Psalms 11

FOUNDATIONS

‘If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?’

Psalms 11:3

I. Look at true foundations.—(1) God is God, before all things pre-ordaining, revolving within Himself and all things else, as He pleases, the great foundation given to Moses in the bush—‘I am!’ (2) This good God has given us a revelation. We can prove it by every evidence: the external evidence—prophecy; the internal evidence—the harmony; the experimental evidence—what it has been to many, and what it is to me. (3) In the Revelation there is shown a way—the only way—by which a just God can forgive a sinner. He has found and accepted a Substitute, Who outweighs the whole world—His own Son. (4) To communicate this thought and to give this faith, there is a Holy Ghost, Himself also God; and He being Spirit, works in the spirit of a man, and creates in his heart trust and love towards Jesus Christ. (5) As soon as by that Spirit a man really trusts, as a sinner, in Christ, he is united to Christ. God sees him in Christ, and in Christ God sees him righteous. (6) By the same union, and through the operation of the Holy Ghost, that man, now a living member in Christ, has a motive sufficient to change his whole life and to make him do all good works. God, inspiration, Christ, the Holy Ghost, faith, good works—these are the foundations.

II. Be always looking to foundations and resting in foundations.—Sometimes a child of God thinks he has lost his foundations. If he thinks so, he should see whether any part of his foundation is impaired, or loose, or out of order. (2) If he finds out the fault, he should try to repair it; but if not, then let him throw himself back at once on the all-foundation that God is God. There is nothing in the world so sure as a believer’s foundation. As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more, but the righteous is an everlasting foundation.

—Rev. James Vaughan.

Illustrations

(1) ‘This psalm is referred by some to the eve of Absalom’s conspiracy. David was so surrounded with hatred that flight seemed the one condition of life. It may be that voices spoke in his heart, and that we hear his dialogue with himself; or it may be that his friends advised him to be gone. But, whichever way it was, how well the Psalmist’s words describe the temptation which often sweeps across us to abandon resistance to prevailing evil, as hopeless and useless, and to betake ourselves to some soft nest embosomed in the rocks, beyond the reach of bow-shot or cannon-ball!’

(2) ‘When John Welsh and his fellow captives were summoned from their prison in Blackness on the Firth of Forth, to appear before the Court at Linlithgow, they sang this psalm as they marched during the night. While they were lying in their dungeon, deep and dark, one of the prisoners received a letter of encouragement from Lady Melville of Culross, one of the best women of her time, which bade them be thankful that they were only in the “darkness of Blackness, and not in the blackness of darkness.” ’