Sermon Bible Commentary
Psalms 119:54
Taken together, these words set forth our condition as strangers and pilgrims on the earth, and God's bountiful provision for meeting that condition in Christ.
I. The fact that we are strangers is forced upon us by our ignorance. Apart from revelation, we know almost nothing of the world we live in, and absolutely nothing of its Lord. In every age and to every thinking soul arise the great questions, Who sent me into this earth? Why am I here? Whither am I going? A yearning for replies to these questions springs up in every heart. "O unknown Maker, I am a stranger on the earth; hide not Thy laws from me." The Gospel is God's answer to this cry. It is the revelation of the light which is behind sun and stars. Christ puts that great word "Father" into all our thoughts. He lifts the light of it over the whole universe. And the knowledge and glory of a living, loving, personal Father stream in upon us from every side.
II. Our sins still more than our ignorance have put the sense of strangeness into our hearts and the marks of it upon our countenance. When the soul awakens to spiritual consciousness and finds itself in the presence of this great truth of the Fatherhood of God, the first fact which confronts it is a sense of farness from the Father. It is God's mercy that He has not left us to rest in this depth of strangeness. He has made a way for us in Christ the new and living way by the blood. God's own Son has died to put our estrangement away. "We are no more strangers and foreigners." The blood has brought us near.
III. Another proof that we are strangers is the estrangement we find among men. Of this problem also the solution is provided in the Gospel. Christ comes as the great Uniter and Binder together. He comes sowing over all the waste of estrangement and alienation this healing word: "One is your Father." He comes with the grand purpose of binding those who receive that word into a holy and abiding fellowship.
IV. The last and saddest mark of the stranger upon us is death. If there had been no light for this shadow, how great our misery should be. But, blessed be God, He has not hidden the future from His child. This also is laid bare to our hungering hearts in Christ. A home awaits us beyond the grave. A new life blooms for us in the very presence of God. Our torn and suffering earthly existence is to be crowned with: glory and immortality in the world of the risen dead. Christ the Resurrection! Christ the Life! that is our song in the home on which the shadows have begun to fall.
A. Macleod, Days of Heaven upon Earth,p. 291.
References: Psalms 119:20. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxvii., No. 1586. Psalms 119:24. J. R. Macduff, Good Words,1861, p. 525.
The doctrine of the Psalmist, removing the poetry of the form, is this: that obligation to God is our privilege.
I. Consider how it would be with us if we existed under no terms of obligation. (1) There could be no such thing as criminal law for the defence of property, reputation, and life, because the moral distinctions on which criminal law is grounded would be all wanting. (2) What we call society, as far as there is any element of dignity or blessing in it, depends on these moral obligations. Without these it would be intercourse without friendship, truth, charity, or mercy. All that is warm, and trustful, and dear in society rests in the keeping of these moral bonds.
II. Consider, as regards the spiritual nature, how much there is depending on this great privilege of obligation to God. (1) This claim of God's authority, this bond of duty laid upon us, is virtually the throne of God erected in the soul. When violated, it will scorch the bosom with pangs of remorse that are the most fiery and implacable of all mental sufferings. But of this there is no need; all such pains are avoidable by due obedience. And then obligation to God becomes the spring instead of the most dignified, fullest, healthiest joys anywhere attainable. The self-approving consciousness, the consciousness of good what can raise one to a loftier pitch of confidence and blessing? (2) Consider the truly fraternal relation between our obligations to God and what we call our liberty. Instead of restraining our liberty, they only show us, in fact, how to use our liberty, and how to air it, in great and heroic actions. (3) Obligation to God also imparts zest to life by giving to our actions a higher import, and, when they are right, a more consciously elevated spirit. The most serene, the most truly Godlike, enjoyment open to man, is that which he receives in the testimony that he pleases God and the moral self-approbation of his own mind. (4) It is also a great fact, as regards a due impression of obligation to God and of what is conferred in it, that it raises and tones the spiritual emotions of obedient souls into a key of sublimity which is the completeness of their joy. "For ye are complete in Him," says the Apostle, well knowing that it is not what we are in ourselves that makes our completeness, but that our measure of being is full only when we come unto God as an object and unite ourselves to the good and great emotions of God. Before Him all the deep and powerful emotions that lie in the vicinity of fear are waked into life; every chord of feeling is pitched to its highest key or capacity; and the soul quivers eternally in the sacred awe of God and His commandments, thrilled as by the sound of many waters or the roll of some anthem that stirs the framework of the worlds.
H. Bushnell, The New Life,p. 194.
Notice the striking combination here of one's identity, one's house, and one's pilgrimage. The great Father's children are not flesh and blood, but for a little while are "partakers of flesh and blood." The songs which are given to cheer us on our journey are not the songs of our flesh nor the songs of the world, but our songs in the flesh. They are the songs of our identity and our home, which accompany us in our pilgrimage through the world.
I. When we meet together as spirits on pilgrimage, song comes in because God comes in. We sing because we are not citizens of the world, but simply pilgrims passing through it. Love hath eternity, and eternity sings in our hearts because we are from eternity and on our way back.
II. Statutes are things that stand, things that have always stood, and will stand to eternity. These certainties of God are the sources whence comes the inspiration of all true songs. Find and enter the sphere where the eternal realities and eternal laws have their scope, and you are in the home of everlasting song. We must strongly rebuke the idea which would ascribe the songs of the soul to enthusiasm or mere impulse. It is law that sings. There is a shallow mirth of the flesh, as there is a momentary blaze from a sky-rocket; but the stars, which shine for ever and ever, are set in the eternal order of musical law.
III. If you would be lifted above the dull level and routine of mortal life, if you would silence your self-reproach and annihilate the canker of discontent, ask the statutes of God to sing your soul into order. Jesus embodies them, and by leading them into you, by establishing them in the centre of your soul, will lead you in the "way everlasting." The sweetest, the loftiest, and most soul-thrilling music of the world is an inspiration from the ascended Man. He is pulsing the harmony of His own nature through the race.
IV. If the eternal statutes sing within us in this strange land, with what songs may we expect to be greeted as we approach the gates of our true home! The way, in Christ, leads thither, and can end nowhere else. "Where I am, there ye shall be also."
V. Notice the inseverability of God and man, suggested by the "Thy" and the "my" of the text. " Thystatutes are mysongs."
J. Pulsford, Our Deathless Hope,p. 254.
References: Psalms 119:54. W. G. Horder, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxvii., p. 27; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxviii., No. 1652; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons,p. 197. Psalms 119:54; Psalms 119:55. A. Scott, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xix., p. 106.