We are so accustomed to associate the word "judgment" with the idea of condemnation and punishment, that we lose thereby the beauty and force and comfort of some Scripture passages. For instance, the expression, "His judgments are in all the earth," (Psalm 105:7) conveys to some minds only the idea that the earth is full of calamities because of man's transgression. As an offset to this extremely limited idea of God's judgments, read: "The judgments of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether; More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb." (Psalm 19:9-10)
The Lord's judgments are sweet, and greatly to be desired; and "His judgments are in all the earth." Indeed it is by His judgments that the earth exists, and that all things continue.
God's judgment means perfection for everything that He has made that will submit to it, He has made all things, and provided for all things that He has made, in the way which, according to His perfect judgment, is the very best. The evidences of this are seen in all the earth. When God created the world:
• He comprehended its dust in a measure, and determined the necessary sum of it. (Proverbs 8:26,RV,margin)
• He weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in the balances of His justice, and proportioned them all according to His judgment.
• He measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and meted out heaven with a span.
In this connection we read: "With whom took He counsel, and who instructed Him, and taught Him in the path of judgment?" (Isaiah 40:14)
So in the waters, in the heavens, in the mountains and hills, and even in every grain of dust, we may see His judgments. Much more are they manifest in the perfectly organized animate creation. We stand "between two infinities":
Boundless inward, in the atom,
Boundless outward, in the whole.
--Alfred Lord Tennyson, Locksley Hall Sixty Years After.
The infinitely minute perfection of His judgment is revealed by the microscope, and something of the infinite length, and breadth, and depth, and height of it, by the telescope.
God's laws are spoken of as His judgments, because in them He prescribes for our guidance that way of life, which infinite wisdom sees to be the right, the best, and the only way of prosperity for man.
Let us then, with the Psalmist, regard them as more to be desired than gold, and sweeter than the honeycomb.--Present Truth, January 29, 1903--Psalm 19:9-10.