From His right hand went a fiery law for them.
Yea, He loved the people.
The law of antagonism
At first sight the text might seem to involve a contradiction, but closer consideration will show that it expresses a great truth, namely, that the severity of human life is an expression of the Divine goodness.
I. In nature. The fiery law published at Sinai is proclaimed from every mountaintop; it burns and blazes through all the earth; the sea also is crystal mingled with fire. Nature knows nothing of indulgence; she makes no concessions to ignorance, folly, or weakness. Nature is imperative, uncompromising, terrible. In our day the severity of nature has been recognised as “the struggle for existence,” and students have shown with great clearness and power how full the world is of antagonism and suffering; yet these same students distinctly perceive that the struggle for existence is at bottom merciful, and that whenever nature chooses an evil it is a lesser evil to prevent a greater.
1. They see the advantage of severity so far as all sound and healthy things are concerned. If the conditions of life are in any degree softened, it is to the detriment of the noble organisms concerned.
2. They see also the advantage of severity so far as defective things are concerned. It is better for the world at large that weak organisms should be eliminated, otherwise the earth would be filled with imperfection and wretchedness; it is better for the creatures concerned that they should perish, for why should a miserable existence be indefinitely prolonged?
II. In civilisation. It is not by gentle yielding restrictions, by pliant understandings, by soft phrases, by light penalties easily remitted, by facility and complaisance, by the coddling of the individual, and the pampering of the nations, but by laws most exacting and rigorous, that God governs the race and conducts it to ultimate perfection. And yet once more we may see that the fiery law is only a definition of love.
1. Take the struggle of man with nature. The tropical sun burns us; the Arctic cold freezes us; in temperate regions the changeability of the weather troubles us; everywhere we experience the fury of the elements. All climates and countries have their special inconveniences, inhospitalities, and scourges. But is not this conflict with nature part of the inspiration and programme of civilisation? Contending with the globe, we are like Jacob wrestling with the angel. The fight is long and hard amid the mystery and the darkness, and the great Power seems reluctant to bless us; but the breaking of the day comes, and we find ourselves blest with corn, wine, oil, purple, feasts, flowers. Ah! and with gifts far beyond those of basket and store--ripened intelligence, self-reliance, courage, skill, manliness, virtue.
2. Take the struggle of man with man. Society is a great system of antitheses. There are international rivalries--a relentless competition between the several races and nations for power and supremacy. The various peoples watch each other across the seas; the earth is full of feuds, stratagems, competitions. And within the separate communities what complex and unceasing emulations and antagonisms exist! But this social rivalry brings its rich compensations. Solicitude, fatigue, difficulty, danger, hunger, these are the true king-makers; and the misfortune with many rich families today is, that they are being gradually let down because they are losing sight of the wolf. The wolf not merely suckled Romulus; it suckles all kings of men. The wolf is not a wolf at all; it is an angel in wolves’ clothing, saving us from rust, sloth, effeminacy, cowardice, baseness, from a miserable superficiality of thought, life, and character.
III. In character. When we are called upon to perform duties utterly repugnant to flesh and blood, to suffer grievous losses, to experience bitterest disappointments, to bleed under social humiliations, to be tortured by pain, to lose those whose love was our life, to endure the great fight of afflictions which sooner or later comes upon us all, we may rationally and consolingly murmur to ourselves, “This is a lesser evil to prevent a greater.” For as the catastrophes of nature are, after all, but partial and temporary, preventing immeasurably greater calamities, so our physical pain, impoverishment, social suffering, severe toil, bereavement, and all our terrestrial woes are the lesser evils, saving us from the infinitely greater one of the superficiality, corruption, misery, and ruin of the soul. And not only is the fiery law a wall of fire securing our salvation from the abyss; it is also a call unto a high and splendid perfection. It shows the way to the dignities, freedoms, treasures, felicities, perfections, of the highest universe and the unending life.
1. Let us not reject the law of Sinai because of its severity. The musician with the harp believes in strait-lacing, and it is only when the strings are stretched nigh to the breaking that he brings out the finest music. So in human life, caprice, licence, abandonment mean dissonance and misery; only through obligation, duty, discipline do all the chords of our nature become tuned to the music of a sweet perfection.
2. Let us not reject the Lord Jesus because He comes to us with a cross. To attain the highest, we must be crucified with Christ.
3. Let us not shrink from the tribulations of life. “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: but rejoice,” etc. The whole case is here. We must not consider the fiery trial “a strange thing.” It is the universal order. We witness it in all nature; we discern it in all the history of civilisation; it is the common experience. The fiery trial is not some ordeal peculiar to the Christian saints; it is appointed to the whole of humanity. We must not consider the fiery trial an uncompensated thing. The cross we carry is no longer a pitiless and crushing burden; we look to its ultimate design, and know it as the rough but precious instrument of our purification and perfecting. (W. L. Watkinson.)
All His saints are in Thy hand.
Saints in the Lord’s hand
These holy ones are distinguished by many things from each other. Some of them are in public life and some in private. Some are rich and some poor. Some are young and some old. But all are equally dear to God; and partakers of the common salvation; in which there is neither Jew nor Greek, for we are all one in Christ Jesus. This honour have all His saints--“All His saints are in His hand.”
1. In His fashioning hand. They are the clay, He is the potter; and He makes them vessels of honour, prepared unto every good work.
2. In His preserving hand. For now they are precious, they are the more exposed. They are called a crown and a diadem; and the powers of darkness would gladly seize it.
3. In His guiding hand. Though God, says Bishop Hall, has a large family, none of His children are able to go alone: they are too weak, as well as too ignorant. But fear not, says God: I will strengthen thee, yea, I will help thee, yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness.
4. In His chastening hand. (W. Jay.)
God and His saints
I. The Divine love which is the foundation of all. “He loved the people.” The word used here is probably connected with words in an allied language, which mean “the bosom,” and “a tender embrace”; so the picture we have is of the great Divine Lover folding “the people” to His heart, as a mother her child, and cherishing them in His bosom.
2. The word is in a form which implies that the act is continuous and perpetual. Timeless, eternal love--always the same.
3. Mark the place in the song where this comes in. It is the beginning of everything. This old singer, with the mists of antiquity round him, who knew nothing about the Cross or the historic Christ, who had only that which modern thinkers tell us is a revelation of a wrathful God, somehow or other rose to the height of the evangelical conception of God’s love as the foundation of the very existence of a people who are His.
4. If the question is asked, Why does God thus love? the only answer is, Because He is God. The love of God is inseparable from His being, and flows forth before, and independent of, anything in the creature which could draw it out. It is like an artesian well, or a fountain springing up from unknown depths in obedience to its own impulse.
II. The guardian care extended to all those that answer love by love. “All His saints are in Thy hand.”
1. A saint is a man that answers God’s love by his love. The root idea of sanctity or holiness is not moral character, goodness of disposition and action, but separation from the world and consecration to God. As surely as a magnet applied to a heap of miscellaneous filings will pick out every little bit of iron there, so surely will that love which God bears to the people, when it is responded to, draw to itself, and therefore draw out of the heap, the men that feel its impulse and its preciousness.
2. The saints lie in God’s hand.
(1) Absolute security; for, will He not close His fingers over His palm to keep the soul that has laid itself there?
(2) Submission. Do not try to get out of God’s hand. Be content to be guided, as the steersman’s hand turns the spokes of the wheel and directs the ship.
III. The docile obedience of those that are thus guarded. “They sat down at Thy feet; everyone shall receive of Thy words.” These two clauses make up one picture, and one easily understands what it is. It presents a group of docile scholars, sitting at the Master’s feet. He is teaching them, and they listen open-mouthed and open-eared to what He says, and will take His words into their lives, like Mary sitting at Christ’s feet, whilst Martha was bustling about His meal. But perhaps, instead of “sitting down at Thy feet,” we should read “followed at Thy feet.” That suggests the familiar metaphor of a guide and those led by him who without him knew not their road. As a dog follows his master, as the sheep their shepherd, so, this singer felt, will saints follow the God whom they love. Religion is imitation of God. They “follow at His foot.” That is the blessedness and the power of Christian morality, that it is keeping close at Christ’s heels, and that, instead of its being said to us, “Go,” He says, “Come”; and instead of us being bade to hew out for ourselves a path of duty, He says to us, “He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” They “receive His words.” Yes, if you will keep close to Him, He will turn round and speak to you. If you are near enough to Him to catch His whisper He will not leave you without guidance. That is one side of the thought, that following we receive what He says, whereas the people that are away far behind Him scarcely know what His will is, and never can catch the low whisper which will come to us by providences, by movements in our own spirits, through the exercise of our faculties of judgment and common sense, if only we will keep near to Him. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)