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February 1928
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From the moon by night we shall be protected. But there may be other evils not included within these statements^ and lest we should suppose there is no promise for these the Psalmist declares, “Jehovah will keep thee from ALL. evil.” It would seem that the Apostle Paul follows this same model in his great passage in Romans 8 :38-39. In this passage the Apostle searches death and life, height and depth, things present and things to come, but finds nothing that shall be able to separate us from the love of God. And, lest he may have overlooked something in his enumeration, he concludes the statement by declaring that there is no “ other creation” which shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. But now, lest someone should think that the keeping- promise of this Psalm is merely physical, we are told fur ther that “H e will keep thy SOULS After all, this is the heart o f it all. What avail is it that my body is kept if the soul be lost? The soul is the important thing. “ Be not afraid o f them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Thank God, our Lord is able to keep not only the body, but the whole man. This is the subject o f the Apostle’s prayer in 1 Thess. 5 :23 ifffMay your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame at the coming o f our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who will also do it.” Finally, someone may ask, How long will the keeping o f Jehovah last? Will the Lord at some time in future ages relax His watchfulness and turn us over to ourselves? N o ! “Jehovah will keep thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth and fo r evermore.” When we go out in the morning to labor, the Lord will keep us. ' When we come in at night to rest, He will also keep us. When we go out in the morning to begin life, full o f hope and en thusiasm, Jehovah will keep us. When we come in at the evening o f life, sometimes broken and weary, it is the same. And all this reminds us of the word which was spoken by our Lord in the days of His flesh, “ I am the D oor; by Me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall GO IN AND O UT, and find pasture.” ■j Iffi -.’V;1 plllllI Hs HI Christ Preeminent in Literature L EWIS R. AKERS, in his book “ The Red Road to Royalty,” brings out the following thought concerning our Lord’s pre eminence in literature: No record have we o f anything written by Jesus Christ. Y et, the masters of literature have been content to sit at His feet. Dickens, well known for his skill in the pathetic style, declared that the most touching story in all literature was that of the Prodigal Son. Coleridge, unquestioned master in the realm of fine literature, has affirmed that the richest passages ever recorded are “The Beatitudes.” The great statesman, Edmund Burke, has called The Sermon on the Mount the world’s most impressive political document on the rights of man. Edmund Kean, great as an artist and as an actor, said there was one passage so full of tenderness and tears that no man could properly interpret it : “ Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” In thinking of His matchless messages to men, well may we call them “Wonderful words o f life!” for no phase of human need was neglected by Him who ministered to .every lack of humankind . . , Go where you will in all the realm of literature, amid the innumerable tomes of the world’s libraries, the greater mass of these writings relates itself in some way to the life or principles of Him who was both Son o f God and Son o f man, and whose preeminence in the realm of literature remains unquestioned.
They understood perfectly that Christ’s claim of power to keep the human soul was equivalent to a claim to be Jehovah. Paul was a Jew, learned in the Scriptures of the Old Testament. As a Jew he knew that Jehovah alone was able to keep the soul of a sinner. And yet we find him writing of Jesus Christ, “ I know Him whom I have be lieved and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.” This decla ration in the mouth of Paul, the Jew, was nothing less than a declaration of his belief in the Deity of Jesus. But now the Psalmist goes on to speak o f the near ness of Jehovah—-Jesus, our Keeper. How near is He to His people ? “ He is thy shade upon thy right hand.” Have you ever, when a child, tried to run away from your shadow? Do what you will, go where you may, your shade is always at your side. If we belong to Jehovah- Jesus, we can no more escape from Him than a man can escape from his shadow. “ Jehovah is thy shade.” But He is not a mere useless shadow which follows you about and never protects. The Lord is a ( “ shade” that protects you so that “ the sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.” The readers of the book of Isaiah will remember that in the thirty-second chapter there is a prophecy o f Jesus Christ which declares that He will be to us just this kind of a protection: “ Behold . . . . a Man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest, as streams o f water in a dry place, as the SHADE o f a great Rock in a weary land.” Someone may ask, Do you believe that God literally protects us- at the present time from the “ sun by day and the moon by night” ? I am very sure that He does protect the Christian from physical disaster, and that He will con tinue to do so just as long as He has work for us to do here in this world. But we must not forget that this Psalm is like many others; it looks far into the coming Messianic age when our Lord shall reign in person upon the earth. In that blessed age the words of this one hun dred twenty-first Psalm shall be fulfilled in the most abso lute manner. In that day, we are told, “ There shall be a pavilion fo r a shade in the daytime from the heat, and fo r a refuge, and fo r a covert from storm and from rain” (Isa. 4 :6 ), And again, " They shall not hunger nor thirst, neither shall the heat nor sun smite them” (Isa. 14:10). I do not intend this study to enter into a lengthy dis cussion regarding the interpretation o f these prophecies. It will be sufficient to point out that the world in which we dwell at present is, as the Philosophers would say, a “ precarious” place, where not even the child of God always escapes the lightning, the earthquake, the flood, and the storm. But in that blessed age which is yet to come, the world is no longer a precarious world. The world at last will be safe for human life. Whatsoever else may be taught by these passages, of this much we are certain. S ecurity F orever IV. V erses 7-8 promise th at we shall be kept from all evil , and kept for evermore . “ Jehovah will keep thee from all evil; H e will keep thy soul. Jehovah will keep thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth and forevermore.” When lawyers draw up an im portant legal document, they generally conclude it with a sweeping statement which includes any and all unforeseen emergencies. It would seem that God does likewise in the one hundred twenty-first Psalm. In previous verses the writer has specified by name certain evils from which Jehovah will keep us. In the slippery path He will keep our feet. From the smiting sun by day we shall be kept.
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