Psalm 144:3-4 LORD, what is man, that you take knowledge of him! or the son of man, that you make account of him!… We must take care, in denouncing human depravity, and declaiming on human misery, not to decry human nature; for that would be a procedure of a plainly immoral and irreligious tendency, instead of being praiseworthy; and it would involve untruth. The temple is in ruins, and "the Great Inhabitant is gone." But still we meet, here with a broken shaft, and there with a mutilated wreath; although all only sufficient to awaken melancholy remembrances, and make us say, "Here God once dwelt." And yet "man is like to vanity"; and the moment we have read the text it finds an echo in our bosoms. I. THE VANITY OF MAN. There are two words in our Bibles with which we are familiar, Death and Vanity. They are both employed to express the desolate estate into which man's fall has plunged him. Death sometimes includes the sin of that estate as well as its penal consequences. So sometimes does vanity. It is sometimes used as but another name for sin (Psalm 12:2; Job 15:35; Romans 1:21; Ephesians 4:17). But it appears to be the more appropriate function of the Bible-word to express the penal consequences of sin (Job 15:31; Psalm 78:33; Romans 8:20). Sin has driven all the originally solid and desirable out of man. It has left him the lifeless, bloodless, unsubstantial ghost of what once he was. 1. The life of man is perishable and ephemeral. 2. It is very far from yielding him satisfaction while it lasts. Man cannot find what he was made to find. He is like a long-lost child, with faint and melancholy recollections lingering in him of a sunny land and a pleasant home. And, closely connected with this, man cannot make of life what he has shrewd suspicions it was given to him that he might make of it. It is soon to end; and yet he knows that he has not been turning it to the right account; and, what is worse, he feels that even yet he cannot do so. Go then it must, and he can make nothing to his satisfaction out of it. II. CHRISTIANITY THE ANTIDOTE OF HUMAN VANITY. 1. It brings redemption by the Son of God. 2. It brings regeneration by the Spirit of God. 3. It gives faith in God. 4. It opens up the glorious spiritual world to view, and intercourse, and hope. (H. Angus.) Parallel Verses KJV: LORD, what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him! or the son of man, that thou makest account of him!WEB: Yahweh, what is man, that you care for him? Or the son of man, that you think of him? |
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