing for the love and appreciation of men, and above all for the love and appreciation of His countrymen after the flesh, the Jews. He had, strange as it may seem yet there it is in the Gospels, written for ever and undeniable that capacity of shame which is the mark of true nobleness of soul.

If He had not felt the shame, what merit in despising it? It was His glory that He felt the shame and yet conquered the shame and crushed it down by the might of His love for fallen man.

II. Our Lord and Saviour stooped to be confounded for a moment that we might not be confounded to all eternity. As He did, so must we try to do. Every man who makes up his mind to do right and to be good must expect ridicule now and then. And the more tender your heart, the more you wish for the love and approbation of your fellow-men, the more of noble and modest self-distrust there is in you, the more painful will that be to you. The fear of man brings a snare, and nothing can deliver you out of that snare save the opposite fear: the fear of God, which is the same as trust in God.

C. Kingsley, Westminster Sermons,p. 71.