PSALM 42

TEHILLIM 42

1 (To the chief Musician, Maschil, for the sons of Korah.)

As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O Elohim.

Now,‭ ‬there is a development beyond the stage of mortal life,‭ ‬for by-and-bye there comes resurrection,‭ ‬and the efficient faculties of immortality.‭ ‬In those days infinity is before us.‭ ‬What can please,‭ ‬then‭?

While all things will more or less contribute pleasure,‭ ‬there is one object which is alone capable of affording satisfaction to the mind.‭ ‬We experience the truth of this even now,‭ ‬when we advance sufficiently in wisdom.‭ ‬God only can satisfy the highest reason.

‭ ‬It is therefore kindness in God to require that we should seek Him,‭ ‬for He is the well of our joy,‭ ‬and the fountain of our salvation,‭ ‬and without Him we are withered branches in all respects.‭ ‬We learn at last to echo David's expression,‭

‭"‬Whom have I in heaven but Thee‭? ‬and there is none upon earth that I desire besides Thee.‭"

‭ ‬The feeling grows so intense that we can join even in his apparently extravagant but only literally true statement of his experience:‭

‭Exhort 278.

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks,"

is not an enjoying state. But now, when the day of song for the righteous has come, it will be pleasant to look back and think that while the night prevailed upon the earth, their eyes were in strong desire towards God, and that God has openly acknowledged their love by manifesting Himself to them in the sending of Christ.

"With my spirit within me, will I seek Thee early".

...Only now it is a seeking with a finding, which differs from the seeking of these days of darkness. The sons of God will always seek God. They will never forget Him or tire in their love. They will always feel what David says:

"Thy love is better than life."

Seasons 2.42

2 My soul thirsteth for Elohim, for the living El: when shall I come and appear before Elohim?

In the natural state, men prefer to contemplate and deal with the works of God without God. They are more interested in the mechanical conditions that govern their being than in any consideration of the ultimate cause of those conditions. There is a powerful natural preference for the study of nature without reference to the origin of nature, and for the discussion of man and man's affairs, apart from the anterior purpose in the Eternal Mind out of which man sprang.

This is the natural bent of the human mind unenlightened with regard to God. It is the source of the universal distaste for Bible things. It is due to a partial and depraved action of the mind. A full and enlightened action would lead a man to penetrate beneath mere aspects of nature to the fundamental power in which it subsists.

When the truth comes, this comes with it. The illusions of the natural mind vanish. A new mental action is set up. Fact displaces appearance, wisdom overrides feeling: the eternal is seen below all mere phenomena. God becomes the great truth and the governing point of view.

Between men with whom God is a reality and men to whom God is a superstition, there can be no sympathy. Every man truly enlightened in the truth is bound sooner or later to experience in himself what Jesus said of his disciples,

"I have given them thy word, and the world hath hated them."

If the Word of God dwell in a man, the world will hate him, because it hates the Word; and it hates the Word, because it hates God. This is the cause of the world's hatred of the Bible. The Bible is full of God. You can scarcely put your finger upon a part within its pages where He is not on view in some aspect or other.

That which repels the world attracts the children of God. They desire to come near to God. They share David's thirst for the living God in a land of drought and barrenness. They cry out with him,

"Oh, when shall I come and appear before God."

With him, they would "dwell in the house of God for ever."

They love to frequent meetings where He is prominent, and to keep the company of men and women in whom His love is a guest.

Sunday Morning 196 - The Christadelphian, Apr 1889

3 My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy Elohim?

WHERE IS THY ELOHIM?

It would be a strong answer to the enemy - it would be a tower of strength to ourselves - if we had but one single token from on high - the briefest word of recognition or guidance. But such we are not permitted to have. Such we cannot have. Let us use our reason, and we shall be helped to adjust ourselves to the position and to endure. For want of this, some have grown weary and have given in. For want of it we are in danger of the same,

"Be ye not as the ox or the mule which have no understanding;"

so are we commanded.

Let us survey the facts and we shall be strengthened. First of all, the night is not so long as it seems. We look back to the many centuries it has lasted, and we have a kind of a feeling as if we had lived those centuries and had been in the darkness all the time it has brooded upon the earth.

In the same way, we look forward to the days it may yet have to last, with the feeling that these days also are ours. This is an illusion of the mental mirrors with which the inner man is lined. It is liable to be an oppressive illusion if we do not dispel it by the recollection that our short human life is all the measurement of the night for us. We have not had the centuries that elapsed before we were born; we shall not have the days that will run if we have to go to the grave before the coming of the Lord. Our experience of evil is limited to the short day man is permitted to live on the earth.

That day will soon be over, with all its futility and pain - we know not how soon; and there is this happy thought about it, that when it is gone, it will never return.

There is nothing we forget so soon as trouble when it is over. The only thing left of trouble for us will be the good it has done; for it does good.

Evil has a mission. Evil is from God in the execution of His own plans. "The days wherein we have seen evil" are not thrown away. They are not waste. They are grievous while they last, but they accomplish a work with those "who are the called according to His purpose." We may not know all they accomplish, but we can see this, that no creature can be brought to that constant and cordial and delighted sense of dependence which is the first qualification for eternal fellowship with the Father of all life without suffering.

A life of suffering tends to break into the self-contentment, self-consciousness, and self-sufficiency that is natural to mere self-enjoyment. It prepares us in the right spirit to pray the prayer of Moses, the man of God:

"Return, O Lord, how long? Let it repent Thee concerning Thy servants. O satisfy us early with Thy mercy . . . Make us glad according to the days wherein Thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants, and Thy glory unto their children. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us."

Seasons 2: 21

4 When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of Elohim, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.

What can be more subtle than the relations between Creative Intelligence (as incorporate in the Father) and His operations among men through the Spirit, whether in the ordinary inspiration of His servants, or in the manifestation of His wisdom, character and power in a body prepared from the seed of David?

Figure necessarily enters largely into the expression of these relations, when directed to mortal intellect; and of figure there was much in the words of Christ. It would be a mistake to confound figure with literal truth. Yet underneath the figure, there is absolute truth which Jesus ... intimates will one day be made plain.

"The time cometh when ... I shall shew you plainly of the Father."

For such a day every enlightened mind must thirst with ardent desire. Ever since Adam was driven out of Eden, the cherubim and the flaming sword of symbol have shut off the verities of the divine existence from death-stricken man. He has had to discern them as through a glass darkly.

Approach has been invited through them for reconciliation, with a view to the day of open sight that is coming. Those who have accepted the invitation have in all ages been distinguished by a longing for the removal of all barriers, and the end of all darkness towards God.

They desire to come plainly into the presence and touch of Eternal Power. Even the higher kinds of unjustified intellect have a certain yearning for the "infinite" and the "absolute."

Nazareth Revisited Ch 54

5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in Elohim: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.

6 O my Elohim, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar.

7 Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.

The fertilizing influences of the Word of truth, are likened unto the influences of the rain and the dew upon the earth. The word of Yahweh through the prophet saith:

"As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater: so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void; but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper whereto I sent it" (Isa. 55:10, 11).

Harmonious testimony Moses gives, saying:

"My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew: as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass" (Deut. 32:1, 2).

Therefore, the Spirit through the prophet, speaks of Yahweh as the "fountain of living waters" (Jer. 2:13).

The "Strife" that arose over the life-giving waters of Meribah, seemed to prefigure the strife that was destined to arise when Christ should dispense the "living water" of the Spirit-word of truth; and ever afterward, whenever that spiritual vitality, emanating from the Living Word, is manifested.

In passages relating to other subjects, water is used in different senses. Sometimes as an emblem of affliction: as when the Spirit of Christ, through the Psalmist, laden with grief and sorrow, saith:

"All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me" (Ps. 42:7).

An emblem of truth and righteousness in the following testimony, where the Lord, addressing Israel, saith:

"O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea" (Isa. 48:18).

To those that keep His commandments, the Word saith:

"The Lord shall guide thee continually; and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a

spring of water, whose waters fail not" (Isa. 58:11).

Sis Lasius - Yahweh Elohim Ch 2

8 Yet Yahweh will command his lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the Elohim of my life.

9 I will say unto Elohim my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?

10 As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy Elohim?

11 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in Elohim: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my Elohim.

à...our waiting has a bright side: of course it is the dark side that we most readily feel. The weariness of the delay-the burden of "this tabernacle" which cleaves to the earth-the mental depression arising from the spectacle of so much evil around us-are all liable to weigh us heavily to the earth, and make us groan. Do not give in too much to the dejection. Do not think that

"some strange thing has happened to you."

Remember it has been the experience of all the saints. Even David, as we find in the psalm this morning, has to rally himself on the subject. He had to ask himself,

"Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance."

Paul also, in the chapter read from Romans, exclaims,

"O wretched man that I am!"

What also means the testimony concerning the Lord that he was a man of sorrow, but this, that cloud and sadness are the normal experience of this probationary time?

True, there is an "always rejoicing" associated with it as an undercurrent. Still, sorrow has the larger place. It is by appointment. It is no accident. Yea, it is the inevitable adjunct of a state and a time when mankind is not in friendship with God. Let us recognise the fact. It makes its endurance easier than if we carry our burden with the idea that things ought to be different.

Let us never give in. Let us bravely breast the dark billows. Let us remember that we are not alone in the storm. God is near us all the time; and what time our spirit is overwhelmed, let us fly unto him, whom David well describes as the Rock that is higher than we.

He maketh light to arise in the darkness for the upright even now. He will not put upon us more than we are able to bear. After we have suffered awhile, He will establish, strengthen, settle-even now. And at the end of the dark journey, there waits a welcome whose sweetness and joy it hath not entered into our hearts to conceive.

Seasons 1.92.