Psalm 16:6 The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places; yes, I have a goodly heritage. I. THE GOODLY LAND. The dominant expression of the Psalms is joy in God: entire trust, perfect hope, therefore abounding joy. There is something of childlike gladness in the songs of the Hebrew people mingled with the deep moans of life's sadness. Still, the joy is dominant; and it meant that deep down, under all man's sense of strain and struggle, there is an abiding belief in his heart that, through Christ, the order of things in the universe is good; that the world is good; that life is good; that the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth everywhere and always. Now, I want that we should make the language of the text our own, and so I would dwell on some of the more prominent features of the "goodly heritage" which we all enjoy. And we shall speak of the goodly land. The goodly land in which God planted His people, the goodly land in which He has planted us. I. PALESTINE IS THE ENGLAND OF THE EAST. I think it is Miss Martineau who says that nothing which she had seen about the world so reminded her of the rolling Yorkshire moors as the approach to Palestine by Hebron. God planted His people in a country singularly fair, glad, fertile, and homelike; where men could pass from under the shadow of the turn of nature, could lie in her lap and bask in her smile. Think of its physical condition (Deuteronomy 8:7-10 and Deuteronomy 11:10-12). It was in strong contrast to the monotonous regions around, a land of rich variety, of marked feature and animation. There is this sympathy between man and nature. Egypt and Mesopotamia are sympathetic with despotism; their rich, fat plains, vast and monotonous, have possessed little to occupy the imagination. They nurtured great herds of men, but there was little for men to cling to, to cherish, to fight and die for. Egypt was a long monotonous tract where life was lavish, especially in its baser and uglier forms, in the rich soft alluvial mud. Melons, onions, garlic, fish in abundance, in over-abundance. Cats and crocodiles were promoted to the temples; while the people, like the Egyptian fellahs to this day — the men who made the Suez Canal — were the helpless herds of weary workmen who built the Pyramids for the Pharaohs, and were content to drag on a dull, dreary, hopeless existence. And with Mesopotamia it was much the same. But pass into Palestine and you have at once a new world. Moses speaks with contempt of the agriculture of Egypt, where the land was watered with the foot, "as a garden of herbs." The country, as it were, tilled itself. Not so Palestine. Like the Rhineland or Switzerland, it was a matter of constant care. To live in it, as compared with Egypt or Babylonia, was an education. "Out of Egypt have I called My Son." Palestine, not Egypt, was their goodly home. II. AND THEN, OUR OWN LAND, ENGLAND, the Canaan to which in the early morning twilight of Christendom God led His sons. Yea, we have a goodly heritage. It is a land that demands but repays toil, is full of beauty, of fair skies, with sweet fruits and strong herbs, and where all the products of the world are accessible. No doubt there is a dark side as well as a bright one. But marred as it is by sin, still, "Behold, it is very good." Seek by your prayers to draw it closer to Christ. III. THE GOODLY FELLOWSHIP. A goodly land can help us but little without goodly human fellowships to inhabit it. Here in England the human element has always been in full force. The nature of the people is strong, somewhat coarse in the grain perhaps, but, like the rude granite, capable of exquisite polish, and with a grandeur all its own into whatever form it may be wrought. And it has had a strong development. Are there anywhere stronger and deeper affections than there are in England? Love is that which binds, that seeketh not her own. Nowhere on earth has the battle of life been fought more sternly, with a result in individual character and energy which places us amongst the strongest and most masterful races of the world. And the fellowship of such a race has borne very rich and noble fruit. The men whom we have produced hold their own in comparison with any others, whether in the intellectual, political, or military world. When I number up my mercies I count it among the chief that I am born an Englishman. And God designed the ministry of human fellowship for the development of our nature (Genesis 3:14-19). It is all there, in all its sadness and in all its gladness, its blessings and its pain. Our life was meant, from the first, to be one of close association. That of the Jews was. It was, like ours, a rich, stirring, closely knit social and political life. They were shut up with and to each other during their best years. And so was it with our own people. Men like King David came out of the one; men like King Alfred came out of the other. God's idea of man's life is not that of the ascetic who flies into the lonely desert from all human associations, but that by their associations and activities his higher life is to be saved. The Jewish state was distinctly built on the family. The woman had honour there such as she has in Christian England at this day — nay, a deeper honour. At the root of all human relations lie self-control and self-denial; not self-assertion. But the whole education of a man under the influence of society is an education in self-control and self-denial. It begins early with the mother. And yet how the mother loves her burden of children's cares. And the father takes up the burden and denies himself for his children. The success of Scotch lads is largely owing to the lessons of self-denial which they have seen practised, and so have learnt in their own homes. They have seen how their parents sacrificed themselves for their children. And such spirit is the principle of order, growth, and true prosperity. "I desire not this power," said King Alfred of his kingship; "but that I might leave behind me a memory of good works." IV. OUR GOODLY TASKS. For these are by no means the least precious part of the goodly heritage. The fundamental part of man's being is not with things, but with beings; not with the creation, but with his fellow man and God. It is said that the totally blind are as a rule more serene and cheerful than the totally deaf. That means, that man belongs to his fellows by a closer and dearer bond than any which binds him to nature: he can better spare the vision of the whole universe than the voice of human sympathy and tenderness. So needful is human association and fellowship. But another ordinance of heaven for our good is our work. "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread." It looks hard and stern, yet it is most benignant. Hard toil under a fatherly discipline is reforming, and so heaven established it as the condition of our sinful lives. The sentence from a father's lips made the wilderness a goodly heritage for the exiles from Eden. Nature became a monitress rather than a mistress, urging him to toil, rather than wooing him to rest and play. But, we say, the tasks are goodly tasks, and you are bound to praise the Lord for them. The popular philosophy of the day denies this, though not in this country, where we seem to take more kindly to toil than do those under more sunny skies. "It is a hard world," you say, "a hard lot, a hard God." The Bible answers, "It is all ordained by a God who loves you and cares for you and who gave His Son to die for you. Of all the loving things which He has done for you, there is none more loving than this." Consider — 1. The necessity of toil, hard and constant. It is connected, like death, with sin (Genesis 3:17); teaches that the conditions of life are harder for us than the Creator designed for the man whom He made in His own image. The life of a pure and happy being is symbolised in Eden. We need not trouble about its historic verity: of its spiritual verity there is no doubt at all. But for sin there would be only labour, not toil, — the bitter element is born of transgression. 2. Note the fundamental principle of this ordinance of toil. It is to restore man to right relations to the things around him. Transgression had put him in a false relation, though the tempter told him it would be far otherwise: he would win all he could desire at once (Genesis 3:1-6). "Ye shall be as gods." The sentence of toil fell on man as a disenchantment. Sin had brought him into collision with the higher will, which orders the whole system of things, a collision which will bruise and crush him until he learns to obey. Hence toil is hard that we may learn this. And the ordinance has been effectual. They who have lived the life of toil have been ever those nearest the kingdom of heaven. V. THE GOODLY DISCIPLINE. It is the supreme exercise of faith to believe in its goodness, to accept it as a part of the heritage of benediction. It is hard to praise when the fibres of the soul are throbbing with anguish, and the heart reels under a pressure which it can no longer endure. Are there not nights too dark for even heaven to expect a song? And God is compassionate and gentle. But yet there is no depth Of misery out of which praise may not come. Read 2 Timothy 4:7, 8, 16, 17. The gladdest songs have gone up from the profoundest depths. True joy springs from communion with those whom you most love, and that, no calamity can rid you off Christ's presence, and smile, and tender touch and tone, no glooms, no depths can obscure. Nay, the darkness but makes the presence more luminous, and charged with richer benediction. Much of the complaints of our spirits God interprets as compassionately as in the passionate outbursts of a child in pain. God looks at the heart, not at the maddened utterances which the torture of pain produces. There are passages of human experience which hardly come within the pale of that goodly heritage of discipline for which I bid you praise. You cannot sing in them. "I was dumb because Thou didst it," is the most that we can say. But not of these depths, but of the ordinary discipline of life, do I speak, — the fact that life is a discipline, that we have not only to toil but to suffer. It is a school of culture, not a home, a rest. It would be very terrible for sinful man if he could command the stones to be made bread — that is, if he could make things obey him instead of God. What a hell he would make out of life. But the pain of life throws a man's thought back on his sin, shows him that in all its forms it is armed with scourges to smite him, and that his flesh shall quiver and the thongs shall be stained with his blood, ere he shall live on in the dream that the way of transgressors is peace. So would God wean us from sin and vice and folly. And when we learn the lesson, and are led to self-control and self-denial, the pain ceases and peace descends. But another and yet higher end of discipline than even conversion is to elevate, purify, and conform us to the image of God. VI. THE GOODLY HOPE. This is the last feature which I dwell upon. It completes and crowns the whole. Without the hope man's lot is a heritage which a brute might shrink from. For the broad fact of man's history is, that "he is born to trouble." It is written everywhere, it is the burden of life to us all. Nor is it the weakest and poorest in nature who are pressed most heavily, but the strongest, the bravest, the noblest, and the most faithful souls. Job was the righteous man of his era, and yet his life was an unspeakable curse till he remembered his hope, "I know that my Redeemer liveth." But if these things be so, you may ask — What is the use of talking about the goodly heritage? How can men praise for such a life as this? And it would be mockery thus to speak but for the hope, the "good hope through grace." A few days ago I was talking with one of our ablest and most eminent writers in his department of literature, and he said, "I have absolutely no hope. God, Christ, immortality, I have no hold of; they are nought to me. All is darkness!" It was not said in bravado, not even in bitterness. But profound sadness was on him as he said it. No hope, because no Christ. All dark, because no hope. Now, the broad fundamental principle which lies at the root of this portion of our subject is, that man is here on earth not a settler but a pilgrim. The patriarchs of Israel are the true patriarchs of our race. As they dwelt in Canaan, man dwells in this world. But they were kept constantly moving; no place was suffered to be as home to them. Long ages of training had to be endured, as our long years of discipline, before they entered the goodly land into which the Lord had brought them, and could call it home. Now, behind this condition of pilgrimage lies the blessed fact that man is made on too large a scale, with too vast capacities, for this world to be enough for him. God has made us for eternity and for such a world as heaven. And so man is born to trouble precisely as a schoolboy is born to tasks and toils. "The heir differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all." Were man only of this earth, how much would be his imagining and longing for beauty and goodness more than this world can ever give. But all goodliness that is here is suggestive to them of a higher kind yonder. Fellowship is blessed. Yet without the hope, how terrible the breaking up of our earthly associations by death would be. But with the hope they are blessed. And the tasks are good, but what drudgery they would be were there no hope to irradiate them. And so, too, of our disciplines. But to what end they, and the Cross, the symbol of them all, if hope is but a dancing marsh fire, and "glory, honour, and immortality" but a brilliant dream? If the highest outcome of life is that scene in Gethsemane and Calvary, and for Christ, and for those like Him, there was and is nothing beyond, what words can curse with sufficient emphasis the whole order of the universe? No, rather than believe that, may — "Thy hand, great Anarch, let the curtain fall, And universal darkness bury all."But how is this hope assured? — (1) By the revelation which is afforded to us of the essential nature of God and His revelation to the world; and(2) By the light which the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and the Ascension of the Lord Jesus casts upon life and its destinies. "We have not followed cunningly devised fables." The Gospel story is one of solid historic truth, and our hope is the anchor of our soul. (J. Baldwin Brown, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.WEB: The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. Yes, I have a good inheritance. |
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