Psalms 22:4

Our fathers trusted in Thee.

The God of our fathers.
A sermon to young men

The age in which we live is an enlightened age. And no man is bound to be religious for no better reason than that his father was religious before him. With advancing light and knowledge great changes are coming, or have already come. But how far do such things affect our attitude and utterance like those of the text? Offer first one or two regulative thoughts.

1. It is only right and fair to remember that the great facts of human nature and of human life with which religion has to do remain substantially the same throughout the ages. In the great matters of essential religion, in the main, no one age is more favoured than another. “Our fathers’” disease is our disease; and may not “our fathers’” cure be our cure?

2. Scepticism and unbelief are not new. It is ignorance of the history of unbelief that makes modern unbelief, to many minds, so formidable. Scepticism may change its form,--now the light raillery of a Voltaire, now the learning and logical acumen of a Hume, now the bitter wail of a Mill,--but it is one thing, one principle, one substance. Every age has its sceptic, or its sceptics. It looks almost as if Almighty God permitted them that, intellectually, the Church might be kept from going to sleep.

3. Science is doing grand things today. Her beneficent step is heard almost everywhere. But physical science is comparatively young. And you know the characteristic defects of youth. It is headstrong and impatient, and often irreverent.

It is sometimes not over reticent, even on matters concerning which it cannot form reliable judgments I now speak on “the claims of the religion of our fathers.”

1. It was “our fathers’.” That the sires trusted in God is a very sufficient reason why the sons should hesitate, and hesitate long, before they reach the grave conclusion that there is no God, or that if there be He cannot be trusted because He cannot be known. One of the healthiest facts of human nature and of human life has ever been that spirit of reverence for the past which links generation to generation, and practically makes the race one. We Englishmen are by no means destitute of this fine sentiment.

2. Our fathers proved it. What is the testimony borne by honest men who have preceded us? It is that the religion of Jesus is a grand reality and not a human dream; that the Bible contains a Divine and all-satisfying revelation of God; that it is not a fabrication or an imposture; that the heart of man is weary till it find rest in Christ; that there is such rest in Christ; that in the Cross of the Crucified One there is hope for all, comfort for all, heaven for all! And how are we asked to receive that testimony Some would have us believe that it is untrustworthy. Surely “our fathers” were not mere intellectual weaklings? What are we to say of the testimony they bore? We will go long before we speak ill, or listen with patience to ill spoken, of the bridge which bore them over!

3. They died in the faith of it. For me, I believe in the “God of my fathers.” I believe in the religion of my fathers. I will take the liberty of expressing it in forms suited to the spirit and the habits of thought of the age in which we live; but the essential Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ I keep. (J. Thew.)

Gods faithfulness to ancient saints good ground for trust and hope

Those who look upon this Psalm as having a primary reference to the King of Israel attribute great beauty to these words, from the very pleasing conjecture that David was, at the time of composing them, sojourning at Mahanaim, where Jacob, in his distress, wrestled with the angel and obtained such signal blessings. That, in a place so greatly hallowed by associations of the past, he should make his appeal to the God of his fathers, was alike the dictate of patriarchal feeling and religion. (John Morison.)

Strong warrant for trust

Our hope is not hung upon such untwisted thread as “I imagined so” or “it is likely,” but the cable, the strong hope of our fastened anchor, is the oath and promise of Him who is eternal verity; our salvation is fastened with God’s own hand and Christ’s own strength to the strong stake of God’s unchanging nature. (S. Rutherford.)