Psalms 42:10

As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me: while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?

The sword of the wicked

I. The carriage, disposition and expression of others to David.

1. They were his enemies. God’s children will never want such.

2. They reproached him. Their tongues were tipped from hell, and they did but utter that which was in their hearts. But such reproach is grievous. See Galatians 4:1., how Ishmael persecuted Isaac.

3. The specialty of their reproach was, “They say unto me, Where is thy God?” They touch him in his religion. They did not deny that there was any God, but they upbraid him with his singularity, “Where is thy God?” And this is an ordinary reproach to be east at a good man in trouble. They seek to shake his faith. So did Satan try our Lord (Matthew 4:3).

4. And they say out their reproach to his face. They are that impudent. Malice is so, and will always be so.

5. And they say it “daily.” They are unwearied: their malice is fed with a spring; it never wants for words.

6. And that which they say is--Where is now thy God? God does at times hide Himself (Isaiah 45:15; Matthew 27:46). God was never nearer Christ in all His life than then, and yet He thus cries out. But our life is hid with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). As in winter the life of a tree is hid in its roots. But God was not gone from David. God was never nearer Moses than when he was sprawling upon the water in that ark they had made for him (Exodus 2:8). David might have said to them, Where are your eyes? For God was not only in heaven, but in his soul.

II. How did this reproach affect David? “As with a sword in my bones.” Now, this was so

1. Because it tended to the reproach of God. It disparaged God, and so touched David, who loved God.

2. And it touched upon religion itself. As if it were vain to serve God. It was a base thought to think that God would do no good to them that serve Him. Even the devil does that.

3. This reproach was for the damping of the spirits of all good men. Words affect strangely; they have a strange force with men, especially in such as are weak (Numbers 13:32).

III. Conclusion. To make some use of all this--how does hearing God reproached affect us? Is it as a sword in our bones? It should be. That which hath no grief when there is cause of grief is to be accounted but as dead flesh. When God’s enemies persecute His people we ought to be stirred. Paul (Acts 13:10). And we may learn here how to enlarge the commandments. The swords spoken of here were but words. He is a murderer in God’s esteem that wounds another with his tongue (Romans 3:13; Proverbs 12:18). (R. Sibbes.)

“Where is thy God?” How God is known

During the prevalence of the disease known as the “Black Death,” in the fourteenth century, the people in some of the European cities, attributing the disorder to poison secretly disseminated by Jews, furiously murdered these Israelites, it is said, by thousands, and then built Christian churches and church belfries out of the houses and estates of the slaughtered victims. See, too, the atrocities of the Inquisition, who tormented mankind in the name of God. Also the malignity of the Jews in John 9:1. toward the blind man cured by our Lord. These and other such facts move two questions--What is our knowledge of God? and, What has such knowledge to do with personal character? We speak of God as if there were a common understanding about Him, which is far from being the case. There are as many impressions of God as there are persons, and no uniformity will be attained by any attempts at definitions, for all these will be modified by our own individuality. Still we are told in Scripture that we ought to know God, and that the people that know Him shall be strong. But our apprehensions of God’s character depends, and was meant to depend, very largely on conditions for which we are ourselves responsible. The text implies this. The mere idea of God--however derived--may be said to be natural, but the conception of the Divine character is compounded of many elements. Christians deem the grand essentials of that character to be wisdom, power, goodness. Find these three in perfect degree and balance in a living person, and He will be the Christian’s God--All-wise, Almighty, All-good. But we can only realize these as we possess them in ourselves. If we have no goodness in us we cannot understand goodness. In the measure that we receive God’s Spirit shall we know God, and so only. Slavish peoples crouch before a despotic deity. Given the character of the people, and you may know what their gods will be. As to character, God is what we look to as the best goodness embodied in an unseen person. Even Revelation, in all its many and varied forms, its combined voices and cross lights, will not produce uniformity of conception, for that must depend upon what our minds are. We must long to be better men would we know how good God is. (Bishop Huntington.)