Psalms 42-43.
These Psalms may be considered as one continuous strain. They exhibit different branches of one general subject, and are not therefore to be confounded, but their close connection is apparent. The acceptable groaning of the burdened man of God, whose relief is sought in trustful prayer to the known Rock of his salvation; is articulated in these deeply experimental utterances.
They apply themselves, therefore, with more or less distinctness, to the proper experience of the believer as a spiritual man. A Christian groans because he knows God. The very presence of the Spirit of adoption produces, in the expectant heirs of salvation, a sense of present deficiency and distress, which turns to Godward for its only and sure relief. Such is the expression of these Psalms. The wearied spirit pours forth the sorrows of a heart whose affections are wholly God's., No word of mistrust or repining is heard, although His hand is owned as well as felt, in weighty visitation on the spirit. Deep communing of heart is had. But the heart is one in which the Lord of hosts has been sanctified; and so these musings turn to joy and strength, because of the assured stability of that trusted name of promise and of hope.
Regarded as prophecies, the first of them seems to disclose some of the secret communing of the soul of Jesus, under the profound depression which His Spirit knew, because of the godless vanity and darkness amid which He shone solitary as the light of life. It was the utter exclusion of God from the hearts of men, while the power of Satan displayed itself in the words and ways of those who made their boast of God, that caused the Blessed One to sigh deeply in spirit, as He turned in Divine sorrow from a generation whom He would have blessed, but could not because of the hardness of their hearts. In proportion to the devotedness of Jesus to the Father must have been the sorrowful amazement which He experienced when, in the very temple of Jehovah, He saw only the idolatry of covetousness, instead of the worship of the God of truth. Man had occupied the chambers of the house of God with the family of his own degraded lusts. Yet the existing order of things was quite seemly in their eyes. The power by which the Lord demonstrated and sustained His title to do the works of Him that sent Him might constrain their attention to His words, as He sat and taught in the temple; but the hard and dark stupidity of sin possessed their souls, and shut out from their understandings the true perception of His sayings. “Where is thy Father?" was the question which they put, who, had they known Him, should have known His Father also. But they knew Him not. They were willingly ignorant of His blessed Person, while their eyes and consciences concurred to witness that He was indeed the Christ. Irrefragable evidences forced conviction on their minds, while their hearts refused to Him their love; they saw no beauty that they should desire Him. Jehovah's delight was the abhorrence of their souls.
Jesus was an outcast. The hill Mizar, the land of Jordan, were the places of His resort, rather than the city of solemnities, though the unction of royal title was upon Him as the true Seed of David. “He would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill Him.”
Man was the instrument of Messiah's sufferings; but the will of the Father was the source whence all proceeded. "The Son of man mud suffer many things," etc. We have this recognition of the Father's hand expressed in verse 7: "All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me." But joy was before Him: “Jehovah will command His loving-kindness," etc. For that joy He would endure the cross, despising the shame, although the reproach of His enemies were as a sword in His bones, while daily the taunt of their unbelief rang in His ears:" Where is thy God?" The sharpness of that infliction was not so much His own rejection and dishonor, as that in rejecting Him they disowned and disallowed the Father: "The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me;" “Now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father," etc. God was His joy. He knew Him. He had proceeded forth from Him to be the messenger and minister of His love to the world. But His own received Him not. The blessed Son of God found man deliberately choosing Satan rather than the Father. Light came into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
Who can enter into the sorrow of Him who knew the gift of God—Himself that gift—but found on every side hearts closed by suspicion, or blunted by indifference, or fenced by determinate hatred against the gracious overtures of such a love!
But truth as well as grace came by Jesus Christ. Hence, in Psa. 43, we have His appeal, as the Elect of Jehovah, against the ungodly nation.
I believe that while the God of judgment is avouched here by the Spirit of prophecy in the first instance against Israel, because of their rejection of Messiah, there is a further object contemplated in this Psalm. As it respects the nation, that appeal has already had its awful reply in part, and will eventually draw down from the Ancient of days upon that evil generation the residue of the cup of trembling, when the madness of their iniquity shall have come to its perfect height in their reception of Him who is to come in His own name. But the destinies of Israel are held fast for eventual salvation in the sure hands of the God of promise. They will be forgiven their iniquity through the intercession of Him whom with wicked hands their fathers crucified and slew. For the death of Jesus was for that nation, though not for them alone. What these Psalms then seem principally to express is, the sympathy of the Spirit of Jesus with some who will long, in the last evil days, for the joys of Jehovah's sanctuary, and will seem to long in vain; while the satellites of the dragon and the beast prevail, with cruelties and taunting words, against the servants of the Most High God. Jehovah is invoked to send forth the light which is to lead them to the safe altars of His praise, to the holy hill which their faith still recognizes as the chosen place of His tabernacles, though for a season it may be defiled by those of the arch-rebel in his pride. "The deceitful and unjust man" refers, I doubt not, to the willful king; whose coming is after the power of Satan, as well as with all deceivableness of unrighteousness. But the Lord will destroy him with the brightness of His appearing. “Send out thy light and thy truth" is the supplication of them who walk in darkness, and have no light, while staying themselves in hope upon the God of their salvation. The coming of Jesus will be the reply to this desire in due time. "He shall send Jesus," said Peter, when, preaching to the Jews, he declared the fulfillment of the national promises to be dependent on the manifestation in glory of Him whom the heavens had meanwhile received. At the appointed hour of the Father's counsel the Light of Israel shall arise.
Meanwhile, to the afflicted and much-buffeted Christian there is plenteous consolation in these Psalms. "Why art thou cast down, O my soul?" Such words suit well the spirit of reviving faith, amid the stress and heavy sadness of the day of conflict. One believing look at Christ regains, for the prostrate and desponding saint, the firm and assured position of acceptance and of peace. For His presence is the full salvation of the soul.
And He is present always. In the triumphant power of redemption He fills all things. Confidence, therefore, and patience of hope, are to be held fast amidst all the opposing evils of the day of strife. The Holy Ghost is already, as the Comforter, the power of praise and thanksgiving, through Jesus Christ, for the victory which is even now our own in Him; while the remembrance of GOD, in His immutability of eternal favor to usward in His Son, fills all the future with the unclouded brightness of a hope which maketh not ashamed.
Psalm 44
THAT this remarkable Psalm is the language of the faithful dispersion is quite evident. It may be regarded as the intercessory pleading of the Spirit of Christ in the hearts of such, while as yet they remain scattered through the countries under the outstretched hand of Jehovah. It is a highly instructive as well as interesting Psalm, opening deep views of the wisdom of God's disciplinary dealing with the vessels of faith and mercy, whom He thus causes to cleave the more closely to Himself under a pressure which is perceived to be the appointment of His will, whose name is pledged from ancient tiles as the eventual deliverer of His people. Divine principles, such as render the world unworthy of them that obey them, and which have ever characterized suffering faith and patience, receive their illustration here. The quotation of verse 22 by the apostle is an instance of this familiar to the Christian reader.
The reproach borne, though connected with national sin, and a result of Divine chastisement, is yet the reproach of Christ to those whose hearts are loyal to the Hope of Israel, and who by faith are able to call out of the low place of affliction upon the name of Jehovah as the redeemer of His own. Thus the matter for fruitful meditation which this Psalm affords to the Christian who enters at all in spirit into the existing condition of the Church, in its broken and dishonored state, is abundant. But it deserves attention on its own account, as a remarkable utterance of oppressed Jewish faith.
One striking feature in it is the absence of any confession of national sin. The ground taken is that of pure faith, appealing to the name of Jehovah as Jacob's God—the angel of the everlasting covenant. Ancient deliverances are recited as they had been committed to the memories of the children in whose fathers God would see no iniquity, when, with the shout of a King, He brought them forth out of Egypt.
The circumstances of Israel's past history are not introduced. Only the actual condition of the nation is pleaded as that which seems to contradict the counsel of Jehovah. “Thou art my King," is the keynote of the strain. “Command deliverances for Jacob," is the echo given back by the believer's heart upon the sounding there of Jehovah's name as Jacob's King. He must act as such. According to the power of His might He will vindicate in righteousness His covenanted words.
Another trait to be noticed is the strong tone in which the remnant assert their own faithfulness to the covenant. God had scattered the people for their iniquity, so that they were become a by-word among the heathen. But the heart of the believing remnant was sound. “Our heart is not turned back, neither have our steps declined from thy way" (verse 18). Faith in God, producing as its invariable result practical holiness, will be found in those whose cause the Spirit of Christ seems here to be advocating with truthful intercession to Him that trieth the hearts. It is the Abrahamic covenant of promise that is here in point. They cleave in heart to Jacob's God. Redemption for His mercies' sake is the desire of their afflicted yet steadfast faith (verse 26). They were His witnesses, not only to exemplify the power of His anger, when He taught among them terrible things in righteousness, but also as the flock of His choice, whom He would surely lead (though now they seemed but destined to the slaughter), at the set time of His appointment, into the prepared pastures of that rest which is secured for them in His own land and theirs.
Verses 15, 16 speak the true language of faith at all times. The Lord's name is involved in the dishonor of His people. Thus David elsewhere: "Who is this uncircumcised, that He should defy the armies of the living God?" The blasphemous vaunting of the enemy has to be met by the majesty of Jehovah's name. They are His people. The oppressor is acting against Him in afflicting them; yet was he but a scourge for their correction in Jehovah's all-wise hand.
No mention is made of Moses, nor is there allusion of any kind to the law, except it be found in the emphatic disclaimer of their own strength as a means of deliverance and blessing. They turn to the fathers' God, the God of grace. Helplessness is owned as their condition, and oppression is complained of as the unrighteous work of the enemy; but God is kept in faithful remembrance as a Savior. He would deliver at His pleasure, as had ever been His way (verse 3). Sword and bow are of no account. They will push down the enemy when Jehovah shall Himself arise and hasten to their help.
The plea of the righteous remnant is not that they had kept the commandment, but that they had abode in the covenant of promise. For this cause also they suffered persecution, for they dwelt amongst those who had stretched forth their hands to another god-who trusted in themselves, and regarded lying vanities. Meanwhile, their hearts are open to His view who knows their secret, and who is the witness that for His sake they are killed all the day long (verse 22). The persecutions under Antichrist I suppose to be intended more especially in this jut verse. The entire distinctness of that branch of the Divine counsels which respects the destinies of Jacob, from that which secures its blessing to the Church, is clearly seen in this Psalm. Viewed as a dispensation, the latter, if it fails, fails without hope of restoration. Its latter end is to be cut out of the tree of promise, that the natural branches may again be graffed in; a consideration which gives a peculiar solemnity of interest to the remarkable language of this Psalm.
Psalm 45
A SONG of loves is the title borne by this most beautiful Psalm. It is the delighted celebration by the Spirit (animating the heart and opening the lips of faith) of the Person of Jesus, as the manifested consummation of the precious thoughts of Jehovah toward the people of His covenant. The King is the subject which brings forth so rich a gush of Divine song. It is not, properly speaking, Christ's heavenly glory that is here described, nor His spousal relation to the bride, the Lamb's wife. The subject of the Psalm is rather the intrinsic glory and Divine comeliness of His Person, according to His future revelation in power and majesty as Messiah, in immediate connection with the destinies of His earthly people. Two main points are treated. First, the personal glory of Messiah; and secondly, the resulting effects of His manifestation, whether in the destruction of His enemies (then made His footstool), or in the blessing of the new-married people of His love.
With respect to the former of these we have the twofold display of His glory, both Divine and human. He is glorified as the God whose throne is forever and ever (verse 6). It is from this Psalm, accordingly, that one of the decisive quotations is made by the same Spirit in the New Testament, in proof of the essential divinity of Jesus. But the chief topic of praise and wonder is the setting forth, in the fullness of power and glory, of MAN as the supreme object of Jehovah's interest and delight.
The second verse declares the Spirit's estimate of the acceptable Man. He is “fairer than the sons of men," though no beauty was discoverable there to the dull eye of self-seeking nature. There was another comeliness in Jesus from that which the children of men either value or possess. The pure and living beauty of holiness and truth and love abode in that temple which man might sacrilegiously destroy, but within which no evil thing could enter or be known. The glory as of the only-begotten of the Father displayed itself palpably to the eye of faith in the Man Christ Jesus. Grace is poured upon His lips. The lips of Jesus are the echo and everlasting witness of the Divine counsels of faithfulness and truth. Men wondered at the gracious words that flowed from those lips, when once they opened as the pure interpreters of God's deep thoughts of love to favored though self-ruined sinners; but execration and the threat of violence were the fruits which the thankless soil of human selfishness returned to the Sower of the seed of life. For the grace of those lips which witnessed a good confession before Pontius Pilate, God hath blessed forever the faithful doer of the truth. The believer knows the precious force of the expressions in this verse. In the eyes of them that know Him, Jesus is, indeed, the chiefest among ten thousand and altogether lovely. For them the lips of the great High Priest of their profession keep a knowledge better far than life; for by Him God now speaks, declaring the long-hidden counsels of His wisdom, and by the revealing power of the Comforter fulfilling even now their joy.
Viewing the first two verses as the expression of right-minded Jewish faith at the second advent of the Lord, they present a striking and happy contrast to the former state of the nation, when, instead of “indicting a good matter," their hearts boiled over with the bitter gall of wickedness. Then they were conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood and of hate. "Away with Him!" "He hath a devil, and is mad." “Not this man, but Barabbas."“We have no king but Cesar." “What think ye? He is worthy of death," etc. Thus they judged when through the veil of a willing blindness they looked in vain for the Messiah whom they sought in the despised person of the Lamb of God. Not such will be their language when, with unveiled hearts, they look on Him whom they have pierced with a sorrow whose sharp compunction shall be turned to more abundant joy, when the full light of the day which the Lord hath made shines with unclouded brightness of salvation in their hearts. The heart of the rash shall in that day understand knowledge, and shall move the once stammering tongue to skilful praise.
Verses 3-5 describe the sending forth of judgment unto, victory by the Lord of all power and might. The day of the Lamb's wrath will usher in the undisputed dominion of the Governor of the nations. He will ride prosperously, because of truth and meekness of righteousness. The moral government of God is to be set up in power by the victory, in manifested judgment, of the WORD of God. "Faithful" and "true" are the descriptive praise of Him who bears that name, and in righteousness He will judge and make war. His arrows will be sharp in the heart of the King's enemies. Fenced with iron and with the staff of a spear, He will touch with destruction the sons of Belial.
The nations shall fall under Him who shall be known in that day as King of kings and Lord of lords. The prosperous majesty of the once rejected King is because of truth and meekness of righteousness. The displayed glory of Jesus in that day will be the worthy answer of God to the confidence with which He committed Himself, in the days of His long-suffering patience, to Him that judgeth righteously. God will bring forth His righteousness as the light, and His judgment as the noon-day.
And in the brightness of that high noon of glory will be seen the Church, which is called to be the fellow of His patience in the world of Satan and the day of man. Marvelous thought! that they, whose hearts now fill with grateful wonder at the remembrance of the grace which has plucked them as brands from the everlasting burning, should be taught to weigh against their present light affliction for the gospel's sake the far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, Which is to reward their patience in the coming day.
Verses 6, 7 assign to Jesus eternal supremacy in glory. In all things He will have the pre-eminence. Essentially Divine, and upholding by the word of His power all existing things as the work of His own hands, He takes, as the first-born from the dead, a new pre-eminence.
But the ancient glory of the only-begotten of the Father is not hidden, but rather the more brightly revealed, in the new manifestation of appointed heirship. It is the believer's joy to know that, while the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ has wrought a work of love which sets the pardoned sinner before the Father's face in co-equal acceptance with the beloved One, the Redeemer can never be confounded with the redeemed. The incommunicable divinity of the Son of God is something eternally distinct and separate from that nature which He shares, and in which He delights before the Father as the first-born of many brethren. The Church, whose bridal endowment is the glory which the Son has received as the righteous Father's gift, will find the completion of her joy in the worship of the Christ she loves. She will behold His glory, because she will be with Him where He is. Moreover, in His manifestation, though as yet what we shall be remains a hidden thing, we know that we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. To feel thus the eternal consciousness of rest and assurance, because of the overshadowing of Divine glory, while realizing in delighted experience the perfection of fellowship in His joys—to be capable at once of loving Him freely and entirely, and of adoring Him in the perfect and undiminished reverence of godly fear—will be the ripened fulfillment of that joy unspeakable and full of glory of which the Holy Ghost is already the earnest and effective power in the hearts of God's elect.
But if our hearts are incapable while here below of estimating perfectly the portion of the fellow-heirs of Christ, how far less able are our tongues to tell that joy which is the worthy portion of the beloved One Himself? With more abundant unction of the oil of gladness, He stands revealed supreme in joy as in glory and in praise. “God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows." Jesus crowned with joy! Joying in God—(thy God hath anointed thee). Joying, also, in His fellows. Joying, too, in the love and blessedness of His earthly portion, His now reconciled and re-married people here below. Joying, moreover, in the consciousness of being the holder of that scepter of effectual righteousness, under whose sway the rod of violence may no more afflict, while the freed and quieted creation breaks forth into a full song of happiness and praise—welcome sounds, which will find swift entrance into the heart of Him whose delights were ever with the sons of men. No thought is dearer to the mind of the Spirit than that of the finished joy of Jesus over the full results of His redemption-toil. And we believers, poor, weak, and worthless as we know ourselves to be, and unprofitable servants at the very best, are yet to be His fellows in this joy, according to the capacity of perfect creature blessedness which is the possession of the new-created vessels of Divine good pleasure.
Verses 8, 9 celebrate the specialty of His dominion as "the Prince of the kings of the earth," the possessor of the wealth of the world and the forces of the Gentiles And here as the true Solomon He is seen accompanied by His queen. That the restored earthly Jerusalem is intended in these words I have no doubt.
Prophetic promise is varied and express as to the future regal splendor of the once forsaken city, when brought effectually within the blessing of the better covenant. The filthy rags of her own iniquities, once blindly boasted in as righteousness, but then seen and abhorred in the clear brightness of the Lord of life, shall be changed in that day for the fine gold of Divine justification.
Verses 10, 11 seem to apostrophize the new-born city. Her natural generation, as born in and gendering to bondage, is to be forgotten in the remembrance of the better covenant, now brought fully to light with all its long-hoarded promise and blessing, and seen to be secured in the person of Immanuel. The King will have pleasure in her beauty. The King of Israel, even the Lord, will be in the midst of her in that day. He will save; He will rejoice over her with joy; He will rest in His love, He will joy over her with singing. For as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall her God rejoice over Zion in that day. And she on her part shall both know and worship Him; calling Him no more Baali, but Ishi, in the day -when, in righteousness and in judgment, in loving-kindness and in mercies, He shall have betrothed His people to Himself in faithfulness, and they shall know the Lord.
Verse 12 exalts the city of solemnities, now become again the favored abode of Jehovah, to receive the homage of the nations. Jerusalem, not Rome, is the true metropolis of the earth.
In verse 13 the moral purity of the new-born nation, as “all righteous," and all "'taught of God," is indicated. The virgin companions of the queen are, I suppose, the cities of Immanuel's land. For unto them, too, as well as to Jerusalem, shall the message of glad tidings come.
Verses 16, 17. The Bing is here again addressed. The reference seems to be to the humiliation of Messiah, when, as Son of David and Seed of Abraham, He was disallowed and cut off out of the land of the living. The city which for a moment was moved to receive Him with cries of "Hosanna to the Son of David!" had presently condemned Him with transgressors, and sent Him forth to suffer shameful death without the gate. The titles which were allowed then only in derision are justified and glorified in resurrection. But with the fulfillment of the promise made to the fathers in the death and resurrection of Christ, begins the new and paramount order of blessing which, while retaining all preceding titles of promise, and including them in itself, yet stands above them all. The resurrection has demonstrated the Divine title of Jesus to be Heir of all things whether heavenly or earthly. He is declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. He is now to be known no longer after the flesh. He is the beginning, the first-born from the dead. As such He will see His seed. This is opened fully in 1 Cor. 15, where the second Adam and His children are the subject.
The Church is given as a family to Jesus. The words which follow— "whom thou mayest make princes in all the earth"—are naturally applicable to the Church as ordained to share the throne of Jesus. “Know ye not that the saints shall judge the world?"etc. When the King shall reign in righteousness, princes also shall rule in judgment. If, instead of “all the earth," we render” all the land," the special promise to the twelve will occur at once to our recollection. I take it, however, in a wider sense. The last verse is a resume of the opening strain of praise and homage to the King of God's anointing. The Gentiles learn and perpetuate the song of grateful worship, which is begun by the chosen people of His covenant.
Psalm 46
A STRAIN of grandest power, and of most abundant blessing to the soul whose refuge is the living God. Its very full practical bearing upon the proper experiences of Christian patience need not be pointed out; but it is most clearly a millennial Psalm. The works of Jehovah, and their decisive results in the desolation of human pride, and the quelling of the anger of the nations by the majesty of His power, are joyfully commemorated (verses 8, 9). The singers of this noble ode are evidently inhabitants of the city of God.
But that this city is not the heavenly Jerusalem is quite apparent from the whole drift of the Psalm. The heathen do not rage against that. But they have raged, and will yet again be found assembled in dreadful yet impotent fury against the earthly city of God's names. Nothing can exceed the sublimity and energy of the language in which the catastrophe is described (verse 6). The results of the judgment, opening the new era of peace and blessing upon the earth, are stated in expressions not unlike what are elsewhere used by the Spirit in other prophetic testimonies of the same events. The exaltation of Christ, as God of the whole earth, is the theme of the Psalm (verse 10). There is nothing heavenly in its first intention. God is exalted among the heathen; He is exalted in the earth. The tabernacles of the Most High are re-established abidingly in the city of His name. All these things are celebrated by the people, whose cup of joy flows over in the exulting declaration, that "the Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge.”
Christian faith, while knowing and delighting in the gracious meaning which the junction of God's name with that of the worm Jacob conveys to the child of grace, beholds and tastes in Christ a richer wisdom than is opened in this Psalm. "Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ." The power of this communion is the One blessed Spirit of truth. God is for us, if believers. He is also with us. But more than all, He is in us, and we in Him.
As He will be in the midst of Jerusalem in the day when He shall have returned thither with mercies, so is He now inhabiting, by the Spirit, the Church of His election, as the temple of His presence. As He was not to His ancient people, He is to the believing children of His love, in whom now the Spirit of adoption individually dwells, crying, Abba, Father. That Spirit, the witness of accomplished redemption, could not be given until Jesus was glorified.
The language of the fourth verse, though figurative, is clearly intelligible, and rich in meaning to the believer, who knows by what figure the living power of grace and truth is ever indicated in scripture. The glorious Lord will be to Israel in that day, as He is to the Christian now, a place of broad rivers and streams. The water of life, first gladdening the city of solemnities, shall issue thence to renovate the thirsty wilderness of Gentile lands.
Psalm 47
IN close connection with the subject of the preceding Psalm, we have now the glad summons, addressed by the restored and exalted nation to the Gentiles, to own with wise and willing homage the King whose dominion is over all the earth. The exalting of Israel above the nations, as the chosen inheritance of the Most High, possessor as He is of heaven and earth, is a leading topic in this Psalm. Israel is the rod of His inheritance, who created Jacob and formed Israel to be a people for His praise.
But the portion of Jacob is also the governor of the nations. The ancient covenant of Abrahamic promise comprehended, in its terms of blessing, not only the natural offspring of Jehovah's friend (whose blessing as a nation is as yet deferred until the veil be taken from the heart of Israel), and the believing first-fruits of electing mercy, who, whether circumcised or uncircumcised, are blessed with faithful. Abraham, but likewise all the families of the earth. The nations of the earth are included in the inheritance of Him who, as the one seed of promise, was to hold the heirship of earthly dominion and blessing, as well as the heavenly glory of the Father's house: "All things that the Father hath are mine." The possessions of the Most High, possessor of heaven and earth, are the heritage of the exalted Christ. The present Psalm deals exclusively with His earthly portion. As to this He has loved the excellency of Jacob. The Gentiles are to rejoice with His people. It is as subject vassals to the acknowledged throne of God in Jerusalem, that the nations of the earth will alone prosper in that day.
The frequency with which the name of God occurs in this Psalm is remarkable. It derives its emphasis from a consideration of the times which immediately precede the setting up of Divine sovereignty in power on the earth. The climax of Anti-Christian wickedness is the total denial of God. The beast usurps His place, dealing with the earth and its inhabitants at the lawless bidding of his own will, corrupting and destroying, for his appointed season, in the unchecked energy of Satanic craft and power. But the kingdom is the Lord's. The power of His Christ will be asserted in the day when He arises to shake terribly the earth.
The last verse presents a lovely picture of the general and willing gathering of the nations of the saved to Shiloh. The greatness of His majesty will be accepted as the refuge and peaceful shelter of those princes of the earth whose predecessors had once crucified the Lord of glory. They will worship at His footstool both with and as the people of the God of Abraham. For in the King of nations they will then acknowledge and do homage to Abraham's exalted seed. For His glory shall cover the heavens, and the earth be filled with His praise. Instead of the lip-worship of a lifeless profession, the dwellers upon earth shall sing with understanding in that day. The kings of the earth shall praise Him. They shall sing in the ways of the Lord, because of the greatness of His glory in that day.
Psalm 48
THE celebration of Jehovah's name and glory as the God and King of all the earth, which has been the subject of the three foregoing Psalms, receives its consummation in this magnificent song, which has for its immediate subject the earthly Zion, the city of the great King. To Jerusalem alone belongs this title. Nor is it a vain distinction. True it is that the great King Himself, the Judge of Israel, was there smitten on the cheek, and nailed to the cross. The Scripture must be so fulfilled. But that same city, which for its sin had been a hissing and an execration among the nations, is to be known as the joy of the whole earth, because of the majesty of the presence of the self-same Messiah, whose glory once was turned to shame, when over the head of the crucified Son of God there was written, in cruel and derisive mockery, "Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews.”
The only place of God's name on earth is Zion. Sovereign dignity belongs to Jerusalem as the divinely-appointed center of all earthly dominion. What she was for a moment in the palmy days of Solomon, she will be permanently, even until the end of all present ordinances of earth or heaven, under the scepter of Messiah's rule, whose heritage as David's seed is the throne and people of His Father: for "the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David, and He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end."
The promises of God are without repentance. The earth, over which man and the devil have ruled to its corruption and ruin, is to be revived under the blessed sway of the scepter of righteousness. It is a solemn thought, that of all the mighty kingdoms of Gentile power, not one finds favorable notice in the word of promise apart from the now despised land of Immanuel. The eyes and the heart of Jehovah are at Jerusalem continually. She may be forgotten for a season as the punishment of her sins; but neither the wrath nor the counsel of man can frustrate the purposes of God. And His recorded purpose is to beautify with His praise the earthly house of His glory—to make the place of His feet glorious.
The present Psalm records the peace and prosperity of Jerusalem as she will be known in the millennium, when her name shall be, “The Lord is there."He is great, and greatly to be praised there," in the city of our God, in the mountain of His holiness." The believer now is come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. Faith finds localities of blessing which are still invisible to the natural eye.
But the heavenly Jerusalem is not, alas! the joy of the whole earth. Twill not pause to show by additional proof that the earthly and not the heavenly Zion is here meant. The entire language of the Psalm forbids any other interpretation.
The third verse contains the secret of the blessing described. “God is known in her palaces for a refuge." The present condition of the nation is darkness. God is utterly unknown among them, save as the inflictor of the judgment written against their stiffness of neck and blindness of heart. The palaces of Jerusalem are the lodging of the worst of the heathen still. But yet more bitter sorrows await that city, when, in the last dire stress of Gentile enmity, Jerusalem shall be girded in to what may seem a hopeless ruin and destruction.
Verses 4-7 relate the catastrophe of the drama of human wickedness and Divine faithfulness and truth in language worthy of the event. The eighth verse is full of sweet and solemn power. It is the utterance of those whose faith had held fast amid the desolations of the day of rebuke the sure word of promise. Their hearts had indeed sickened at long-deferred hope. They had fainted for the salvation of Jehovah, while they clave still unto His testimonies. And now their delighted eyes behold indeed the realization of their fond and truth-fed expectation. "As we have heard, so have we seen," etc. The rehearsal of the mighty acts of the Ancient of days had kept their souls in constant though long-tried faith and patience until He should arise.
Waiting for deliverance, they had possessed their souls in patience amid the mockings of triumphant wickedness, which, springing up with rapid and consistent growth, like a rooted plant in its own soil, had now reached its height of pride, and had been lopped with terror in the day of the Lord's decision.
In the tenth verse we have the universal acknowledgment of the name of God as the praise of the nations, when the oaths of the tribes shall have become the world's confession, in the day when the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea. They will praise Him according to His name. The full and blessed meaning of that name, instead of being as it is now revealed to a chosen few, into whose hearts, as vessels of mercy, the treasures of Divine grace are poured,will then be disclosed to multitudes. For all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto the Lord; and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before His Christ.
The daughters of Judah rejoice because of the judgments of God (verse 11). This is an eternal principle, and as such equally applicable to the Church and to the nation. Unrepentant wickedness must be destroyed before the permanent rest of God's saints can be attained. “To you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed," etc. The believer now awaits in hope the dissolution of all that which lifts itself up in rivalry to the name of Jesus. We look for a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
Verses 12, 13 describe the unalterable stability and security of Jerusalem and her children when freed into the liberty of the new covenant. “It shall not be plucked up, nor thrown down any more forever."Her walls shall be called Salvation, and her gates Praise. Her people, too, shall be all righteous; they shall inherit the land for ever. The Lord will hasten it in His time.
In the last verse mention is made of death. It is contemplated as the natural portion of fallen man, even while under grace, so long as he is in an unchanged body. Hence, as is evident from other passages, death will be known in the millennium. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. Meanwhile God is known, who raiseth the dead. “This God is our God forever and ever: He will be our guide, even unto death." Death thus becomes (as now to a Christian, until Jesus come) a stage in the progress by which the successive generations of God's people are led, as by a door of welcome exit, from the lesser joys of earthly blessing to the everlasting and perfect rest which remaineth for the people of Abraham's God —to God Himself, both His and their exceeding great reward.
Psalm 49
THE Spirit of God brings in this Psalm the dark shadow of death over the world of human vanity, in order to open in the way of parable the Divine secret of redemption. The truth of the resurrection, which was present always to the faith of God's elect, was but a “dark saying," until the descent of the Holy Ghost as the Divine unfolder of the finished truth of God. The fathers trusted in God, who raiseth the dead. To faith His words of promise were testimonies of resurrection; and the hope which stayed itself on Him expressed itself at times in the bold distinctness of declarative anticipation. The God whom they trusted, and who bare them witness, is not the God of the dead, but of the living. But the demonstration of the perfect truth, which discloses to the heart of the believer, and to the conscience (though his heart disown it) of the unbeliever, the person of Jesus as the resurrection and the life, could only follow the accomplishment of the ever blessed work to which it referred. In the days of His flesh He had both revealed His name and justified His declaration by an act of death-revoking power, when He called forth Lazarus from the grave; but by His own dying once for all to sin, and rising up again, He has dispelled for His chosen both the darkness and the fear of death. He has abolished death, and brought to light life and incorruption through the gospel.
From the beginning, however, of man's sinful life, the hearts of those who bowed submissively to death, as the accepted wages of sin, were sustained by promise in the hope of immortality, and resurrection was the means by which this hope was to be realized. As the power of God first formed His own image out of the earth's dust, and after filling it with life had bowed that living soul again to dust, because it was His own to punish as well as to create; so when the word of gracious promise entered the believing sinner's heart, it spoke of a Divine reparation of the breach which sin had made. The soul, in abstraction from the body, is no man of God's creation. If Divine power wrought in grace for human deliverance, it would compass the deliverance of the entire man. This lay at the bottom of all true and proper hope in prospective redemption, though dimly seen, perhaps, for the most part, by the ancient holders of the word of promise.
The object of their faith and hope was God. The mode of His blessed operation, whereby that hope should be eventually justified, was but darkly intimated, though to the quick sense of one really born of Him, the dark sayings and symbolic actions of the God of grace were full of precious meaning. The knowledge of Him as the living God was and is the only wisdom which delivers to the believing sinner the crown of life and glory.
Two things are prominently treated in this Psalm. First, the universality of death's dominion over rich and poor alike—a fact of all-pervading testimony to the utter vanity of mortal life; and secondly, the fruitlessness of all hope of deliverance from life's great grievance, save by the wisdom of justifying faith.
The state of the world is that of reckless acquiescence in its actual condition of vanity, while haughtily ignoring sin, its only cause. This is the fullness and the wonder of human folly. Generations succeed each other in the worn ways of hopeless labor, hastening to their common grave while vainly snatching at the perishable things within their reach, as if the large possession of this world's goods could reverse or intercept the divinely-appointed destiny of man (verse 13).
But this way of folly is the clearest practical evidence of man's utter alienation from God. He is willingly forgotten in the busy calculations of our selfishness. His will is of no account as the guide and reason of men's ways.
He is left out of their thoughts, save where, perforce and with reluctance, He is owned in His resistless power as the Almighty. He is dreaded, but not feared. His interference with their aims and purposes is ever suspected, and in heart deprecated, by those who think of Him rather as the destroyer of natural happiness, than as the proper and only source of all true blessedness and joy. Such is the effect of sin, its wasting destructive misery, which eats up with hopeless vanity the fleeting generations of mankind. “Like sheep they are laid in the grave." Leveled by the hand of death to the common dust of corruption, the haughtiness of man conducts him only to the low and dishonored darkness of the tomb.
The human understanding is quite alive to the portentous and degrading phenomenon of death. But the perishable thoughts of men can devise no remedy against their own destruction. Yet is the God of life not far away. That man acquiesces in his wretchedness is because of the darkness of his understanding; but that darkness is itself the witness and effect of a willing exclusion of Divine light.
The pride of life exalts man in the days of his vanity above all else. The stroke of death mingles him indistinguishably with the beasts that perish (verse 20). By dying he becomes a sure though reluctant witness to the truth of God, which while living at his own discretion he practically falsifies; for he dies by the recorded sentence of the Judge of sin. But until quickened by the Holy Ghost he is incapable of turning his expectation towards God as a Savior and a rest. Man's natural thought is permanency; his sentence is corruption. The wise man and the fool go alike to one place. Philosophy can furnish no light strong enough to dissipate the mists of death. But there is a light of life which enables the happy possessor of it to sing the morning song of deathless hope amid the blackest shades of vanity and death. The voice of faith sounds loudly in this solemn Psalm. The upright are to have dominion in the morning (verse 14). Life and death, things present or things to come, are theirs who stand in Christ in everlasting uprightness before God.
The mystery of Divine redemption is darkly yet sweetly opened in this Psalm upon the harp of prophecy (verses 5-9).
In the fifteenth verse it is boldly asserted as the confidence and rejoicing of the soul: “God will redeem," etc. The whole Psalm is the utterance of the Spirit of Jesus groaning in gracious sympathy with that of which, as born of a woman, He took part (though by the spotlessness of His humanity exempt from any natural necessity of dying); and revealing in the ears of the children whom God hath given Him the secret of hope and joy. How the blessed Lord sought, and vainly sought, to bring the souls of the disciples within the power of the resurrection while yet in the days of His flesh, the Gospels teach us. They understood not that saying. The mist of spiritual darkness was over their minds, until the living brightness of the risen Christ broke through and dissolved that darkness forever, even forever and ever. All is now changed, and “children of light" is a distinctive appellation of those who ground their confidence and rejoicing on the blessed certainty that Jesus, who was delivered for our offences, has been raised again for our justification. God's mighty power, who raised the Savior from the dead, is now become the guarantee of certain triumph to His trusting children. That power now acts to usward who believe. Meanwhile, in the world the true and only God—the living God—is preached as a Savior to all who will hearken and believe. God in Christ; God therefore as the author of reconciliation and of peace. Not as the threatener of vengeance, but as the pardoner in grace of all transgression; the giver of righteousness and life in the Son of His love. The living God—the fulfiller of the promise of life made to Jesus—to Man in Christ—to Himself in man—saving man for His own good pleasure in the accomplishment of His eternal and ever blessed thoughts of peace—for the satisfying of the high and holy desires of Divine love and truth. The gospel is preached. Yet its light shines still upon the ceaseless vanity of a Christ-rejecting world. But the thoughts of God's counsel shall stand. He will fill to the full the pages of that book of life which is the Lamb's record of the Father's gift to Him
Psalm 50
THE majesty of the God of judgment, as it will be displayed in the revelation of the day of Christ, is the leading subject of this magnificent and very comprehensive Psalm. Its action is very wide, for heavenly as well as earthly things are included in its scope. But the truth which determines its special character, and-by reference to which its details are rightly discerned and understood, is in the second verse. God shines forth out of Zion. It is there that the throne is set for judgment. The summons is of mighty and all-pervading force. The earth is called from the rising to the setting of the sun (verse 1). Moreover, the heavens are to hear that voice which is presently to judge the people of His name. But it is Israel that is especially addressed (verse 7). It is a Psalm of judgment, whose moral burden is “The Judge of all the world will do right." It embraces in its scope the blessedness of the remnant, according to the election of grace, as well as the destruction of the ungodly and the sinner from Jehovah's presence.
In verses 5, 6 we have, I doubt not, a reference to the glorified saints who shall shine in the day of the Lord, in the glory whose light shall make the earth and its inhabitants afraid. They had made a covenant with God by sacrifice. The Lamb is the Lord their Righteousness, and the heavens will convincingly reveal that righteousness. Its annunciation to the earth will be from thence. For from heaven the bright glory of that light shall be revealed, in which they alone shall shine whose filthiness has been changed to the pure white of Divine holiness in the day of their patience, when they fought and conquered in the good fight of faith, through the blood of the Lamb, and the word of their testimony.
Verses 7-15 state the Lord's case as Himself the witness against His people. Judgment is affirmed against ungodliness, while the “people " are still held fast in the steadfast grasp of an unrepentant mercy. "Hear, O my people!" "I am God, thy God," etc. Israel, as a nation, is an indestructible reality. Divine holiness will be asserted in judgment-the Lord will judge His people; but mercy is His last as well as first counsel concerning the people of His name. It was for that nation that Christ died.
The practical power of what follows is very great, and is directly applicable in its principle to the Church. Israel's folly had been the diminishing of God; unmindful of the rock that begat them, they did not cease to think of themselves as the people of God. Hence sacrifice abounded, while mercy perished from the land. They drew nigh in His courts; they said, “The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord," etc. But the incense that their hands brought thither was grudged by hearts that knew not the secret of His praise. They gave, in the vain hope of receiving in return; because they knew not the manner of His way who giveth liberally, and upbraideth not.
Spiritual declension usually discovers itself thus in its earlier stages. Methodical formalism takes the place of heart-devotion. Love waxes cold; because the exciting cause of love in the heart is becoming daily more and more remote. Love is of God; God is love. Out of His presence it cannot subsist, and faith alone maintains us there. But Israel after the flesh was a nation of unbelievers. God had among them the numbered thousands of His chosen; but the nation itself was a faithless generation. Their eye and their heart were alike blind to Godward; they stayed their hearts, not on grace, but on meats. Thus they vainly went about to establish their own righteousness, in willing ignorance of the righteousness of God. Yet, grace was the cradle of the nation. God had found His beloved in her blood, and drawn her thence, before the young love of her espousals had turned her heart to Him. But that first love was now clean gone. “I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you," said He, whose altars, nevertheless, they diligently dressed with costly victims day by day. Verses 16-22, though in close connection with what precedes, are of a more general interpretation. Wickedness is apostrophized under an individual impersonation, which renders the direct appeal to conscience more distinct and forcible. The moral drift and bearing of the passage is quite clear. It is the warning voice of the Spirit of Jesus —the Spirit of prophecy—testifying with the pleadings of Divine wisdom in the midst of the streets of Sodom and Egypt. I do not pause to search for the exact and ultimate object of this testimony. Its immediate application to apostate Christianity is apparent. It is the truly solemn warning of the Spirit of grace, taking up the main features of human wickedness, and, as a faithful watchman, giving notice of the passing away of the season of long-suffering patience, and of the advent of God in judgment. It becomes thus a word of searching power to the conscience. The combination of a form of godliness, with the excess of selfish wickedness, is a fatal symptom that the closing days are come of the long-protracted dispensation of grace. Satan's craft, as the corrupter of the Church, has triumphed chiefly in making the doctrines of grace in some shape a warranty for minding earthly things.
But the rudimental truth of Christianity is the cross. God is denied where that is denied. Now the true discernment of the cross leads the soul of necessity into heavenly things; for the Lord who died there is in heaven. Our citizenship, if believers, is there also. It is there, because He is there. Thither, then, must the affections of that heart turn whose treasure and inheritance is Christ. To turn the doctrine which condemns the world, while opening in heaven the door of salvation and eternal life, into a charter of temporal increase and worldly pleasure, is the last stage but one of Christian apostasy. Antichrist is already owned 'in the heart that disowns the cross. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
What God looks for in His saints is conformity to Himself. The ground and reason as well as the means of this is grace: “Whoso offereth praise," etc. (verse 23.) Holiness of walk and diligence in service are natural results of the soul's perception of mercy: "As we have received mercy, we faint not," etc. A believer whose heart is established with grace, not with meats, is strong for God, because he is strong in God. He lives and labors for Christ. Not for himself, for he has no longer any need, seeing that his Keeper is the Lord, the faithful Shepherd and Bishop of our souls. Meanwhile, the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him. To hold with faith a blameless conscience is the great business of Christian life. All practical blessing depends on this; for Divine communion is ever bound, as a result, to devotedness of heart: "To him that ordereth his way will I show the salvation of God."
Psalm 51
THE occasion of this solemn and deeply-searching, yet most precious Psalm, is plainly indicated by its title. It is a memorial of grace abused and turned to lasciviousness, in the base and thankless folly of human selfishness. It is a confession of sin by one who had pre-eminently enjoyed Divine favor. Moreover, the transgressor was one who had obtained a good report, through faith and patience long and sorely tried. It is a very pregnant and instructive Psalm. Particular transgression gave rise to it; but, as the utterance of the Spirit of God, through the experience of a thoroughly bruised and contrite heart, it goes deep down into the sources of both sin and grace. The perfect justification of the God of all grace both in His sayings of judgment and in His pure ways of faithful mercy,—whereby, as the Healer and Restorer, as well as the Justifier and Avenger, of His saints for His own name, He brings the vessels of His mercy through all the varied passages of their earthly experience,—is the proper subject of this Psalm. Un-repented sin in a believer gives occasion to the faithful dealing of God in the judgment of transgression, where found in the ways of His saints. The bones and sinews of carnal confidence are thus broken. The soul, learning thoroughly its own just estimate, according to the holiness and power of God's immediate presence, is prepared for yet deeper lessons of Divine wisdom and knowledge. Praise flows from the lips of the confessed sinner at the bidding of the gracious Restorer of His people's souls (verse 15).
The unspeakable badness of corrupted nature is nowhere so strikingly exemplified as in the case of an erring saint. For the dark colors of human iniquity are most clearly discerned, and most perfectly appreciated, in the light of Divine truth. The end and idol of nature is self. As a natural consequence, the ways of a man who walks after the flesh tend constantly away from God, who is the only center of holiness, and may lead into any and every kind of sinful result. This is a truth as applicable to a devoted servant of God, as it is to the most abandoned sinner. For it is only while watchfully abiding in Christ that we are kept in practical security from the power of the wicked one.
If a Christian is not walking in the Spirit, he is walking in the flesh, and will certainly fulfill its lusts. It then becomes purely a question of degree as to the distance to which he may wander or be driven from the ways of holiness and peace. In such circumstances, an act of glaring wickedness has sometimes become the term and limit to a long course of careless evil; during which the heart has been too drowsy, or too much absorbed in its own selfish pursuits, to perceive the increasing variance of its path from the secret of God's presence. David, alas! is no solitary instance, in the confessed experience of God's saints, of human weakness and depravity,—of nature fulfilling its darkest evil in the very midst of Divine favor and blessing. Nor, blessed be God, is he alone in his testimony to the still abounding riches of exhaustless mercy, whereby, through the once-shed blood of Jesus Christ His Son, all iniquity may be forgiven by the righteous God, the Savior.
If the blessings which grace confers are borne out of God's presence for their enjoyment, instead of being used in communion with Himself, corruption in greater or less measure will be the result. The flesh can use nothing for God. It lavishes His gifts upon its idols; for it loves its idols, but is enmity against God. In those instances in which some frightful outbreak of sin has occurred, the condition of the soul previously to the catastrophe has perhaps been quite as displeasing to God as in the very crisis of its wickedness. A habit of heart-aversion, or of self-seeking indifference, is as evil a thing as the particular act of enormity which may, by giving a ruder shock to the conscience (and that possibly, as in the present case, not without some direct intervention of God, who sent His prophet to the king), become the means of arousing the soul to a just sense of its distance from God. Often He moves on His way, while we stand lingering over past experiences. If this continue, the soul is always endangered and often wounded to its hurt. For the place of safety and of strength is the Divine presence alone. Thus it was with David. God had given him rest from his enemies, and he makes the goodness of God the occasion of self-gratification. He consults his own ease, seeking contentment in his palace of cedar rather than in God. Fruits, which the patience of faith had brought into his possession, are held and enjoyed in careless self-confidence. But as long as the heart thinks of pleasure, or happiness, or ease, apart from communion with God, Satan has an open approach to those lusts of the flesh which, being eternally opposed to holiness, are in readiness at any time to break from a restraint which the remembrance of God's nearness can alone effectually maintain.
Satan tempts God's children in a variety of ways. Speaking generally, the natural love of ease is to a Christian, whose soul has once been established in grace, the most immediate snare against which he has to guard. "Love not the world" is the word addressed to them who knew the fruits of victory in Christ.
But nature rests only in the world and its delights. On the other hand, there is no feeling more directly at variance with the bias and yearning of the Spirit of Christ than the love of present ease. That Spirit finds no rest in present things. The Son of God, whose Spirit is the unction of filial liberty to the believer, knew no rest on earth. He desired none; for His presence in the world was to do the will of Him that sent Him, and to finish His work. The conditions of rest were not found in a world whose ruler and whose god was then and still is SATAN. So is it with the Christian who truly knows his calling, and estimates aright the separating power of the resurrection as a truth of present reality to the heart of faith. Girded loins become those whose vocation is to serve the Lord until He come—serving in newness of spirit, according to the Divine assurance of that perfect liberty of which the Spirit of the Lord is the witness and the power. Rest is in prospect. God prepares it for them who now run the way of patient obedience, in joyful expectation of the day of promise. Meanwhile, in spirit, the believer already rests in the blessed object of his faith. Christ is the rest both of God and man. God rests in Him because of the perfection of all His counsels in His finished work. Believing man rests in Him because that work thus finished is the work of his redemption. The first ripe fruits of Jesus' husbandry of travail already refresh the weary lips of faith. But it is from heaven that this refreshment comes; and the soul whose eye is thus enlightened by the more than honey sweetness which distils from the lips of the ascended Christ—now speaking peace and teaching praise in the midst of the brethren of His love—looks upward to the place whence those refreshings come, and often finds it hard, while groaning still beneath its fleshly burden, to count the time of patience short until the hour of the Father's secret counsel be arrived.
A Christian may be sure that he is in a carnal state whenever he is desiring a permanency of temporal enjoyment. God gives us richly all things to enjoy; and godliness has promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come. But the power of right and godly enjoyment is the Spirit of adoption, whereby we know and love the Giver above His gifts, perceiving and tasting the spring of all mercies in His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. We are blessed as pilgrims by the way, as well as in rest at the end; but the spiritual man does not confound one with the other. God journeys with us as our shield and sun, walking in the shifting tabernacle of our flesh until He reach for us, and with us, and in us the eternal habitation of His holiness. Upon our faithful recognition of this blessed truth depends the speed and prosperity of our pilgrim way. We are called to the fellowship of the Father and the Son. If we live below the truth of our calling, our walk cannot be worthy of that calling. We shall be surely minding earthly things if we do not keep in our habitual remembrance that our life and heritage are where our Savior is.
To return more immediately to the Psalm before us. The first essential to the restoration of a soul that has fallen into sin is an unshaken faith in God who does not change. “According to thy lovingkindness; according to the multitude of thy tender mercies," etc. The godly sorrow, which is the parent of repentance unto salvation not to be repented of, is wrought by the Holy Ghost in the believer's heart, not so much by representing the intrinsic enormity of an evil act, as by recalling the mind to a sense of its baseness in having thus wrought against the perfect goodness of the God of all grace. “Against thee, thee only," etc. To have to appeal to former mercies under a sense of personal delinquency enhances exceedingly the severity of self-judgment in the exercised spirit of the sinner, while it opens to the heart a view of the Divine nature in its infiniteness both of purity and love, which more than any other thing tends to render contrite and keep low the humbled yet confiding soul.
There are measures and degrees in the liveliness of a believer's sense of guilt, when self-convicted of departure from the Lord. Nothing but perfect grace can vanquish sin. The manner of that grace, as it is opened in the gospel of God's blessed Son, alone truly humbles the sinner in self-loathing for his ways. The CROSS is the truth which sets and preserves the tone of all true spiritual feeling. Sin judged there is perfectly abhorred. Joyful and happy emotions, on the other hand, are cleared of all fleshly tincture, and sobered, yet raised withal, to still higher elevation of pure blessedness, by reference to that wondrous truth in which the God of grace and holiness comes nearest to the soul.
Sin in a Christian is the quintessence of moral depravity. In David it was hideously evil; in a Christian it is many degrees worse; for in proportion to the nearness of our actual relationship to God is the aggravation and intensity of positive sin. The Spirit of adoption, which dwells in a believer now, dwelt not in David. He was indeed a blessed vessel of Divine grace and favor. He was taken from the sheep-cotes to be the anointed of the Lord. He was the receiver of promise—the father, as touching the flesh, of the hope of Israel and the nations. Richly endowed and divinely gifted, whether to lead the armies or to set the praises of the Lord of hosts, he was, moreover, a largely favored prophet of good things to come. But no such appeal lay to his conscience as that which the Spirit makes now to a believer in Jesus. He who sins in the latter case is joined to the Lord in spiritual unity, is a member of Christ, a temple of the Holy Ghost, an accepted child of God through the redemption which is only in the blood of His eternal Son. He must grieve the Holy Spirit of God if he sins, for he is thereby sealed unto the day of redemption.
He defiles and dishonors not his own members, but those of Christ; for he is not his own, being bought with a price. Christ paid that price. Christ died amid shame and torture, and under Divine wrath, to redeem the soul that thus turns away from the fountain of all purity, to dishonor and defile again his blood-washed conscience in natural uncleanness; forgetting spiritual joy—the precious fruits of heavenly grace—the spiritual blessings wherewith in heavenly places he is blessed in Christ—to go down again at the enticement of some selfish lust, to drag the grieved Spirit of Christ into the mire of pollution, doing again the deeds of the devil under the name and in the garments of an heir of God.
Tongue cannot utter the enormity of willful sin in a believer. But even more wretched than any striking and sudden surprise of the enemy, in the case of one generally zealous and watchful, is that lethargy of spirit, that habitual self-contentment and practical forgetfulness of heavenly things, which leaves but little inducement to the adversary to provoke any special act of iniquity, so inert and deadened has the action both of conscience and of heart become. A vehement outbreak of positive evil is a fearful thing in a saint of God. But it is preferable to spiritual apathy, where Christ is almost spewed out of the mouth of the self-seeking soul, that loathes the light food of God's providing, and thinks no higher and no dearer thought of JESUS than as a convenience of eventual escape from wrath. Love must be at a low ebb where this is so. Yet, alas! for the Church, because. of its shame; and alas! again for the world, because of offences whereby its willing alienation from Christ is plausibly excused,—such is the temper of much of the Christianity of our own day. Earthly-mindedness is the very stamp and character of the general profession of our times.
Once more to return. David's sensations, as they are here expressed, were those of a man of God. God never loses His true place in his mind, while judging and acknowledging his sin. His peace, indeed, was gone; the joy once known, of salvation in His presence, is interrupted. This is the necessary effect of a defiled conscience. True peace of soul cannot consist with practical unrighteousness. Nor when the evil is confessed, and the soul is again recovering its right position before God, is peace, generally speaking, immediately restored. It may be so, for in reality no obstacle to peace continues on God's side. “If we confess—He is faithful and just to forgive." Still when the Spirit of God is working deeply upon the heart and conscience, full recovery of the joy of salvation is usually a gradual process. The soul is at bottom sustained by a sense of the unalterable character of God, and of the perfect sufficiency which exists in Christ to meet all sin; but the direct appropriation of this is not usually immediate. Indeed, it is a suspicious symptom when it is so. For this indicates an imperfect apprehension of the evil which had interrupted conscious fellowship with God. But, longer or shorter as the process of restoration may be, its means are found in the simple recognition of the truth, both as it respects the evil, and the grace which on God's part is to meet it. So David felt. He is here cast upon God, because he is as he is. The necessity of sin is the opportunity of grace. Faith, knowing this, lives through all, though fearful billows of cumulative evil may well threaten to bury all hope, until the heart of the self-condemned sinner is turned to the remembrance of Him who is overcome of no evil, and whose glory is to rescue and deliver, for His own name's sake, the self-ruined vessels of His mercy. David's part is to declare the truth; to justify his Maker in His sayings. God had of old spoken evil of the heart of man, and the son of Jesse had by his own example fully verified His words.
But (verse 5) the strong exercise of conscience leads to a profounder searching into the root and fountain of human wretchedness. Sinful conception, is an evil anterior to personal transgression: the latter comes of the former as its fatal fruit. Grace, then, if it deal remedially with a sinner, must meet the evil in its source. God is accordingly invoked no longer as a helper in the sinner's work of self-recovery: the work is purely and exclusively His own. What He requires in holiness He must effect in grace (verse 6). This primal, yet often imperfectly learned truth of Christian doctrine, if once divinely taught in the cross of Jesus, secures the tried believer from despair in the darkest hour, how much soever he may have to loathe himself meanwhile on account of his experienced vileness. Satan cannot work a work of evil in a believer which God has not already counteracted and excelled in measure in the finished work of grace. “Where sin abounded, grace has superabounded." Atonement once complete is of an eternal validity. In justice therefore, and in faithfulness to Jesus, God forgives continually the confessing sinner. “The Lord hath put away thy sin “was the immediate response of Nathan to David, when the simple confession of his sin was made. God is Himself the healer and restorer of the soul. The broken spirit can be bound up effectually only by His gracious hands. The plenteousness of forgiving mercy re-opens in the heart of the believer the springs of pure desire toward God. Fruitful works of love flow also from the soul that has been thus restored (verse 13). There is no true restoration where this result is not perceived.
I cannot doubt the prophetic bearing of this Psalm upon the nation of Israel. In the latter day they shall consider their ways: repentance and self-loathing will be the result. Blood-guiltiness heavier than that of David has to be removed from that nation. They will become the teachers of the Gentiles, when first the iniquity of their own transgression has been purged away. An unbroken heart, a brow of brass, and a neck of iron have been hitherto the characteristics of unrepentant Israel. But a time of weeping and contrition will arrive. They will turn to the Lord and say, "Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips." Then shall the Lord do good to Zion; He will build again the walls of Jerusalem; and from the place of His name shall the welcome offering be presented and accepted, as in the olden time.
Psalm 52
A SONG of defiant faith in the presence of successful wickedness. God, in His enduring goodness and mercy, is found to be an argument of sure eventual triumph in the midst of the adverse sea of trouble and distress.
The historical circumstances to which the title of this Psalm refers are full of instructive interest. David's conduct was far from blameless. The catastrophe of the priests had arisen from his reception by Ahimelech in the hour of his need. The tale-bearer of blood found his occasion of wickedness from this fact. But this place of refuge had been opened to the fugitive only by a sacrifice of truth. David lied to Ahimelech, because he believed that the name of Saul was of weightier authority with him than that of God. In going to Ahimelech David acted in faith, according to the liberty of the Divine unction, which made God's ordinances and God's house the natural asylum of the man of His own choice in the hour of his sore distress. But his conduct in the presence of Jehovah's priest was regulated by policy, and not at all by faith.
It is thus that the faith of God's saints has often failed. Rightly judging that no reliance may be safely placed on man, they have accommodated their conduct to the circumstances of the time. But this is to forget God—to lose sight of Him as the shield and light of our present way. The behavior of Abraham at the court of Abimelech is an earlier example of this. Because he thought the fear of God was not in that place, he chose a lie for his confidence instead of the God of truth and faithfulness. Shuffling and falsehood are the natural expedients of spiritual timidity. God is the believer's strength. If He is forgotten in the presence of difficulties, crookedness is inevitably the result. But the failure of a saint is an exceptional thing. It is a violence to the proper bias and direction of the soul. The habitual purpose of such is obedience and godly fear. The knowledge which faith has of God as a Savior and reward is the determinate principle which governs the true believer in his ways.
David's position as an outcast was a result of the Lord's anointing: he was suffering for the truth's sake according to the will of God. In the consciousness, therefore, of being on God's side, he is bold to connect that great name with his actual circumstances. His very failures are those of a man of God. God judges evil in His saints; but the judgment of their evil does not alter their relation to Himself as the chosen vessels of His grace. The personal history of the elders, who obtained through faith a good report, is full of value as an extended illustration of the principle here stated.
Doeg is an apt instance of the subtle activity of the spirit of wickedness as it works under the seared conscience of apostate profession. Lying and malice were his choice, not his necessity. He is willingly against the truth. He lies against men's lives, and freely dips his hand in their blood, in ready subservience to the commandment of unrighteousness. He follows Saul for vineyards and oliveyards, betraying the innocent for the wages of iniquity. God is not his strength, yet he is a mighty man (verses 1, 7). But the end of human selfishness is Divine retribution. God will righteously avenge His name in His own time.
The crafty plotting of the Antichrist against the faithful remnant of Judah may be contemplated in this Psalm. Verse 8 encourages this thought. The destroyer had set himself in the very house of God, driving far away the poor of the flock, whose trust is in Jehovah. But faith, perceiving the signs of near redemption in the ripening triumph of appointed wickedness, can rejoice and sing the song of anticipative deliverance, because of the enduring mercy of God. Power will wither from the rod of wickedness, and the scepter of dominion shall flourish in the hand of Him who loveth righteousness, and hateth iniquity.
Psalm 53
THIS Psalm seems to connect more pointedly the general testimony of the Holy Ghost to the folly of human wickedness, with that especial display of its madness when the very name of God shall be denied, and the atheistic confederates of the Wicked One shall be found in the last act of their iniquity by the hand of Divine judgment.
The name of Jehovah does not occur. In this it differs from Psa. 14 The actual denial of everything that is called God seems to be already come, and God arises to avenge His name against him who usurps that name, and who counterfeits the attributes of the Divine Majesty through the energy of Satanic power. The remnant of Israel are not only witnesses to the name of Jehovah, as their covenanted refuge, but they confess Him also as the one Creator, in His power and Godhead, when "the man of the earth" shall be claiming the creature as his own.
Another point of difference to be noticed is that here we have (verse 5) direct mention made of the manner of the crisis. “God hath scattered the bones of him that encampeth against thee: thou halt put them to shame, because God hath despised them." Jerusalem, I suppose to be here apostrophized, as the place which bears Immanuel's name.
The fact of the almost verbal repetition of the Spirit's earlier testimony is in itself an impressive one, and when regard is had to the leading topic of both these Psalms, it acquires a mournful and emphatic force. Without presuming to speak positively in a doubtful point, I may readily avow my assent to the view of those who would refer the former to the Jewish apostasy at the era of the first advent of the Lord, and the latter to the state of Christendom at the second. Great fear was on the multitude at Jerusalem, when by tokens undeniable it was perceived that God is in the generation of the righteous; but a mightier and irremediable dread will visit those assembled hosts who, after proudly beleaguering Jerusalem, will utterly perish at the Lord's rebuke. But with these not unimportant differences, it is evident that the final action of both Psalms exhausts itself in the long-deferred accomplishment of Israel's hope.
Psalm 54
THERE is exceeding force as well as beauty in this little Psalm. It displays the proper effect of tribulation in calling forth into exercise the full energies of that faith whose only staff is God. There is an appeal to the righteousness, as well as to the power, of God. His name is felt to be the shield of safety by the soul whose affliction is because of His truth. Faith can never take a personal ground of appeal to God, but as a vessel of mercy the believer can abide the righteous award of Divine judgment. God will then act for His own name, and full deliverance and triumph result to the believer from His faithfulness. God, indeed, is not unrighteous to forget the patience of His saints; a cloudless conscience may well increase the joy of a man of faith, when drawing nigh the goal of his earthly race, but it is the grace of God on which the soul has leaned throughout its entire weight. It has done and suffered, feared and hoped, with present reference to a Savior. As having received mercy, it did not faint.
Jesus alone could appeal to God directly, and in His own name. The unspotted purity of His Person gave Him this just claim. But even He trusted in God. He would await the Father's pleasure for His own' deliverance and justification. God would display Himself in due time as the avenger of His own Elect.
Read in connection with the historical narrative to which the title refers, the present Psalm is full of practical value to the Christian, as a companion of the affliction and patience of Christ, while awaiting the arrival of the promised kingdom. The great point in the moral lesson here presented is; that no change of circumstances can in itself afford protection or security to faith. The Ziphim were as little to be trusted as the Gittites. Moreover, the wilderness of Ziph might harbor David's enemies as well as himself. Faith cleaves to God only, since He alone is the competent preserver of His saints. They are kept by the power of God through faith. His people are continually under the gracious management of the Father of their spirits, in order to teach them thoroughly this truth. The soul must be raised completely out of creature hope and confidence, in order to know its true stability as Divinely upheld. The truth of God is the girdle of strength to His children in the hour of trial. And when His changeless character as the God of all grace is rested on, according to its manifested revelation in the face of Jesus Christ, no cloud of present adversity can blot out from the believer's view the joy of his eternal portion in his God.
For He is the Reward of His people, not less than their present and effective Shield. Hence supplication for deliverance is always accompanied by thanksgiving, where the grace of the Gospel is held fast by faith. We are in all afflictions more than conquerors through Him that loved us.
As in so many other Psalms ascribed to David, the personal experience of the writer becomes a qualification for the Spirit's use of him as the prophetic shadow of the Lord's true King. It is a Messianic Psalm, though its features as such are less distinctly marked than in some other instances.
Psalm 55
THIS Psalm has a varied subject. In the earlier verses (1-8) we seem to have the voice of God's Elect, when, as a persecuted sufferer for the truth's sake, He opened His complaint to God. Jesus found only hatred where He might have looked for love. He stood as a mark daily aimed at, and often sore wounded by the archers of iniquity, whose tongues of malice and deceit were as bended bows made ready against the patient Witness of the Father. "They cast iniquity upon me, and in wrath they hate me."
It was thus that Messiah fared among His brethren after the flesh. The very mention of His proper title justified to their minds an imputation of blasphemy. They pronounced Him to be a sinner upon the evidence of His Divinest acts of mercy. They willingly gave to Satan the glory of Jehovah their Healer, because of the hatred their hearts bore towards the gracious doer of the works of God: “Say we not well that thou hast a devil?" etc. It was the contrariety of holiness to sin, of light to darkness, of God to man, that produced these results of pain and bitterness to Him who went about doing only good.
The world could not love Jesus. The world will love its own; for like loves like: but He was from above while they were from beneath. Though among them on the Father's business, He was none of theirs. Their thoughts, their lusts, their counsels and imaginations had no place in Him. He lived for God, while all their thought was for themselves. They would none of Him. Yet He came unto His own—the creatures of His hand, the nation of His election, and now, as touching His flesh, the very brethren of Him who is the Seed of Abraham—they were thrice His own. But they received Him not. How must the earthly days of the Son of God have been embittered by His finding Himself everywhere the object of suspicion or aversion on the part of those whom He had come to bless! He had left the Father's bosom in order to become, in love, the bearer of their sickness, and to charge Himself with their infirmities. In grace He had come as the Lamb of God into the world. The words which He spoke were spirit and were life; and if He spoke, it was for their sakes, that they might be saved. Grace and truth in all their fullness dwelt in Him. Sin, covered with a lying and unavailing shelter of hypocrisy, was in them. They esteemed themselves, and therefore He was despicable in their eyes. The very sinners whose desperate wretchedness had moved His Divine compassion to be the minister of their need, to work the work of their salvation, were they who sat in judgment on Him as an evil-doer, and esteemed Him well worthy of a shameful death. It must needs thus be.
A touching insight is afforded by verses 4-8 into the reality and tenderness of the Divine Sufferer's sensibilities, as they were excited by the circumstances through the midst of which His path of daily human experience led Him, as the doer of the Father's will. He would fain have quitted the scene of vanity and wickedness. The deep subtlety of human hypocrisy, and the complicated maze of human selfishness, continually vexed His righteous soul. No one circumstance of merely human growth which accompanied His progress along the ways which led Him to the goal of His self-devotion could cheer the spirit of the Son of God. He found and trod the path of obedience unto death, in the loneliness of One whose very nature isolated Him in a world which knew not God. All His refreshments were from above. In communion with the Father, whose deep purposes of mercy He had come to serve, He could rejoice in spirit when most removed from every human source of solace or of strength. But with desires which could find their rest only in the place which for a season He had left, the Man of sorrows patiently remained a willing sojourner with men, until the works of Him that sent Him should be fully wrought. And the disciple is invited to partake his Master's cup. How does the tried spirit of Christian faith echo the wish expressed in verse 6, when, wearied with a conflict which often seems almost a hopeless one, it longs for that rest which remaineth for the people of God! A right desire, yet not to be indulged to a forgetting of the purposes of our present calling. God regards such desires as of His own Spirit, and sends an exhortation of patience still for the remainder of the “little while."
Verses 9-15 change the tone of complaint and supplication into an invocation of righteous judgment upon the treacherous dealers of iniquity. He had visited the city where Jehovah's name was held in outward honor—the city of solemnities, but had found violence and deceit in the midst of the habitation of justice. There seems to be in verses 12-14 a particular allusion to the treason of Judas, but it is exhibited in close connection with the moral character of the nation as a treacherous dealer from the womb.
Verses 16-18 express the faith and patience of Him who trusted in God. They are of obvious application also to those who, as partakers of Christ, are called to continue in prayer, while fulfilling in tribulation the will of Him who called them. The power of God is the stay of the saint's endurance; but it is through faith that he is kept.
Verse 19 is of general application. Judgment is ordained from of old. Long-suffering mercy defers its execution. But the goodness of God, instead of leading men to repentance, is turned into a shield of unbelief, to resist the testimony given to the coming wrath. Prolonged impunity extinguishes at length all fear of judgment in the hearts of men.
Verses 20, 21 point, I conceive, to the Antichrist. This gives a specific distinctness to many general expressions in the Psalm; and seems to identify, morally, the position of the lonely Son of God, in the days of His flesh, with that of the remnant, who shall bear amid the same people His last reproach at the closing of the evil day.
Full of precious meaning is the verse which follows: “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee." The believer knows what manner of burden he has cast upon the Savior of his soul. Coming, in the sore grief of a sin-burdened conscience, the soul finds peace in Jesus. He enters, and fills with His satisfying presence, the heart that by faith is open to receive His love. Burdens of circumstance lose their weight whenever the name of Christ can be connected with them in the heart of faith; and there is no burden which a contrite spirit feels, that he is not ready to receive at our hands. There is sustaining power in Him, who nourishes His chosen with His flesh and blood. Yet too often it happens, that those who rest the burden of their soul's salvation upon Jesus, find it hard to trust Him with some paltry care. More especially this verse relates to any who may be called to bear the active hostility of the enemy as suffering confessors of His name. It is a word of cheer addressed to such. The Psalm concludes with the recorded judgment of God against bloody and deceitful men—the diligent doers of their father's work—whose opportunity of wickedness shall be abruptly closed. Their sun shall suddenly go down in the very noonday of their strength.
Psalm 56
DREAD of his too mighty enemies, mixed with and surmounted by unshaken confidence in God, brings out of David's heart this very beautiful Psalm. But the Spirit of God spake by him. Expressions, therefore, are found in it of a wider bearing than his own experience. As an experimental Psalm, it is one of high interest and value; but if respect be had to its prophetic character, it seems to relate rather to the afflictions of Christ, which are to be endured in the last time by the suffering remnant of His earthly people, than to the personal experience of the Lord Himself.
Gentile tyranny is appealed from to God as the Avenger of His own truth. “In anger cast down the peoples, O God" (verse 7). Man is the oppressor (verse 1). The nations are the objects of the Spirit's denunciation; but their enmity is against one whose shield is the only God. He is invoked with threefold emphasis—as God, as Jehovah, and as Most High. Atheistic wickedness and full-blown human pride are in array against the confessor of the only God.
The tried Christian may find precious counsel of strength and comfort in this Psalm; for it is the utterance of a heart animated by the sure conviction of Divine faithfulness and sufficiency, while, at the same time, acutely sensible of its own weakness and danger. “What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee." There is a rich tone of strong and confident assurance throughout. The loins of the mind are girt with strength, through faith in 'the word of promise.
Verses 4 and 10 are especially to be noted as containing the key-note of true spiritual praise: "In God I will praise His word," etc. The promises of God are, to the believer, pledges of His faithfulness and power. He is able to perform. A living man lives only by the word which proceedeth from His mouth. All the Divine knowledge which the children have is by that word. Faith never thinks of God apart from the revelation of His truth. Natural idealism does, and, mounting on the wings of high-thought vanity, is borne to and fro amid the windy eddies of an ever-shifting fancy. Cloudy speculations and mystic abstractions may occupy and mislead the natural mind, when constitutionally of a religious temperament; for religious sentiment is quite consistent with the absence of all vital power. Faith, on the contrary, is a recipient from a source without and above itself, living still on that which first produced it The word of God is the authentic witness to the heart which He has quickened of the purpose and ability of God to bless. Specialties of promise are to the child of God but clauses in that deed of universal gift, whereby in Christ all promise is affirmed and everlastingly secured to the believing soul. The exercised disciple knows well the value of the word.
For he knows that from thence has been derived to his own soul all that he knows and rests on of salvation and of hope. It is to him the word of life. In the mind of such, creation stands by that same word. It is by the word of God, moreover, that the dissolution of what is now shall take place. Especially, it is by this means that faith learns the manner and measure of the love of God. Joy and peace come of believing, and faith is by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. The wisdom which is unto salvation is in that word. The believer finds, in every sentence of recorded truth, a fragment of Christ who is the total fullness of all truth. The promises, which in Him are yea, and in Him Amen, are now unto the Divine glory by those who honor God by trusting in His word. They are to His dishonor on the part of others, who, despising the word, yet dream religiously, and speak of God according to the folly of their own sin-darkened minds. But God will justify His sayings in due time. Meanwhile, the Spirit, who beareth witness, is Himself the truth. He is the Divine realization to the believer of the certainty of that hope which maketh not ashamed.
An interesting distinction may be noticed in the latter of these verses: there is a change in the Divine name. In the former, God is opposed to man, from whom the fear comes, as having spoken in the truth of His holiness and power. His name of eternal majesty is put in contrast with perishable flesh. He is thus the fortress of His trusting people, who may set up their banners in His name. Jehovah, in the latter, is cited as the eternal witness of His own special covenant, whose letter contains the promise of the Deliverer, the hope of Israel.
Verse 8 is full of comfort to the man whose sorrow is according to God, and whose wanderings are willingly discovered to his eye. He will exalt and stablish in the light of His own countenance the self-abased expectants of His mercy whose desire is toward His way.
The last verse is of the highest practical value in seasons of spiritual conflict. It is exactly the language which the Spirit of Christ often brings from the lips of a Christian who, with clear discernment of the cross as God's work of deliverance, is filled with despondency and faintings of heart from his past and present experience of himself. Desires of holiness are checked and discouraged in the soul that ponders mournfully its past discomfitures, until God is remembered as its present and abiding strength. For by His one work of effectual deliverance He is become the everlasting refuge of His people. His servant shall be holden up, for He is able to make him to stand. While thus mistrusting himself, the believer may boldly say, “The Lord is my helper." Satan may watch him, enemies may be around him, but the defense of his head is the Redeemer of his soul. Christ is in him the hope of salvation. The Filler of all things fills with the saving presence of Divine power all the circumstances of evil through which His people have to pass. He careth for the sheep.
Psalm 57
A KINDRED strain to the last. It is a very lovely and triumphant expression of confidence and rejoicing in God. He is celebrated in His majesty as the most High, but in the power of a faith that knows Him as the performer of all things for the dependent vessel of His praise. It is in an evil crisis that this trust is felt, but the stress of evil is the furnace in which faith is proved. Dens and caves of the earth have resounded many times with acceptable praise, through the faith of them that are kept by the power of God. In the royal palace was Saul, companioned by an evil spirit from God. In the cave of Adullam was the outcast upon whom rested the true unction of the kingdom. And God was there. His presence, and the outspread shelter of His faithfulness and power, made David glad with an exceeding joy. His heart is fixed. For the quiet assurance of Divine acceptance has stilled all fear, though danger lurked on every side.
The practical value of this most beautiful Psalm to the believer cannot but be felt by such as have begun to learn what rejoicing in tribulation really means. But its chief beauty appears when we regard it in its prophetic aspect. The desires which fill the heart of David as he sings are loftier than could be satisfied by his own accession to the throne of Israel "Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; let thy glory be above all the earth," is his prayer (verse 5). Nations and peoples are to be the audience, in whose presence the praises of the God of Israel must be sung (verse 9).
The occasion of this praise was to be the riddance of the adversaries of the Lord, and the exaltation of the throne of His anointed (verses 2, 3). "God shall send forth His mercy and His truth." The expectant heir of salvation, and the desponding outcast of Israel alike await this. He shall send Jesus, when the times of refreshing shall have fully come, which shall cause Israel again to blossom and bud, and to fill the face of the world with fruit. Meanwhile the Christian, living amid the ripening evils of the latter day, is kept in expectation of the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. Till then his calling is to suffer, but with joy, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation —enduring it according to the power of God—keeping himself in the love of God, praying in the Holy Ghost, looking for and hasting the coming of the day of God.
Full of blessed Meaning is the tenth verse. We know Him who with His saving presence now pervades all space in the fullness of the finished mercy of redemption. Singing and making heart-melody to the Lord ought now to be the constant habit of every one whose heart is fixed in the stability of perfect grace. His soul is among lions, but his salvation is ready to be revealed.
Psalm 58
A SOLEMN judgment expressed by the Spirit of the heart-searching God, upon the thoughts and ways of the natural man, together with a prophetic warning of the sure arising of the God to whom vengeance belongeth, who will show Himself to be God by His judgments in the earth (verse 11).
It is a Psalm of very wide as well as practical application. The general world of sinful and unreal profession is passed morally in review, the subject contemplated being “the sons of men." The leading features of religious apostasy are always the same; what describes Jewish wickedness applies equally, only with augmented force, to the corruption of Christianity. The men of the world, whatever their nominal profession, walk in the path which seems good in their own eyes. The character of that way of willfulness, together with its fearful end, are powerfully depicted in the present Psalm.
Verse 2, applicable at any stage in the progress of apostasy, seems to respect especially the time when evil, having long grown and ripened under the opportunity of Divine long-suffering, is at last openly established and systematized in the earth.
Verses 3-5, while describing the malignant features of human corruption, trace the evil to its source. "As soon as they are born," etc. Falsehood is the natural language of a sin-corrupted nature, because God is denied. The highest conceptions of the natural man are misrepresentations of the truth. The rudiments of the world can teach no right knowledge, either of God or, of man. Human communications, where not morally corrupt, are at their best essentially vain. It is the mouth of God alone that opens with the word of life. But men naturally have no ear for this; faith alone hearkens to a word which withers into vanity every human pretention, that salvation and strength may be perceived and rested on in God alone.
Through all the successive dispensations of God, nature's evil consistency with itself has been preserved. Men have been deaf to the voice of Divine wisdom, and attentive only to the persuasion of their own lusts. First willingly ignorant of God, and then alienated from the life of God because of that ignorance, they are fitly described by the Spirit of truths "as by nature children of wrath." Wise in their own esteem, they are in reality "foolish, disobedient, deceived;" settled upon the lees of natural corruption, and abhorring still the truth which alone can free them from their bondage. The world has no ear for God when speaking in the Gospel of His Son, for it is filled and satisfied by the lie of the devil, which deceives the whole world. God sets forth the claims of Jesus as the only Lord. Men's hearts refuse that homage to the just God and the Savior, because they are naturally the willing slaves of sin. "Serving divers lusts and pleasures." "Lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God." Divine wisdom essays indeed to charm by new and marvelous words. God has become a suitor to His creature—speaking persuasively of excellent things—alluring self-ruined sinners to the untried blessedness of free forgiveness. Peace of conscience is His ready offer to those who know no peace, through the propitiation which is in the blood of His own Son. Eternal life is pressed as a free gift upon their acceptance, whose natural condition is to be under death, with prospect of eternal judgment after death. Glory, honor, and immortality, a kingdom of perpetual blessedness, an inheritance incorruptible, unfading, undefiled, are brought within the easy reach of those who are willing to be blessed of God in Christ But alas for man it is the will that is the one thing lacking.
Men know that God is no liar in the word of His grace. Conscience within them, misery and death around them, and the heavy hand of the consuming vanity which rests upon them with a daily increasing pressure, till it bows them to the grave, confirm, with a distinctness not to be mistaken or avoided, the truth of God's testimony to the ruin of His creature. Men know, moreover, that the demands of Divine justice are not unequal, and that the sentence of Holiness upon sin is according to truth. But the lie which first made man an exile from God's garden of delights, by teaching him to cease from his Creator and build his hopes upon himself, still holds its power as a spell of destruction over all the world.
But God is not mocked, nor are His purposes of doubtful issue. He has given all to Jesus. Man and his works are to be judged by Him. That which now flourishes in "man's day" and as the fruit of human effort, for the exaltation of the sinful creature in his own esteem, will be as lighted tow in the day when the breath of the Lord shall kindle into the flame of a perpetual destruction both the maker and his work.
The latter verses have, I think, a clear reference to Israel in the day when Jehovah shall avenge His people. The language of verses 6-9, compared with that found in Zech. 14:12, 13, is not unimportant, as a means of enabling us to assign a definite intention to this Psalm as a prophetic testimony. With respect to the general principle stated in the concluding verses, it is familiar to the Christian as a confessor of the righteous God. The Spirit of prophecy, detailing thus the growth and ripeness of human evil, calls upon God to arise.
Nothing can meet the desires of the Spirit but the introduction of the appointed Heir into the manifested possession of His inheritance. Hitherto the testimony to the coming judgment has been as little regarded as the overtures of saving mercy. But the time is at hand when the derided hope and testimony of believers will be vindicated in power as the true sayings of God. “So that a man shall say, "Verily, there is a reward for the righteous; verily, He is a God that judgeth in the earth."
Psalm 59
ASSUMING the authenticity of its title, this Psalm affords a remarkable example of the power of the Spirit of Christ to expand a personal incident in the life of His afflicted servant into a wide and comprehensive prophecy of national mercy and deliverance in the latter day. Instances of this kind have already been frequently before us. None have, however, occurred in which the type and the reality have had a closer circumstantial agreement.
The opening verses (1-4) are a just expression of what David might well have felt when appealing to the righteous Judge amid the unprovoked aggression of iniquity. But David was the anointed of Jehovah. As such he was the hope of Israel. The nation and its destinies were bound up in him; the name of the God of Israel was upon him. In fighting against him Saul was contending with God. To quench the light of Israel, to turn the hearts of the people from the true champion of the Lord's deliverance, that his own name might be had in honor, and his own house be established, was the counsel of Saul. It was the attempt of unsanctified nature to obstruct the counsels of Jehovah, and to perpetuate in willfulness a title which had attached to him conditionally only by the grace of God.
In a still more emphatic manner will. this proud infatuation be exemplified when the willful King, whose lofty imaginations and defiant words are against the most high God, shall stand up against the Prince of princes, and speak marvelous things against the God of gods, and shall plant the tabernacles of his palaces between the seas in the glorious holy mountain. The remnant of them that fear Jehovah's name, and wait for the rising of the Star of Jacob, will urge in that day their appeal to the God of Israel. The Spirit of prophecy, looking onward to that time, gives utterance in the next verse to the righteous intercession of Immanuel against the far-extended conspiracy of wickedness. “Awake to visit all the nations." Such is the call of the Spirit addressed to Jehovah, the God of hosts, the God of Israel. The language of verse 6, repeated at verse 14, seems to describe the unhallowed eagerness of the armies of the beast, when, in the evening of man's day, they shall be found beleaguering the city of Jehovah's name.
Verses 7-10 contrast the moral features of the conflicting parties. Carnal self-confidence and atheistic hardness of heart are arrayed, with all the appalling accompaniments of overwhelming physical force, against the small remainder of the house of Jacob. But there is confidence and hopeful rejoicing on their side. God will act. His name is committed in this controversy. The rights of His anointed are to be asserted, and the truth of His Covenant to be maintained. “The God of my mercy shall prevent me." There is a mercy which remains in sure reserve for those who, though long reckoned as enemies, because they refused the gracious message of the Gospel, are still beloved for the fathers' sakes, and to be remembered with an everlasting kindness when the days of their warfare shall come to their appointed end. The Lord will have His enemies and theirs in derision in that day .
With respect to the following verses (11-15) the language presents some difficulties. In the fifth verse he had said, "Awake to visit all the heathen; be not merciful to any wicked transgressors." Like many other Psalms of kindred tone, the one before us seems to present a twofold view of the actings of God. First, as the Judge of all the world, He visits the transgressions of the nations generally -avenging Himself as the Holy One upon sinners and their ways. Secondly, He acts in fulfillment of covenant promise, as the Deliverer and Avenger of the people which He calls His own.
The manner of visitation seems to be referred to in the present passage. There is the actual destruction of all who are found in hostile array against the citadel of Zion. There is, moreover, the total abasement of Gentile pride, the complete subduing to vassalage under Jacob of those who had lorded it over them, in the wanton insolence of power, while they lay under the Lord's rebuke. As the herdmen and vinedressers of the restored nation, they will be a perpetual memorial to the people of Immanuel of what strength it was that had humbled them beneath their feet (verse 11). The broken and dispersed remainder of the nations, on the other hand, will thus learn and witness to the ends of the earth that God in very deed is King in Jacob (verse 13).
The Psalm closes with a sweet strain of anticipative gladness—the joy of the morning when, in unclouded brightness, the Sun of righteousness shall shine with renovating power upon the ancient desolations of Jacob. The God of his mercy will be the staff of Israel's confidence in that day. He will be known in the palaces of Jerusalem as a refuge and an everlasting praise.
Psalm 60
THE title of this Psalm relates to an incident of which there is no distinct historical notice in the Bible. It may, therefore, be disregarded, and we may consider the Psalm in its purely prophetic character.
Its general drift is very clear. There is a recognition on the part of the afflicted people of the hand of God in all the national calamities. He is confessed in His dealings.
They humble themselves under His mighty hand (verses 1-3). We do not find any express mention of sin as the moving cause of the breaches in the Lord's inheritance. It is to be remarked, in reference to this, that the covenant name of Jehovah does not occur; nor even have we the expression because He knew His people “our God," though it is the cry of His people that goes up. God, whose name had been set upon Israel, had been displeased. He had broken the land and showed His people hard things. The heathen saw it, and their strength revived. In the prostration of Israel there seemed to pass away as a cloud their former dread, and their very remembrance of Jehovah. They were bold to invade again His land, and to vaunt themselves in the strength of their own power, when the people who bore that name upon their banners proved palpably inferior in might to the nations whose boast was of their idols and themselves. God's name was had in contempt by the uncircumcised through the diminishing and discomfiture of His people. Faith recognizes this. The nation is broken; the power of the enemy is round about them, and the waters seem ready to overflow even to the neck.
But the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him. A banner is held fast in the hands of the believing remnant whose trust is in God. His name who is the God of promise will be openly displayed by such as continue in His fear (verse 4). Of old that banner was set up, when in the wilderness Jehovah vowed a conflict of extermination against the haters of His own; and with Him there is no change, Nor will He abandon finally the name of His holiness to the derision of the heathen. What He had done in Israel He had done because of that name—because He knew His people, and by His very discipline would bring them more effectually to a knowledge of Himself. The vision of mercy might seem to linger in its fulfillment, but His counsels from of old are faithfulness and truth. In those is continuance, and they shall be saved. He will arise for His own name and show Himself to be their God.
In the fifth verse the ground of the ancient mercy is stated. “That thy beloved,"etc. “He loved the people." From Israel's childhood He had loved him, and had called His son out of Egypt. "Jacob have I loved," is the un-repented acknowledgment of the Rock that begat him. It is thus that the Spirit of Christ here takes up the claim of the nation as the destined vessel of God's praise among the families of the earth. He will save them with His own right hand.
Verses 6-10. God had spoken in His holiness. Faith praises magnificently the word of God in what follows. As He had said, so would it surely be. The inheritance which God had sworn to give should surely be divided by Him to whom the promises were made. The Heir of promise is Jehovah's Christ, who will assert His dominion in the appointed time. The once dried root of Ephraim shall send forth shoots of freshness and of strength The God who has cast him away to be a wanderer among the nations shall gather him again. The land of Joseph shall be blessed. The ten thousands of Ephraim and the thousands of Manasseh shall cover the fair land of their inheritance, whose glorious beauty shall no more be as a fading flower, because the dew of Jehovah's blessing shall no more be withheld.
The fruit of the fruitful will then be found to be in God, and not in man. The Maker of the blessing will be rejoiced in by the wise-hearted receivers of His favor: for the long-enduring hardness of the stony heart shall then have been taken away, and a new heart, full written by the finger of the God of truth and grace, will be worthily indicting in the children of the covenant the praises of their God and of their King. Ephraim is yet to be the strength of His head, who will crown Himself with the chosen nation of His praise The Lawgiver, whose word will be heard and obeyed to the utmost coasts of the earth, finding everywhere obedience, whether willing or constrained , shall have His seat in Judah. Christian faith already rejoices in Him who numbers among His titles that of “the Lion of the tribe of Judah." In that day the earth shall know Him as her only Governor and God. It will be full then of His praise. The hands of Judah will be sufficient for Him in that day. Moab shall be smitten, and Edom be for a possession, when the Star of Jacob shall arise, for whom dominion is ordained.
The actual conquests of the son of Jesse, which paved the way for the peaceful accession of the mighty and undisputed scepter of Solomon, doubtless warmed the heart of the sweet singer of Israel with joyous exultation in the God of his own deliverance.
But being a prophet, he had not only a tongue of utterance to speak of things to come, but probably, as one deeply versed in God, he perceived the future bearing of this noble strain. He knew that firm dominion could rest with Him alone who is intrinsically just.
In verse 11 we have the recognition, on the part of the nation, of the lesson which they had found it hard to learn. But it will be thoroughly understood by them in that day. They will feel and know, as well as confess, that flesh is indeed grass, and of no profit. They will cease from man, whose breath is in his nostrils. The shout of a king will then once more be heard among them. According to the ancient deliverances, so will the arm of the Lord be bared for their defense. It is He that shall tread down the enemies of His name, and exalt the humbled people to inherit His own land.
Psalm 61
A TRULY blessed Psalm, full of richest comfort to the tried spirit of Christian faith, as well as deeply interesting in its prophetic bearing. In the latter point of view it seems to stand related to the two Psalms immediately following.
It is a cry of faith, seeking to God, not as to one unknown, but as a shelter and defense already known and proved in former trials (verse 3); confided in, therefore, and waited on for sure deliverance, while the heart's heaviness is great because of manifold temptations (verse 2).
I recognize in the second verse the voice of the Spirit of Immanuel, uttering, in the broken-hearted remnant, the prayer of remembrance, when from the dark and distant places of the earth into which the nation had been scattered for its iniquity they shall turn again to the Rock of their strength. Calling to mind the ancient deliverances, they shall turn as prisoners of hope to the stronghold—to the name of the mighty God.
The latter verses connect the expected deliverance with the glory of Jesus as the anointed King, under whose scepter alone the united tribes of the Lord's inheritance will be settled, in the quiet resting-places reserved for them, in the day when the reproach of their widowhood shall be taken away. That King's life shall be prolonged indeed; for Christ, being risen from the dead, dieth no more. Mercy and truth, promised of old to the fathers, and eternally fulfilled in Jesus, shall keep abidingly upon the throne of His dominion the anointed Minister of Israel's peace.
Looking at the Psalm more practically, we find its keynote in the second verse—"Lead me to the Rock that is higher than I." Christian faith may find itself severely tried. God tries it purposely; Satan, again, tempts it: but the heaviness with which the soul of a believer may become acquainted in the secret exercise of his spirit before God tends in its results to more abundant joy in Him. The end of God, in dealing with those who are not bastards but sons, is to acquaint them more perfectly with His own way—to render them more wisely conversant with Him as a Savior God.
While any lurking root of pride, or any un-withered growth of self-righteousness remains un-judged in the soul, God cannot fully manifest Himself in Christ. The heart, when brought truly to a sense of its own helplessness, ceases from itself. The mist which surrounded it then rises, and the glory of Christ as the Rock of its salvation becomes distinctly manifest. God in Christ is found to be a present refuge. Out of weakness is the soul of the believer made strong, when simply given up through Christ into the hands of God. "Lead me." And what the Church now finds will Israel also find, when, taking words of needy yet faithful prayer upon his lips, he turns again to seek the Lord.
He will then be known as the fruitful dew which shall clothe with the beauty of Lebanon the once dry and sapless branch. Often a believer has to learn the lesson of practical dependence in a painful way. The private aims of the heart are not easily extinguished. Steps are taken and plans are formed which, if allowed to grow to their issue, would remove the soul farther than ever from the presence of God. But the Father of mercies knows how to wither these flowers of our painting, and by reducing the soul to a sense of its intrinsic poverty and weakness, to draw it with renewed earnestness of desire to the Rock which is higher than itself, to find therein its everlasting strength and joy.
A Christian is never really in a spiritual state who does not daily feel his need of coming to Jesus, who is not conscious of being daily drawn there by the Spirit of truth, as to the necessary supply of his soul's hunger, as well as the desired object of his delight. “He that eateth me shall live by me."“Without me, ye can do nothing," etc.
Hard sayings to the natural ear, but the very light and joy of the believer's inner man.
The tabernacle of God is the dwelling of His saints (verse 4). The covert of His wings is the natural refuge of His children from the presence of the enemy. Both these things are opened, in the person of Jesus, to the believer now. In the remotest dreariness of earthly circumstance, or the darkest hour of spiritual conflict, he is still a son; as such he suffers, and as such he hopes. Nor shall that hope ever make ashamed. As a King shall He dwell for ever before God, through the grace which has already made Him to be accepted in the Beloved. The Spirit who now witnesses these things shall ere long change his bodily condition from mortality to life.
Psalm 62
THE cry of suffering faith, which found its utterance in the foregoing Psalm, now rises to a calm and sober assertion of the experienced sufficiency of God. Silently awaiting (verse 1) the hour of His salvation, the sufferer for His name is able meanwhile to stand as a watchman on the high place of his defense, and to speak, with the lips of the wise-hearted and in faithful testimony, words, whether of warning (verse 10), or of comfort (verse 8), or of solemn denunciation (verses 3, 4), as a witness for God in the midst of human wickedness and unbelief.
It is a beautiful and very precious Psalm. To the Christian, under his character of a “man of God," it is of exceeding value and most abundant comfort. For it speaks the genuine language of that confidence and rejoicing of hope which is the proper portion of the man in whose heart the word of Jesus has been mixed with faith. The Rock, which in the foregoing Psalm was the object of the fainting soul's desire, is now felt to be the firm supporter of the foot of faith (verses 2, 6).
This is both the beginning and the measure of true spiritual strength. The soul that has ceased from self-trust in every shape, and terminated its wanderings in quest of peace at the cross of the Son of God, is fixed for eternity upon the Rock of salvation. The true believer knows the God on whom he waits. The dangers and conflicts which threaten him are viewed in juxtaposition to the Divine security of his defense (verses 3, 4). Craft and power, animated by relentless and perpetual hate, are evermore about the path of them that love the Lord. They have been set upon an excellency in Christ, to cast them down from which the world, the devil, and the flesh are banded in continual league. The heart that is truly being taught of God is well aware of this, and, with an ever-present consciousness of personal impotency for all good, finds watchfulness and godly fear to be the necessary companions of his daily course. Yet this wholesome dread of self and of Satan, instead of weakening his confidence in God, serves but to drive him closer to the only arm of his salvation and his strength. "I shall not be greatly moved," is the measured utterance of incipient spiritual experience, which seems to acquire a firmer and more unqualified expression (verse 6) as the soul attains, through heavy but successful conflict, the firm maturity and manhood of its faith.
But full of practical value as this Psalm appears to be to the Christian, it is plainly Jewish in its ultimate interpretation. The Spirit of Christ, who will fill the chosen witnesses of truth in the closing days of evil, seems to speak in this Psalm with more especial reference to the internal condition of the Jewish people. They will be, as it respects the mass of the nation and their rulers, in covenant with death and at agreement with hell. There is, however, a remnant left of them that fear the Lord. The Spirit addresses, apparently, this remnant in verse 8. “Trust in Him at all times, ye people ; pour out your heart before Him. God is a refuge for us." The believing remnant alone carries the sympathies of Messiah; and is regarded by Him as the nucleus of the nation which is to be wholly righteous in the day of the Lord. The rest are but as dross and tin, to be purged away by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning. The hypocrisy and wickedness of the ungodly nation seem to be referred to in verses 3, 4. The sharp sword of the Spirit rips open unsparingly the refuge of lies, while ministering words of strong consolation to the believing prisoners of hope.
The remaining verses (9-12) are full of solemn power. Flesh is laid, both root and flower, in the balance of truth, and found to be vanity. A heartfelt confession of this truth is the necessary preliminary to spiritual blessing. Power belongeth unto God. Faith learns that truth concurrently with the lesson of human impotency. But God's power is to a believer His ability to bless. The mighty power which raised Christ from the dead is the demonstration to the Christian of eternal peace.
Salvation and glory, refuge and strength (verse 7) are found and enjoyed in the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith's expectation is from Him. “God hath spoken once; twice have I heard," etc. (verse 11.) Creation was the first effect of Divine power. Its second proof is resurrection. Faith knows God ever as the living God, the producer of life out of death. The fathers knew Him thus in hope and promise. The believer in Jesus knows Him in the active demonstration of His power; but with Him also is mercy, though He render to every man according to his work (verse 2). The Christian sees no contradiction in this statement. Standing through grace in full acceptance with the Father, he knows God as the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. The work of a believer is the work of faith and love. His present life is to be passed in reverence and godly fear, because of Him who justly estimates that work . Already righteous in the Lord his Righteousness, he looks, as an heir of salvation, for a hope worthy of that righteousness. But he has, in addition, a promise of reward as a servant of Christ and of God. The joy of the Lord will be entered by the servant who has wrought his Master's will. The tenor of a Christian's mortal life will be for praise or blame at the appointed day of recompenses, even as his temporal happiness is made dependent on his personal devotedness.
What seemed once to be precious may in that day be found vile, and burn as stubble before the searching presence of Him who is a consuming fire. But He, who will thus judge in holiness every man's work of what sort it is is Himself the sure Keeper in Christ of the children of His love. They have boldness in the day of judgment, because of that love which already is made perfect and which casts out fear, that confidence and rejoicing may alone remain. How the distinct yet harmonious principles of grace and righteousness receive their illustration in Israel's history need not here be shown.
Psalm 63
A PSALM of richest value, experimentally, to the Christian whose walk is with God. Its title should be noticed. The wilderness of Judah was the scene in which those experiences were known which enabled the sweet psalmist of Israel thus to write. David was never more with God, and God with him, than in that wilderness. It was there that, while an outcast from the face of Israel, be could do valiantly for God. Jehovah's prophet had assigned him that retreat; he went there in obedience to Him. Deeply-searching trials, indeed, befell him there; but they were precious trials of a faith, which grew but the more vigorously under the healthful discipline through which it passed. Realized dependence upon God turned, on each occasion, his weakness into strength. God kept him from the hand of Saul, and led him and used him as Israel's true deliverer from the spoilers of the Philistines. Tasting thus, in the dry and weary land, the realities of Divine lovingkindness, his soul, sustained in its trial by proofs of an ever watchful mercy, and growing in the knowledge of God, is thirsting more intensely for Him.
Considered in its practical bearing on Christian experience it is evident that this Psalm applies only to those who are realizing in some degree what is expressed in the opening verse. Believers may be divided with reference to their spiritual condition into three classes. There are Christians in a decidedly careless state; there are those who, while in the main walking wisely as to their practice, are yet indifferent to the solid growth and progress of their souls in Christ; there are, lastly, some who truly walk in Him, with desire only to be well-pleasing to Him in all things, and to increase in the knowledge of God—to be sincere and without offence until the day of Christ.
It is to the last of these that the language of this Psalm applies. The world may be practically found a wilderness in more ways than one, and by other means than through the faith of heavenly things. It is the Spirit of Christ alone that finds it always such. A spiritual man having tasted Christ has tasted Divine love, and beheld in spirit the brightness of a glory which casts all perishable things into the deep shadow of death. God is desired because known. The recognition only of His saving mercy in the cross is compatible with an indifference to that knowledge of God which the Holy Ghost imparts increasingly to the partakers of the heavenly calling, as He opens in Christ the deep treasures of spiritual blessedness to the thirsty and inquiring soul.
If Christians are satisfied with getting such a view of Divine redemption as puts them in safety from the coming wrath, they are as yet incapable of thoroughly enjoying this Psalm; for it is an expression of healthy spiritual growth, of ardent desire to Godward. Calm and sober confidence, and quiet assurance of hope are the ground of support for the livelier and more positive energies of the inner man, and from whence arise, impeded as they may be by the counter working of the will of nature, the ever-growing desires of the Spirit.
God is desired. Not the knowledge merely of truth by which the mind may be interested, but that which fills the heart while it stimulates the conscience. Such knowledge is of impossible attainment apart from habitual obedience and devotedness to Christ. He will not reveal Himself to hearts that are not truly thirsting for His love. To bring the soul to that condition, and to keep it there, is the perpetual striving of the blessed Comforter in the saints. Joy unspeakable and full of glory is the present experience of the soul that waits with patience upon God (verses 3-5). Christ is to such the marrow and fatness of heavenly blessing. The watches of the night of earthly trial, now far spent, pass lightly for the man whose heart has learned the secret of true strength (verse 6). Past mercies are reviewed in proof of the faithfulness and power of God. Former experiences, both of trial and deliverance, are called to remembrance (verse 7), and found to be of active power as arguments of joy and peace. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, is the needed and appreciated stay and support of the really growing Christian. Hopeful patience fails not to result and to abound, with present joy, from looking immediately to Him.
Divine mercy, tasted here below with the keen appetite of personal need, and traced upward to its ever-living spring, is found to be better far than life. It comes from Him who is our life, savoring of Him with a reviving freshness in the soul. The lips thus fed open willingly in acceptable praises, making glad confession to the name of Jesus (verse 5). Praise, joined with prayer, is the constant occupation of a soul that is abidingly in the presence of God. Jesus found solitary places long before the dawn, to seek this solace in the thirsty wilderness of a world which knew not God. And such is now the Christian's calling; to joy in God through Jesus Christ. Finding tribulation in the world for Jesus' sake, to rejoice evermore in Him, rejoicing in Christ Jesus, and having no confidence in the flesh; watching, meanwhile, with thanksgiving in continual prayer; recognizing willingly the contrariety between the Father and the world, and wholly choosing Him. Kept thus of Him—preserved in Christ—kept by Divine power through a faith that already sees Jesus crowned with glory and honor, and looks, even now for the hour of His appearing. The world is a thirsty land to such; but godliness with contentment makes rich their souls with an exceeding gain. Meanwhile the Lord knoweth them that seek Him. Jesus is not indifferent to that which is done and suffered for His sake. He is capable of sympathy with every heart whose desire is to find and follow the footsteps of His way. He is a merciful and faithful High Priest to every believer at his need; but His friendship, in the condescending nearness of His love, is appreciable only as we are likeminded to Himself.
The Psalm has, I conceive, a prophetic reference to the suffering remnant of Jewish faith, whose hope and expectation is Messiah their King. They will suffer for His sake. In verses 9, 10 the judgment of the oppressors is described. The last verse makes mention of the King. He shall rejoice in God. The unction of superior gladness will rest on Him forever. “Every one that sweareth by Him shall glory." In principle this is now realized by those who rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. But it is properly anticipative of millennial days. The latter part of the verse has no fulfillment in the present dispensation. The mouth of falsehood is still open to blaspheme the truth; nor will it be closed until the earth be brought under the effectual sway of the King, whose girdle of majesty is righteousness and truth, and who will in that day still the voice of evil with the iron scepter of His rule.
Psalm 64
A CRY of God's elect, when persecuted for righteousness' sake, to their Deliverer and sure Avenger. The general principle stated is perfectly clear. The Psalm will adjust itself, as an experimental utterance, to the lips of Christian faith whenever brought into contact with the evil forces of the prince of this world, so as to suffer affliction for the gospel's sake; for it expresses the condition and the hope of one actually imperiled for the truth. How aptly a portion of this Psalm applies to the suffering Truth Himself in the days of His affliction, when, pierced in His spirit by lying words, He endured the contradiction of sinners against Himself, need not be pointed out.
But there is a definiteness of prophetic meaning in it which we do well to observe. Judgment and its results are stated, but in relation to this earth alone and its inhabitants (verses 7-10). It is to the remnant of righteousness, brought in the last times into close view and actual experience of the terrors of Antichrist, that the Psalm seems directly to apply. Secret chambers of Divine security are provided for such by Him who is in readiness to avenge, and who will then call upon the earth also to disclose her blood.
In verses 3-8 we have contrasted in their operation and result the guile and wickedness of man, and the truth and power of the righteous God. Man's arrow and God's arrow are compared. The tongue of man, speaking only vanity and deceit, digs in its evil diligence its owner's grave in 'the sure vengeance of God, when the day shall have come for the word of His holiness to be as a stream of brimstone to kindle into everlasting burnings the chaff and stubble of iniquity . The throat of the natural man is his own sepulcher, as well as that of his neighbor. By his own words shall he be judged. Human policy is deep (verse 6), hut its depths are of Satan, and will close over the devoted heads of all whose trust is in themselves. God's thoughts are also deep; great depths are in Him, far hidden from the search of man, but disclosed in Christ to the believer by His ever-blessed Spirit. The soul that is delighting itself in the riches of God's hidden treasure has no desire to fathom the profundities of natural iniquity. The exercised child of God knows in himself enough and to spare of the stuff that fallen humanity is made of.
His joy is to know and magnify the gracious counsels of the God of his salvation.
Meanwhile, as evil runs on in its foreseen and destined course, the arrow of God is fully prepared against the day of His great battle. All power and all judgment are committed to the hands of Jesus. He is kept as a polished shaft in the secret place of the Most High. As yet hidden in God, He is ready to come forth. He is ready also to judge. He will be as the Arrow of the Lord's deliverance to His suffering saints. He will descend as the lightning of destruction upon those whose thought is to triumph in the ways of rebellion and of sin. They have uttered marvelous words against the God of gods. They have used their tongues in hard speeches against the blessed and only Potentate, the God moreover of all grace. But their tongue will recoil upon themselves. The bitterness of its unbelieving blasphemy will turn to the condemning sentence of their own destruction from the presence of the Lord. God will shoot. Suddenly, and amid their fairest expectations of peace and safety, will the children of disobedience learn, to their fearful cost, that truth and wisdom, and power and life are only God's; that sin, and death, and judgment are their only patrimony whose father first sinned from the beginning, and that what they seemed to have, while yet the forbearance of their Judge maintained them in long patience, amid the bounties of His goodness and within the hearing of His word of grace, was never really theirs, but His. He and all His would have been theirs forever, but they received not in the love of it the truth which told them of the riches of His love in Jesus.
By nature children of wrath, they will come to their fearful inheritance through the eager madness of a will whose wisdom ever was to seek its own.
The ninth verse describes the effect of the judgment upon the residue of men. It is quite clear that the last judgment is not here meant. When His judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness. The Son of man will send, and will gather, out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them that do iniquity. The righteous shall then shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Not heavenly, but earthly results, however, are regarded in this Psalm. The upright in heart, who are mentioned in the last verse, intend, I doubt not, " the righteous nation that keepeth the truth, the proud and happy title of Israel in the day when the Lord shall have turned away their ungodliness, and revealed Himself as their abiding righteousness and glory.
Psalm 65
THIS very beautiful Psalm opens with a remarkable expression: “Praise waiteth” (or, as the margin more exactly renders, "is silent") "for thee in Zion." Zion is the chosen place of earthly worship, when God recognizes an earthly people. The Church of God is not an earthly people, but a heavenly. Their place of worship is, by faith, in the tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not man. Jerusalem is to an intelligent Christian of no more present religious value than Mecca or Medina. The Lord is not there. His name is no longer the ornament and strength of the city of solemnities. It is not the habitation of justice, for the just Lord has left it desolate. He has bared it of its beauty, and given it to be a treading of the Gentiles. Zion has been ploughed as a field, because of the wickedness of those who, while they leaned upon the Lord and said, “Is He not among us? none evil can come upon us," were filling up their sin to its fullness by the utter rejection of His truth and love in the Person of His Son. They sought to build up Zion with the blood of God's Anointed, and to establish Jerusalem by the iniquity of their own apostasy.
Yet is there for Zion an expected end of blessing and of peace. The glory of those names with which Jehovah has clothed Himself, as the covenant God of Israel, will be displayed in perfect brightness in the latter day. The stone which the foolish builders once refused, to the ruin of their building, and to their own He will build up Zion, even as He has pulled her down. But until that day arrive, Jerusalem is disowned. No acceptable praise arises thence, nor will arise until they Shall say, in the open vision of Christ's returning glory, “Blessed is He that cometh in Jehovah's name."
The two facts, first of the Lord's utter displeasure with His people for their sakes; and secondly of the sure remembrance of His covenanted promise for His Own sake, are always prominent in the mind of faith in the time of apostasy. For faith's wisdom is the truth of God. The judgment of the believer, therefore, upon existing things, is always remote from the appearances, whether of good or evil, which suggest to men, in their natural state, inferences of hope or of despondency. Faith never desponds. It cannot do so, because its habitation and defense is God. Its ruling character is hope for the same reason. Meanwhile it speaks in a language which varies in its tone, according to the topic of its immediate meditation. If thinking of man, what man is in his ways will be expressed without reserve, and in a tone of thorough self-judgment and sorrowful self-abasement. If God be simply before the view, joy and triumph will abound. Sin, when it comes before the spiritual mind, is always seen and judged in its relation to God. The song of faith is of mercy and judgment; because these are the qualities of the Divine nature which exemplify themselves in connection with human evil. What is thus generally true of faith will have a special illustration in the Jewish remnant in the latter day.
The Psalm before us is a most beautiful instance of this. There is a full recognition of iniquity, as yet un-purged (verse 3), and the effect of this in the actual depression of the nation. There is, moreover, a clear expression on the suppliant's part of personal impotency. “Iniquities prevail against me." But grace is discerned in God. "As for our transgressions, thou shalt purge them away." Such is the expectation of Israel's remnant when, with hearts made contrite by the Spirit of grace, they look for Jehovah as their deliverer. He will come, and at His second advent He will purge their sin, and so remove their shame. The known stability of Divine promise enables the heart of faith to exalt God according to the tenor of His promise, and thus to celebrate, with sweet and full notes of anticipative praise, the God of their hope according to the manner of the blessing with which they surely shall be blessed.
Praise waits silently for God in Zion. It was not so when David the king prepared to set to skilful melody this admirable Psalm. It is a prophecy, first and last, and has no other than a prophetic interpretation. The fourth verse finds its echo wherever the Holy Ghost has shed the savor of the love of Christ. It is the nation, however, who will be thus satisfied. The judgments which are to exhaust the cup of chastisement, and place its dregs in the hands of the nations as a potion of judicial death seem referred to in verse 5. But God, who will arise thus to shake terribly the earth, is yet its confidence. Messiah is “the desire of all nations." Shaking must precede His manifestation in that character; for it is in righteousness that He will judge the nations of the earth.
The latter half of the Psalm (verses 6-13) is a majestic yet lovely description of the glory of Christ, in His manifestation as the God of the whole earth, and its effects of pervading blessing upon the creature. Already the true Christian's heart experiences more or less of the fertilizing power of the droppings of Divine mercy and love. The Holy Ghost, as the revealer of Jesus, is as the dew of blessing, the springing well of refreshment to the believing soul. But what is now realized morally in the inner man, will be externally and physically displayed also in the day when the Lord shall gladden by His presence the waste places of His earthly inheritance, and shall cause Israel to blossom and bud, and to fill the face of the world with fruit. God's tokens will then be regarded in the remotest corners of the earth. All flesh shall come to Him who heareth prayer. They shall flow by nations toward the mountain of His holiness, the appointed place of His eternal Name.
Psalm 66
THIS Psalm appears to follow the last in historic succession. The events which were there celebrated by anticipation have now been actually accomplished, and their results are here announced. It is a glad yet solemn summons, addressed on the part of the preserved of Israel to the nations of the earth. They stand as the competent expounders of the right ways of Jehovah, in that they have subjectively experienced them in His wondrous dealings with themselves (verses 8-16).
It is a Psalm of comprehensive power. The main topic is the faithfulness of God in the deliverance and establishing of His earthly people, according to the power of His own righteousness In close and necessary connection with this there is opened a wide view of His dealings both in judgment and in mercy. The experience of the remnant of the nation for which Christ died, anterior to their deliverance, is reviewed, not in relation ostensibly to the sin which had produced it, but for the exaltation of the unsearchable ways of the only wise God the Savior, in whose light the facts of the national history are now discerned, to the praise of His faithfulness and grace. While, therefore, sin is implied in the recital of the Divine dealings (verses 10-12), yet it is not dwelt upon; for it is as the righteous nation, whose righteousness is Jehovah Himself, that Israel will thus appeal to the nations of the earth in that day.
Judgment is celebrated as already established in victory by the display of the power of God (verses 1-5). The day of Christ is come. His power has been made manifest, and the isles now wait for His law. In the sixth verse we have a retrospective commemoration of ancient national deliverance in its two grand crises-the redemption out of Egypt, and the entrance into Canaan. The sea and the flood (Jordan) are both mentioned. It was after the manner of the ancient deliverances that God now wrought, according to His mercies, and according to the multitude of His loving-kindnesses.
As His rod had been upon the sea, so it had again been lifted up, after the manner of Egypt, in the day of His exaltation in judgment.
Unlimited power and sovereignty are ascribed to Him who is now known and boasted in as Israel's God (verses 7, 8). The nations are called to sing His praise, with warning of the danger of rebellion; for judgment is now no longer a remote and feebly-sounding threat, which men might (as in the present day of longsuffering) treat derisively and yet remain unpunished, but God is terrible in His doing toward the children of men. He ruleth by His power. The scepter of righteousness is placed for effective administration in the hand of His Anointed.
All will sing His praise (verse 4), but not all will desire His worship in their hearts. Through the greatness of His power His enemies will submit, but with a lying homage of extorted praise. They will own no love in their hearts to Him or to His people, though kept still as a stone from any movement of revolt by the overshadowing power of His majesty. Dominion and fear will be the manifest attendants of that throne.
Verses 8-12 make mention of the great goodness of Him who is not ashamed to be called their God. The past experiences of the nation, while under His sifting and chastening hand, are remembered to His praise who had brought them out in faithfulness into the wealthy place of covenanted promise. They had stumbled, but not to a perpetual fall. God had loved Jacob. He had remembered Ephraim amid all his wanderings and backslidings. For His own name was committed in the controversy of His people.
Their sin might have determined the special character of God's dealings with them in past times; but it is His glory, as the faithful accomplisher in righteousness of elective mercy, that is the subject of this remarkable Psalm.
Verses 13-15 discover Israel in his attitude of true worship. Brought into the knowledge of the God of grace, he is thus fitted to enter into His courts with an acceptable offering. And now, satisfied with favor, and full of the blessing of the Lord, they become His witnesses of salvation to the nations who enquire for the God of Jacob. The language of the concluding verses is especially noticeable: "If I regard iniquity," etc. It is as justified and glorying in Jehovah that the seed of Israel will be known in blessing and for blessing to the nations of the earth. Zion will be redeemed with judgment, and her remnant with righteousness. It is to Jerusalem, as the habitation of justice, the mountain of holiness, that the nations will flow. The Lord, who exalted the people of old when He led them forth out of Egypt, will lift them to a yet higher eminence of blessing. They shall be known as the righteous nation. Glory will dwell in their land because of the purging of its iniquity. Thus the Spirit of Christ, regarding prophetically the people as they are contemplated in the counsel of Jehovah's peace, claims for them a moral standing according to the perfectness of that which in Christ will constitute the blameless righteousness of Israel in the coming day, even as it is now the boast and glory of the Church.
Psalm 67
A SWEET anticipative ode of millennial blessedness, the theme of which is the return of God in gracious power to His people as the condition of the earth's effectual settlement and joy. It is fragrant with Christ as the desire of all nations. Israel, filled with a zeal which is according to knowledge, desires to spread abroad the name and the salvation of God, that the ends of the earth may fear Him.
The new heart being given, they are no longer haughty because of the holy mountain, but eagerly desirous of the earth-pervading worship of the blessed God, that His way may be known upon earth, l His salvation among all nations (verse 2). Praise then would go up to the only God from the divers peoples of the world (verse 3). The earth, made glad by the establishment of truth and righteousness in the place of dominion, should be filled with the knowledge of His glory who is the "King of nations," though His throne be set for judgment in Jerusalem, the city of His choice.
The Psalm most beautifully illustrates the apostle's argument where, having shown that the fall of Israel was in the mystery of God's grace the riches of the world, he foretells a yet more abundant result in Gentile blessing from their restoration. The sullen unbelief, the proud, contemptuous hatred, with which while the veil is on their hearts they still refuse the testimony of Gentile mercy in the gospel, will be changed to the ready and persuasive declaration of His praise among the remotest inhabitants of earth, in the day when with their own eyes they shall behold, and with unveiled hearts shall worship and confess the once-rejected Jesus as their Redeemer and their God.
Their seed shall then be known among the Gentiles. As priests and ministers of the Lord of peace, they will be the welcome and honored visitors of the nations, whose happiness and security will be then felt to be dependent upon the scepter of the Son of David.
No longer a foolish nation and unwise—stiff-necked and perverse, wise in their own conceits, wise to do evil, but incapable of good, boasting themselves in the law of the Lord, while their hearts revolted from His commandments —they shall then remember their ways, loathing themselves for doings which were not good. Because of the grace which has made their sin the opportunity of its mighty triumph, their hearts will be then turned wholly to the Lord. They will thus be fitted to declare glad tidings to the nations. The rich abundance of the Spirit will fill their mouths with a convincing utterance. The palpable evidence, moreover, of their physical prosperity will confirm to the incredulous the reality of their testimony that the times of refreshing have indeed arrived, and that God ruleth in Zion and to the ends of the earth. The withered staff of Jacob, reviving through the scent of living water, shall again put forth its leaf. He shall be as a fruitful tree of blessing, filling all nations with the fragrance of His increase. Deeply rooted downward in the rock of covenanted truth and grace, he shall bear sweet and apparent fruits of righteousness, to the praise and glory of Him who shall again be pleased with worship which addresses Him as Jacob's God.
The receiving of them again shall be as life from the dead.
There is a striking expression in verse 4: “Thou shalt lead (margin) the nations." God now overrules the nations in their ways, but surely they are led by another guide. There is a bridle in their jaws causing them to err. They are held and shaken in the sieve of vanity, until He come to whom the government pertains.
Verse 6 is full of deepest tenderness and sweetness. “The land shall bring forth her increase; and God, even our own God, shall bless us."It is thus that the Holy Ghost anticipates, as the spirit of prophecy, the delighted recognition, on the part of the once rebellious but now contrite nation, of that “Immanuel" whom their fathers in their blinded ignorance had crucified and slain. He is indeed in a peculiar sense their own God, and will be so acknowledged in that day.
The last verse is pointedly expressive of the dependence of the earth's full blessing upon the restoration of Israel. To force a Psalm of this kind into an application to the present dispensation' of elective grace and of expected judgment, seems little less than an act of violence to the testimony of the Holy Ghost.
Psalm 68
THE argument of this magnificent Psalm is contained in the first three verses. It is a grand and lofty celebration of the majesty of God, on the part of the people who are instructed in His praise, as the sanctified vessels of His mercy. The discomfiture, in righteous judgment, of the enemies of God is according to the same mighty power of holiness and truth which establishes in His presence the acceptable people of His choice with an exceeding joy (verses 1-3).
It is superfluous to insist here on the Christian's right to take such praise upon his lips; but what is before us is clearly a song of redeemed Israel, extolling the Rock of their salvation in a full recognition of the Divine glory of His person, and in the conscious enjoyment of strength and power (verse 35) through the grace which has exalted them from their low estate, bringing them out of darkness into His marvelous light, to utter His eternal praise.
The true basis of all this blessedness, and consequently the key-note of the nation's praise, is to be found in verse 18. It is the discovery that He who had hidden His face from Jacob, and who seemed to have forsaken His heritage forever, had met and conquered the enemy of their peace in His own strength—working out their salvation and glory by means of their very rebellion against Himself, when they knew Him not, and turned His glory into shame.
This Psalm is not free from difficulties of interpretation, both verbally and in other respects, but it is very full of precious matter, which is appreciable by every true lover of the Lord.
Verses 4-6. The hearts of God's people are here awakened for His praise by the mention of His name of covenant blessing, and a declaration of His acts of faithfulness and truth. Believers are now exhorted by the Spirit to let the word of Christ dwell in them richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in their hearts to the Lord— making sweet melody to His name in hearts which understand His praise. And in the coming day of restitution, when Israel's silent harp is once more tuned, that praise will find its just expression in such words as these. They will answer each other, as in days of old, with timbrels and sweet utterances of triumphant thanksgiving, when the name of Jehovah is again exalted in holiness as the Deliverer of His people, whom He has brought again, (verse22) from Bashan, from the depths of the sea. They will extol Him who rideth with chariots of salvation through the wilderness, to make Himself a lasting name. There seems to be a reference here, not only to the ancient deliverance, but also to the advent—first, in gracious humiliation, when He came only to be rejected of His own; and secondly, in a power and ostensive glory which all flesh will see—of Immanuel, the Hope of Israel. The following verse contains, besides the general ascription of mercy and tender loving-kindness which the words import, an especial allusion to the condition of, the nation in the weary days of its widowhood and orphanage.
He was doubtless their Father, though Abraham were ignorant of them. They had been as fatherless and destitute, and their inheritance was turned to strangers, but tender mercy had been found for them in God; for Ephraim was still a dear son, a pleasant child, in the bowels of Divine compassion, though the God of truth might have to speak against him while he went on frowardly in the way of his heart. Jerusalem had long borne the reproach of her widowhood. A barren womb and dry breasts had marked the term of Jehovah's divorcement of His people, when for their iniquity they became strangers to the God of their fathers. But He, who judges in righteousness, has now proved Himself mighty to save in grace. For a small moment He had forsaken, but with everlasting kindness has He turned again to revisit with abounding mercies the former desolations, and to turn the shame of barrenness to the song of fruitful blessing in His land.
“God setteth the solitary in a house: He bringeth forth the captives into prosperity: but the rebellious dwell in a dry land" (verse 6). The bearing of this verse upon the fortunes of Israel is clear. Its general application to the Divine dealings with man, both in grace and judgment, is equally so.
Verses 7-16. We have now a condensed recital, in language of surpassing power, of the mighty acts of Jehovah, the God of Israel, as the God of His people's mercy. The Egyptian deliverance, the first conquest of Canaan, the subsequent judicial degradation of the nation, and its ultimate restoration in grace, seem all to be comprehended in this very beautiful yet difficult passage, which concludes with the glorification of the hill of God as the chosen and lasting sanctuary of His name.
Verses 17, 18. The contrasted displays of the Divine glory, first in the array of majesty and terror on Mount Sinai; and secondly, in the triumphant ascension of God, who had been manifested in flesh, are presented in these verses. The identity of Him who, from the low place of His self-chosen humiliation, ascended on high and received gifts for men, with the Lord of all power and might, who had descended to the summits of Sinai among the many thousands of His angels, is clearly seen. God had surrounded Himself with countless hosts of angelic beings.
Himself a consuming fire, He had made for His pleasure, and to be the instrumental agency and just expression of His holiness and power, the angels who excel in strength. “He maketh His angels spirits, His ministers a flame of fire." They are the swift messengers, the apt and ready ministers of His commands. They hearken to His word, obeying that which has created, and which still upholds them. But power and majesty are not the only attributes of God. Truth and grace are the two great constituent principles which form the Divine character, whose name is Love. The angels are no strangers to the love of God. His own elective will has kept their myriads in their place unfallen. He takes pleasure in the strength and glory with which, in sovereign goodness, He has clothed them for His praise—for they are His ministers, rays of the great Light of His omnipotence; and what He is, as the Almighty, is reflected by these ready servants of His will.
But the love of God has set itself supremely, not on angels, but on man. The incarnation of the Son was the astonishing but ill-requited evidence of this. His death on the cross was the mighty and convincing proof of its reality. God thus commends to us His love.
The blessed result of this finishing of love is the sending forth into the justified vessels of His mercy the Spirit of holiness and truth, the Spirit of the Son, crying, Abba, Father. God has prepared Himself a dwelling. The once rebellious children of wrath become, by the power of His effectual calling, living stones in His building. “The rebellious, “in the present passage, mean, I doubt not, the nation. The words will, of course, apply far more widely; but the characteristic title of Israel, as under the law, is here placed in contrast to the grace which, in its blessed effect, will enable the just Lord to return with mercies to the long-deserted seat of His earthly kingdom. The word of holiness, which has denounced woe to the rebellious children, and laid Jerusalem in the dust of desolation for her iniquity; has also spoken good things in promise concerning the nation of His un-repented choice:" I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him," is a promise which will have its sure fulfillment in due time Jerusalem shall again be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city, when all her children shall be taught of the Lord; when they who once were" a seed of evil doers "shall be" all righteous; when "they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." The Lord, who shall establish them in righteousness, will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever, in the place, never more to be polluted, of His throne.
Verses 19-23. Praise is here sung with understanding to Him who is now known among them as their God—the God of salvations. To Him belong the issues from death.
Fully will the remnant of Israel appreciate this last truth, when they sing the praise of the Deliverer who shall have recovered them as it were out of the jaws of the lion. The Christian tastes the sweetness of both these precious truths. His God is verily a God of salvations. His life is a continuous proof of the faithfulness and sufficiency of the God of all grace, the Father of mercies-of the ever-saving power of Christ. Christian life is a witness of deliverances past, present, and to come. It is, however, Israel's national deliverances which are properly in question here.
Verses 24-27 describe the glory of His rest who is the King of Jacob, reigning before His ancients gloriously. The people are called upon to bless Him in their festal congregations. Some of the tribes are named by a synecdoche for the nation. Adonai is to be blessed from the fountain of Israel The land which is called by the name of the Lord will be filled with His praises in that day.
Verses 28-31. We have now the importunate expression of prophetic faith which gives no rest to the God of Israel until He establish and make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. God had commanded strength for Zion. He had founded it in His un-repented purpose, and the time was come for the fair colors of these foundations to be seen and admired of all nations. But the day of decision must first establish the fame of His glory as the God of judgment to whom power belongeth.
It will be out of Zion that His terrible voice will be uttered in that day. For it will be the time of the Lord's vengeance—the vengeance of His temple, wherein the abomination of desolation had been suffered for a moment to appear. That temple will be again purged and restored, and the latter glory of the house will be greater than the former. Because of that temple kings of many nations will bring costly gifts of homage to the Lord of all the earth. Egypt and Ethiopia will promptly own the right of that dominion, whose seat will be the re-erected city of the King of kings.
Verses 32-35. The kingdoms of the earth will sing unto God; they will ascribe strength unto Him. In verse 34 the heavenly glory of Christ, according to its manifestation in and with the Church, appears to be involved.
His excellency is over Israel, and His strength is in the clouds" (margin, heavens). Assuredly His glory shall cover the heavens, when the earth is filled with His praise. Creation waits with groaning for the manifestation of the sons of God.
It is, however, the glory of Jesus as the mighty One of Jacob that is the true subject of this Psalm. He is to be known as the God of Israel. His terrible majesty will be feared from thence, when His fame is spread over the face of the world. He is their God—the God of their salvations. He will dwell among the nation for whose sake He died, for whose sake also He ascended on high, after having gotten for them the everlasting victory.
He had wrought thus the work of their peace, all unprofitable and rebellious as they had been to Him, who had borne them from the womb, and carried them from the belly, in the faithful compassions of His truth; for He remembered that His name was their covenant of life, and that their name was to be to Him as a chief ornament of praise.
The end of this beautiful Psalm is worthy of its beginning. Happy they who, even now, because they know Him, in whom all the promises of God are yea and Amen, can enter anticipatively into the triumph of that day. It is His; it is therefore ours who believe; for all that the Father hath given unto Him as Heir of all, He hath given unto us. It is the manner of the Father's love in Him to know us, and in Him to bless us, and with Him to entitle us as sons and heirs of God. To Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.
Psalm 69
A STRIKING contrast is presented in this Psalm to the one immediately preceding. It is a deeply touching portraiture of the suffering Son of God in the midst of the blinded seed of Abraham who hated Him without a cause. But it contains much more than this. It is not only a record of the matchless personal grief of Jesus, and a memorial of judgment in righteousness upon the nation of His adversaries; it has' a clear prophetic bearing also on the lowly and sore-broken remnant of that people, whom the Lord has ordained for deliverance as His prisoners (verse 33), when He will both loose the bonds of their iniquity, and change the cup of trembling from their hands to those of their pitiless oppressors.
The salvation of Zion, and the safe inheritance of the cities of Judah (verses 35, 36) by the restored earthly people of God, is the limit of prophetic vision in this Psalm. But as its main subject is the Suffering and dishonored Christ, its scope to the believer is wide and full indeed, as well as infinitely precious.
The Psalm opens at the hour of the sore amazement and overwhelming distress of Jesus, when, in the solitude of his un-pitied grief, He waited still for God, who seemed to tarry long in appearing to His help.
Verses 1-4 express the pure sorrow of Him "who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth." They were His enemies wrongfully; but His cry was unto God. He suffered at His will. The truth and holiness of God were the reasons of necessity which led the obedient Sufferer into the place of affliction. It was at the hands of man that He endured His grief; but it was without cause as it respected Him, They requited Him evil for good, and hatred for His love. Thus, while appealing from the wrong judgment of men to Him who knew the pure depths of His perfect heart, and delighted in the spotless holiness of His way, He lifts up no voice of contention in the street. "Then I restored that which I took not away." Man's robbery of God must be compensated by the gracious self-devotion of the Just One. His cause was committed to Him that judgeth righteously.
Verses 5-9 connect the sufferings, of Jesus with the mystery of Divine mercy, which is' in clue time to accomplish thereby the ends of deliverance and blessing towards those whose distinctive hope is in the God of Israel, not less than for the Church, which is the present remnant according to the election of grace. There is, first, the direct appropriation of the sin and folly of His people as His own. It is confessed as such on the part of the Sufferer. What He realized on the cross as the Substitute of His people, He is here anticipatively contemplating as His own. Enemies were about Him, more in number than the hairs of His head, but His thoughts were on the hour for which He had come into the world, and His desire is toward them that seek the name of His God. There is a wonderful tenderness and beauty in the order of these verses, where intercession for His own is so intimately blended with the pouring out of His wearied yet willing spirit. He had suffered reproach for the name of God: so would they also in their time and measure, and He thinks of them in His intercessory pleading with Jehovah: “Let not them.... be ashamed nor confounded for my sake" (verse 6). Meanwhile His heart is rudely bruised. No sweet taste of natural charity came unalloyed to His enjoyment. He was a stranger to His brethren, and an alien to His mother's children. The consuming zeal of His Father's house estranged Him from the men whose thought was not for God, but for themselves.
Verses 10-21 disclose yet further the dark passages of pain and sorrow through which the blessed One held on His way in patience, till the full measure of the Father's will should be attained. Himself overflowing with perfect grace and patient mercy towards His people, He was surrounded on every side by those whose hearts gathered, the more mischief and envy in proportion to the abundance of that light of life and healing which shone on them from the person of the Sun of righteousness and truth. Men and Satan searched and tried Him. They watched for His halting; but they found, instead of sin, the clear shining of Divine holiness, which drove them back confounded and abashed.
Yet before God He took upon Himself the iniquity of us all. This confession of sin was the secret of Divine love, hidden and undiscovered until made manifest by the preaching of the Gospel of the God of peace. Jesus had come into the world to undertake for His people, to be the Captain of their salvation. It was for the children's sake that He had taken flesh. But He wrought, and suffered, and overcame, in the strength and according to the will of the Father. He lived and died in obedient dependence upon Him. Hence He prayed, committing Himself and His work unto Him whom He honored as His God. He was the Servant of Jehovah, to bring Jacob again unto Him. And Jacob will yet be brought, though His work seemed frustrate and His labor vain, when they, for whose sakes He was born into the world, refused and thrust Him far away, making haste to shed wickedly His precious blood.
But His prayer was upon God in an acceptable time (verse 13). Amid the maze of ever-growing sorrow and affliction, He turns to Jehovah as to the God of His mercy.
The author and exemplar of His people's faith, He puts His trust in the promise of the faithful God. His hope of deliverance was the “truth of Jehovah's salvation." The keys of Divine mercy to usward were hidden in Jesus; He died to place them in the Father's hands, to enable Him to manifest Himself as the God of all grace. The mercy which He claimed in the day of His distress should be shown to Him in righteousness, when His obedience had been ended at the cross. God, who raised Him from the dead, and gave Him glory, is the eternal witness of His truth.
The climax of His suffering is stated in verses 19-21. His heart was broken by reproach. He had been sent, and had come as the willing Messenger of Divine love, to heal the broken-hearted. The Lord God, who opened His ear morning by morning to hear as His disciple, had given Him a tongue which flowed with pure words of grace and quickening power into the wearied ear. But He was as a proverb of derision to them that sat at ease. He was the song of the drunkards, who had no care for the affliction of Joseph; whose inward parts were extortion and excess, while they chose chief places at their feasts of iniquity. With deep and mournful power do these verses testify the reality of the blessed Sufferer's tender sensibilities as the Man of sorrows. “I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none." Even where the spirit was willing, the flesh was all too weak to bear one hour's watching with His grief.
Verses 23-28 have, I think, a double application; first, to the nation in its rejection of the Son of God in the flesh, and secondly, to the antichristian oppressors (perhaps the nation in its reception of the beast may more especially be contemplated) who in the end shall persecute and abhor the faithful remnant which will be found cleaving to the Lord amid the general apostasy.
The expression “thy wounded" seems to apply to the latter. The quotation of verse 25 of this Psalm in connection with Psa. 109:8, where application is made by Peter of both passages to the case of Judas, does not affect the general interpretation of the context. Judas was himself a type and specimen of the ungodly nation. As, in the treachery of their hearts, the people whom Jehovah had fed with the multitude of His loving-kindnesses—bringing them near to Himself, and making His goodness to pass in abundance before their eyes, had betrayed Iris name, and sacrificed His truth to the idols of their vanity— so in a yet more fearful manner had the son of perdition acted in selling for a bribe of covetousness the Lord of truth and grace. The unspeakable vileness of sinful flesh is presented in its quintessence in the person of Judas. The nation and its rulers saw and hated both Jesus and the Father; Judas also saw, and seemed to love. He heard and followed Jesus. He was His companion, and a ministering instrument of the grace and truth which flowed from Him. He was in the secret of His person, and was the trusted steward of God's little flock.
He kept the bag; but in heart he was a thief. The covetousness which formed the root of his character bore as its fearful fruit destructive treason against the Lord of life. For a very little sum he sold God's Christ to death, although he knew full well the manner of his sin. That he was deceived by Satan is true; but the entrance of the deceiver into his heart was by the avenue of his ruling natural lust. Nor is fallen nature ever intrinsically better. The believer learns this truth partly in his own experience and personal conflict. He learns it fully only in the cross of Christ.
With verse 25 may be compared the Lord's address to Jerusalem. The latter verses of the Psalm are full of the expression of proper Jewish hope. The joy of the risen Christ is contemplated (verses 29, 30), but in connection chiefly with the glorification of the God of Israel, the builder of Zion. Still, heaven as well as earth shall praise Him (verse 34). The Church has her rich portion in the world's great jubilee of millennial blessedness. But it is the city of David that is the prominent object in the present scene, “They that love His name shall dwell therein." But the city shall itself be known by His memorial in that day of joy.
Psalm 70
A PSALM of kindred tone to the last. If compared with the latter part of Psa. 40, a great similarity of expression will be apparent. It is a prayer of faith to the God of known deliverance (verse 5). Its application to the suffering Messiah is obvious; but, perhaps, it is to the afflicted people of His name that it more fully refers.
It is a Psalm “to bring to remembrance." As such, it will suit appropriately the lips of those whose hearts will be full of sore mourning and of earnest supplication in the day of their distress. Intercession (verse 4) as well as prayer abounds. There is a full expression of confidence in God, while the severity of present suffering moves an urgent appeal to His faithfulness. That His name should be magnified by the saved and satisfied vessels of His mercy, is all the desire of the poor and needy, yet hopeful suppliant.
Tried Christian faith, which looks for the promise of the God of peace, enduring meanwhile with patience of hope, may find a sweetly sympathetic and encouraging response in this short but interesting Psalm.
Psalm 71
THERE is no title to this Psalm. In its first intention it may have expressed the experience of David, under the acute afflictions which befell him in old age, in connection with Absalom's rebellion. Its value to the Christian, as a just expression of personal experience and desire, will be according to the circumstances of his actual position while a partaker of the afflictions of the Gospel.
The Psalm is one of great beauty and power in whatever light it is regarded. But it is especially so when viewed (which is, I believe, its true prophetic meaning) as a descriptive testimony by the Spirit of Christ of the condition, the prospects, the distresses, and the hopes of Israel, the people of Immanuel's kindred as concerning 'the flesh.
A strong resemblance will be remarked by the attentive reader between much of the language of this Psalm and that of Psa. 22 While, however, this is so, there are many expressions which forbid an exclusive appropriation of the Psalm before us to Messiah. On the other hand, its language is everywhere capable of the most direct application to the nation, as the subject of God's varied dealings in His faithfulness and truth. I believe it to be a prophetic expression of the heart's desire of Israel, when, in the old age of his varied and eventful life of vanity, he shall turn finally, with true desire, to the Lord. There is a crying to God for deliverance, the righteousness of Jehovah being urged as the sure ground of appeal (verse 2). This is always the language of faith. There is, moreover, a remembrance of His covenant of mercy-His commandment of salvation (verse 3). But the cry appears to be sent up by those whose appointment it is to taste for a season the hardest rod of Divine chastisement, in the person of the Wicked One himself (verse 4). This verse seems to connect the Psalm generally with the particular experience of the faithful remnant of the circumcision in the day of Jacob's trouble.
The verses which follow are very full of meaning. Verses 5-8 are surely applicable to Jesus in His earthly days. Their present bearing is, however, not on Immanuel Himself, but on His kinsmen after the flesh. The day-spring of Israel's youth was lovely with Divine favor. The nation was wonderful from its beginning, when God brought them out of Egypt to be the people of His praise. But Israel had forgotten the Lord, and had provoked His Holy One to jealousy.
The chastisements which came upon that people because they bore His name, had made them a wonder among the Gentiles after another sort. But faith looked through the darkness of Jacob's trouble, to the sure mercy which would in due time rejoice for their sakes against judgment. In verse 11 we have the grounds upon which the persecutors justify their oppression: “God hath forsaken Him." But it is not so. They who thus express the evil desire of their hearts know not that God has established them for the judgment, and ordained them for the correction of His own. His people shall not die; for His covenant is with them both of life and peace. He will break and cast finally away the rod of His anger, when He has remembered for them His promise of the sure mercies of David.
Verses 14-19. The song of Moses had been sung by the people who fell afterwards by judgment in the wilderness. God regarded not the generation in whom there was no faith to know His ways, and who abode not in His covenant. But a mightier deliverance remains to be accomplished for the children of the covenant, upon whom the elective love of God rests steadfast for the fathers' sakes. It will be celebrated in another, a new song—the song of Moses indeed, but likewise of the Lamb. That nation's end will be yet more wonderful than its beginning. Light and glory will fill and beautify the quiet evening of Jacob's troublous day. Salvation and rest are ordained to be the close, in peace and honor, of the many centuries of wandering and shame which have been the sorrowful meat of the rebellious house.
From the dust of weakness and affliction Zion will be bidden to arise, and put on strength and beauty, when the time shall have come for the Sun of her righteousness to shine forth. Whereas they have endured the long and heavy burden of Jehovah's indignation, because of the hardness of their hearts, they shall find in that day another heart within their breasts. They shall no more go about to establish their own righteousness and justify their ways. They shall see the living truth in Jesus when the veil is taken from their hearts: with contrite spirits they shall submit themselves to the righteousness of God, and delight their souls in the rich abundance of His grace. Their tongues will then be loosed to speak His praise, and to show forth the perfection of His way. Israel had ever been Jehovah's witnesses. In their triumph and in their after dispersions they had alike exemplified His truth. Even in despite of their own folly and perverseness God had glorified His name through them, while they were but an occasion of His dishonor in their ways. And now yet once again, and that forever, they will be reinstated in their place of honor, as worthy expounders of the ways of God to men. They have been a foolish nation and unwise. Their strength of manhood has been withered for their sins; but the grey hairs of Jacob will keep, and his lips will utter, the true sayings of wisdom. The beautiful garments of Christ will be upon those who shall have been brought by the sore stress of famine and misery within the better covenant of grace, and who will rest under the manifested scepter of Him whom God has exalted to be a Prince and a Savior, to give repentance unto Israel, and remission of sins.
Verses 20-24. These verses are a very sweet expression of the wise-hearted joy of the restored people, when in the safe enjoyment of the fair fruits of promise, they will survey with wonder and delight the incomparable ways of Divine mercy and truth. As yet the nation is spiritually in its tomb. But it is not always to be there. God will open the graves of His people, and will bring them up into the light of life. His mountain shall bear men, and His cities shall be inhabited. An exceeding great army will arise from Jacob's dust. Dispersion and variance shall be no more remembered, when Judah and Ephraim are again united as one nation, in the land which Jehovah has destined to become a praise for His name's sake among the countries of the earth. One heart and one way will then be theirs who had turned every one to his own way. For they will know the Lord. Increase and comfort will be on every side about the city and the people of the Lord's inheritance (verse 21). For they shall be as the stones of a crown lifted up for an ensign upon His land, when their face is enlightened with the light of life. The virgin of Israel will then again go forth with dance, and psaltery, and song, when the mirth of their gladness shall be acceptable to the Holy One, as the grateful offering of those whose righteousness and comeliness are the fair and lasting memorials of His own abounding grace.
He will find fragrance in the branch of His planting. He will be glorified in the work of His own hands.
Psalm 72
A PSALM for Solomon. For the figure in part—for the Divine reality in its full intent. It is a very lovely celebration of the glory as it will be manifested in “the world to come" of the reigning Christ, the great King, whose dominion is the earth and its entire fullness.
Verse 1 declares His title, and sets Him before God as the minister of His judgment, the acceptable holder of His government in righteousness. As to His title, it is twofold. He is first King absolutely; He is also the King's Son, Dominion and fear pertain to Him who is Lord of all. He is in His Divine person the living God, and an everlasting King. He is King of kings, and Lord of lords. But He is, as the incarnate fulfiller of Divine counsel, the King's Son. He is, moreover, the anointed heir of promise according to the sure covenant with David. It is with especial reference to this last title that He is regarded in this Psalm. He who is the subject of it is the Judge of Jehovah's people. “He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment" (verse 2).
Two principal points have to be considered. First, the moral glory and proper majesty of Christ, the King of righteousness; and secondly, the effects of His power upon that which is the immediate subject of His sway.
I. He is God's King. He will bear the government upon His shoulder in the name and in the fear of God. As in the days of His flesh He wrought out in gracious suffering the Father's will, so will it be to the praise of His glory that the fullness of dominion will be held and wielded by the appointed Heir of all. He is in this, as in all else, a perfect contrast to the willful king, whose throne of iniquity is to be destroyed at the brightness of His appearing. He will come to break in pieces the oppressor (verse 4), and to save the children of the needy. But it is as the binder-up of the breach of His earthly people—the fulfiller to Israel of the mercy sworn to the fathers—that He is chiefly celebrated in the present Psalm. The remnant of the nation is called collectively God's poor (verse 2.) There will be such a residue found in the land after the removal in judgment of the haughty and the despisers. Upon such He will descend as showers of revival upon the new-mown grass (verse 6). He will visit with overflowing grace and blessing the nation which shall then have attained the end of its humiliation. God's final and enduring thoughts of peace shall thus perfect and fulfill the beginnings of His mercy. David the son of Jesse looked in spirit onward to that day. It was not so with his house. But the hope of Israel was to come of his loins as touching the flesh.
This was all his salvation, as well as all his desire. With this joyful assurance in his heart he was gathered to his fathers, when, having served his generation, by the will of God he fell on sleep.
With respect to the kingdom, it is here limited to earth alone. The present Psalm is, therefore, of much less extensive scope than Psa. 8, where the subject is the Adamic dominion of Christ. Jesus is Son of David, Son of Abraham, and Son of Man. Of these three human titles, the first is the smallest, if strictly construed, though in another sense the Abrahamic and Davidical titles may be regarded as co-extensive. But neither David's throne nor Abraham's inheritance looked beyond an earthly limit. Christ's title, therefore, as David's Son, confers in itself no claim to heavenly rule. But He takes possession of the throne of David by virtue of His larger and permanent title as the appointed Heir of all things—according to the majesty of His Person, who is Lord of all—Possessor of heaven, as well as earth. The Son of Man will enter on the occupation of delegated human government in the sufficiency of a name and title perfectly Divine. The born Child of Israel's hope is Immanuel.
The Son of Judah, who is to bear the government upon the throne of David, is describable as to His Person only by such names as "Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." Divine fullness will be the known and visible supply of Israel's blessing in the great and lasting day of Jezreel. The shout of a King will be among them in that day.
It is an earthly kingdom, but a perpetual one; that is, it knows no successor in its place. With the termination of that kingdom there will arrive also the close of measured time. The earth will then itself have reached its destined end. It will have served the purposes of its creation, and will be removed by the same word that called it into being. It will disappear completely that another may be seen. All things will be made new, when God has compassed in the now existing creation the purposed glory and kingdom of His Christ. Perpetual endurance, unaffected by disturbing forces from within or from without, is here affirmed of the kingdom which the Most High shall set up under heaven. Yet the very symbols of endurance are also the tokens of intended limitation. While sun and moon endure, this reign, once entered on, will last (verses 7, 17). But neither sun nor moon abides forever. The heavens that now are will hereafter cease to be. They will depart where none can follow, at the bidding of Him whose they are, whether to garnish with beauty, or to hang with sackcloth, or finally to change them as a man puts of his garment, dwelling no longer in the curtains of that tent, because His will has chosen a newer and yet fairer habitation for His name. As touching this present creation, God has set His lights in the heavens—the lesser and the greater—for the creature's sake below. But when God's tabernacle is indeed with men, they will see Him by another light.
The heavens which now declare His glory, and the firmament which is the present witness of His handiwork, will be forgotten, with all former things, when, in the ultimate accomplishment of the written word of promise, man's full and changeless blessedness shall be attained, and God in Christ shall be his only Light.
Nothing is more expressly stated in Scripture than, first, that the Son has a kingdom; and secondly, that this kingdom has an end. Further, it is in the clearest manner declared that earthly as well as heavenly things are to be brought under His dominion. He is the Prince of the kings of the earth. Again, a time is set and limited for this kingdom. Before He enters on it He will bind the present prince of this world. A millennial bondage is assigned to Satan, during which his power over the nations of the world will be in suspense. It is while he lies deep beneath the feet of those whom now he seeks to devour that the kingdom of God's Christ on earth will bear its blessed sway.
Never has Christ yet acted openly as King of nations. Sitting on the Father's throne in parity of Divine glory, He yet expects a time when a kingdom and throne will be manifestly conferred on Him as the anointed Son of man.
That throne, and the high fellowship of its dominion, are the promised gift of Jesus' love to those who now are content awhile to suffer in the confession of His name. The nations, before whom His people have acknowledged a hope and confessed a title which the world still disallows, are to be subjected to the rule of those on whom there rests now, by the Spirit of promise, the unction of the kingdom and glory of God. The first kingly act of the returning Christ will be to clear His kingdom of offence. He will be as the lightning of God upon the assembled hosts of wickedness. But His coming is not only to redress with power the long outraged claims of holiness against sin; He will come as the Restorer of the earth. He will begin a reign of righteousness wherein creation shall rejoice. Let us now more briefly notice the second of the two points above stated.
II. The effects of the Messiah's earthly reign are largely and most beautifully described in this Psalm. Without dwelling now at length on these, some of the more important results may here be stated. There is, first, a full deliverance of the afflicted people in the destruction of the oppressor. The reign of blessedness thus inaugurated in judicial righteousness flows on in still increasing peace. The manner of this is intimated in verses 4, 12, 14. The multitudinous prosperity of Israel follows as a consequence of this (verse 16). The full effect of righteousness is felt in quietness and perfect assurance, with inward and outward peace (verses 3, 7). The nation, being established in Jehovah their righteousness, shall hear no more the alarm of war. The mountains and the hills shall bring peace. If looked to, they shall be found to bear no longer beacons of terror and tokens of approaching foes. Clothed to their summits with harvests of plenty, they shall drop sweet wine and melt with purest oil, running down in streams of increase, because of the overflowing fullness of the blessing poured forth from God's open windows on His chosen.
Violence shall be no more heard within the borders of Immanuel's land. There will be, moreover, the full and universal subjection of the nations of the earth to the scepter of David's Son (verses 8-11). “All kings shall fall down before Him: all nations shall serve Him." Willingly or unwillingly all must bow. Blessing will be known or thought of only in His name (verse 17). The whole earth will be filled with His glory and His fame (verse 19). Future Psalms will describe with richer fullness of detail the blessings of the day for which creation groans. I will now only add a remark on one or two passages which seem to demand particular notice with reference to their just interpretation.
In the eighth verse we have, I believe, an allusion to the original Abrahamic promise of the land, and its subsequent temporary accomplishment in the days of Solomon. That the expressions are capable of a wider and more general intention is clear, but the distinct and permanent fulfillment of the specific promise seems more immediately to be imported by the language of this verse. The meaning of verse 16 is not easily determined. On the whole, the English version seems correct.
The passage may refer to the multitude of Israel's physical blessings—blessings of the basket and the store—or, as I rather think, more directly to the growth of the nation itself, when, after having been brought low and made few in number, they shall again be known among the Gentiles as the seed which the Lord hath blessed.
The concluding verse is important. That purpose of God, of which the Church is the object, was no part of Divine revelation to David. A glorified Christ, reigning over Israel and the nations of the world, filled the compass of his hope as a receiver of promise and a prophet of God. His prayers were ended in the utterance of that desire. Of heavenly things, as they are now revealed in the Church by the Spirit, he had no knowledge. As a master and prophet in Israel, he spake of earthly things, and his soul entered into them as the proper objects of his hope and desire. It is interesting, and of very great practical importance, to observe and to keep constantly in view this essential difference between the callings respectively of Israel and the Church. In all this full and lovely picture of Christ's power and blessedness, heaven is the silent and unnoticed witness only of the joys of earth. It is the kingdom under the whole heaven that is here described. It is an exclusively earthly scene. He who fills and lightens it is indeed the Lord from heaven, and from thence will His glory be revealed; but the place of His pleasure is earth, and the receivers of His favor and the subjects of Nis power are nations and peoples upon earth. In the ancient house of vanity, whose rule held all beneath the sun, shall the power of truth and righteousness be set, with pervading results of happiness and peace.
The tongue of wisdom, which had striven in vain to tell the sum of human toil and sorrow, will then have happier employ in celebrating the abundant blessings of the creature's rest.