“Nevertheless.”
VISITING a patient in the County Hospital the other day, with my wife, while I left her to talk with the special object of our visit, I went to speak to those who were in bed, and when doing so came up to one patient whom I saw was reading a book. On asking what she was looking at, I was informed it was the 73rd Psalm, which, it appears, the chaplain, who had been reading in that particular ward, had spoken upon, and thus directed the attention of the young person to it, “The 73rd Psalm,” I said; “I am very fond of that Psalm, it’s the number of my old regiment. What verse have you got to?”
“The 22nd,” she replied.
“Read it for me, please.”
She did. “So foolish was I, and ignorant; I was as a beast before Thee.”
“Have you learned you are ‘a BEAST’ before Him?” I inquired very quietly, but pointedly.
A stare of surprise was the reply.
Perhaps, dear reader, more than a stare of surprise would be seen on your face if such a question was put to you; one of scorn and indignation, with a toss of the head. The idea that such as you, so nice, so amiable, moral, and, perhaps, what people would call religious, whatever they mean by that word, should be asked such a question. “Have I learned that I am a beast?” Yes. Have YOU learned the lesson? aye, and more, “Foolish,” “IGNORANT” as well as “a beast;” not before me, or the best person on earth, but before a Holy God? Who is it that owns that he is all those three things combined in one person? Why, the Psalmist Asaph, a good man, as people say, one of the choir, the leader, in fact, in the magnificent temple service of that day. What leads tip to the confession made in the 22nd verse? Let us look at it for a minute.
He was troubled at the prosperity of the wicked, could not make out how it was they got on, were prospered, had not the trouble of other men, and at last “no bands in their death,” while as for him, be “had cleansed his heart in vain, and washed his hands in innocency,” and yet he had been plagued all the day long, and so on. He could not make it out at all, UNTIL he got into the presence of God “the sanctuary” — then he understood THEIR end; he learned about them and a GOOD DEAL MORE too, as one always does in God’s presence. Wonderful school, dear friend; have you ever been there — into “the light” — about yourself?
That is where Job was brought after all his self-justification, and blaming even God; and what was the expression, it, the light, wrung from him? “BEHOLD I AM VILE,” in the 40th chapter; and more, for in the 42nd he adds, “I ABHOR MYSELF.” It does not say Jehovah abhorred him. Oh! no, it does not, for it could not, “FOR GOD IS LOVE.”
This is ever the effect on the conscience; have you learned the effect of that “Light?” If not, may God in His mercy bring you at once within the focus of that ray from the glory, which penetrates all the coverings with which nature and the flesh would try to clothe poor wretched SELF; that, like Adam, when he found out his apron of fig leaves did. not satisfy his conscience after all, owned “I was naked;” like Job, exclaim, “I am vile;” or Asaph in our psalm, exclaim, “Foolish, Ignorant, a Beast before Thee.” He will not leave you naked; there is His Christ for you, dead and risen, and seated on the throne of glory. The antitype of the “coat of skins,” He will do for you as Job, make you learn what He has for those who take the low place and own their vileness. And as in Asaph’s case, as I tried to show the young person in that hospital ward, that immediately on the confession of his being “Foolish,” “Ignorant” and “a Beast he adds (Verses 23 24), “NEVERTHELESS.” Yes, in spite of what I am, for all that, “Nevertheless, I am continually with Thee; Thou hast holden me by my right hand. Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory.” Yes, that is just it; no more troubled about other people, enough to have learned what he was in God sight, and now in HIS OWN, yet, “NEVERTHELESS,” loved and cared for, sustained now, and in His good time received into glory, and this shown out by his expressions in the next two verses (25 and 26). “Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee. MY flesh and MY heart faileth: BUT God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever.”
Then, in spite of the humbling lesson he had learned by doing so, he adds in the last verse, “But it is good for me to draw near to God” — where he had learned what “a beast” he was — “I have put my trust in the Lord GOD, that I may declare all Thy works.”
There is another “nevertheless” to which one’s mind is carried, and that in a most solemn though blessed connection, uttered, not by an Asaph, but by the Son of God, Jesus, the “Jehovah,” a Saviour, as that precious word of five letters, Jesus, really means.
Turn to the 26th chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel, and read with me that terrible scene of agony which that blessed One went through in the garden of Gethsemane, in anticipation of what was to come upon Him when bearing the wrath of a Holy God, in whose presence I trust everyone who may read this has owned, or will own, himself or herself, foolish, ignorant, and “A BEAST,” when He made Him to be sin for us (2 Cor. v. 21), when “Jehovah laid upon Him the iniquity of us all,” and when “it pleased Jehovah to bruise Him” (Isa. 53:6-10), when He was about to cry, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46)—I say, when the anticipation of this terrible moment was pressing upon that Holy One, in the 38th verse He says, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death,” and in the 39th verse, “O My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me, nevertheless, “NEVERTHELESS,” NEVERTHELESS, oh! thank God for that “NEVERTHELESS,” “NOT as I will, but as Thou wilt.”
He took “this cup” and drank it to the dregs, as we sometimes sing: —
“Mercy and truth unite,
Oh, ‘tis a wondrous sights,
All sights above!
JESUS the curse sustains,
Guilt’s bitter cup HE drains!
Nothing for us remains —
Nothing but love.”
Yes, indeed, all gone, the sinner and his sin too, and now, in a risen Christ, the believer is a new creation; old things passed away, all things become new (2 Cor. 5:17).
A little lower down in the same chapter you will find another “NEVERTHELESS,” and that connected with the coming and glory of that One who in humiliation, and foreseeing the “sufferings,” could now foretell “the glories” (1 Peter 1:11).
In the 64th verse, “Jesus saith,….. ‘NEVERTHELESS,’ I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”
Thank God for that “nevertheless” also, as it speaks of the glories of Him who in agony of soul, yet as the ever subject Son and Servant, uttered the previous one alluded to in verse 39 — the glories of Him who “suffered the Just for the unjust,” and who enables such as I, to exclaim with Asaph, now one sees God can do it righteously, now that He has caused “Mercy and truth to meet together; righteousness and peace to kiss each other” (Psalm 85:10), “So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before Thee.” Nevertheless—WHAT when I (S. V. H.), was “foolish,” “ignorant,” and “a beast?” YES, THEN; for you never were anything else in His eyes, though yon thought a lot of yourself, S. V. H.; yes, THEN. “Nevertheless, I am continually with Thee; Thou hast holden ME by my right hand. Thou shalt guide ME with Thy counsel, and afterward receive ME to glory.” “Oh! to grace how great a debtor!”
Don’t you see, my reader, you can afford to take that low place, when you learn you are loved with such a love, by such a Person? who to enable Him to gratify it, as righteously as right royally, “spared not His own Son” (Rom. 8:32), “laid upon Him iniquity,” “bruised Him” (Is. 53:10), that love which proved stronger than death, and rejoice in Asaph’s “nevertheless” because of Jesus’ “nevertheless.” May you do both. “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” S. V. H.