PCEA

I WOULD LIKE TO CONSIDER the words of Psalm 63:8 : 'My soul followeth hard after thee, thy right hand upholdeth me'.

These words, along with a number of other verses of Scripture, came to me one night in 1938 in Scotland when, as a member of the Intervarsity Fellowship of Evangelical Unions, I was taking part in an evangelistic campaign. There was deep concern that the team was divided and that the effort would be spoiled as a result of an argument which had developed after one of the members had preached a rather Arminian-flavoured sermon which had been taken up by one of the more Calvinist-minded of the students. The argument developed late into the night and they did not seem to reach any conclusion. Finally, my friend Alistair Rennie, one of the leaders, asked if I would say something about it.

While they were talking there came into my mind a number of texts of Scripture in which there was emphasised both the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. Some of these texts will be given in my discourse today. Our text today was one in particular that came to me, showing the beautiful balance there is in God's economy of redemption as he deals with men: 'My soul followeth hard after thee, thy right hand upholdeth me'. We settled down after that and had a good campaign with some results.

The setting of this particular Psalm was the wilderness, when David was chased into the wilderness by Saul, and a price was on his head and his life was sought. The wilderness of Judea was as it is today: wild and rugged and dry, with not much fresh water; a haunt of wild beasts and wild men and of refugees. There had gathered to David in that particular place a band of men that were themselves rather desperate; very courageous and bold men who became particularly loyal to David as their leader. It was for David a bitter experience, yet there was in him a remarkable capacity directed in several areas. He was not only a soldier who was well acquainted with weapons. He seemed to be a born leader, an attractive man who drew to him others who yielded to him intense loyalty.

But it must have been a trying time for David, this wilderness experience. Exiled from his native town of Bethlehem, from his family, and also from the services of the Sanctuary. He would have endured thirst, and some of the night watches as he stood with the men. It was a time of intense trial. And yet it was a time in which his particular capacities, not only of leadership, but of his devotion to God, and of psalmody came to the fore. The man was a musician, a poet, as well as a military leader, and this psalm is one of the poems of that particular period of his life. It indicates some of the deep thirst he had for God, and the isolation that he felt as he thought of the comforts of his home, the fertile fields grown around his village, the upland pastures on which he would have herded his father's sheep, and the company of God's people from whom he would have felt separated. And so David pours out his heart in this particular psalm. He also indicates his intense devotion to God: 'My soul followeth hard after thee, thy right hand upholdeth me'.

One realises very often the benefit of exile, or isolation, or persecution; the impact of the wilderness experience on men who have had to endure it, and what they have been able to produce in such circumstances.

One thinks of Moses, the child of slaves in Egypt, who was exiled for some time to the desert and his experience there. And the further experience of leading the children of Israel through the wilderness in the direction of the Promised Land. Of how that experience so nurtured the man, and under God developed his mental and other capacities, that we owe to him those magnificent five early books of the Bible. He was productive during that particular period.

And one thinks also of the apostle John on the island of Patmos, exiled for his Christian testimony and his devotion to God. And from that particular period of isolation we have the book of Revelation and its magnificent message to people.

And one thinks of the apostle Paul himself and that testimony in our reading today. Paul, who was himself subject to ostracism, who was excommunicated from the synagogue, driven out by his own people and persecuted by them. Paul had spent three years in Arabia, and during his imprisonment in Rome, when he was unable to carry on his ordinary missionary activities, was yet particularly active with the pen. The bulk of his epistles, which form so large a doctrinal part of the New Testament, came from him in that period of isolation.

And you may think of the years when Samuel Rutherford was exiled from his parish and confined to Aberdeen and forbidden to preach, and of the wonderful letters written to people in different places. One thinks also of John Bunyan lodged in Bedford Gaol, who there produced the Pilgrim's Progress and some of his other writings.

The wilderness experience can have its fruit in the thought and the life and the devotion of men, and that is what happened in David's experience here. He indicates in this particular verse the secret of his devotion to God, and in doing so illustrates the remarkable harmony of the grace of God operational in human life in the process of redemption and of salvation of the soul. He is indicating in this verse 'the life of God in the soul of man'. It is a deep and significant thought that he brings out in this one verse. This is something which is beyond analysis even by the most devout and learned Christians. And there are two obvious aspects of this experience in which God's grace is operative in human life and manifest in Christian experience that we ought to bear in mind and should never neglect in our thinking about these things. In both Holy Scripture and in Christian experience we find that these two are brought together indissolubly linked and must always be regarded together: the Divine Grace and Christian devotion. And David is crystallising that in this utterance: 'My soul followeth hard after thee, thy right hand upholdeth me'.

An old Huguenot family had this particular motto: 'Teneo et teneor' which literally is translated 'I hold and I am held'. And there again you find this beautiful balance. You see, I am alive but I recognise that he has quickened me. I choose him as my God and I know that he has first chosen me. I come to Christ as I am drawn by the Father. And one can get something of that thought in David's utterance here.

And the apostle Paul takes up and indicates in his personal testimonies which are given in his letters something of the same thought: 'we can endure to the end of our Christian experience here because we are preserved by the Father'; 'we can keep the faith because we are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation'; and 'I am able to follow Christ as he keeps my feet from falling and upholds me in the path of life that he has called me to'. And Paul was able to say in that critical experience of the thorn in the flesh which he sought so earnestly to have taken from him that, in the assurance of the words given to him by the Lord himself, he was finding the Grace of Christ sufficient for him and Christ's strength made perfect in his weakness. He recognised that he could become more than a conqueror through him that loved him, and that he was able to do all things through Christ who strengthened him. In the passage we read he states that 'I am seeking to apprehend (or to grasp) that by which I am apprehended (or grasped by Christ)'. You see how he puts together both these elements of Christian experience: the Divine Grace and the Christian devotion and dedication to God. And he was 'pressing toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus'.

When you take the statements both in the Old and New Testaments you realise that on the one side you see a weak creature who is often striving against tremendous odds, and on the other side you see that same person supported and assured of final victory. 'The righteous scarcely are saved' is a rather striking utterance of the New Testament. But we know in the light of many other statements that they are assuredly saved, they never perish and they are brought ultimately to Glory. We may be in strife and in conflict. We have doubts and fears within and opposition that we meet without. We are conscious of our own personal weakness and we strive, we fight, we wrestle and we endeavour to carry on. And yet we realise that we could not do so unless there were beneath us the everlasting arms of which Moses spoke so long ago. And we may pursue and cling to God, and follow the Christian life as if God were very hard to find and hard to hold, and yet we know at the same time that he himself is holding us in a grasp which no power on earth or even from hell can break.

There are others mentioned in biography and in the history of the Christian Church who make us wonder what the secret of their accomplishment was. And I think it comes to that simple statement that was made about Joseph when he was in Egypt: 'The Lord was with him'. And I think David would ascribe to that fully. If he was able to accomplish anything worthwhile in his life, and able to secure leadership and give good government to the people of Israel, and able to devote himself in praising God it was because the Lord was with him.

Paul takes up the same thought when relating his experience to the Galatians: 'I live, yet not I but Christ who liveth in me'; 'the life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me'. He is stating the two aspects there: 'I live' and 'Christ liveth in me'. And you must retain that balance and if you have the grace to do anything worthwhile and of benefit to others it is because of the grace which God has imparted to you. Paul's statement to the Galatians expressed a communion in which his life, thoughts, desires and aspirations all conformed to Christ and to Christ's will for him.

You may wonder at David abandoned, and David abandoned to his God. And somehow it prefigured Paul's devotion to his Lord: 'I laboured more abundantly than they all' he said comparing himself to the other apostles, yet he was very quick to add 'yet not I, but the Grace of God which was with me'. He would never and could never forget that. You see, for him the Christian life was warfare (he uses that figure) and a race (he uses that figure as well). And it was an unending round of activity as he travelled, and taught, and wrote, and discussed, and very often in the face of opposition and even persecution and imprisonment. At the prospect of death there was nothing that would stop this man's activity till the very last. His work involved the exercise of all the faculties of his heart and mind and body and soul. And yet all of this was to him just a demonstration of the sheer grace of Christ which had come into his life and which he recognised and so gratefully praised God for: Christ's strength was made perfect in his weakness and Christ's grace was sufficient for him.

When you look at this you must recognise that in every act there is the concurrence of two wills: the will of the human person and the decreed purpose of God. And this is especially so in the Christian experience when we are consciously striving to do the will of God. The minds of men contemplating these things very often fail to grasp both aspects of this particular experience. They cannot reconcile what appears to them as two opposites and they say either this is true or that is true, they can't both be true; God is sovereign or man is responsible. An old Christian minister at Cambridge University in the days when there was controversy between Whitefield and Wesley on these matters, and who greatly influenced Henry Martin and others, made this statement about it: 'The truth is not in the one extreme, neither is it in the other extreme. Neither is it in the middle. The truth is in both extremes. God is sovereign and man is responsible'.

We should never let the limitations of our human intellects alter the exquisite balance of the Divine economy in God's dealing with men by refusing to accept what we cannot fully explain, because both are truths of Scripture and facts of human experience. Salvation is of the Lord. It is not of man. God takes the initiative. Yet in the experience of salvation man is not just the object. He is the subject of that experience. He is not entirely passive. He is active as the life of God operates in his soul. The Divine quickening is just the beginning of an experience which he goes through for the rest of his earthly experience here, and the Grace which is operating then ripens eventually to the Glory which he enters thereafter.

You see, in all our struggles and our triumphs, all our trials and efforts, all our sorrows and joys, we are engaged in the most free and real experiences as human persons and we are conscious at the same time that we are utterly dependent upon the grace and the power of our Saviour God. So enters the texture of our Christian life the threads of Divine grace and human response, which are woven inextricably, and you have to accept that in the light of Scripture. The Lord's words I think indicate that particular fact. You remember when he was speaking about himself as the Good Shepherd. He said: 'My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall anyone pluck them out of my hand'.

Paul's words to Timothy underline the same truth: 'The salvation of the Lord is sure, having this seal: the Lord knoweth them that are his, and let him that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.' And you may recall the force of his exhortation to his Phillipian Christian friends: 'Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling because it is God who worketh within you both to will and to do of his good pleasure'.

The supporting Saviour is upholding the pursuing soul. That was so in David's experience and he recognised that we love him because he first loved us; we cleave to him who has taken us from the fearful pit and from the miry clay; we lay hold of that eternal life to which also we are called. You see the beautiful balance of these statements which are thus put close together in Holy Scripture.

I made reference to Samuel Rutherford and some of the remarkable letters that he wrote. In these letters he made one particular statement: 'I needs must go in at Heaven's gate borrowing strength from Christ'. Mrs Cousins took this and some other statements made in his letters and put them together in the hymn titled 'The Sands of Time.' I quote one of these verses:

I've wrestled on toward heaven,
'Gainst wind and storm and tide;
Now like a weary traveller,
That leaneth on his guide,
Amid the shades of evening,
While sinks life's ling'ring sand,
I hail the glory dwelling,
In Emmanuel's land.

I read in one of the books written about Dr Rabbi John Duncan that the prayers with which he introduced his Old Testament and Hebrew classes gripped the students intensely. One student wrote about one particular prayer which extended well into the time set aside for the lecture, which finished with these words: 'Oh that I may be his and he mine.' 'And he mine.' The old man was expressing the deepest longing and desires of his own heart.

Well, that particular desire and that particular request is answered fully and finally in the second last chapter of the book of Revelation, when John speaks about the Tabernacle of God being with men, and he will be their God, and God himself shall dwell with them, and they will be his people, and he himself will be with them and be their God.

So there it is. The pursuing soul is finally, eternally possessing, and the upholding Saviour is finally and eternally holding. 'My soul followeth hard after thee, thy right hand upholdeth me'. Our closing Psalm is number 73, verses 23 to 26.

Nevertheless continually
     Oh Lord I am with thee,
Thou dost me hold by my right hand
     And still upholdest me.

Thou with thy counsel while I live
     Wilt me conduct and guide,
And to thy Glory afterward
     Receive me to abide.

Who have I in the heavens high
     But thee oh Lord alone,
And in the earth whom I desire
     Beside thee there is none.

My flesh and heart doth faint and fail
     But God doth fail me never,
For thou, my heart, God is the strength
     And portion for ever.