God our Rock.
Here called the "Rock of thy fortress; 'and contrasting with the fortress-cities, which proved no defense, and the fortress-rocks, in which the refugees had found safe shelter. The city represented man's power to defend; the rock represents God's power. According to the circumstances of the age, and in view of the machinery of war then in use, the steep rock was a better safety than the walled city. The figure of God as a Rock is found very early in Scripture, and was perhaps associated with the fact of God's revealing himself from the mount, or rock, of Sinai. Moses pleads in striking similarity with Isaiah, saying, "Then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation;" "Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee" (Deuteronomy 32:15, Deuteronomy 32:18).
I. MAN'S PERILS AS A MORAL BEING. These can be illustrated from the evils and the perils of social and national life. They can be opened out fully under three headings:
II. FOR SUCH PERILS MAN CAN NEVER PROVIDE EFFICIENT DEFENCES. Intellectual safeguards fail before the subtleties of aggressive unbelief. Moral safeguards fail before the uprising swell of passions. Formal religious safeguards fail to satisfy when heart begins to cry. In the dangerous ways of an earth full of temptation and evil, "it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps."
III. MAN'S SAFETY FROM ALL PERILS IS IN GOD HIS ROCK. On God a man may stand secure, though the wild storm-waves beat around him. In God a man may hide quite safely until all the calamities be overpast. His house may feel the blowing of the mighty winds; but it falls not, for it is founded on a rock.
"God is my strong Salvation;
What foe have I to fear?
In darkness and temptation,
My Light, my Help, is near.
Though hosts encamp around me,
Firm to the fight I stand;
What terror can confound me,
With God at my right hand?"
R.T.