will not add that to the rest of their sins." Nay, it is quite
otherwise, saith he, "They eat up my people as they eat
bread." "Those workers of iniquity have no knowledge, who eat up
my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the Lord." What is the
reason why he brings it in in that manner? Why could he not say,
"They have no knowledge that do such abominable things;" but brings
it in thus, "They have no knowledge who eat up my people as they eat
bread?" "It is strange, that after all my dealings with them and
declaration of my will, they should be so brutish as not to know this
would be their ruin. Don't they know this will devour them, destroy
them, and be called over again in a particular manner? In the midst
of all the sins, and greatest and highest provocations that are in
the world, God lays a special weight upon the eating of his people.
They may feed upon their own lusts what they will; but, "Have they no
knowledge, that they eat up my people as they eat bread?"
There are very many things that might be
observed from all this; but I aim to give but a few hints from the
Psalms.
Well, what is the state of things now?
You see what it was with them. How was it with the providence of God
in reference unto them? Which is strange, and a man would scarce
believe it in such a course as this is, he tells you (verse 5),
notwithstanding all this, they were in great fear. "There were
they in great fear," saith he. May be so, for they saw some evil
coming upon them. No, there was nothing but the hand of God in it;
for in Psalm 53:5, where these words are repeated, it is, "There were
they in great fear, where no fear was"—no visible cause of fear yet
they were in great fear.
God by his providence seldom gives an
absolute, universal security unto men in their height of sin, and
oppression, and sensuality, and lusts; but he will secretly put them
in fear where no fear is: and though there be nothing seen that
should cause them to have any fear, they shall act like men at their
wits' end with fear.
But whence should this fear arise? Saith
he, it ariseth from hence, "For God is in the generation of the
righteous." Plainly they see their work doth not go on; their
meat doth not digest with them; their bread doth not go well down.
"They were eating and devouring my people, and when they came to
devour them, they found God was among them (they could not digest
their bread); and this put them in fear; quite surprised them." They
came, and thought to have found them a sweet morsel: when engaged,
God was there filling their mouth and teeth with gravel; and he began
to break out the jawbone of the terrible ones when they came to feed
upon them. Saith he, "God was there." (Verse 5.)
The Holy Ghost gives an account of the
state of things that was between those two sorts of people he had
described—between the fool and the people of God—them that were
devouring, and them that had been utterly devoured, had not God been
among them. Both were in fear—they that were to be devoured, and
those that did devour. And they took several ways for their relief;
and he showeth what those ways were, and what judgment they made upon
the ways of one another. Saith he, "Ye have shamed the counsel of
the poor, because the Lord is his refuge."
There are the persons spoken of—they
are "the poor;" and that is those who are described in the verses
foregoing, the people that were ready to be eaten up and
devoured.
And there is the hope and refuge that
these poor had in such a time as this, when all things were in fear;
and that was "the LORD." The poor maketh the Lord his refuge.
And you may observe here, that as he did
describe all the wicked as one man, "the fool," so he describes all
his own people as one man, "the poor"—that is, the poor man:
"Because the LORD is his refuge." He keeps it in the singular number.
Whatsoever the people of God may differ in, they are all as one man
in this business.
And there is the way whereby these poor
make God their refuge. They do it by "counsel," saith he. It is not a
thing they do by chance, but they look upon it as their wisdom. They
do it upon consideration, upon advice. It is a thing of great
wisdom.
Well, what thoughts have the others
concerning this acting of theirs? The poor make God their refuge; and
they do it by counsel. What judgment, now, doth the world make of
this counsel of theirs? Why, they "shame it;" that is, they cast
shame upon it, contemn it as a very foolish thing, to make the Lord
their refuge. "Truly, if they could make this or that great man their
refuge, it were something; but to make the Lord their refuge, this is
the foolishest thing in the world," say they. To shame men's counsel,
to despise their counsel as foolish, is as great contempt as they can
lay upon them.
Here you see the state of things as they
are represented in this Psalm, and spread before the Lord: which
being laid down, the psalmist showeth what our duty is upon such a
state of things—what is the duty of the people of God, things thus
being stated. Saith he, "Their way is to go to prayer:" verse 7,
"O that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion! when the
Lord bringeth back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice,
and Israel shall be glad." If things are thus stated, then cry,
then pray, "O that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion,"
etc. There shall a revenue of praise come to God out of Zion, to the
rejoicing of his people. John Owen.
Verse 1. "The fool." That sapless fellow, that carcase
of a man, that walking sepulchre of himself, in whom all religion and
right reason is withered and wasted, dried up and decayed. That
apostate in whom natural principles are extinct, and from whom God is
departed, as when the prince is departed, hangings are taken down.
That mere animal that hath no more than a reasonable soul, and for
little other purpose than as salt, to keep his body from putrefying.
That wicked man hereafter described, that studieth atheism. John
Trapp.
Verse 1. "The fool," etc. The world we live in is a
world of fools. The far greater part of mankind act a part entirely
irrational. So great is their infatuation, that they prefer time to
eternity, momentary enjoyments to those that shall never have an end,
and listen to the testimony of Satan in preference to that of God. Of
all folly, that is the greatest, which relates to eternal objects,
because it is the most fatal, and when persisted in through life,
entirely remediless. A mistake in the management of temporal concerns
may be afterwards rectified. At any rate, it is comparatively of
little importance. But an error in spiritual and eternal matters, as
it is in itself of the greatest moment, if carried through life, can
never be remedied; because after death there is no redemption. The
greatest folly that any creature is capable of, is that of denying or
entertaining unjust apprehensions of the being and perfections of the
great Creator. Therefore in a way of eminence, the appellation of
fool is given by the Spirit of God, to him who is chargeable
with this guilt. "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no
God." John Jamieson, M.A., 1789.
Verse 1. "The fool," a term in Scripture signifying a
wicked man, used also by the heathen philosophers to signify a
vicious person, (Heb.) as coming from (Heb.) signifies the extinction
of life in men, animals, and plants; so the word (Heb.) is taken
Isaiah 40:7, (Heb.) "the flower fadeth" (Isaiah 28:1), a plant that
hath lost all that juice that made it lovely and useful. So, a fool
is one that hath lost his wisdom and right notion of God and divine
things, which were communicated to man by creation; one dead in sin,
yet one not so much void of rational faculties, as of grace in those
faculties; not one that wants a reason, but abuses his reason.
Stephen Charnock.
Verse 1. "The fool hath said," etc. This folly is bound
up in every heart. It is bound, but it is not tongue-tied; it speaks
blasphemous things against God, it says there is "no
God." There is a difference indeed in the language: gross sins
speak this louder, there are crying sins; but though less sins speak
it not so loud, they whisper it. But the Lord can hear the language
of the heart, the whisperings of its motions, as plainly as we hear
one another in our ordinary discourse. Oh, how heinous is the least
sin, which is so injurious to the very being of the great God!
David Clarkson.
Verse 1. "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no
God." If you will turn over some few leaves, as far as the
fifty-third Psalm, you shall not only find my text, but this whole
Psalm, without any alteration, save only in the fifth verse, and that
not at all in the sense neither. What shall we say? Took the Holy
Spirit of God such especial particular notice of the sayings and
deeds of a fool, that one expression of them would not serve
the turn? Or, does that babbling and madness of a fool so much
concern us, as that we need to have them urged upon us once and
again, and a third time in the third of the Romans? Surely not any
one of us present here, is this fool! Nay, if one of us could but
tell where to find such a fool as this, that would offer to say,
though in his heart, "There is no God," he should not rest in
quiet, he should soon perceive we were not of his faction. We that
are able to tell David an article or two of faith more than ever he
was acquainted with! Nay, more; can we with any imaginable ground of
reason be supposed liable to any suspicion of atheism, that are able
to read to David a lecture out of his own Psalms, and explain the
meaning of his own prophecies much clearer than himself which held
the pen to the Holy Spirit of God? Though we cannot deny but that in
other things there may be found some spice of folly and imperfection
in us, but it cannot be imagined that we, who are almost cloyed with
heavenly manna of God's word, that can instruct our teachers, and are
able to maintain opinions and tenets, the scruples whereof not both
the universities in this land, nor the whole clergy are able to
resolve, that it should be possible for us ever to come to that
perfection and excellency of folly and madness, as to entertain
thought that there is no God: nay, we are not so uncharitable
as to charge a Turk or an infidel with such a horrible imputation as
this.
Beloved Christians, be not wise in your
own conceits: if you will seriously examine the third of Romans
(which I mentioned before), you shall find that Paul, out of this
Psalm, and the like words of Isaiah, doth conclude the whole
posterity of Adam (Christ only excepted), under sin and the curse of
God; which inference of his were weak and inconcluding, unless every
man of his own nature were such a one as the prophet here describes;
and the same apostle in another place expresses, "Even altogether
without God in the world," i.e., not maintaining it as an opinion