Psalms 15

THE GODLY MAN

‘Whoso doeth these things: shall never fall.’

Psalms 15:5 (Prayer Book Version)

Through the whole of the Jewish polity and of Old Testament history God is spoken of as bringing His people into a true and right state—a state of fellowship with Himself. It was no contradiction to say of any men whomsoever who had been taken into God’s covenant, ‘They are wholly a right seed; whatsoever of wrong springs up in them is of their own seeking; it will come from their choosing a way of their own, from their liking to be independent of their actual Ruler.’ But what was the necessary corollary from this statement? Surely that there must be certain evil habits which denoted a determination not to abide in the state into which God had called them. To resist these habits was to acquire a fixed dwelling in God’s tabernacle. No Jew could dare to say that God was present with him because he was better or more believing than his brethren. The Lord was in the holy hill, the Protector of the city, the bond of Jewish fellowship. The man who wanted to be something better than a citizen must go without the Divine protection; he could not abide in the tabernacle or rest on Zion.

I. The Lord, on the holy hill of Zion, was an object of distinct, definite contemplation.—When we speak of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, do we mean a Being less distinct, less personal? Our reverence is not promoted, but destroyed, by vagueness and unreality.

II. The ascension of Christ, like the placing of the tabernacle on the holy hill, claims equal privileges for us all.—Christ has claimed for us a place in His Father’s house, the place of sons and daughters. His Father is our Father. In that right we may ascend the holy hill. To say that we ascend it in virtue of any feelings, sensations, holiness, of ours is to set aside the incarnation, sacrifice, ascension, of Christ.

III. What, then, is the reason why we do not receive these blessings, seeing that they are so freely given?—The fifteenth psalm again gives the reason. The New Testament tells us more perfectly than the Old how we may rise out of the most base, corrupt, dishonest habits, how God has revealed His righteousness in Christ for the remission of sins. But He has revealed His righteousness. Therefore He has said that no unrighteousness can have any fellowship or intercourse with Him.

Rev. F. D. Maurice.

Illustrations

(1) ‘A merely moral ideal, apart from any distinctively Christian application, is presented to us in the picture of “stainless chivalry,” as it has been finely called, which is drawn in the fifteenth psalm.’

(2) ‘It is not social position which makes the heart really blessed. For God and Christ and the Holy Spirit may be far away. Nor is it the possession of power which brings tranquillity and joy. “I have everything,” a Roman emperor said, “and everything is nothing.” Physical, mental, material resources may be mine; but I am poor unless I have the new heart. It is character which transfigures everything. When “the honest thought” is mine, when “simple truth” is my only skill, when I walk uprightly and work righteousness, when God has made all things new, and when day by day He keeps me holy and humble and loving and self-forgetful—then I “shall never be moved.” ’