Psalm 73:28 But it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord GOD, that I may declare all your works. I. NEARNESS TO GOD IS THE ONE GOOD. Union with God is life, in all senses of the word, according as the creature is capable of union with Him. Why; there is no life in a plant except God's power is vitalizing it. "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow" — because God makes them grow. There is no bodily life in a man unless He continually breathes into the nostrils the breath of life. If you stop the flow of the fountain then all the pools are dry. There is no life intellectual in a man unless by the "inspiration of the Almighty " in union with God, from whom all just "thoughts do proceed." And high above all these forms of life, the only real life of a spirit is the life that it draws from its union with God Himself, whereby He pours Himself into it, and in the deepest sense of the words it is true — "Because I live ye shall live also." I need scarcely go on pointing out other respects of this supreme — or more truly, this solitary — good. For instance, nothing is really good to me unless I have it within me, so as that it never can be wrenched away from me. The blessings that we cannot incorporate with the very substance of our being are only partial blessings after all; and all these things round us that do minister to our necessities, tastes, affections, and sometimes to our weaknesses, these good things fail just in this, that they stand outside us, and there is no real union between us and them. So changes come, and we have to unclasp hands, and the footsteps that used to be planted by the side of ours cease, and our track across the sands is lonely; and losses come, and death comes, and all the glory and the good that were only externally possessed by us we leave behind us. "It is good for me," amidst the morasses and quicksands and bogs of life's uncertain and shifting ill and good, to set my feet upon the rock, and to say, "Here I stand, and my footing will never give way." Do you, brother, possess a changeless, imperishable, inwrought "good like that? You may if you like. But remember, too, that in regard to this Christian good, it is not only the possession of it, but the aspiration after it, that is blessed. "It is good to draw near;" and the seeking after God is as far above the possession of all other good as the heaven is above the earth. II. THE WAY TO NEARNESS TO GOD IS TWOFOLD. On the one hand the true path is Jesus Christ, on the other hand the means by which we walk upon that path is our faith. The apostle puts it all in a nutshell when he says his prayer is that "Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith," and then, by a linked chain, leads up to the final issues of that faith in that indwelling Christ — "that ye may be filled with all the fulness of God." So to draw near and to possess that good, that only good which is God, all that is needed is — and it is needed — that we should turn with the surrender of our hearts, with the submission of our wills, with the outgoing of our affections, and with the conformity of our practical life, to Jesus. Seeing Him, we see the Father, and having Him near us, we feel the touch of the Divine hand, and being joined to the Lord, we are separated from the vanities of life, and united to the supreme good. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: But it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord GOD, that I may declare all thy works. |
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