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‘Thy word
have I hid in my heart.’ — Psalm 119:11.
‘I have not
hid Thy righteousness in my heart.’ —
Psalm 40:10
THEN
there are two kinds of hiding — one right and one wrong: one essential to
the life of the Christian, one inconsistent with it. He is a shallow
Christian who has no secret depths in his religion. He is a cowardly
or a lazy one, at all events an unworthy
one, who does not exhibit, to the utmost of his power, his religion. It is
bad to have all the goods in the shop window; it is just as bad to have
them all in the cellar. There are two aspects of the Christian life — one
between God and myself, with which no stranger intermeddles; one patent to
all the world. My two texts touch these two.
I. ‘I have hid Thy word within
my heart.’
There we have the word hidden, or the
secret religion of the heart.
Now, I
have often had occasion to remind you that the Old Testament use of the
word ‘heart’ is much wider than our modern one, which limits it to being
the seat and organ of love, affection, or emotion; whereas in the Old
Testament the ‘heart’ is the very vital centre of the personal self.
As
the Book of Proverbs has it, ‘out of it are the issues of life,’ all the
outgoings of activity of every kind, both that which we ascribe to the
head, and that which we ascribe to the heart. These come, according to the
Old Testament idea, from this central self. And so, when the Psalmist
says, ‘I have hid Thy word within my heart,’ he means ‘I have buried it
deep in the very midst of my being, and put it down at the very roots of
myself, and there incorporated it with the very substance of my soul.’
Now, I
venture to take that expression, ‘Thy word,’ in a somewhat wider
sense than the Psalmist employed it. There are three ideas conveyed by
that expression in Scripture; and two of them are distinctly found in this
psalm.
First,
there is the plain, obvious one, which means by ‘the word,’ written
revelation. The Bible of the Psalmist was a very small volume compared
with ours. The Pentateuch, and perhaps some of the historical books,
possibly also one or two of the prophets — and these were about all Yet
this fragmentary word he ‘hid in his heart.’ Now, dear brethren! I wish to
say a very practical thing or two, and I begin with this. If you want
to be strong Christian people, hide the Bible in your heart. When I
was a boy the practice of good Christian folk was to read a daily chapter.
I wonder if that is kept up. I gravely suspect it is not. There are, no
doubt, a great many causes contributing to the comparative decay amongst
professing Christians, of Bible reading and Bible study.
There is modern ‘higher criticism,’
which has a great deal to say about how and when the books were made,
especially the books that composed this Psalmist’s Bible.
But I want to insist that no theories, were they
ever so well established — as I take leave to say they are not — no
theories about these secondary questions touch the value of Scripture as a
factor in the development of the Christian life. Whatever a man may think
about these, he will be none the less alive, if he is wise, to the
importance of the daily devotional study of Scripture.
Then there is another set of reasons
for the neglect of Scripture, in the multiplication of other forms of
literature.
People have so many other books to read now, that they have not much time
for reading their Bibles, or i they have, they think they have not.
No literature will ever take the place of the old Book. Why, even
looked at as a mere literary product there is nothing in the world like
it! And no religious literature, sermons, treatises, still less magazines
and periodicals, will do for Christian men what the Bible will do for
them. You make a tremendous mistake, for your own souls’ sake, if your
religious reading consists in what people have said and thought about
Scripture, more than in the Scripture itself. Why should you dip your
pitchers into the reservoir, when you can take them up to where the spring
comes gushing out of the hillside, pure and limpid and living?
Then
there is the drive of our modern life which crowds out the word.
Get up a quarter of an hour earlier and you will have time to read your
Bible. It will be well worth the sacrifice, if it is a sacrifice. I do not
mean by reading the Bible what, I am afraid, is far too common, reading a
scrap of Scripture as if it were a kind of charm. But I would most
earnestly press upon you that muscle and fibre will distinctly atrophy and
become enfeebled, if Christian people neglect the first plain way of
hiding the word in their heart, which is to make the utterances of
Scripture as if incorporated with their very being, and part of their very
selves.
But there
is another use of the expression, ‘Thy word,’ which is not without example
in this great psalm of praise of the word. In one place in it we read, ‘For
ever, O Lord! Thy word is settled in heaven’; that is not the Bible.
‘Thy faithfulness is unto all generations. They continue this day
according to Thy ordinances’; these are not the Bible — ’ for all are Thy
servants.’ ‘Unless Thy law had been my delight, I should have perished in my
afflictions’; I think that is not the Bible either, but it is the
utterance of God’s will, as expressed in the Psalmist’s affliction. God’s
word comes to us in His
providences and in many other ways. It is the declaration of His character
and purposes, however they are declared, and the expression of His will
and command, however expressed. In that wider sense of the phrase, I would
say, ‘Hide that manifested will of God in your hearts.’ Let us
cultivate the habit of bringing all ‘the issues of life ‘ — the streams
that bubble up from that fountain in the centre of our being — into close relation
to what we know to be God’s will concerning us. Let the thought of the
will of God sit sovereign arbiter, enthroned in the very centre of our
personality, ruling our will, bending it and making it yielding and
conformed to His, governing our affections, regulating our passions,
restraining our desires, stimulating our slothfulness, quickening our
aspirations, lifting heavenwards our hopes, and bringing the whole of the
activities that well up from our hearts into touch with the will of God.
Cast the healing branch into the very eye of the fountain, and then all
the streams will partake of the cleansing. Let that known will of God be
as the leaven hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened. A
fanciful interpretation of that emblem makes the three measures to mean
the triple constituents of humanity, body, soul, and spirit. We may smile
at the fantastic exposition, but let us take heed to obey the exhortation.
When God’s will is deeply planted within, it will work quickening
change on the heavy dough of our sluggish natures. It is when we bring
the springs of our actions — namely, our motives, which are our true
selves — into touch with His
uttered will, that our deeds become conformed to it. Look after the
motives, and the deeds will look after themselves. ‘I have hid Thy word within my
heart.’
And now I
venture upon a further application of this phrase, of which the Psalmist
had no notion, but which, in God’s great mercy, in the progress of
revelation, we can make. There is a better word of God than the Bible; there is
a better word of God than any will uttered in His providences and the like.
There is the Incarnate Word of God, who ‘was from the beginning with God,
and was God,’ and is manifested in these last times unto us. I am keeping
well within the analogy of Scripture teaching when I see the
perfecting of revelation by the spoken Word as reached in the revelation
by the
personal word; and when, in addition to the exhortation, to hide the Scripture
in your hearts, and to hide the uttered will of God, however uttered,
in your hearts, I add, let us hide Christ in our hearts. For He will ‘dwell in
our hearts by faith,’ and if He is shrined within the curtains of the secret
place within us, which is ‘the secret place of the Most High,’ then, in the
courts of the sanctuary, there will be a pure sacrifice and a priest clad ‘in the
beauties of holiness.’
II. The word not hidden, or
the religion of the outward life.
Our
second text brings into view the outer side of the devout life, that which is
turned to the world. The word is to be hidden in the heart, for this very end
of being then revealed in the life. For what other purpose is it to be set in
the centre of our being and applied to the springs of action, than to mould
action, and so to be displayed in conduct? It is not to be hid like some
forgotten and unused treasure in a castle vault, but to be buried deep in a
living person, that it may affect all that person’s character and acts. ‘There is
nothing hidden, but that it should come abroad.’ The deepest, sacredest,
most secret Christian experiences are to be operative on the outward
life. A man may be caught up into the third heavens and there hear words
which mortal speech cannot utter, but the incommunicable vision should
tell on his patience and fortitude, and influence his Christian work.
Nor is
our manifestation of the springs of our action to be confined to conduct.
However eloquent it is, it will be all the more intelligible for the
commentary supplied by confession with the mouth. Speech for Christ is a Christian
obligation. ‘What ye hear in the ear, that proclaim ye on the
housetops.’ True, there is a legitimate reticence as to the depths of personal
religion, which needs very strong reasons to warrant its being broken
through. Peter told Mark nothing of the interview which he had with
Christ on the Resurrection morning, but he must have told the fact. We shall
do well to be silent as to what passes between Jesus and us in secret;
but we shall not do well if, coming from our private communion with Him,
we do not ‘find’ some to whom we can say, ‘We have found the Messiah,’
and so bring them to Jesus.
The word,
if hid in the heart, will certainly be manifest in the life. For not only is
it impossible for a man who deeply and continually realises God’s will, and
lives in touch with Jesus Christ, to prevent these experiences from
visibly affecting His life and conduct, but also in the measure in
which we have that
conscious inward possession of the divine word and the divine Christ we
shall be impelled to manifest them to our fellows by every means in our
power.
What, then, is the inference to be drawn from the fact that there are
thousands of professing Christian people in Manchester, who never
felt the slightest touch of a necessity to make known the Master Whom they
say they serve? They must be very shallow Christians, having no depth
of experience, or that experience would insist on coming out. True
Christian emotion is like a fire smoldering within some substance, that
never rests till it burns its way to the outside. As one of the prophets puts it,
‘I said I will speak no more in Thy name’; he goes on to tell how his
resolve of silence gave way under the pressure of the unuttered speech ‘Thy word
shut up in my bones was like a fire, and I was weary of
forbearing and I could not stay.’ So it will always be. Every genuine
conviction demands utterance. A full heart needs the relief of speech.
If you feel
no need to show your allegiance and love to Christ by speech as well as
by life, I shrewdly suspect you have little love or allegiance to hide.
Further,
the more we show it, the more need there is for us to cultivate the hidden
element in our religion. If I were talking to ministers I should have a great
deal to say about that. There are preachers who preach away their own
religion. The two attitudes of mind in imparting and in receiving are wholly
different; and if one is allowed to encroach upon the other, nothing but harm
can come. ‘As thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone,’— that is
the short account of the decay of personal religion in many a life outwardly
diligent in Christian work. If there is a proportionate cultivation of the
hidden self, then the act of manifesting will tend to strengthen it. It is meant
that our Christian convictions and affections should grow in strength and in
transforming power upon ourselves, by reason of utterance; just as when you
let air in, the fire burns brighter. But it is quite possible that we may
dissipate and scatter our feeble religion by talking about it; and some of us may
be in danger of that. The loftier you mean to build your tower, the
deeper must be the foundation that you dig. The more any of us are trying to
do for Jesus Christ, the more need there is that we increase our secret
communion with Jesus Christ.
We may
wrongly hide our religion so that it evaporates. Too many
professing Christians put away their religion as careless housewives might do some
precious perfume, and when they go to take it out, they find nothing
but a rotten cork, a faint odour, and an empty flask. Take care of burying
your religion so deep, as dogs do bones, that you cannot find it again, or
if you do discover, when you open the coffin, that it holds only a handful
of dry dust.
The heart has two actions. In one it opens its portals and
expands to receive the inflowing blood which is the life. In the other it contracts
to drive the life through the veins. For health there must be both motions;
the receptiveness, in the secret ‘hiding of the word in the heart’; the
expulsive energy in the ‘not hiding Thy righteousness in my heart.’
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