?The Sermon Bible Commentary ? Psalms (Vol. 1 ... - ccbiblestudy

?The Sermon Bible Commentary - Psalms (Vol. 1)?(William R. Nicoll)

Editor
Sir William Robertson Nicoll CH (October 10, 1851 - May 4, 1923) was a
Scottish Free Church minister, journalist, editor, and man of letters.
Nicoll was born in Lumsden, Aberdeenshire, the son of a Free Church
minister. He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and graduated MA at
the University of Aberdeen in 1870, and studied for the ministry at the
Free Church Divinity Hall there until 1874, when he was ordained minister
of the Free Church at Dufftown, Banffshire. Three years later he moved to
Kelso, and in 1884 became editor of The Expositor for Hodder & Stoughton, a
position he held until his death.
In 1885 Nicoll was forced to retire from pastoral ministry after an attack
of typhoid had badly damaged his lung. In 1886 he moved south to London,
which became the base for the rest of his life. With the support of Hodder
and Stoughton he founded the British Weekly, a Nonconformist newspaper,
which also gained great influence over opinion in the churches in Scotland.
Nicoll secured many writers of exceptional talent for his paper (including
Marcus Dods, J. M. Barrie, Ian Maclaren, Alexander Whyte, Alexander
Maclaren, and James Denney), to which he added his own considerable talents
as a contributor. He began a highly popular feature, "Correspondence of
Claudius Clear", which enabled him to share his interests and his reading
with his readers. He was also the founding editor of The Bookman from 1891,
and acted as chief literary adviser to the publishing firm of Hodder &
Stoughton.
Among his other enterprises were The Expositor's Bible and The Theological
Educator. He edited The Expositor's Greek Testament (from 1897), and a
series of Contemporary Writers (from 1894), and of Literary Lives (from
1904).
He projected but never wrote a history of The Victorian Era in English
Literature, and edited, with T. J. Wise, two volumes of Literary Anecdotes
of the Nineteenth Century. He was knighted in 1909, ostensibly for his
literrary work, but in reality probably more for his long-term support for
the Liberal Party. He was appointed to the Order of the Companions of
Honour (CH) in the 1921 Birthday Honours.

01 Psalm 1

Verse 1
Psalms 1:1
I. The blessed man is described in this verse by negatives. We are told
what he does not do. It so happens that we cannot understand some of the
very highest things in life except they are put to us in precisely this
way. There are more ways of saying "Thou shalt not" than there are of
saying "Thou shalt."
II. But a man who is thus instructed in negatives occupies a very
peculiarly perilous position. Man has energies; he must be doing something,
must be affirmative, practical, energetic. Therefore we await some further
instruction as to the way in which to direct our life. We have it in ver.
2: "His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate
day and night." God does not destroy our powers; He does not quench our
aspirations and turn us into nonentities. He lays His hand upon the
strength we are misusing and says, "You must use this strength in another
direction and for another purpose." What is the happy man doing? He
delights in the law of the Lord.
III. What will be the consequence of this delight? "He shall be like a
tree," etc. Beauty is always associated with righteousness in the highest
quarters. Then there comes the great promise, "Whatsoever he doeth shall
prosper." The great principle of the text is right as honour, truth as
crown, goodness occupying the throne.
IV. "The ungodly are not so," etc. The sinner has a brief day. There is no
life in the ungodly that abides; there is surface, there is no vitality;
there is an outward attitude and display of comfort and enjoyment, but
there is at the heart that which will give way under pressure.
Parker, City Temple, vol. iii., p. 289.
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References: Psalms 1:1.-E. C. Wickham, Wellington College Sermons, p. 203;
A. Mursell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvi., p. 269; C. C.
Bartholomew, Sermons chiefly Practical, p. 245.
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Verse 1-2
Psalms 1:1-2
Psalms 150:6
I. We have here a twofold declaration of God's great purpose in all His
self-revelation, and especially in the Gospel of His Son. Our first text
may be translated as a joyful exclamation; our second is an invocation or a
command. The one then expresses the purpose which God secures by His gift
of the law, the other the purpose which He summons us to fulfil by the
tribute of our hearts and songs-man's happiness and God's glory. (1) His
purpose is man's blessedness. That is but another way of saying that God is
love. His purpose is not blessedness anyhow, but one which will not and
cannot be given by God to those who walk in the way of sinners. His love
desires that we should be holy and followers of God as dear children, and
the blessedness which it bestows comes from pardon and growing fellowship
with Him. It can no more fall on rebellious hearts than the pure crystals
of the snow can lie and sparkle on the hot black cone of a volcano. (2) God
seeks our praise. "The glory of God" is the end of all the Divine actions.
His glory is sought by Him in the manifestation of His loving heart,
mirrored in our illuminated and gladdened heart. First He showers down
blessings, then looks for the revenue of praise.
II. We may also take this passage as giving us a twofold expression of the
actual effects of God's revelation, especially in the Gospel, even here
upon earth. (1) God does actually, though not completely, make men blessed
here. With all its sorrows and pains, the life of a Christian is a happy
life, and the joy of the Lord remains with His servants. (2) So, too, God's
gift produces man's praise. He requires from us nothing but our thankful
recognition and reception of His benefit. The echo of love which gives and
forgives is love which accepts and thanks.
III. We have also a twofold prophecy of the perfection of heaven. (1) It is
the perfection of man's blessedness. The end will crown the work. (2) It is
the perfection of God's praise. Our second text opens to us the gates of
the heavenly temple, and shows us there the saintly ranks and angel
companies gathered in the city whose walls are salvation, and its gates
praise.
A. Maclaren, Sermons Preached in Manchester, 3rd series, p. 225.
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I. This law, which we have to learn, and by keeping of which we shall be
blessed, is nothing else than God's will. If you wish to learn the law of
the Lord, keep your soul pious, pure, reverent, and earnest; for it is only
the pure in heart who shall see God, and only those who do God's will as
far as they know it who will know concerning any doctrine whether it be
true or false, in one word whether it be of God.
II. This law is the law of the Lord. You cannot have a law without a
Lawgiver who makes the law, and also without a Judge who enforces the law;
and the Lawgiver and the Judge of the law is the Lord Himself, our Lord
Jesus Christ.
III. Christ the Lord rules, and knows that He rules; whether we know it or
not, Christ's law still hangs over our head, ready to lead us to light, and
life, and peace, and wealth; or ready to fall on us and grind us to powder,
whether we choose to look up and see it or not. The Lord liveth, though we
may be too dead to feel Him. The Lord sees us, though we may be too blind
to see Him.
C. Kingsley, Westminster Sermons, p. no.
References: Psalms 1:2.-Preacher's Monthly, vol. iii., p. 359; Ibid., vol.
i., p. 350; E. C. Wickham, Wellington College Sermons, p. 209; M. G.
Pearse, Some Aspects of the Blessed Life, pp. 1, 17.
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Verses 1-3
Psalms 1:1-3
In the figure of ver. 3 there are revealed three aspects of godly
character.
I. Its variety. The comparison is with a fruit-tree, not of any particular
kind, but one of that large class of trees. The variety which God stamps
upon nature He means to have reproduced in character.
II. Its Divine culture. The godly man is not like a tree that grows wild.
He is like a tree planted, and that in a place which will best promote its
growth. Godly character is developed under God's special supervision and
with God's own appliances.
III. Its fruitfulness. God's tree by God's river must be a fruitful tree.
Notice: (1) The words are "his fruit," not any other tree's fruit. (2) "In
his season." The seasons are different for different fruits. The latest
fruit is usually the best. But, early or late, the fruit of godly character
is seasonable.
M. R. Vincent, Gates into the Psalm Country, p. 3.
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Verse 3
Psalms 1:3
The spiritual plant of God is placed by the running waters; it is nourished
and recruited by the never-failing, the perpetual, the daily and hourly,
supply of their wholesome influences. It grows up gradually, silently,
without observation; and in proportion as it rises aloft, so do its roots,
with still less observation, strike deep into the earth. Year after year it
grows more and more into the hope and the posture of a glorious immobility
and unchangeableness. What it has been, that it shall be; if it changes, it
is as growing into fruitfulness, and maturing in its fruit's abundance and
perfection. Nor is that fruit lost; it neither withers upon the branches
nor decays upon the ground. Angels unseen gather crop after crop from the
unwearied, never-failing parent, and carefully store them up in heavenly
treasure-houses. The servant of God resembles a tree (1) in his
graciousness; (2) in his fruitfulness; (3) in his immobility.
J. H. Newman, Sermons on