Sermon Bible Commentary
Psalms 48:8
I. First, "we have heard" of the honour of the Church as included in that testimony of Jesus which is the spirit of prophecy, the very groundwork of the Psalter. We hear our Lord's own predictions about His Church, His accomplishment of His own prophetic psalms those psalms in which ages beforehand He prepared men to realise what the Church of Christ should be and how it should fill up His sufferings and share His glory.
II. "Like as we have heard, so have we seen." This frequent teaching about the Church is not a thrice-told tale, not only a prophetic vision or an Apostolic instruction. It is something for us to realise ourselves. The "fair place" is our heritage. The kingdom of God is within us. The Divine presence is granted to us if we will but open the eyes of our mind, the temple of our hearts, every day.
III. The past and the present alike cheer us on in our hopes for the future of the Church of Christ. In this present time we see, and not only with the eye of faith, the fulfilment of those ancient promises and predictions in the marvellous preservation and enlargement of the Church.
IV. Notice one or two reflections as to our own duty in the Church into which we have been baptized. (1) Take on trust the doctrine of the Church's life, even if you can only hear of it at present. (2) Abide in the Church. We must not try to stand outside the Church or above it, but where Christ is, in it. (3) Though faith tarry, wait for it. Fulness of conviction, like consummate knowledge, can only gradually be won. Study then humbly the holy doctrines delivered unto you, and most of all that priceless word which proves them.
V. Let us all remember that holiness is the great mark of the Church the holiness which is God's gift of mercy through the merits of His Son, granted to the lowliest and most degraded if truly penitent and faithful.
J. E. Jelf, Oxford Review,May 3rd, 1883.
These words of the prophet and psalmist seem to contain a short and plain account of the temper and behaviour of the friends and Apostles of our Lord during those days of hope and patience which came to an end on the morning of the first Whit-Sunday.
I. They waited patiently for the Lord. They had taken it on His word, however unaccountable it might sound, that it was expedient for them His going away; and they were prepared to trust Him still further and to abide in faith and quietness any length of time during which the Comforter might delay His coming.
II. Observe the place where they waited. The prophecy had described God's people as waiting in the Temple. Our Lord ordered His Apostles to tarry in the city of Jerusalem, and they were continually in the Temple.
III. This teaches, first, that patient waiting is the strength of God's people, that they greatly err if they pretend to fix His times or to take His matters into their own hands; and, secondly, that they are to take things as they find them and set out on God's work in their social callings from the present moment and the present state of things, whenever and whatever it be.
IV. There can be no such encouragement to serious repentance, to serious improvement, to patient continuance in welldoing, as the answer which God gave to those prayers in which our Lord's disciples and His mother continued during the ten days from His ascension to Pentecost. The return of these prayers was the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, Jesus Christ coming by His Spirit to save us one by one from the power of sin for the future, as He had before come in His own person to offer Himself an all-sufficient sacrifice for us, and save us one and all from the punishment of sins past.
V. If the disciples were to wait for the Comforter in Jerusalem, in or near the visible Temple, much more ought we to take care how we wander in any way, even in thought, beyond the bounds of the spiritual temple, the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. Let us so long and strive for these mercies, as never to forget the sort of persons to whom they are promised.
Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times"vol. vii., p. 127.
References: Psalms 48:8. J. Keble, Sermons from Ascension Day to Trinity,p. 151.Psalms 48:9. J. C. Gallaway, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiii., p. 275.