7. This mortality is not accidental, neither was it inevitable in the
original of our nature, but sin has provoked the Lord to anger, and therefore
thus we die. For we are consumed by thine anger. This is the scythe
which mows and the scorching heat which withers. This was specially the case in
reference to the people in the wilderness. As well might grass grow in an oven
as people flourish when the Lord is angry with them. And by thy wrath are we troubled, or terror-stricken. A sense of divine anger confounded them, so
that they lived as people who knew that they were doomed. This is true of us in
a measure, but not altogether, for now that immortality and life are brought to
light by the Gospel, death has changed its aspect, and, to believers in Jesus,
it is no more a judicial execution. Anger and wrath are the sting of death, and
in these believers have no share; love and mercy now conduct us to glory by way
of the tomb. It is not seemly to read these words at a Christian’s funeral
without words of explanation, and a distinct endeavor to show how little they
belong to believers in Jesus. To apply an ode written by the leader of the
legal dispensation under circumstances of particular judgment, in reference to
a people under penal censure, to those who fall asleep in Jesus seems to be the
height of blundering. We may learn much from it, but we ought not to misapply
it by taking to ourselves, as the beloved of the Lord, that which was chiefly
true of those to whom God had sworn in his wrath that they should not enter
into his rest. When, however, a soul is under conviction of sin, the language
of this psalm is highly appropriate to his case, and will naturally suggest
itself to the distracted mind. No fire consumes like God’s anger, and no
anguish so troubles the heart as his wrath.
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