A most interesting thing it is to observe that all God's people, the simplest and least intelligent even, when confronted in some terrible way with the wickedness and violence of the world around them, at once turn to, and instinctively, one may say, count on, the intervention of God to set things right. They know that these things are not happening in a sphere beyond His love and care; but that somewhere, somehow, He will step in, and sin and conflict cease. History has for them this one great lesson that God will interpose. Prophecy, they are ready to believe, speaks clearly of it. Their own common sense of the fitness of things confirms them in this that in the affairs of men, plan them carefully as they may, carry out their projects ruthlessly as they do, God will, at least ultimately, actively intervene.
We see this instinctive sense, if one may so call it, of God's interest in human concerns clouded over for the time being in a very remarkable scripture, Psa. 73. The great problem of history, the apparent dominance of evil, its seeming success in the world, and its counterpart—the subservience, and to all appearance the adversity attaching to a righteous course—is there come up for solution. “I was envious at the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked,” proceeds the Psalmist, recounting his experience. It is a common experience. We all know it well. Hard thoughts and perplexing doubts chase one another through the despondent mind. Sin, pride, and violence are so apparently successful, His own people so poor, oppressed, despised, tried. These on the one hand “are not in trouble as other men, neither are they plagued like other men. Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment. Their eyes stand out with fatness; they have more than heart could wish.”
Of those, on the other hand, it is said, “Therefore his people return hither, and waters of a full cup are wrung out to them.” God seems to have forgotten, to have withdrawn His interest, to have relinquished all government of the earth, when things are so out of course. All this, says the Psalmist, when he sought to know it, was too painful for him. “Until I went into the sanctuary of God, then understood I their end.” The right perspective is restored in the presence of God. Intelligence as to God, as to the nature and principles of His actions, brings enlightenment and relief. So at all times. Carefulness in observing the revealed principles of God's intervention in human history will preserve us from either perplexity as to the delay, or any wavering as to the fact, of His so intervening.
This intervention, one's moral sense suggests, is imperative. In presence of the evil, the disorder, the violence, and corruption in the world, we feel that God must intervene. If righteousness is to have any place in the world at all He must. And He intends it to have supreme place. The day is coming when “judgment shall return unto righteousness, when a king shall reign in righteousness. With righteousness shall He judge the poor, and reprove with equity for, the meek of the earth, and He shall smite the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips shall he slay the wicked.” “Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever” (Isa. 9:77Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. (Isaiah 9:7)). He has destined, too, the creation of “new heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.” A reclaimed, restored, reconciled universe is not only to witness the supremacy of righteousness, but is also to be filled with, and be forever characterized by it. The present world, needless to say, must experience vast changes before either can come about. And only by a direct active intervention on God's part can such change be effected. Those who look to the gradual development of existing agencies for righteousness being brought in and established, the gradual spread of the gospel, the permeating of society and the whole social order by civilizing and righteous influences, are wholly wrong. Not by human effort; but by divine intervention shall, or can, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.
Mere philosophy of course, the philosophy which to-day underlies all world-politics and statecraft, looks not for, nor reckons on, any such divine interposition. The whole thought is alien to its reasoning. Man is no fallen creature here, nor his world a moral wreck in this view. At most he is but immature, and steadily, slowly, as the years pass, is evolving his own destiny. No thought is more foreign to democratic ideas and ideals alike than that man is a sinful creature in a morally-ruined creation. The whole system of human government and politics, as it is conceived generally to-day, is based on man's competency to look after himself in that field. Representative government, democracy, assumes both his power and ability to govern himself, as also to so adjust his environment as to conduce to progress. Utterly oblivious to any thought or consciousness of the presence and dominance of this defiling element, sin, in the world they seek to deal with, it escapes the observation of philosophers and politicians that the progress they make is largely superficial, and only material. They make the great initial mistake of leaving out the fall of man, and reasoning on the present as a normal moral state. Even where they do bring God in, it is not in any thought of Himself having plans ultimately to deal directly with the situation; but simply in the idea of His general over-ruling providence. God is in His heaven, all's well with the world. What we do have, on the contrary, is, by reason of the presence of sin's lingering disease throughout the body politic, a very mixed and disordered state, where justice and righteousness are only, in a very general way, by the present over-ruling providence of God secured and maintained in the face of the hostile elements predominating. That which the scriptures reveal also is that, in addition to this, God Himself shall, in His own wise and suitable time, actively, directly, immediately, take the case in hand, deal with the malady of sin, and give this weary, war-worn, sin-scarred earth its glorious rest and reign of righteousness and peace.
It is then the nature of this intervention, the principles on which it is based, that is here the subject of inquiry. Two Psalms there are which in conjunction seem to give light on this subject. Psa. 75 and 76 stand as close in spiritual relation to each other as they do in numerical order. If, in the first mentioned, the confidence in God displayed in presence of imminent danger bases itself on the fact that His intervention is near, in the second that same intervention is thankfully commemorated as an event just newly experienced A wicked and proud adversary was on the scene in Psa. 75. He is solemnly adjured— “Lift not up your horn on high; speak not with a stiff neck.” He is reminded that “promotion (or lifting up) cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge. He putteth down one, and setteth up another.” He is warned that “in the hand of the Lord there is a cup—but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them.” Such is the atmosphere of Psa. 75 Psa. 76 is the sequel. Arrogant opposition had been persisted in, God had been defied, the threatened attack on His people had been delivered, and God had interposed in power for their deliverance, and to the enemy's destruction. God had “arisen to judgment, to save all the meek of the earth.” “At thy rebuke, O God of Jacob, the chariot and horse are cast into a dead sleep.” Arrows, shield, sword, yea, battle itself had been broken and ended, and now, “in Judah is God known, His name is great in Israel. In Salem also (city of peace) is His tabernacle, and His dwelling place in Zion.” The intervention of God clearly is the theme in both.
Many expositors take these two Psalms as speaking directly of an incident in Israel's history, Hezekiah's wonderful deliverance from Sennacherib of Assyria (2 Kings 18; 19). The one Psa. 75, they say, anticipating; the other (76) celebrating God's deliverance on that occasion. This cannot be conceded. The marks of their application to the future, to the anticipation and celebration of a still greater deliverance, are too certain and evident: As an illustration, however, that former intervention of God on behalf of His people is of great value and force in this connection. Dark indeed was the day for the people of God when the king of Assyria with his armies came up against them. Few and feeble they were themselves, as even their adversaries reproached them with. It was a handful against a host. Their adherence to their king, and their faithful, if feeble, stand for God was likely to cost them dear. Proud and cruel Sennacherib, and his arrogant, blaspheming captain were of that generation spoken of in Psa. 76 “Pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment.” “They are corrupt, and speak wickedly concerning oppression, they speak loftily. They set their mouth against the heavens and their tongue walketh through the earth.” Surrounded by such powerful and unscrupulous enemies, they well might fear the result of so unequal combat. But, in answer to Hezekiah's prayer, as also in reply to the enemy's taunts, God Himself intervened in power. By a stroke of His judgment, deliverance was effected, and vengeance executed. The stout-hearted were spoiled, they slept their sleep, and none of the men of might found their hands. For God caused judgment to be heard from heaven, and His people were delivered. Illustration as it is, however, the future crisis will in magnitude and importance far surpass this remarkable incident. And to that in its full extent these Psalms apply.
J.T.]
(To be continued)