God the righteous Judge.
I. THAT GOD WILL JUDGE ALL MEN. Even now there is judgment. Every act of our lives has its moral character, and carries its consequences of good or evil. But this judgment is but partial and incomplete. Reason, conscience, and Holy Scripture proclaim a judgment to come which will be perfect and final. The supreme Judge of all men is God. He and he alone has the right and the power. Be has perfect knowledge, and cannot err; he has absolute righteousness, and cannot do injustice; he has almighty power, and cannot be prevented from carrying his judgments into effect. In the psalm the vision seems gradually to unfold itself till the great God stands before us in awful majesty and glory, "the Judge of the quick and the dead."
II. THAT GOD'S JUDGMENT WILL SETTLE FOR EVER THE DESTINIES OF MEN. God comes to us now, but it is in mercy. He has no pleasure in the death of the sinner, but would rather that all should turn from their evil ways and live. But there is a great crisis near, when he will come as a Judge, and when all men shall be brought consciously before him for judgment. The judgment will be universal: not only Israel, but all the earth; but it will begin at the house of God. Unavoidable: there will be no possibility of eluding the officers of justice, or of evading the testimony of the witnesses. Conclusive: it is the last judgment, from which there can be no appeal, whose sentences are irreversible and eternal.
III. THAT GOD WILL SETTLE THE DESTINIES OF MEN ON THE GROUNDS OF ETERNAL JUSTICE. There is a hint as to the principles on which the judgment will be based in Psalms 50:7. Everything may be said to turn on the kind of religion which we have. This is shown negatively (Psalms 50:8-13), then positively (Psalms 50:14-23). True religion is not outward, but inward; not formal, but spiritual; not conventional, but personal; not in privileges, not in professions, not in ceremonial observances, hut in the sincere obedience of the heart and life. It implies that God's love is supreme in the heart, and God's law is supreme in the life. Such a religion can only be obtained for sinners through Jesus Christ the Saviour. Where it really exists there is not only the form, but the power of godliness—in grateful thanksgiving and joyous obedience and adoring prayer (Psalms 50:23).—W.F.