Psalms 90:11

Psalms 90:11

I. When I consider the difficulties which lie in the way of our measuring the anger of God, I conclude that it is chiefly His steady and orderly goodness which has thrust His displeasure out of sight. So far as one can see from the present arrangements of the world, it is God's way to withdraw for the most part from our view the sterner features of His character, while He puts forward and emphasises everywhere His gracious and fruitful goodness. (1) The mere power or strength of God is itself rather concealed than thrust upon us. It hides itself behind the order within which He is pleased to exert it. (2) The extent to which God's strength might come to be at the service of His anger, and be used by Him to destroy, is still more closely veiled from us by the uniform beneficence of His creation. Only occasionally does nature suggest wrath. Her deliberate arrangements are all inspired by goodness. (3) The experience which we have had of God in our own lives is to the same effect; our bitter days we count upon our fingers, our happier ones by years. Judgment is God's strange work; but His tender mercies are over all His works.

II. By what line shall we fathom the unknown severity of Jehovah? Seeing that God intends His latent wrath to remain as yet concealed from us and hath Himself been at pains to conceal it, by what means shall we search it out? The writer of this Psalm puts into our hand a standard of comparison which, though insufficient, is at least approximative. The wrath of God, he says, is "according to His fear;" to His fearfulness, that is, or His fitness for inspiring in the bosoms of men an awful and sacred dread. Whatever suggests to our minds the enormous strength of God as against our weakness, suggests how terrific His wrath may be if He will. (1) Susceptible souls are sometimes under favourable conditions wrought to fear by the mere vastness, or mystery, or loneliness of God's material works. According to this fear of Him, so is His wrath. (2) The mass of men are too unimaginative or too stupid to be much moved by the mere sublimity of God's everyday creation. They need occasional outbursts of unwonted violence to prick their hearts to fear Him. In their coward hearts terror suggests judgment; and according to His fear, so is to them His wrath. (3) In order to estimate the capacity of wrath in the Almighty, we need to know more than His strength, more than His material terribleness. One event in history expresses to the full the moral terribleness of God. The Passion of Jesus Christ is the crown of all terrible things, and the supreme measure not only of God's mercy, but quite as really of God's severity. According to His fearfulness, so is His wrath.

J. Oswald Dykes, Sermons,p. 205.

Reference: Psalms 90:11. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 2593.