Thoughts of God.
"Thou thoughtest … as thyself." What a man thinks in his heart of God is the turning-point of life and character. If we think "all things are naked and opened," etc. (Hebrews 4:13), that we really "have to do" with God, this must needs tell on our whole view of life, from its greatest affairs to its least. If we think God takes no note of sin, we shall be careless of sin. If we think of God as severe, implacable, unjust, we may fear him, but cannot love him. If we think of him as loving and merciful, "faithful and just to forgive," etc. (1 John 1:9), we shall learn to "love him, because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19); and loving, shall obey. And if we think of him as holy, we shall hate sin, and strive after holiness (Hebrews 12:14). Let us note
I. THE ERROR OF BRINGING DOWN OUR THOUGHTS OF GOD TO THE LEVEL OF HUMAN NATURE—measuring God by man. "Thou thoughtest," etc. This is the germ of idolatry. Man's nature makes him a worshipper. His reason demands God. His heart cries out for God. His weakness needs God. But his sinfulness shrinks from a righteous and holy God (see St. Paul's account of the matter, Romans 1:19-25). But those to whom this warning is spoken are not idolaters, any more than they are atheists. They "declare God's statutes" and "take his covenant in their mouth." Professed members of his Church, even teachers in it. But "in works they deny him" (Titus 1:16). Looking at this psalm as predictive, its first fulfilment was when our Saviour denounced the hypocrites of this day; as in Matthew 24:1-51. Its final fulfilment will be that of which he speaks in Matthew 7:21-23. (The whole second chapter of Romans is a commentary on this psalm.) How is such self-deceiving hypocrisy possible? Through false thoughts of God. Men persuade themselves that he does not mean what he says; will not be hard on them; is too indulgent really to punish sin. Not only a fatal error, but one that adds to other sins that of insulting the Most High! Terrible to think that men may set up an idol in their own thoughts—a false view of God's character and dealings, as unlike God as Baal or Juggernaut!
II. THE OPPOSITE ERROR IS THAT OF SUPPOSING THAT GOD IN NO RESPECT RESEMBLES MAN; OR MAN, GOD. That there is nothing in our nature—conscience, reason, affections—from which we may infer some correspondence in "the Father of spirits." God is thus removed out of all reach of our knowledge, sympathy, love; and even trust and obedience. This is the error to which men are most prone in our own day, especially men of cultured intellect and science. They see themselves surrounded by an order so stupendous, laws so unchangeable, worlds and systems so remote, so ancient, so infinite to our feeble thought, that the Creator seems infinitely removed—lost in the greatness of his own works. The world by wisdom knows not God. If such men worship, it is not the God revealed in the Bible and in Christ, but an idol—not of sense or imagination, but intellect—"the Infinite," "the Absolute," "the Stream of tendency making for righteousness," "the Unknowable."
III. IN BOTH THESE ERRORS THERE IS A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF TRUTH. But only half the truth. Half-truths are often the most deadly errors, when mistaken for whole truths. But truth is not found by flying from one error to the opposite extreme. The truth contained, but concealed and distorted, in idolatry, is that man's nature has something akin to God, so that man can converse with God. The truth contained, but perverted, in the philosophy which declares God to be "unknowable," is that our knowledge of him, though real and true, must needs be very limited. Finite minds cannot comprehend the Infinite.
The narrow limits of our knowledge of God, and its necessary imperfection, are amply taught in the Bible (see Exodus 3:13, Exodus 3:14; Isaiah 40:25; Isaiah 55:8, Isaiah 55:9). But the main efforts and purpose of the Bible, from first to last, is not to weigh us down with God's incomprehensible greatness, but to lift us up and bring us near to him. Its opening page shows us, not God in the likeness of man, but man created in the image of God. Then the Scripture goes on to reveal God
(4) miracle, making nature, where only dead law seems to reign, reveal his living presence, power, and love;