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This psalm has no indication of the time in which it was written. At whatever time, however, it may have been penned, there is no doubt about the general features of the age here represented. It was one in which good men were becoming more and more rare, in which the wicked abounded, and took occasion from the numerical inferiority of the righteous to indulge in haughty and vain talk against them and against God. The psalmist looks with concern and distress upon this state of things, and sends up a piercing cry to God to arise and make his glory known. We have in the psalm three lines of thought fierce trials; fervent prayer; faithful promise.

I. FIERCE TRIALS. They are not personal ones merely; they are such as would be felt mainly by those of God's people who, possessed of a holy yearning for the prosperity of his cause and the honour of his Name, grieved more acutely over the degeneracy of their age than over any private or family sorrow. There were six features of society at the time when this psalm was written.

1. The paucity of good and faithful men (ver. 2).

2. Wicked men being in power (ver. 8).

3. The righteous being oppressed (ver. 5).

4. Falsehood, i.e. faithlessness.

5. Pride.

6. Vain-glorious boasting and self-assertion.

When wickedness gets the upper hand in these ways, times are hard indeed for good and faithful men. In such times Elijah, Jeremiah, and others lived, and wept, and moaned, and prayed. Many a prophet of the Lord has had to look upon such a state of things, when all day long he stretched out his hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people. Note:

1. This description of the degeneracy of the writer's age is not a Divine record of the state of the world as a whole. The psalm is made up of words of man to God, not of words of God to man.

2. Still less is the psalm to be regarded as stating or implying that the world as a whole is always getting worse and worse. Let the student take the psalm simply for what it professes to be - a believer's moan over the corruptions of his age - and he will find it far more richly helpful and suggestive than on any forced hypothesis.

3. The special ills of any age may well press on the heart of a believer; yea, they will do so, if a becoming Christian public spirit is cherished by him.

4. There are times when Christian men have to sigh and cry, owing to the abominations of the social life around them; and when Faber's touching words are true -

"He hides himself so wondrously,
As if there were no God;
He is least seen when all the powers
Of ill are most abroad."

5. And trials not less severe are felt when there is a widespread defection from the faith once delivered to the saints, and when men are calling for a "religion without God;" and are even, in some cases, forsaking Christianity for Mohammedanism or Buddhism. Through such trials believers are passing now (A.D. 1894). At such times they must resort to -

II. FERVENT PRAYER. The psalmist gives expression to the conviction that nothing but the immediate and powerful interposition of God will meet the crisis (cf. Isaiah 64:1). In what way this Divine aid shall be vouchsafed it is not for the praying man to say. He must leave that with God, content to have laid the case before him. The answer may come in the form of terrible providential judgments, or in the sending forth of a new band of powerful witnesses to contend with the adversaries, or in a widespread work of grace and of spiritual quickening power. All these methods are hinted at in Scripture, and witnessed to by the history of the Church. Note: Such prayers as this agonizing "Help, Lord!" while they are the outcome of intense concern, are yet not cries of hopeless despair. True, our help is only in God; but it is there, and an all-sufficient help it will prove to be - as to time, method, measure, and effect. In every age the saints of God have thus betaken themselves to him, and. never in vain. For ever have they proved the -

III. FAITHFUL PROMISE.

1. The contents of the promise are given in ver. 5.

2. The value of the promise, as proved and tried, is specified in ver. 6. There is not an atom of dross in any of the promises of God - all are pure gold.

3. Having these promises, the believer can calmly declare the issue in the full assurance of faith.

(1) The false men and proud boasters shall be cut off (ver. 3).

(2) The Divine preserving guard will keep the righteous from being sucked into the vortex of corruption (ver. 7).

Note: The Christian teacher will feel bound to remember that in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the gift of the Spirit, and in all the resulting activities of the Christian Church, the Lord has put forces in operation for the rectification of social wrongs, more effective than any of which the psalmist dreamt, and that these forces have only to be given time to work, and "all things will become new." The disclosures to this effect in the Book of the Apocalypse are an abiding source of comfort to God's people in the worst of times. - C.

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Parallel Verses

KJV: {To the chief Musician upon Sheminith, A Psalm of David.} Help, LORD; for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men.

WEB: Help, Yahweh; for the godly man ceases. For the faithful fail from among the children of men.