Expositions of Holy Scripture | Page 8

there, so he has betaken himself to the
everlasting Rock, in the cleft of which he is at rest and secure. To trust in God is neither
more nor less than to flee to Him for refuge, and there to be at peace. The same presence
of the original metaphor, colouring the same religious thought, is found in the beautiful
words with which Boaz welcomes Ruth, when he prays for her that the God of Israel may
reward her, 'under the shadow of whose wings thou hast come to trust.'
So, as a man in peril runs into a hiding-place or fortress, as the chickens beneath the
outspread wing of the mother bird nestle close in the warm feathers and are safe and well,
the soul that trusts takes its flight straight to God, and in Him reposes and is secure.
Now, it seems to me that such a figure as that is worth tons of theological lectures about
the true nature of faith, and that it tells us, by means of a picture that says a great deal
more than many a treatise, that faith is something very different from a cold-blooded act
of believing in the truth of certain propositions; that it is the flight of the soul--knowing
itself to be in peril, and naked, and unarmed--into the strong Fortress.
What is it that keeps a man safe when he thus has around him the walls of some citadel?
Is it himself, is it the act by which he took refuge, or is it the battlements behind which he
crouches? So in faith--which is more than a process of a man's understanding, and is not
merely the saying, 'Yes, I believe all that is in the Bible is true; at any rate, it is not for me
to contradict it,' but is the running of the man, when he knows himself to be in danger,
into the very arms of God--it is not the running that makes him safe, but it is the arms to
which he runs.
If we would only lay to heart that the very essence of religion lies in this 'flight of the
lonely soul to the only God,' we should understand better than we do what He asks from
us in order that He may defend us, and how blessed and certain His defence is. So let us
clear our minds from the thought that anything is worth calling trust which is not thus
taking refuge in God Himself.
Now, I need not remind you, I suppose, that all this is just as true about us as it was about
David, and that the emotion or the act of his will and heart which he expresses in these
words of my text is neither more nor less than the Christian act of faith. There is no
difference except a difference of development; there is no difference between the road to
God marked out in the Psalms, and the road to God laid down in the Gospels. The
Psalmist who said, 'Trust ye in the Lord for ever,' and the Apostle who said, 'Believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,' were preaching identically the same

doctrine. One of them could speak more fully than the other could of the Person on whom
trust was to be rested, but the trust itself was the same, and the Person on whom it rested
was the same, though His Name of old was Jehovah, and His Name to-day is 'Immanuel,
God with us.'
Nor need I do more than point out how the context of the words that I have ventured to
detach from their surroundings is instructive: 'Let all those that put their trust in Thee
rejoice because Thou defendest them.' The word for defending there continues the
metaphor that lies in the word for 'trust,' for it means literally to cover over and so to
protect. Thus, when a man runs to God for His refuge, God
'Covers his defenceless head With the shadow of His wings.'
And the joy of trust is, first, that it brings round me the whole omnipotence of God for
my defence, and the whole tenderness of God for my consolation, and next, that in the
very exercise of trust in such defence, so fortified and vindicated by experience, there is
great reward. All who thus flee into the refuge shall find refuge whither they flee, and
shall be glad.
II. Then the next thought of my texts, which I do not force into them, but which results,
as it seems to me, distinctly from the order in which they occur in the context, is that love
follows trust.
'All those that put their trust in Thee--they also that love Thee.' If I am to love God,