11/11/51

Scripture: Psalm 73.

Text: Psalm 73: 2; “As for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well-nigh slipped.”

The book of Psalms is a book of realism in the moods of man. The Psalms were the songs, the hymns, of the Hebrew people of that day. They were sung, not only in the house of worship, but in the community. Some of them may have been sung by traveling groups; used antiphonally with one section of the group chanting a section and then another chanting the responding section. One section may speak of the low, or doubting, moods of the people. The other may lift the mood to hope and confident trust.

A quick reading of the Psalms may impress one with the high faith of those who could compose and sing them through the years. A further, thoughtful reading, also impresses one with the recognition that there is also reflected the human mood of deep pessimism with which people of all ages have to deal in their own experience. The Psalm [73rd] of this morning illustrates well that mood. It raises numerous complaints against the Almighty; envy of the apparent prosperity of evil folk, and self-commiseration. The emotion is enervating --- doubt, spiritual depression --- the same mood that appears elsewhere in the question: “How long, O Lord, wilt thou forget me?” [Psalm 13: 1]. And “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” [Psalm 42: 5].

Of course there are different ways of reacting to depression of spirit. Some of the moderns, when plunged into a thick blue mood, go out and get drunk, or write an article to a magazine. The Jews of the earlier day to which we refer, raised their skepticism in a prayer and poured out their troubles before the Lord.

“As for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well-nigh slipped.” Gloom must have settled down like a terrible fog on the writer. Here is one going through “the dark night of the soul,” tortured with dark thoughts and fearful apprehensions. He couldn’t think straight; prayer was difficult; he saw no essential good. He was like a Chinese immigrant coming from the Orient to Canada, landing at Nova Scotia, who disliked the fog. “Lighthouse” he observed, “no good for fog. Lighthouse he shine, whistle he blow, fog bell he ring; but fog he come just the same. No good!” What good was a lighthouse, in his thinking, if it could not drive away the fog. And perhaps no one is entirely free from the mood that whispers: “What good does it do to pray, if I am still surrounded by the trouble and the evil which seem to engulf my soul?”

(1) This mood may be brought on by sickness of one sort or other. Low moods sometimes mean low vitality. Perhaps some of the Old Testament worthies were sick and didn’t know it, or didn’t tell it. They felt punished by the Lord without knowing that the liver may have been out of order!

(2) Sometimes individual temperament can do it. We are not all made alike. Some people are cheerful by nature, usually optimistic, hopeful, given to seeing the bright side of things. Others seem born to doubt, like the apostle Thomas. The sun does not shine every day. And the cloudy days are magnified in the lives of some folk. And most people have fluctuations of mood, like the weather. A Negro spiritual sings a plaintive: “Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down. O yes Lord. Sometimes I’m almost to de ground.”

(3) But to come to grips with the Psalmist’s problem we must look deep enough to recognize that a great deal of trouble is neither personal illness nor personal mood. Many of the atrocity stories are real. Much of the world is in deep hostility. Evil is arrogant and greedy. The world gets one down, as it got the Psalmist down to where he complained that his steps had well-nigh slipped. For he saw the prosperity of the wicked; he was envious of the arrogant. The world seemed hostile to him. And it had gotten him down.

Perhaps you have heard about the fellow who got so frightened and disgusted that he decided to end it all. He got out on a bridge with a high railing, climbed the railing and was about to jump when a policeman who had seen him shouted, “Hey! you can’t do that.” The policeman got out on the railing, trying to talk him out of his suicide notion. Finally the fellow handed the policeman the morning newspaper, and pointed to the headlines, and then they both jumped!

The day-by-day bombardment of bitter facts; the pressure of fear, uncertainty, anxiety; attempts for peace that does not come; personal set-backs and tragedies --- it is little wonder that our spirits get beaten down by the hammer blows of the world’s enormous evil.

A columnist, commenting on the assassination of Gandhi, and then Bernadotte, said: “In this violent age, it happens all too often that the men of peace and goodwill perish, while the men of blood and violence, secure in their bodyguards, continue their evil work.” Well, that sort of thing is what got the psalmist down, too.

His problem was aggravated by warped thinking as well. It was a prevailing trust among pious Jews -- and not un-heard-of among religious folk of these later days -- that prosperity was a mark of God’s approval; and adversity of His wrath. If you were the right kind of person, said your prayers, paid your tithe, observed the laws; you had a right to expect God to give you a good harvest, a good market, good health to enjoy your success, and protection from adversity. You can see that reflected in the Psalms too. “A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee.” [Psalm 91: 7]. Or in the first Psalm: “Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly --- whatever he doeth shall prosper.” [Psalm 1: 1,3]. It was assumed to be God’s business to look after His people with favor.

So it was hard for the Psalmist to understand, when he could plainly see that the ungodly were prospering in ways that he envied. “Their eyes stand out with fatness.” And he was, for all his praying, still troubled.

I once visited a student at Harvard University. He lived in a dormitory room where each of the former occupants through the years had written his name permanently on the door. One of the names was that of Horatio Alger, Jr., some of whose stories I had read as a youngster. In Alger’s yarns the good boy always eventually gets the pie, while the bad boy gets the stick. The whole moral order is there neatly wrapped up for the prosperity and protection of the righteous.

But there is no such complacent assurance! God-fearing folk get piteous diseases; Christians of Nero’s time were devoured by human hatred and hungry lions; sore disappointments come to people who would seem to deserve the surest happiness.

All of us need to get to footing that is far more solid than the notion that devoutness is an insurance policy against disaster. Well, how can we keep our footing and our faith? This is tremendously important just now; for depression is a public liability; and firm confidence is critically essential.

The same psalmist who saw so much of the dark side of life also knew where to look for the light. He said he went to church. That’s the first thing. “I went into the sanctuary of God.” It is the best therapy I know of -- just to be reminded that God is. Roger William Riis, writing in the last issue of the Reader’s Digest, says he has taken to going to church after 22 years of neglect and scoffing, and he finds it to be a great lift.

I went to a hospital room where parents were waiting, agitated and anxious, while their child was gone to surgery. They admitted that it was almost more than they could accept, that their child had become ill and was at that moment dependent for life on the skill and success of a surgeon in whom they tried to trust. In the midst of their obvious anxiety, the father said that at least one thing we could do would be to pray about it. And so, for a few moments, we did just that. And I think that the very recognition that God had something important to do with people’s lives -- soul and body, theirs and their son’s -- got them on to firmer footing. It is first aid therapy just to be reminded that God is. The fog may continue, despite all the lights, bells and whistles of the lighthouse and the foghorns of the ships. But the sun still shines out beyond, steady in its course, dependable, unchanged. There may come an upsurge of quiet confidence just to remember that “the eternal God is thy refuge.”

On the troubled night when Abraham Lincoln was shot, an excited crowd gathered around the New York hotel where Garfield was stopping. As the tension increased, Garfield walked out on a balcony and quoted from the 97th Psalm: “‘Clouds and darkness are about us, but righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.’ [Psalm 97: 2]. God reigns, and the government at Washington still lives.” Quietly the crowd dispersed with the hush of God upon them, and the streets were stilled again.

It is good to keep informed on the events of the day and to assess the good and the evil, the successes and the mistakes, the dangers and the ways to safety. But it is no good to keep your mind pounding on the problem, or looking for the solution in every newspaper. And the way to pray is not to center your mind on your slipping feet, your failing flesh or heart, but rather to move where the Psalmist went when he said, “God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.” [Psalm 73: 26].

For ages, the Jews tried their best to believe that adversity is the mark of God’s wrath and that prosperity the evidence of God’s smile. And their feet were always slipping at that point. But now and then some prophetic soul got his feet on solid ground. When the Chaldean hordes swept in on their little nation and horror and desolation were the lot of the Hebrews, Habakkuk climbed into his watchtower, to tell God frankly what he thought. Then he listened in silence, came down subdued, and straightened out his thinking on what providence was for. Listen to him vow that henceforth he will serve God, not for “what is in it,” but no matter what comes out of it: “Though the fig tree may not blossom -- though the olive crop has failed -- though in stalls no cattle lie; yet will I trust in the Lord who helps us keep our footing in the heights.” [Habakkuk 3: 17-19].

Job came to it too --- and he did not arrive where Calvin Coolidge thought he did! Calvin Coolidge wrote a magazine article pointing to the happy ending of the Job story as a solution for economic depression. He wrote, “When Job’s change of mind became apparent, his friends came back to him. They furnished him capital to set himself up in business again and, purified by his reverses, he became twice as wealthy and prosperous as before. By keeping his faith, Job recovered from his depression.”

Twice as wealthy and prosperous as before. That may have been a by-product result. But that is not the point at all! That is the nostalgic conclusion of Mr. Coolidge and the determined conclusion of the ancient writers. Not all the “happy endings” of life’s stories were written by the Algers of 1900 years AD. What is really it, is what Job himself said. This is what came out of Job’s mouth and soul. When all things seemed against him and even his wife said, “Curse God and die,” Job lifted up his boil-covered arm and cried, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” [Job 13: 15]. That was a sublime moment. There was his way to get his soul out of the depression, where it had slipped, onto solid footing again! Let’s get our tangled thinking straightened out! Trust God, and die if He will, or live if He will!

Another thing the Psalmist learned, while in church, to keep his feet from slipping: he got behind the appearances, to things as they really are. He leaned that ethical insights are to be trusted more than emotional moods. When he perceived that the rule of God is solid, then the prosperity of the wicked was shakier than it had seemed to him. The moral order was not slipping; he had been slipping. It would steady our footing, too, to remember that appearances are often deceptive. Even facts fool us unless we know how to interpret them. You have to see beyond the facts, and around the facts, in order to interpret them.

This pulpit appears solid. If you’ve ever helped to move it you are sure it’s solid. Our church furniture was not made of tissue paper, laminated or otherwise! But an important understanding of the facts is that this pulpit is not really solid in the popular concept. It is a mass of whirling electrons.

The earth appears flat --- and it isn’t. It seems to be stationary -- and it isn’t. The sun appears to rise in the east. It will appear to go down in the west tonight. We’ve all seen it with our own eyes --- and yet that isn’t the fact at all. It’s nearer the truth to say that we do the rising and setting, and our whole world revolves, whirling, around the sun.

It takes a good deal of insight to get back of things as they are. This may be even more true in the ethical realm than in the realm of physical observance. It is so often the appearances that get you off. Sin seems so alluring. Force appears so effective, to crush down your opponent by superior power. Self-assertion appears so solid as you look around. These hard-headed, so-called practical ways make God’s ways of patience, sacrificing love, and belief in the right seem weak and ineffective. But it’s an illusion! They’re not so powerfully effective when you get back of them. An ancient Jew says, “I saw their end.”

Of all generations, we ought to be able to see some of the dreary end of the wicked. Mussolini hanging by his heels, Hitler so excessively aggressive and strong, burned to a crisp in the

[The rest of this sermon manuscript is missing.]

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids (probably) November 11, 1951.