The Real Greatness of Man
J. G. Greenhough, M. A. 2 Samuel 22:36 You have also given me the shield of your salvation: and your gentleness has made me great. David spake unto the Lord the words of this song on the day when he had emerged victorious from all his struggles. It is the story of a life written and set to music by the man who lived it. It is not a piping song of peace, green pastures, and still waters, like some of those tender lyrics which came from the same pen. It deals with rougher and fiercer scenes, and resounds with the clash of arms and noise of battle. It is such a song as St. Paul might have sung, and did sing, when, on the eve of martyrdom, he looked back on his ministry; such a song as every Christian would wish to raise when life's little day is near its close, and he is waiting in the shadows for another and fairer morning. Now these are the words of every man who takes a truthful reading of the facts of life, who views his life's doings and gains in vile searching light of God. The great mind always clothes itself in humility, because it takes a true estimate of self, and disdains to walk in a vain show. In spite of his sins, awful blunders, and moral falls, David stands out in huge bulk as one of the world's master minds; a far-seeing statesman, a gifted thinker and poet, a brilliant soldier, a man of charming personality and winsome attractiveness, a man of infinite patience and unwearying energy, and every inch a king. If he had been a vain man, what a loud story he would have told of his own mighty doings and conquest of difficulties; how loftily he would have carried himself among his throngs of courtiers and flatterers. If there is genius it is heaven-born, not self-wrought. If there is the weighty brain and the keen, far-reaching vision and the indomitable will, they are talents bestowed upon us unasked for, and not digged and coined by our own hands. If your stature is six feet are you to look down with supercilious disdain upon that other piece of humanity which is six inches lower, as if you yourself had manufactured the extra six inches? Ii you have had a brilliant career and succeeded in everything to which you have set your hands, are you to strut about as a little god, forgetting whence came all the powers and gifts of fortune which carried you to victory? A man of David's build knows better than this, because his eyes are opened. The Bible has the greatest contempt for self-important people. Think how it lashes them with the whip of scorn. Its Pharaohs in their Egyptian palaces; its Rabshakehs, with their insolent bravado, boasting as if all the world belonged to them, and as if they could defy omnipotence; its Nebuchadnezzars walking about Babylon and calling upon all men to behold the grandeur of their doings and the majesty of their wisdom; its Herods arrayed in gorgeous robes and flaunting themselves in unholy pride as if they sat on the throne of God. How the Bible scouts and scorns these marionettes that dance for a moment on the world's tawdry stage and mouth-inflated speeches as if they were hardly less than the Almighty. The saints of God were always like David in this one thing. There is not a man in the Bible story worth reading of who was not stamped with this characteristic feature. They had a hundred faults, but the sin of over-estimating their importance was never one of them. They had measured themselves, not with human tape-lines, but with God's larger rule. And this was the language in which they all wrote the story of their lives — "I am not, worthy of the least of all the mercies which the Lord my God has bestowed upon me. Thou hast given me the shield of Thy salvation, and Thy gentleness hath made me great." The gentleness of God: what is it? It is almost indefinable, but something which the heart can feel and understand. The gentleness of man is the most winsome of human attributes. It is strength forgetting its strength and becoming tender as a kiss and soft as a sunbeam. You see it in the old oft-told story of Hector, the Greek warrior, doffing the helmet which frightens the child, and stooping down with smiling face and velvet touch to caress and bless the child. You see it in the soldier with iron arm and mighty heart kneeling over the feeblest wounded thing and soothing it with touches soft and tearful as a child's. You see it in the mother's face as she bends over her sick and helpless infant. You see it more than all in the picture of Christ's healing ministry when He lays His mighty hand, soothing and calming, upon the diseases and sicknesses of men. There is always something of unconscious stooping and condescension in it; something very high, and perhaps mighty, that puts off it, s mightiness to help and bless. That is human gentleness, and that is the gentleness of God, which makes us great. Infinitely more than all this to you is the fact that God is lowly enough to think of you, to care for you, to follow you with watchful eyes, to take any trouble with you at all. If we possessed the whole world, if we had each the genius of a Shakespeare or Milton or David, it would not give us as much right to exalt ourselves as the simple fact that we can pray to God, that it is not a waste of words, a flinging out of something into the dark, a piece of self-deceiving, but that prayer is a reality, the real talk of a real man with a real Almighty God. Think of it! It almost transcends thought. The wonder of it is unspeakable. And our greatness, if we have any, is in the fact that, He thinks us worth caring for, worth teaching and training and leading on to all goodness that we may dwell with Him and enjoy Him for ever. (J. G. Greenhough, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thou hast also given me the shield of thy salvation: and thy gentleness hath made me great. WEB: You have also given me the shield of your salvation. Your gentleness has made me great.