If God speaks to me, He waits for me to speak to Him. My answer should be immediate, and my answer should embrace as true all that He has said to me1 and my answer should build upon His great faithful promise a great triumphant confidence. Do we speak to God in the strain in which He speaks to us? When He says, I will,' do our hearts leap up with joyful confidence, and answer,' Thou dost'? Do we take all His promises for our trust, or do we meet His firm assurance with a feeble, faltering faith? We turn God's verily' into a peradventure, often, and at best when He says to us I will,' we doubtingly say perhaps He may.' That is the kind of faith, even at its highest, with which the best of us meet this great promise, building frail tabernacles on the Rock of Ages and putting shame on God's faithfulness by our faithlessness. He hath said,' and then He pauses and listens, whether we are going to say anything in answer, and whether when He promises: I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee,' we are bold to say, The Lord is my helper, I will not fear what man can do unto me.'
Now, I do not suppose that I am keeping too slavishly to the mere words of the text if I ask you to look at the beautiful sequence of thought in these three clauses which make the response of the man to the divine promise. There is a kind of throb of wonder in that word. The Lord is my helper.' That is the answer of faith to the divine promise, grasping it, never hesitating about it, laying it upon the heart, or on the fevered forehead like a cooling leaf, to subdue the hot pulsations there. And then what comes next? I will not fear.' We have the power of controlling our apprehension of peril, but it is of no use to screw ourselves up to a fictitious courage which consists mainly in the ostrich's wisdom of hiding its head from the danger, and in saying, Who is afraid?' Unless we can say The Lord is my helper,' it is folly to say, I will not be afraid, I will brace myself up, and be courageous to meet these difficulties.' That is all right, but it is not all right, unless we have laid the right foundation for courage. Having our purged ears opened to hear the great, strong, sweet divine promise, we are able to coerce our terrors, and to banish them from our minds by the assurance that, whatever comes, God is with us. The Lord is my helper'--that is the foundation, and built upon that--and madness unless it is built upon it--is the courage which says to all my fears, Down, down, you are not to get the mastery over me.' I will trust,' says the Psalmist, and not be afraid.' Faith is the antagonist to fear, because faith grasps the fact of the divine promise.
Now, there is another thought which may come in here since it is suggested by the context, and that is, that the recognition of God thus, as always with us to sustain us, makes all earthly conditions tolerable. The whole of my text is given as the ground of the exhortation: Be content with such things as ye have,' for He hath said, I will never leave thee.' If Thou dost not leave me, then such things as I have are enough for me, and if Thou hast gone away, no things that I merely have are of much good to me.
And then comes the last stage in our answer to what God says, which is better represented by a slight variation in translation, putting the last words of my text as a question: What can man do unto me?' It is safe to look at men and things, and their possibly calamitous action upon our outward lives, when we have done the other two things, grasped God and rested in faith on Him. If we begin with what ought to come last, and look first at what man can do unto us, then fear will surge over us, as it ought to do. But if we follow the order of faith, and start with God's promise, grapple that to our heart, and put down with strong hand the craven dread that coils round our hearts, then we can look out with calm eyes upon all the appearances that may threaten evil, and say,' Come on, come all, my foot is on the Rock of Ages, and my back is against it. No man can touch me.' So we may boldly say, What can man do unto me?'
