Sermon Bible Commentary
Psalms 36:9
I. It is quite certain that we see nothing by that which is in the object itself. We see it by that which falls on it from above. And this process of seeing everything by a communicated light must go on and on till we arrive at a primary light, and that light alone shows itself. It cannot be known by anything external to itself; it is its own expositor. Such is God. We can only know God by Himself. The means whereby we see God are within God. "In Thy light shall we see light." The Bible mirrors the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost mirrors the Son, the Son mirrors the Father, and we know God. And all through the principle is the same, and the rule is absolute we know God by Himself. "In the light of Thine own being shall we see light."
II. Take the general law that everything is to us just what God is to us. It is the presence or the absence, the nearness or the distance, of God which makes it happy or unhappy, injurious or beneficial. Its complexion all depends on the God that is in it. There may be much beauty, but we shall not find it out till He makes it known to us. "In Thy light shall we see light."
III. This is specially true in sickness and sorrow. God loves to show what His light is by making it burn where all around is very dark. Watch; if you can only see it, there is already a line upon the cloud. The day-star is risen, and soon it will all come in its own order a twilight, a breaking, a fleeing away of the shadows, a mounting of the sun in your heart higher and higher, a merry warmth, a meridian splendour.
IV. The power of everything, the soul of everything, is its light. In God's triple empire it is all one Light, and the Light is Christ. As on that fourth day of creation God gathered up all the scattered particles that played in the new-made firmament and treasured them in the sun, so in the four thousandth year of our world did He concentrate all light into Christ. That is light's unity, and thence it flows through nature, grace, and glory, and light is trinity.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,10th series, p. 28.
We have in these words the significant declaration that God, the fountain of the true and highest life, is known by men in no other than His own light, as the sun is contemplated in no other resplendence than that which streams forth to us from itself. Faith in the living God as He reveals Himself is the light of all our knowledge.
I. Take, first, the problem of the world. "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God." There is not a truer word than this in the Bible. Believing is not knowing, it is true; but yet belief, duly enlightened and confirmed, leads to a knowledge and science certainly very different in its nature from that which we arrive at by the process of reasoning and observation, but not on that account of a lower degree of certainty; and the science which begins by abandoning this faith is condemned by an inexorable judgment of God, at a certain point, earlier or later, either to be reduced to silence or to enter on the path of error.
II. The conception of God who shall satisfactorily determine it? or does not your confession ultimately come to this: God is great, and we comprehend Him not? Yet He has written His monogram deep on every conscience, and all the heavens cry aloud of His glory. But nature conceals God as well as reveals Him. The impure conscience compels man to flee from his Maker, and thus leads the darkened intellect upon the path of error. The Son of God has given us understanding that we may know Him that is true; to His disciples it is granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God.
III. The heart of man. Man remains in the end the greatest enigma to himself. The Bible is just as little a handbook of natural science as of the science of man. Yet this memorial of the Divine revelation of salvation has afforded more satisfactory contributions to the solution of this problem also than the varying systems of all philosophers and psychologists together. The key to the mystery of humanity lies within those sacred pages which testify of sin and grace.
IV. But though the great word of reconciliation has been spoken, what avails it so long as the conflict of life continues so terribly to rage, and to demand so many victims? The old proverb is true that man has a warfare upon earth, a warfare which begins with his birth and usually ends only with death. Wondrous fact that He who reconciles man to God reconciles him also to life, to conflict, to the most bitter grief, and teaches him something higher than subjection teaches him the secret of a joy which sings psalms even in the deepest night!
V. Only one question remains: the question as to the final triumph of the conflict of the ages. God's world-plan what know ye of it who place faith as a blind beggar outside the crystal palace of your science? To us it has been made known, this mystery of God's good pleasure to gather all things together under Christ as Head. To subserve the coming of His kingdom, men's spirits struggle, and the nations rage, and the ages revolve, and the discords follow each other, but at last to be resolved into one prophetic voice, "Maranatha, Jesus comes."
J. Van Oosterzee, Preacher's Lantern,vol. iv., pp. 483, 555.
David saw the world all full of seekers after light; he was a seeker after light himself. What he had discovered, and what he wanted to tell men, was that the first step in a hopeful search after light must be for a man to put himself into the element of light, which was God. The first thing for any man to do who wanted knowledge was to put himself under God, to make himself God's man, because both he who wanted to know and that which he wanted to know had God for their true element, and were their best and did their best only as they lived in Him. Notice three or four facts concerning human knowledge which seem to give their confirmation to the doctrine of the old Hebrew singer's song.
I. First stands the constant sense of the essential unity of knowledge. All truth makes one great whole, and no student of truth rightly masters his own special study unless he at least constantly remembers that it is only one part of the vast unity of knowledge, one strain in the universal music, one ray in the complete and perfect light.
II. A second fact with regard to human knowledge is its need of inspiration and elevation from some pure and spiritual purpose.
III. Another characteristic of the best search after wisdom is the way in which it awakens the sense of obedience.
IV. Closely allied to this fact is the constant tendency which knowledge has always shown to connect itself with moral character. The combination of these consciousnesses makes, almost of necessity, the consciousness of God. As they are necessary to the search for light, so is the God in whom they meet the true Inspirer and Helper of the eternal search.
Phillips Brooks, Sermons Preached in English Churches,p. 89.
I. The frequent occurrence of these two images in conjunction, in tacit, unemphatic passages, shows us how deeply the symbols and their meaning too had sunk into the heart of the nation. But they were at last to receive their full, precise, and definite interpretation an interpretation which should bring the life and light of God home to every man, and show him, not merely that far off in heaven light and life existed, but that they were brought close to every one's home, not merely that the well of life was with God, as the Psalmist knew, but that it rose and ran close by the ways of man, not merely that "we shall see light" in distant years, but that there is for us One that is the Light of the world, which whoso followeth shall not walk in darkness.
II. Look at what our Lord says about the living water of life. "On the last day, that great day of the feast" just perhaps after the priest had poured the water from his ewer, while the crowds were still undispersed "Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come to Me and drink." The water in the Temple was not drunk, only poured out. But Jesus returns at once to the rock which was the meaning of the ceremony, and to the old scene in the desert when the thirsting congregation wished to drink of the clear, outflowing tide. "If any man thirst,let him come to Me and drink." Drink what? That which the ancient water signified: life, and strength, and purity. Innocence restored, strength attained, life assured all these are in the draught which He places at your lips. Once drink of Christ's spirit really, and it shall rise and flow from your own lips, full of freshness, full of progress. To the Christian moralist alone of all moralists the lessening of fault, the growth of perfection, can bring no vanity, for he alone knows that it is not of himself he lives, that the life of Christ is his only life.
Archbishop Benson, Boy Life: Sundays in Wellington College,p. 32.
References: Psalms 36:9. J. Vaughan, Old Testament Outlines,p. 109; Spurgeon, Evening by Evening,pp. 292, 311; S. Macnaughton, Real Religion and Real Life,p. 97.