the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Our Daily Homily - Volume 2
Psalms 109:28—Let them curse, but bless Thou.
This is the Iscariotic psalm. The Apostle Peter quoted it, as applying to Judas, on the occasion of electing a successor to the traitor; but the Church has no desire to appropriate against him or any of her foes the awful anathemas of the psalmist. In reading them we must remember—first, that they may be treated as predictions rather than imprecations, not let, but shall; secondly, that those earlier days had much of the thunder of Sinai and little enough of the tender accents of Calvary; thirdly, that it seemed to the lovers of God all important that wickedness should be punished in this life, as they had very dim conceptions of the next, and it might appear, otherwise, that God was indifferent to moral distinctions.
Men still curse us. It is one of the badges that we belong to the Lord’s household, that they call us Beelzebub. The offence of the Cross has not ceased; and if none curse us, we may seriously question whether we are following in the footsteps of the Crucified. We must be baptized into our Savior’s death, and die with Him to all fear of man. Until we are willing to be counted the offscouring of all things, we have not entered into the true significance of baptism into his death, and participation in his risen life. The late George Müller said that he made no progress till he came to this. But when we are willing to forfeit our character, to die to our reputation, to be fools for Christ’s sake, then God begins to bless. When men revile, and persecute, and say all manner of evil against us falsely for Christ’s sake, God whispers in our heart, "Great is your reward in heaven." You never will know how near and tender God can be, till you are cast out by your kind.
