Psalms 47:4

Psalms 47:4

There is ineffable music in these words, but it is late in life before we are able to hear it so as to understand it; it is late in life before we are able to turn these words into a hymn and to sing it for ourselves: "He shall choose our inheritance for us." It is easy to see and sing in the light and in the day; it is easy to read the score of life's melodies when they are all lyric and rhythmic; but when the great discords rush in and disturb the melody, it is more difficult to sing in the faith that they will constitute its great harmony by-and-bye: that is the frame in which to say, "He shall choose our inheritance for us."

I. The joy of life is to feel the assurance that in any case it is not a scheme of fatalism, a mere reign of law. " Heshall chooseour inheritance for us;" it is not fate; it is not destiny. The universe is governed, not by infinite chance, but by infinite choice.

II. There is a proof of this; there is a correspondence the Divine choice proves itself by Divine love. "The excellency of Jacob whom He loved." We are the illustrations of the Father's will, we are the excellency of Jacob whom He loved, and so God is justified daily by the verification of human experience.

III. Take then the Divine consolation in the text: "He shall choose our inheritance for us." The soul respires amidst such serene and invigorating airs; this is the staple truth, the vertebral column, of the book of God. God is the portion, the inheritance, of His people. Let us live in this great faith, in the great and infinite reservations of God.

E. Paxton Hood, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxiii., p. 349.

References: Psalms 47:4. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. i., No. 33; Ibid., Evening by Evening,p. 318; Congregationalist,vol. vii., p. 472.