I. The stranger. The literal stranger is easily recognised, not so easily, perhaps, in a great city, where there are always thousands of strangers and foreigners, but easily in country towns and villages and on country roads. The life-spelling of the word "onward" sits in his look. His home, wherever it may be, is not here. There is one word which, as it seems to me, expresses more than any other single word of the real meaning of the principal term of this verse: "stranger" the word "reserve." A principle, an instinct, a habit, of reserve will be found running through the whole of life on the earthly side of it with the stranger, as, for instance, (1) reserve in secular occupations, in what we call the business of life; (2) reserve in pleasure; (3) reserve even in the sphere of highest duty. The stranger is one who holds himself in reserve, who lifts himself up, who looks far and high, who directs his being inwards.
II. The prayer is perfectly suited to the condition which has been described. "A stranger" here but for a little, and yet morally beginning the great hereafter, "never continuing in one stay," and yet possessing one being, and developing and settling that being into character. God's commandments, revealed and brought home to the heart, will yield plentifully all that can be needed in the pilgrim state. In one way or other they touch all the chances and hazards of the journey and all the requirements of the traveller, while they all combine to make one supreme influence of preparation for what will come when the earthly journey is over.
A. Raleigh, The Little Sanctuary,p. 313.
I. Man's solitude: "I am a stranger upon earth."
II. Man's true companionship: "Thy commandments."
III. Man's true source of power: "Hide not" teach me "Thy commandments."
Bishop King, Contemporary Pulpit,vol. i., p. 243.
I. I am as a stranger in the earth because of the impermanence of my position.
II. I am as a stranger in the earth because of my life and language.
III. I am as a stranger in the earth because of the perils to which I am exposed.
IV. "Hide not Thy commandments from me." These words show that God has not been unmindful of the earthly life of His saints, but has provided for its effectual protection.
Parker, Pulpit Analyst,vol. i., p.601.
Taken together, these words set forth our condition as strangers and pilgrims on the earth, and God's bountiful provision for meeting that condition in Christ.
I. The fact that we are strangers is forced upon us by our ignorance. Apart from revelation, we know almost nothing of the world we live in, and absolutely nothing of its Lord. In every age and to every thinking soul arise the great questions, Who sent me into this earth? Why am I here? Whither am I going? A yearning for replies to these questions springs up in every heart. "O unknown Maker, I am a stranger on the earth; hide not Thy laws from me." The Gospel is God's answer to this cry. It is the revelation of the light which is behind sun and stars. Christ puts that great word "Father" into all our thoughts. He lifts the light of it over the whole universe. And the knowledge and glory of a living, loving, personal Father stream in upon us from every side.
II. Our sins still more than our ignorance have put the sense of strangeness into our hearts and the marks of it upon our countenance. When the soul awakens to spiritual consciousness and finds itself in the presence of this great truth of the Fatherhood of God, the first fact which confronts it is a sense of farness from the Father. It is God's mercy that He has not left us to rest in this depth of strangeness. He has made a way for us in Christ the new and living way by the blood. God's own Son has died to put our estrangement away. "We are no more strangers and foreigners." The blood has brought us near.
III. Another proof that we are strangers is the estrangement we find among men. Of this problem also the solution is provided in the Gospel. Christ comes as the great Uniter and Binder together. He comes sowing over all the waste of estrangement and alienation this healing word: "One is your Father." He comes with the grand purpose of binding those who receive that word into a holy and abiding fellowship.
IV. The last and saddest mark of the stranger upon us is death. If there had been no light for this shadow, how great our misery should be. But, blessed be God, He has not hidden the future from His child. This also is laid bare to our hungering hearts in Christ. A home awaits us beyond the grave. A new life blooms for us in the very presence of God. Our torn and suffering earthly existence is to be crowned with: glory and immortality in the world of the risen dead. Christ the Resurrection! Christ the Life! that is our song in the home on which the shadows have begun to fall.
A. Macleod, Days of Heaven upon Earth,p. 291.
References: Psalms 119:20. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxvii., No. 1586. Psalms 119:24. J. R. Macduff, Good Words,1861, p. 525.