THE 22nd chapter of 2 Samuel contains David's magnificent song, and is parallel with the 18th Psalm. It is the utterance of the spirit of Christ in David, connected with His triumph over death, through the mighty energy of the power of God. (Eph. 1:1919And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, (Ephesians 1:19).) In it, as the inspired heading teaches us, David presents his praise to God for deliverance from the hand of all his enemies, and the hand of Saul particularly. He thankfully recounts the glorious actings of God on his behalf, yet in such language as at once leads us from David and all his conflicts, to that terrible conflict which raged around the grave of Jesus, when all the powers of darkness were ranged, in fierce array, against God. Tremendous was the scene! Never before, and never since, was such a battle fought, or such a victory gained, whether we look at the contending powers, or the consequences resulting. Heaven, on the one side, and hell on the other. Such were the contending powers. And as to the consequences resulting, who shall recount them? The glory of God and of His Christ, in the first place; the salvation of the Church; the restoration and blessing Of Israel's tribes; and the full deliverance of creation's wide domain from the lordship of Satan, the curse of God, and the thralldom of corruption.
Such were some of the results. Fierce, therefore, was the struggle of the great enemy of God and man at the cross and at the grave of Christ; violent were the efforts of the strong man to prevent his armor from being taken, and his house from being spoiled, but all in vain; Jesus triumphed. " When the waves of death compassed me, the floods of ungodly men made me afraid; the sorrows of hell compassed me about; the snares of death prevented me; in my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried to my God: and He did hear my voice out of His temple, and my cry did enter into His ears. "Here was apparent weakness, but real power. The apparently vanquished one became the victor." Jesus was crucified in weakness, but He liveth by the power of God." Having shed His blood as the victim for sin, He left Himself in the hands of the Father, who, by the eternal Spirit, brought Him again from the dead. He resisted not, but suffered Himself to be trampled upon, and thus crushed the power of the enemy. Satan, by man's agency, nailed him to the cross, laid Him in the grave, and set a seal upon Him, that He might not rise; but He came up out of the horrible pit, and out of the miry clay," having spoiled principalities and powers." He went down into the very heart of the enemy's dominion, only that he might make a show of him openly.
From ver. 8-20, we have the interference of Jehovah on the part of His righteous servant, set forth in language sublime and powerful beyond expression. The imagery used by the inspired Psalmist is of the most solemn and impressive character. "The earth shook and trembled; the foundations of heaven moved and shook, because he was wroth.... He bowed the heavens also, and came down; and darkness was under his feet. And he rode upon a cherub and did fly; and he was seen upon the wings of the wind. And he made darkness pavilions round about him, dark waters and thick clouds of the skies.... The Lord thundered from heaven, and the Most High uttered his voice. And he sent out arrows, and scattered them; lightning, and discomfited them. And the channels of the sea appeared, the foundations of the world were discovered, at the rebuking of the Lord, at the blast of the breath of his nostrils. He sent from above, he took me; he drew me out of many waters." What language is here! Where shall we find anything to equal it? The wrath of the Omnipotent, the thunder of His power, the convulsion of creation's entire framework, the artillery of heaven—all these ideas, so glowingly set forward here, outstrip all human imagination. The grave of Christ was the center round which the battle raged in all its fierceness, for there lay the Prince of life. Satan did his utmost; he brought all the power of hell to bear, all" the power of darkness," but he could not hold his captive, because all the claims of justice had been met. The Lord Jesus triumphed over Satan, death, and hell, in strict conformity with the claims of righteousness. This is the sinner's joy, the sinner's peace. It would avail nothing to be told that God over all, blessed forever, had vanquished Satan, a creature of His own creation. But to be told that He, as man's representative, as the sinner's substitute, as the Church's surety, gained the victory, this, when believed, gives the soul ineffable peace; and this is just what the gospel tells us—this is the message which it conveys to the sinner's ear. The apostle tells us that "He (Christ) was delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification." Having taken upon Himself our sins, and gone down into the grave under the weight of them, resurrection was necessary as the divine proof of His accomplished work. The Holy Ghost, in the gospel, presents Him as risen, ascended, and seated at God's right hand in the heavens, and thus dispels from the believer's heart every doubt, every fear, every hesitation. "The Lord is risen indeed; His precious blood is new and living wine.”
The great argument of the apostle, in 1 Cor. 15, is based upon this subject. The forgiveness of sins is proved by the resurrection of Christ. "If Christ be not raised, ye are yet in your sins," And, as a con. sequence, if Christ be raised, ye are not in your sins. Hence, resurrection and forgiveness stand or fall together. Recognize Christ risen, and you recognize sin forgiven. "But now," says the triumphant reasoner, "is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept." This settles all, The moment you take your eye off a risen Christ, you lose the full, deep, divine, peace-giving sense of the forgiveness of sins. The richest fund of experience—the widest range of intelligence will not do as a ground of confidence. Nothing in short, but JESUS RISEN.
From ver. 21-25, we have the ground of Jehovah's interference on behalf of his servant. These verses prove that, in this entire song, we have a greater than David. David could not say, “The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands hath he recompensed me. For I have kept the ways of the Lord, and have not wickedly departed from my God. For all his judgments were before me; and as for his statutes, I did not depart from them. I was also upright before him, and have kept myself from mine iniquity. Therefore the Lord hath recompensed me according to my righteousness; according to my cleanness in his eyesight." How different is this language from that of the 51st Psalm, on which we have already dwelt.
There it is, “Have mercy upon me, according to thy lovingkindness; according to the multitude of thy tender mercies." This was suitable language for a fallen sinner, as David felt himself to be. He dare not speak of his righteousness, which was as filthy rags; and as to his recompense, he felt that the lake of fire was all that he could, in justice, claim, on the ground of what he was.
Hence, therefore, the language of our chapter is the language of Christ, who alone could use it. He, blessed be His name, could speak of His righteousness, His uprightness, and the cleanness of His hands.
And here we see the wondrous grace that shines in redemption. The righteous one took the place of the guilty. "He hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." Here is the sinner's resting-place.
Here he beholds the spotless victim nailed to the cursed tree, far him; here he beholds a full redemption flowing from the perfect work of the Lamb of God; here, too, he may behold Jehovah interfering on behalf of his glorious and gracious representative, and, as a consequence, on his behalf; and that, moreover, on strictly righteous grounds. What deep peace this gives to the sin-burdened heart! Deep, ineffable, divine peace!
My reader, if you have not as yet entered into the enjoyment of this peace, let me ask you why have you not? Can you read this chapter with the knowledge of whose language it is, and hesitate, for a moment, to enter into the precious results of the work of a crucified and risen Jesus? Remember, God has left nothing undone to secure your peace; Christ has left nothing undone; and the Holy Ghost bears such a clear and unequivocal testimony in the gospel, as to the perfect salvation which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, that nothing but unbelief can stand in the way. All has been done. Precious message! may our hearts delight more and more in it, in the view of all our grievous sins.
David's song closes with a fine allusion to the glories of the latter day, which imparts to it a character of completeness and enlarged compass particularly edifying. "Strangers shall submit themselves unto me." "I will give thanks unto thee among the heathen," &c. Thus are, we conducted along a wondrous path, commencing at the cross, and ending in the kingdom. The one who lay in the grave is to sit on the throne; the hand that was pierced with the nail shall wield the scepter; and the brow that was dishonored with a crown of thorns shall be wreathed with a diadem of glory. And never will the top-stone be laid on the superstructure which redeeming love has begun to erect, until the crucified Jesus of Nazareth shall ascend the throne of David, and rule over the house of Jacob. Then shall the glories of redemption be truly celebrated, in heaven and on earth, because the Redeemer shall be exalted, and the redeemed rendered perfectly and eternally happy. We shall then look back, from amid the glories of that bright and happy day, to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, as the basis of the whole glorious fabric; and the remembrance of His dying love shall impart fervor and vigor to the song of redemption—"Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing.”
In David's last words, we learn a similar lesson. It is truly interesting to find, in the history of every servant of God, that having learned the thorough emptiness of all human and earthly resources, they have fallen back upon God, and found in Him an unfailing portion, and a sure refuge. Thus was it with him whose history we have been dwelling upon. Throughout his whole career, he had been learning that divine grace alone could meet his need; and, at the close, he gives full expression to this. Whether we look at his "song," or his "last words," the great prominent subject is one and the same, viz., the sufficiency of divine grace.
However, David's last words derive point and energy from the knowledge of God's requirements, in reference to the character of a ruler. "He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God." This is God's standard. Nothing less will do; and where, amongst the ranks of human rulers, shall we find any to come up to it? We may travel down the entire catalog of those who have occupied the thrones of this world, and not find so much as one who could answer to the two great characteristics set forth in the above comprehensive verse. He must be just, and he must rule in the fear of God.
Psa. 82 furnishes us with the divine challenge of all those who have been set in places of authority. "God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods." What does He find? Justice and the fear of His name? Ah! no; far from it. "How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked?" Such is man. "They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness; all the foundations of earth are out of course." What, then, is the resource, in the view of such a humiliating state of things? "Arise, O God, judge the earth; for thou shalt inherit all nations." The Lord Jesus is here presented as the one alone competent to fill the throne according to the thoughts of God, and the 72nd Psalm gives us a lovely sketch of what His government will be. "He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment." "He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor." “He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass; as showers that water the earth. “In short, the entire psalm must be read as a sample of the millennial kingdom of the Son of man, and the reader will perceive how entirely David's last words harmonize with the spirit of it." And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springeth out of the earth by clear shining after rain. "Truly refreshing and soul-reviving is this! And how does the heart rejoice to turn away from the dark and dreary scene through which we are passing, to contemplate" a morning without clouds." There is no morning now without a cloud. How could there be? How could a fallen race, a groaning world, enjoy a cloudless sky? Impossible, until the atoning efficacy of the cross shall have been applied to all, and the whole creation shall have entered into its full repose beneath the shadow of Immanuel's wings.
Look where you will, and clouds and darkness meet your view. A groaning creation, a scattered Israel, a broken church, perverted systems, false profession, corrupt principles—all these things tend, like the smoke of the bottomless pit, to darken the horizon around us, and obscure our vision. But, oh, how the heart bounds at the thought of the morning without clouds! Well might the Psalmist call it “a clear shining after rain." The children of God have ever felt this world to, be a place of clouds and rain, a vale of tears; but the millennial morning will put a period to all this: its rising sun will disperse the clouds, and God Himself shall wipe away all tears from their faces. Bright and happy prospect! Blessed be the grace that has set it before us, and the atoning work which has secured our title to it!
But it has been remarked, that no human office-bearer ever came up to the divine standard, as set forth in David's last words. David himself felt this. "My house is not so with God." Such was his humble, soul-subduing sense of what he was. We have already seen how fully, how deeply, how unaffectedly, he entered into the vast distance between what he was personally and the divine requirement, when he exclaimed, "I was born in sin;" "Thou desirest truth in the inward parts." His experience was the same when he looked at himself officially. “My house is not so with God." Neither as a man, nor as a king, was he what he ought to be. And hence it was that grace was so precious to his heart. He looked into the mirror of God's perfect law, and saw therein his own deformity; he then turned round and looked at God's “covenant, ordered in all things and owe," and here he rested with unquestioning simplicity. Though David's house was not ordered in all things, yet God's covenant was, and David could, therefore, say, "This is all my salvation, and all my desire." He had learned to look away from himself and his house straight to God, and His everlasting covenant. And, we may say, that just as his apprehension of his own personal and official nothingness was deep and real, would his sense of what grace had done for him be deep and real also. The view of what God was had humbled him; the view of what God was had lifted him up. It was his joy, as he traveled to the end of all human things, to find his resting- place in the blessed covenant of his God, in which he found embodied, and eternally secured, all his salvation and all his desire.
How blessed it is, dear reader, to find thus our all in God! not merely to use Him as one who makes up our deficiency, or the deficiency of human objects, but to make Him our all; to use Him as one who supersedes everyone and everything, in our estimation.
This is what we want. God must be set above all, not merely in reference to the forgiveness of sins, but also in reference to our every necessity. “I am God, and there is none else." "Look unto ME.”
There are many who can trust God for salvation who, nevertheless, fail much in the minute details of life; and yet God is glorified in being made the depositary of all our cares, and the bearer of all our burdens. There is nothing too small to be brought to Him, and nothing so small as not to be more than a match for our capacity, did we but enter into the sense of our nothingness.
But we find another element in this 23rd chapter, an element, too, which might seem introduced rather abruptly: I allude to the record of David's mighty men. This has been already alluded to; but it is interesting to notice it in connection with God's covenant.
There were two things to cheer and comfort David's heart, viz., the faithfulness of God, and the devotedness of his servants. And, in looking at the close of Paul's course, we find that he had the same springs of comfort and encouragement. In his second epistle to Timothy, he glances at the condition of things around him; he sees the "great house," which assuredly was not so with God as he required it; he sees all that were in Asia turned away from him; he sees Hymeneus and Philetus teaching false doctrine, and overturning the faith of some; he sees Alexander the coppersmith doing much mischief; he sees many with itching ears, heaping to themselves teachers, and turning away from the truth to fables; he sees the perilous times setting in with fearful rapidity: in a word, he sees the whole fabric, humanly speaking, going to pieces; but he, like David, rested in the assurance that "the foundation of God standeth sure," and he was also cheered by the individual devotedness of some mighty man or other, who, through the grace of God, was standing faithful amid the wreck. He remembered the faith of a Timothy, the love of an Onesiphorus; and, moreover, he was cheered by the fact that in darkest times there would be a company of faithful ones who would call on the Lord out of a pure heart. These latter he exhorts Timothy to follow, having purged himself from the dishonorable vessels of the great house.
Thus was it with David. He could count his worthies, and record their deeds. Though his own house was not what it ought to be, and though "the sons of Belial" were around him, yet he could speak of an Adino, a Dodo, and a Shammah, men who had hazarded their lives for him, and signalized their names by deeds of prowess against the uncircumcised.
Thank God, He will never leave Himself without a witness: He will always have a people devoted to His cause in the world. Did we not know and believe this, at a time like the present, our hearts might, indeed, sink within us. A few years have wrought a mighty change in the sphere of action of many Christians. Things are not as they once were amongst us, and we may with truth say, "Our house is not so with God." Many of us have, it may be, been disappointed; we looked for much, and, alas! it has come to little—oh, how little! We have found that we were just like others, or, if we differed in aught, it was in our making a higher profession, and, as a consequence, incurring higher responsibilities, and exhibiting greater inconsistencies. We thought we were somewhat, but we grievously erred, and are now learning our error. The Lord grant that we may learn it rightly, learn it thoroughly, learn it in the dust, in His presence, that so we may never lift up our heads again, but walk in the abiding sense of our own emptiness. The Lord's address to Laodicea may be used with profit: "Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and Miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.”
If our past experience leads us to cling more simply to Jesus, we shall have reason to bless the Lord for it all; and, as it is, we cannot but feel it to be a special mercy to be delivered from every false ground of confidence. If we were seeking to build up a system, it is well to be delivered from its influence, and to be brought to adhere simply to the word and Spirit of God, which are the appointed companions of the Church's path through the wilderness.
Nor are we, either, void of the sweet encouragement to be derived from the devotedness of one or another here and there. There are many who are proving their affection for the Person of Christ, and the high estimation in which they hold the doctrine of the Church. This is a great mercy. The enemy, though he has done much mischief, has it not all his own way. There are those who are ready to spend their strength and energy in the defense of the gospel. May the Lord add to their number,—may He also add to the vigor of their testimony; and, finally, may He make us increasingly thankful for His grace in having set before us, in His Word, the true position and path of His servants in these last days, and, also, those principles which can alone sustain us in the midst of the abounding strife and confusion. All we need expect is to be kept faithful to the end. If we are seeking to make a noise in the world, or raise a testimony, we shall be disappointed; but if we are content to walk humbly with our God, we shall have reason to rejoice, and our labor shall not be in vain.
David had thought to, do much in his day, and was sincere in the thought; but he had to learn that the will of God concerning him was, that he should "serve his generation." We, too, must learn this—we must learn that an humble mind, a devoted heart, a tender conscience, an honest purpose, are far more precious in the sight of God than mere outward services, however showy and attractive. "To obey is better than sacrifice; and to hearken than the fat of rams." Salutary words, these, for a day of religiousness, like the present, wherein divine principle is so loosely held.
The Lord keep us faithful to the end, so that whether, like those who have gone before us, we fall asleep in Jesus, or be caught up to meet Him in the air, we "may be found of Him in peace, without spot, and blameless:" Meanwhile, let us rejoice in the apostle's word to his son Timothy—"The foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are His; and, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.”