Sky, Earth and Sea; a Parable of God
A. Maclaren, D. D. Psalm 36:5-7 Your mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens; and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.… This wonderful description of the manifold brightness of the Divine nature is introduced in this psalm with singular abruptness. It is set side by side with a vivid picture of an evildoer, a man who mutters in his own heart his godlessness, and with obstinate determination plans and plots in forgetfulness of God. We should go mad when we think of man's wickedness Unless we could look up and see, with one quick turn of the eye, the heaven opened and the throned love that sits up there gazing on the chaos, and working to soothe sorrow, and to purify evil. I. WE HAVE GOD IN THE BOUNDLESSNESS OF HIS LOVING NATURE, His mercy, faithfulness and righteousness are set before us. Now, the mercy spoken of is the same as the "love" told of in the New Testament, or, more nearly still, the "grace." Mercy is love in its exercise to persons who might expect something else, being guilty. As a general coming to a body of mutineers with pardon and favour upon his lips, instead of with condemnation and death; so God comes to us forgiving and blessing. All His goodness is forbearance, and His love is mercy, because of the weakness, the lowliness, and the ill desert of us on whom the love falls. And this same "quality of mercy" stands here at the beginning and the end. All the attributes of God are within the circle of His mercy, like diamonds set in a golden ring. But next to mercy comes faithfulness. "Thy faithfulness," etc. This implies a verbal revelation, and definite words from Him pledging Him to a certain line of action. "He hath said, and shall He not do it." "He will not alter the thing that is gone out of His lips." It is only a God who has spoken to men who can be a faithful God. He will not palter with a double sense, keeping His word of promise to the ear, and breaking it to the hope. The next beam of the Divine brightness is Righteousness. "Thy righteousness is," etc. The idea is just this, to put it into other words, that God has a law for His being to which He conforms; and that whatsoever things are fair, and lovely, and good, and pure down here, those things are fair, and lovely, and good, and pure up there. All these characteristics of the Divine nature are boundless. "Thy mercy is in the heavens," towering up above the stars and dwelling there like some Divine ether filling all space. The heavens are the home of light, the source of every blessing, arching over every head, rimming every horizon, holding all the stars, opening into abysses as we gaze, with us by night and by day, undimmed by the mist and smoke of earth, unchanged by the lapse of centuries; ever seen, never reached, bending over us always, always far above us. For even they, however they may dissolve and break, are yet subject to His unalterable law, and fulfil His gracious purpose. Then "Thy righteousness is like the great mountains." Like them, its roots are fast and stable; its summits touch the clouds of fleeting human circumstance: it is a shelter and a refuge, inaccessible in its steepest peaks, but affording many a cleft in its rocks where a man may hide and be safe. But, unlike them, it knew no beginning and shall know no end. Then, with wonderful poetical beauty and vividness of contrast, there follows upon the emblems of the great mountains of God's righteousness the emblem of the "mighty deep" of His judgments. Here towers Vesuvius; there at its feet lie the waters of the bay. The mountains and the sea are the two grandest things in nature, and in their combination sublime; the one the home of calm and silence, the other in perpetual motion. But the mountain's roots are deeper than the depths of the sea, and though the judgments are a mighty deep, the righteousness is deeper, and is the bed of the ocean. There is obscurity, doubtless, in these judgments, but it is that of the sea: not in itself, but in the dimness of the eye that looks upon it. The sea is clear, but our sight is limited. We cannot see to the bottom. A man on the cliff can look much deeper into the ocean than a man on the level beach. Let us remember that it is a hazardous thing to judge of a picture before it is finished; of a building before the scaffolding is pulled down, and it is a hazardous thing for us to say about any deed or any revealed truth that it is inconsistent with the Divine character. Wait a bit. II. So much, then, for the great picture here of these boundless characteristics of the Divine nature. Now let us look for a moment at the picture of MAN SHELTERING BENEATH GOD'S WINGS. "How excellent is Thy loving-kindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings." God's loving-kindness, or mercy, is precious, for that is the true meaning of the word translated "excellent." We are rich when we have that for ours; we are poor without it. That man is wealthy who has God on his side; that man is a pauper who has not God for his. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thy mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. WEB: Your loving kindness, Yahweh, is in the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches to the skies.