Psalms 78:20

Psalms 78:20

Notice what kind of unbelief is here. It does not deny the past fact. It acknowledges that God has done a miracle of mercy. But in that miracle it finds no such revelation of God Himself and His perpetual character and love as gives assurance that He will again be powerful and merciful. These Israelites have no accumulated faith. They are just where they were before the last miracle relieved them. That miracle stands wholly by itself. It does not promise or imply another.

I. The power of accumulation of life differs extremely in different men. Some men gather living force, wisdom, faith, out of every experience. Other men leave the whole experience behind them, and carry out with them nothing but the barren recollection of it. And the difference, when we examine it, depends on this: on whether the man has any conception of a continuous, unbroken principle or personal association running through life, and bringing out of each experience its soul and essence to be perpetually kept.

II. The true unity of life is the unity of a long journey in which, though the quick railroad is constantly compelling you to leave each new scene behind you, the wise, kind company of the friend whom you are travelling with, and who in each new scene has had the chance to show you something new of his wisdom and kindness, has been continually with you and bound the long journey into a unit.

III. Suppose a human soul looking out into the mysterious and unrevealed experiences of the everlasting world. The window of death is wide open; and the soul stands up before it, and looks through, and sees eternity. How shall the soul carry with it the sense of safety and assurance in God, which it has won within His earthly care, forth into this unknown, untrodden vastness whither it now must go? Only in one way; only by deepening as deeply as possible its assurance that it is God not accident, not its own ingenuity, not its brethren's kindness that it is God who has made this earthly life so rich and happy. Wrapped into Him, the soul may be not merely resigned; it may be even impatient to explore those larger regions where the power which has made itself known to it here shall be able to display to it all the completeness of its nature and its love.

IV. There is a difference between coming out of sorrow thankful for relief and coming out of sorrow full of sympathy with, and trust in, Him who has released us. To the soul that finds in all life new and ever deeper knowledge of Christ, life is for ever accumulating. This is the only real transfiguration of the dusty road, the monotony and routine of living.

Phillips Brooks, The Candle of the Lord,p. 320.

References: Psalms 78:23. Preacher's Monthly,vol. ii., p. 459. Psalms 78:25. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 1497.