God a Dwelling place.
God our Home; the soul's Home. There seem to be no sufficient reasons for rejecting the Mosaic authorship of this psalm; but this much appears to be certain—the associations of the time of Moses form the machinery of the psalm; and there are no other associations which fit to it so well. During the last forty years of his life, and during the long years of the desert wanderings for Israel, the people had no home, no resting place; they were constantly moving to and fro; and yet God was caring for them, preserving them from harm; God was their Home. A modern preacher has said, "There is one thing runs through the whole of the Scriptures which is above every other that was ever before the Hebrew mind—it is that in which God is represented as the Dwelling place of his people, as the Home of the soul. It is an awful, incomprehensible, infinite thought; yet we can feel it and know it, not in the same sense as if we were Buddhists or Brahmins, hut, while awed by the grandeur, never losing our personality in the infiniteness of the thought. All things in nature seem to abide ever, constant and unchangeable, but they only seem. All things have the stamp of insecurity upon them; but how confidently secure God's people stand in the eternal relationship of God to them!" See what thoughts we associate with home, and how far these may be applied to God as our "Home," our "Dwelling place."
I. HOME IS A PLACE OF RELATIONSHIPS. Man enters into a variety of connections with his fellows; but his relationships, sanctified by love and service, centre in his home. Relationship to God as "our Father" makes his house our home, and our brothers' home.
II. HOME IS A PLACE OF SECURITY. It is our sanctuary. There we feel not only that none will harm us, but that none ever want to harm us. We even feel that nothing can harm us if we only are safe at home. And nothing ever can harm the soul that is in the shelter of the "everlasting arms."
III. HOME IS A PLACE OF PERSONAL INTERESTS. Each one is concerned in the best welfare of each of the others. It is full of mutual love service. Nothing is paid for, save by responsive love and service. So God may be thought of as personally concerned, personally interested, in all for whom he finds a home.
IV. HOME IS A PLACE OF REST. For those wearied and worn by toil or by trouble. So we sing, "Oh rest in the Lord!"
V. HOME IS A PLACE OF REFUGE. To which the traveller gladly returns from the fatigue and peril of the way. To which the erring child, the prodigal, turns in the penitent hour. So God is the Home of the sinful soul, ever the Father.—R.T.