Spring as the grass. In Eastern countries, after a time of drought, the grass responds with marvellous suddenness to the refreshing rains. But the grass which grows so swiftly is as swiftly cut down by the blazing sunshine or the scorching wind. The sudden success of the ungodly was a surprise and distress to God's people, who looked on temporal success as a special sign of Divine approval. It seemed to them as if, after all, God was practically on the side of the wicked. In drearier moments they might even think that God made fair promises to the good, but gave the actual blessings to the ungodly. The relief which the saints of olden time found for this their distress is not just the relief which we should provide now. They, like Asaph, went into the sanctuary of God, and there they came to understand the end of the wicked. Really, their high places were slippery places; and in God's time they were "cast into destruction." There is a certain measure of comfort in the thought that things gained by unrighteousness are insecure. But it is a higher standpoint that enables us to see that no success is worth having that has no righteousness at the heart of it. God is the secret of all stability, and God is not in a thing, unless goodness is the characteristic of the thing. Goodness always tends to permanency. Bible history is full of illustrations of the instability of all success attained by the ungodly. If a man's gains are secure for his own life, they are squandered by his sons. In the north of England the uncertainty of sudden prosperity is enshrined in a popular saying, "The first generation buys the carriage; the second generation rides in the carnage; the third generation pawns the carriage." See the cases of Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Haman, Herod; and note also our Lord's parable of the "rich fool."
I. THE SUCCESS OF THE WICKED IS UNSTABLE IN THE NATURE OF THINGS.
1. They who overreach are always in danger of being overreached.
2. The wicked are always making enemies, who are quick to avenge themselves, if opportunity offers.
3. The wicked make mistakes which dissipate all their gains.
II. THE SUCCESS OF THE WICKED IS UNSTABLE BECAUSE, SOONER OR LATER, GOD IS SURE TO DEAL WITH IT. He tests foundations; if they are not found righteous, the grandest houses of attainment will surely fall. - R.T.
A brutish man knoweth not; neither doth a fool understand this.
In this psalm we have a contrast between the animal and the spiritual life, the latter exulting in God, uttering His praise, receiving His thoughts, studying His works; the former cleaving to the earth, wallowing in the dust, with no ambition that soars higher than the husks which it eats, or the roof of the sty which it occupies. "A brutish man." It is originally a compound expression — "a brute-man." It is a degrading epithet, and it is employed in common daily life.
I. MAN'S NATURE IS VERY CLOSELY ALLIED TO THAT OF THE ANIMAL. It is difficult to define the boundary between instinct and reason. The mental faculties of man and of the animals run in parallel lines to a point high up on the scale, Where the difference begins. Animals serve man, and should be treated justly, considerately, kindly.
II. THE DEGRADATION OF MAN TO THE LEVEL OF THE ANIMAL.
1. When he is ruled by appetite, not by conscience. A man will sometimes attempt to justify his avarice, his pride, his vindictiveness, his sensuality by saying that he is only following the lead of passions which God has implanted in him; that the light which "leads astray is light from heaven," that God has created the appetite in his nature. Yes; but God never intended it to rule or lead; He intended it to serve, to be under the control of reason and conscience and religious principle.
2. When he eats and drinks, and does not worship. Training may produce a great change in animals; education may turn the stolid rustic into an intelligent, cultured scholar; but there is something greater than any advantage which education may confer — that is, the capacity of union and communion with God of lifting up the soul to the Most High. And yet there are some who ignore this, who cast this pearl before the swine of evil passions, darken the window that looks heavenwards, nail the shutters over it, so that not a ray of light can reach the spirit; go down, down to the animal, as if there were no God, no worship, no adoration, no gratitude. The altar is in ruins; and the man has become as the brute.
3. Because he is working blindly. Take a man who is bent on acquiring wealth, who sacrifices everything on the altar of Mammon; he is shrewd, quick to take advantage of the favourable breeze, successful, makes his "pile," as they say. Is he working blindly? Yes, blindly; he has never discerned the meaning of what he is doing, he has never appraised the course at its right value, never estimated its bearing, its consequences to his moral nature; he is like a mole, scratching and burrowing in the dust, with no eye for the broad universe, and the light of God that floods it. And there is no thought of the future. He degrades himself to an equality with the brute, forgetting that while the beast "goes downwards to the earth," the spirit of man "goeth upward," and that man shall receive in another state "according to that he hath done in the body, whether it be good or bad."
III. THE CONSEQUENCES OF THIS DEGRADATION.
1. He has no eye for the greatest and noblest in life. Just as the eyes and the light, the air and the lungs correspond to each other, so it is with beauty and taste, science and intellect, friends and affection. And there is a spiritual faculty by which we discern spiritual things. The brutish man represses, restrains, stifles this faculty; resists the Spirit of God, who would quicken, direct, enlarge it.
2. He does not, then, value his nature, as God values it. He has degraded himself to a level with the swine; he has no sense of sonship, no feeling of spiritual dignity, he has gone down and down to the mire. Happy is he if he comes to himself, if in a sane moment the animal is cowed, and the angel asserts itself, and the ragged swineherd says, "I will arise and go to my Father."
3. He has no resources in time of suffering and trouble. God is a stranger — he dreads the thought of God — would fain hope that God does riot exist. He is like the brute; he has nothing to fall back upon. Very different is the experience of the spiritual man. Trouble comes; but he sees God in it. The tempest gathers; but "His way is in the whirlwind," etc. The deep, full, bitter cup is presented — but it has been mingled by a Father's love. The bear deprived of her whelps can only rage and moan; the brutish man bereaved of his children can only curse and rebel; the godly man, missing his loved ones in the gloom of the gorge of death, can say (Job 1:21).
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People
PsalmistPlaces
JerusalemTopics
Blossom, Destroyed, Destruction, Doomed, Eternal, Evil, Evildoers, Flourish, Flourished, Forever, Forevermore, Grass, Herb, Iniquity, Sinners, Spring, Sprout, Sprouted, Themselves, Though, Wicked, WorkersOutline
1. The prophet exhorts to praise God4. For his great works6. For his judgments on the wicked10. And for his goodness to the godly.Dictionary of Bible Themes
Psalm 92:7 4460 grass
Psalm 92:1-8
1090 God, majesty of
Psalm 92:5-7
8702 agnosticism
Psalm 92:6-7
5135 blindness, spiritual
Library
December 3. Thy Thoughts are Very Deep (Ps. Xcii. 5).
Thy thoughts are very deep (Ps. xcii. 5). When a Roman soldier was told by his guide that if he insisted on taking a certain journey it would probably be fatal he answered, "It is necessary for me to go, it is not necessary for me to live." That was depth. When we are convicted like that we shall come to something. The shallow nature lives in its impulses, its impressions, its intuitions, its instincts, and very largely in its surroundings. The profound character looks beyond all these and moves …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth God Alone the Salvation of his People
Look on yon rocks and wonder at their antiquity, for from their summits a thousand ages look down upon us. When this gigantic city was as yet unfounded they were grey with age; when our humanity had not yet breathed the air, tis said that these were ancient things; they are the children of departed ages. With awe we look upon these aged rocks, for they are among nature's first-born. You discover, embedded in their bowels, the remnants of unknown worlds, of which, the wise may guess, but which, nevertheless, …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 2: 1856
The Majesty of God. --Ps. Xcii.
The Majesty of God.--Ps. xcii. The Lord is King:--upon His throne, He sits in garments glorious: Or girds for war His armour on, In every field victorious: The world came forth at his command; Built on His word its pillars stand; They never can be shaken. The Lord was King ere time began, His reign is everlasting: When high the floods in tumult ran, Their foam to heaven up-casting, He made the raging waves His path; The sea is mighty in its wrath, But God on high is mightier. Thy testimonies, …
James Montgomery—Sacred Poems and Hymns
Dialogue i. --The Immutable.
Orthodoxos and Eranistes. Orth.--Better were it for us to agree and abide by the apostolic doctrine in its purity. But since, I know not how, you have broken the harmony, and are now offering us new doctrines, let us, if you please, with no kind of quarrel, investigate the truth. Eran.--We need no investigation, for we exactly hold the truth. Orth.--This is what every heretic supposes. Aye, even Jews and Pagans reckon that they are defending the doctrines of the truth; and so also do not only the …
Theodoret—The Ecclesiastical History of Theodoret
Sweet is the Work, My God, My King
[167]Canonbury: Robert Schumann, 1839 Arr. Psalm 92 Isaac Watts, 1719 Sweet is the work, my God, my King, To praise thy Name, give thanks and sing; To show thy love by morning light, And talk of all thy truth at night. Sweet is the day of sacred rest; No mortal cares shall seize my breast; O may my heart in tune be found, Like David's harp of solemn sound. My heart shall triumph in my Lord, And bless his works, and bless his word; Thy works of grace, how bright they shine! How deep thy counsels, …
Various—The Hymnal of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA
Reprobation.
In discussing this subject I shall endeavor to show, I. What the true doctrine of reprobation is not. 1. It is not that the ultimate end of God in the creation of any was their damnation. Neither reason nor revelation confirms, but both contradict the assumption, that God has created or can create any being for the purpose of rendering him miserable as an ultimate end. God is love, or he is benevolent, and cannot therefore will the misery of any being as an ultimate end, or for its own sake. It is …
Charles Grandison Finney—Systematic Theology
Period ii. The Church from the Permanent Division of the Empire Until the Collapse of the Western Empire and the First Schism Between the East and the West, or Until About A. D. 500
In the second period of the history of the Church under the Christian Empire, the Church, although existing in two divisions of the Empire and experiencing very different political fortunes, may still be regarded as forming a whole. The theological controversies distracting the Church, although different in the two halves of the Graeco-Roman world, were felt to some extent in both divisions of the Empire and not merely in the one in which they were principally fought out; and in the condemnation …
Joseph Cullen Ayer Jr., Ph.D.—A Source Book for Ancient Church History
Man's Chief End
Q-I: WHAT IS THE CHIEF END OF MAN? A: Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever. Here are two ends of life specified. 1: The glorifying of God. 2: The enjoying of God. I. The glorifying of God, I Pet 4:4: That God in all things may be glorified.' The glory of God is a silver thread which must run through all our actions. I Cor 10:01. Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.' Everything works to some end in things natural and artificial; …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity
The Knowledge of God Conspicuous in the Creation, and Continual Government of the World.
1. The invisible and incomprehensible essence of God, to a certain extent, made visible in his works. 2. This declared by the first class of works--viz. the admirable motions of the heavens and the earth, the symmetry of the human body, and the connection of its parts; in short, the various objects which are presented to every eye. 3. This more especially manifested in the structure of the human body. 4. The shameful ingratitude of disregarding God, who, in such a variety of ways, is manifested within …
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion
The Resemblance Between the Old Testament and the New.
1. Introduction, showing the necessity of proving the similarity of both dispensations in opposition to Servetus and the Anabaptists. 2. This similarity in general. Both covenants truly one, though differently administered. Three things in which they entirely agree. 3. First general similarity, or agreement--viz. that the Old Testament, equally with the New, extended its promises beyond the present life, and held out a sure hope of immortality. Reason for this resemblance. Objection answered. 4. …
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion
Psalms
The piety of the Old Testament Church is reflected with more clearness and variety in the Psalter than in any other book of the Old Testament. It constitutes the response of the Church to the divine demands of prophecy, and, in a less degree, of law; or, rather, it expresses those emotions and aspirations of the universal heart which lie deeper than any formal demand. It is the speech of the soul face to face with God. Its words are as simple and unaffected as human words can be, for it is the genius …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament
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