Psalms 39:6

Surely every man walketh in a vain show.

The bitterness and blessedness of the brevity of life

(with Psalms 39:12):--These two sayings are two different ways of putting the same thing. There is a common thought underlying both, but the associations with which that common thought is connected in these two verses are distinctly different. The one is bitter and sad--a gloomy half truth. The other, out of the very same fact, draws blessedness and hope. The one may come from no higher point of view than the level of worldly experience, the other is a truth of faith. The former is at best partial, and without the other may be harmful; the latter completes, explains, and hallows it. And this progress and variety is the key to the whole psalm. The writer, in consequence of some personal calamity--we know not what,--was struck dumb with silence. His thoughts were sad and miserable. At last he speaks out, and complains more than prays concerning the deep sadness of life. He dilates on this, but the thought of it alpine is too dreadful: the blackness of his view was making him reel; therefore he turns to God, “And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in Thee.” The psalm changes from this point; there is the same sadness contemplated, but with what a difference. He sees the bright light of tope which streams up from the most lurid masses of opaque cloud till their gloom begins to glow with an inward lustre, and softens into solemn purples and reds. He had said, “I was dumb with silence--even from good.” But when his hope is in God, the silence changes its character and becomes resignation and submission. He is a stranger, but “with Thee”--that makes all the difference. He is God’s guest in his transient life. That life is short, like the stay of a foreigner in a strange land, but he is under the care of the King of the land; therefore be need not fear nor sorrow. Three points are brought before us.

I. The thought of life common to both verses of the text. “Every man walketh in a vain show,” and “in an image” or “shadow”--he walks as a shadow. That is to say, the whole outward life and activity of every man is represented as fleeting and unsubstantial, like the reflection of a cloud which darkens leagues of the mountain’s side in a moment, and “ere a man can say, behold,” is gone again for ever. Then look at the other image employed in the other clause of our text, to express the same idea, “I am a stranger and a sojourner as all my fathers.” The phrase has a history. In that most pathetic narrative of an old-world sorrow long since calmed and consoled, when “Abraham stood up from before his dead” and craved a burying-place for Sarah from the sons of Heth, he pleaded, “I am a stranger and a sojourner with you.” He was so. And such is man’s relation to this world.

II. The gloomy hollowness which that thought apart from God infuses into life, Because life is fleeting, therefore in part, it is so hollow and unsatisfying. Why should we fret and break our hearts, “and scorn delights, and live laborious days “for purposes which will last so short a time, and things which we shall so soon have to leave?” Were it not better to lie still?” Such thoughts have at least a partial truth in them, and are difficult to meet as long as we think only of the facts and results of man’s life that we can see with our eyes. Yes I if we have said all, when we have said--men pass as a fleeting shadow, if my life has no roots in the eternal, nor any consciousness of a life that does not fade, when it is all flat and unprofitable, an illusion, a folly, a dream. For all the while I yearn for something higher, “My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God.” God “hath put eternity in man’s heart,” as Ecclesiastes says. And all these longings and aspirations witness that such limited life as was can never fill our souls or give us rest. Can you fill up the swamps of the Mississippi with any cartloads of faggots that you can fling in? Can you fill your souls with anything which belongs to this fleeting life? Has a flying shadow an appreciable thickness, or will a million of them pressed together occupy a space in your empty hungry heart? But note how our other text in its significant words gives us--

III. The blessedness which springs from this same thought of life when it is looked at in connection with God. The mere conviction of the brevity and hollowness of life is not in itself a religious or helpful thought. It all depends upon what you associate with it. The words, “I am a stranger and a sojourner with Thee,” point back to the law of the jubilee, when all lands returned to their original owners. But its religious aim was to keep alive in the minds of Israel their sense of dependence upon God. “The land shall not be sold for ever, for the laud is mine, for ye are strangers and sojourners with me. Of course, there was a special sense in which that was true with regard to Israel, but David thought that the words were as true in regard to his whole relation of God, as in regard to Israel’s possession of its national inheritance. If we grasp these words as completing all that we have already said, how different this transient and unsubstantial life looks. You must have the light from both sides to stereoscope and make solid the flat surface picture. Transient! yes--but it is passed in the presence of God. Now, if we will hold to this truth, what calm blessedness will flow into our hearts. For if “a stranger with Thee,” then we are the guests of the King, the Lord of the land. We have a constant companion and an abiding presence. He is with us, will walk with us, will sit with us and make our hearts glow. Strangers we are, indeed, here--but not solitary, for we are “strangers with Thee.” As in some ancestral home in which a family has lived for centuries--son after father has rested in these great chambers, and been safe behind the strong walls--so age after age, they who love Him abide in God. “Thou has been our dwelling-place in all generations.” “Strangers with Thee”--then we may carry our thoughts forward to the time when we shall go to our true home, nor wander any longer in the land that is not ours. If even here He is with us, what will it be there? And why should we fear death? Is the sentry sad as the hour for relieving guard comes nigh? Is the wanderer in far-off lands sad as he turns his face homewards? And why should not we rejoice at the thought that we, strangers and foreigners here, shall soon depart to the true metropolis, the mother-country of our souls? I do not know why. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Earth’s vanities and heaven’s verities

I. David records his view of human life.

1. He speaks of life as a walk. He seems to have had in his mind the idea of a great procession: “Surely every man walketh in a vain show.” Such things were more common in Oriental countries than they are with us; but whether it is the Lord Mayor’s show or any other, it is a picture of what this mortal life is. Among some classes of society, show is everything; they must “keep up appearances.” Just so; and, all the world over, that is about all there is--“appearances”--a vain show. I wish we could get a hold of that idea as a practical thing, that everything we can see is shadow, but what we cannot see is the real substance.

2. He speaks of life as a worry. “Surely they are disquieted.” So they are. How few people are so free from the spirit of the things of this world as to pass through this life quietly. See how they begin life, eager for its joys, its honours, its wealth. Note how they plod, and toil, and labour. How much of brain-work is done by the light of the midnight oil! Many a man agitates his mind, and wearies his spirit, till his life is lost in finding a livelihood. They are trying to live, and lo! life is gone; and they wake up, and wonder how it is that they have let it go, and have not really lived at all.

3. David passes on to speak of life as a success; and he mentions those who were supposed to have been successful in life; though, mark you, it is not success in life, after all, to accumulate riches. “He heapeth up riches.” That is all he does not partake of them, he does not use them, he merely heaps them up. He accumulates without enjoyment. “He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.” He leaves his wealth without pleasure. I am sure that there is many a man who would turn in his grave if he knew what was being done with his hard-earned wealth.

II. David expresses his own emotions in contemplation of these things.

1. He has come to a decision. “And now, Lord.” I like that mode of speech; it is a great thing to come to God with a “now.” Every moment is solemn if we would but make it so; but there are certain turning-points in life, when a man has had his eyes opened to see the fallacy of his former pursuits, when, stopping where the roads meet, he looks up to the signpost, and says, “And now, Lord, guide me; help me to take the right turn, to eschew the shadow, and to seek after that which is substantial. Now, Lord.”

2. I also like this expression of David’s emotions, because he consults with God: “Every man walketh in a vain show; but,” saith he, “and now, Lord, there is no vanity with Thee, no deception, no delusion with Thee, behold, I turn away from this mirage, which just now deluded me, to Thee, my God, the Rock of my salvation, and I look to Thee. And now, Lord.”

3. He is a man whose hope is in God.

III. David offers an appropriate and needful prayer, “Deliver me,” etc.

1. From sins committed.

2. From the assaults of sin.

3. From peculiarly dangerous sins.

4. From deserved dishonour.

5. From undeserved defamation.

6. From spiritual disappointment.

7. From dreadful taunts at the last. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Surely they are disquieted in vain.--

Vain disquietudes

I. Because they are utterly useless. Most, if not all, the things that occasion them are inevitable.

1. The approach of age.

2. The advance of reformations.

3. The separation from property.

4. The advent of death.

II. Because they are removable. Since Christianity has come, all the disquietudes of the soul may be hushed. They are kept in “perfect peace” whose minds are stayed upon God. (Homilist.)