(1) Here then is an enemy — the sin of yesterday. We cannot get away from it. When we have half forgotten it, and leave it slumbering in the rear, it is suddenly awake again, and, like a hound, it is baying at our heels. Some days are days of peculiar intensity, and the far-off experience draws near and assumes the vividness of an immediate act. Yesterday pursues to-day, and threatens it !
0 ! I have passed a miserable night,
So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams,
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That, as I am a Christian faithful man, I would not spend another such a night, Though 'twere to buy a world of happy days, So full of dismal terror was the time.
And what were the " ugly sights " which filled the time with " dismal terror " ? They were the threatening presences of old sins, pursuing in full cry across the years ! The affrighted experience is all foreshadowed by the Word of God. Whether we turn to the Old Testament or to the New Testament the awful succession is proclaimed as a primary law of the spiritual life. " Evil pursueth sinners." That sounds significant of desert- flight and hot pursuit !
So it is that David thinks of himself, but it is no more as the sheep that lie in the morning, calm by the green pasture. He sees himself not as one led, but as one pursued. The broken law has its avenger. Every sin tracks a man until it runs him down — nothing can turn it aside, nothing can stay it. That is the deepest need of the human heart — deliverance from sin. No help can avail us anything unless it can save us from our sins. The foe that destroys us is not in our circumstances, or mis- fortunes, or pains, or poverty — out of the heart comes the murderer that seeks to slay us. This is the strength and glory of our holy religion, that it never hides or lessens the black fact that we have sinned ; and yet it provides for every man a Saviour. The figure fails us here, for lo, there comes forth One to greet us who gave Himself for us, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. With a new and fuller meaning we may say indeed : " This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them."
^ There is a resemblance in structure, if perhaps only super- ficial, between this Psalm and the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke. That chapter opens with the picture of a good shepherd, and closes with a view of the festal joy when the lost son is received back into his father's house. " Let us eat, and be merry," the father says ; "for this my son was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found." In like manner, this Psalm begins by speaking of the Lord as our Shepherd, and ends by telling of the joy with which we are received at His table and made to dwell in His house. The verses already considered set forth the relation of God to His people as that of a shepherd to his flock, and bring into view His careful, thoughtful, patient, mighty,
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sheltering love on the one side, and their trusting helplessness on the other.i
Wherever He may guide me,
No want shall turn me back; My Shepherd is beside me,
And nothing can I lack. His wisdom ever waketh,
His sight is never dim, — He knows the way He taketh,
And I will walk with Him.
Green pastures are before me.
Which yet I have not seen ; Bright skies will soon be o'er me,
Where the dark clouds have been. My hope I cannot measure.
My path to life is free, My Saviour has my treasure.
And He will walk with me.^
(2) Here is another enemy — the temptation of to-day. Yester- day is not the only menacing presence ; there is the insidious seducer who stands by the wayside to-day. Sometimes he approaches in deceptive deliberateness ; sometimes his advance is so stealthy that in a moment we are caught in his snare ! At one time he comes near us like a fox ; at other times he leaps upon us like a lion out of the thicket. At one time the menace is in our passions, and again it crouches very near our prayers ! Now the enemy draws near in the heavy guise of carnality, " the lust of the flesh " ; and now in the lighter robe of covetousness, " the lust of the eyes " ; and now in the delicate garb of vanity, " the pride of life " ! But in all the many guises it is the one foe. In the manifold suggestions there is one threat. "The enemy that sowed them is the devil." If I am awake I fear ! If I move he follows ! " When I would do good evil is present with me." " 0 wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death ? " The soul is in the desert chased by the enemy of ever-present temptation.
*[| When you say, " Lead us not into temptation," you must in good earnest mean to avoid in your daily conduct those tempta- tions which you have already suffered from. When you say,