Psalms 52:8

I am like a green olive-tree in the house of God.

Life like a green olive-tree

The olive-tree loves fat soil. It attains to finest fruitfulness when its bed is rich in nutriment. Starve its soil, the tree remains dwarfed and impoverished. A recent traveller, describing the olive-yards of Palestine, says that the soil in which the finest olives grow is “rich as a bride-cake.” Now I think it is to this characteristic of a splendid olive-tree that the psalmist refers. He himself is like an olive-tree in the richness of his rootage. God is the soil of his life, and he exults in the wealth of his resources. Here is the possibility of every man: he may become rooted in God. But how little use we make of our resources! A little while ago I got a load of soil for the purposes of a small kitchen-garden, and the man who keeps my garden in order saw the soil and exclaimed, “That’s a splendid bit of earth, it’s fit for potting work; you can get far more out of that than vegetables.” The phrase at once acquired spiritual suggestiveness. I thought how little I was getting out of God, and how much He wishes me to have. He wants us to be like olive-trees that are rooted in almost inexhaustible resources. It is the apostolic figure; the Apostle Paul speaks of being “rooted in Him.” This, I think, is the first suggestion of the psalmist’s thought; he is like an olive-tree in the wealth of his resources. But he is also like the olive-tree in the vigour of his life. Currents of strength rise out of his resourceful rootage and endow them with spiritual vim and vitality. It is the purpose of our God that every one of our powers should move with firmness and decision. It is His will that there should be nothing weak about our moral and spiritual equipment. He wants everything not only to be beautiful, but to be strong. When we are “rooted” in Him every branch of the life is pervaded by rivers of sap, and every faculty is urged by Divine energy into manifold fruitfulness. The spiritual sap makes everything it pervades fruit for the King. When we are rooted in God everything is sappy. It may be a letter we are writing. It may be a wish we are expressing. It may be a bit of work we are doing. It may be our ordinary occupation, the drudgery of daily life. If we are rooted in God all the issues of the life are sappy with His Spirit, and we become like green olive-trees. Now let us look at the character in a little more detail. “I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever.” What a strong and exquisite word is this word translated “mercy.” One element of its wealthy content is the suggestion of kindness, but it means more than this: Let me put it in this way: the word is descriptive in the first place of the attitude of bowing and coming quite near to the person, an immediate approach to a need. It is the act of the Good Samaritan stooping to the wounded, and pouring in oil and wine. It is pity in action, pity at work. But there is a second element in the word which greatly corroborates the first. Mercy is not only kindness, it is loyalty also. It is love that never says die. It remains full, flowing all through the changing seasons, even in the drought of a fierce indifference. It is the “leal love “ of the Master Himself. “Having loved His own lie loved them unto the end.” This is the mercy of God, and in this mercy the psalmist declares he trusts for ever. Trusts! And there again is a significant word. It means to his for refuge, to take up your home in a thing, to settle down. It is a comfortable nestling in the “leal love” of the Lord. It is to be so sure of Him that worry and fretfulness pass away, and we are like little children, almost careless in our sense of gracious security. “I will give thee thanks for ever.” Here is another characteristic of the life that is like an olive-tree; it is a praiseful, thankful life. There is a sentence in one of Jane Austen’s novels which I think is very expressive. Describing one of her characters, she says, “He was a very liberal thanker.” I think that is very finely descriptive of a rich and welcome character. To be “liberal thankers” heavenward, as well as toward our fellows, is to receive continual spiritual enlargement. Gratitude makes room for more grace. And surely we have abundant opportunity for gratitude! We only need to open our eyes to have our praise awakened at every turn. Every time we express our thanks we make more room for God. I do not wonder, then, that this man, who was rooted in God like an olive-tree, should find himself instinctively and unceasingly bearing the fruit of gratitude and praise. “And I will wait on Thy name, for it is good, in the presence of Thy saints.” What will he wait on? The Lord’s name! And what names the Lord has given Himself, and every name a promise and a pledger He never goes back upon His name. Every name is honoured to the last extremity of its significance. And we can put in richer names than ever the psalmist could. We can insert the name “Saviour,” “Comforter,” “Counsellor,” “Friend.” On this name the psalmist says he will “wait.” That does not mean that he will sit down and indolently tarry until something turns up. It literally means that he will hind himself around the name of God, that he will decline every other support, that he will be wrapped around the covenant of the Lord’s own name. The man who does this will have reason for singing every day. He will find that the support holds, and day by day his experience of security will teach his lips a new song. And he says that he will do this waiting “in the presence of Thy saints.” That is to say, he will mingle with other people who are doing the same, he will make a profession of his willing confidence in God, and he will listen to similar professions made by others. In their mutual confidences they will give one another mutual support. Ah! yes, this kind of communion is always “good.” It nourishes the life like bread, it refreshes the life like water. “Thou satisfiest my mouth with good things.” (J. H. Jowett, M. A.)

I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever.--

On trusting in the mercy of God

I. What mercy is.

1. Mercy, as an attribute of God, is not to be confounded with mere goodness. Goodness may demand the exercise of justice; indeed, it often does; but to say that mercy demands the exercise of justice is to use the word without meaning. Mercy asks that justice be set aside.

2. Mercy is a disposition to pardon the guilty. Desert is never the rule by which mercy-is guided; while it is precisely the rule of justice.

3. Mercy is exercised only where there is guilt. The penalty of the law must have been previously incurred, else there can be no scope for mercy.

4. Mercy can be exercised no further than one deserves punishment. If great punishment is deserved, great mercy can be shown; if endless punishment is due, there is then scope for infinite mercy to be shown, but not otherwise.

II. What is implied in trusting in the mercy of God.

1. A conviction of guilt.

2. That we have no hope on the score of justice. If we had anything to expect from justice, we should not look to mercy.

3. A just apprehension of what mercy is--pardon for the crimes of the guilty.

4. A belief that He is merciful. We could not trust Him if we had no such belief.

5. A conviction of deserving endless punishment.

6. A cessation from all excuses and excuse-making.

III. The conditions upon which we may confidently and securely trust in the mercy of God for ever.

1. Public justice must be appeased. Its demands must be satisfied. However much disposed God may be to pardon, yet He is too good to exercise mercy on any such conditions or under any such circumstances as will impair the dignity of His law, throw out a licence to sin, and open the very floodgates of iniquity. Jehovah never can do this.

2. We must repent.

3. We must confess our sins.

4. We must really make restitution, so far as lies in our power.

5. Another condition is that you really reform.

6. You must go the whole length in justifying the law and its penalty.

7. No sinner can be a proper object of mercy who is not entirely submissive to all those measures of the government that have brought him to conviction.

8. You must close in most cordially with the plan of salvation.

IV. Some mistakes into which many fall.

1. Many really trust in justice, and not in mercy. This is a fatal rock. The sinner who can do this calmly has never seen God’s law and his own heart.

2. Many trust professedly in the mercy of God without fulfilling the conditions on which only mercy can be shown. They may hold on in such trusting till they die--but no longer.

3. Sinners do not consider that God cannot dispense with their fulfilling those conditions. He has no right to do so. They spring out of the very constitution of His government, from His very nature, and must therefore be strictly fulfilled.

4. Many are defeating their own salvation by self-justification. Pleas that excuse self and cavils that arraign God, stand alike and fatally in the way of a pardon. Since the world began it has not been known that a sinner has found mercy in this state.

5. Many pretend to trust in mercy who yet profess to be punished for their sins as they go along. They hope for salvation through mercy, and yet they are punished for all their sins in this life. Two more absurd and self-contradictory things were never put together.

6. Persons who in the letter plead for mercy, often rely really upon justice. The deep conviction of sin and ill-desert does not sink into their soul till they realize what mercy is, and feel that they can rely on nothing else.

7. Some are covering up their sins, yet dream of going to heaven. Do they think they can hide those sins from the Omniscient Eye? Do they think to cover their sins and yet “prosper,” despite of God’s awful Word?

8. We cannot reasonably ask for mercy beyond our acknowledged and felt guilt; and they mistake fatally who suppose that they can. (C. G. Finney.)