It is remarkable how individual the experience given in Psalms 32 is. The writer of it had been taken up by God, as a shepherd boy, and put on the throne. There he committed three of the most awful sins that the law of God condemned, adultery, murder, and corruption. He used the very throne to which he had been raised from the sheep-cote—the throne of Jehovah, as the place, not only for his own shame to come out to light in, but to put dishonor on Jehovah Himself.
But when his soul had passed through this process with God, he found he had gained immensely, he was thrown, not only as a poor sinner, at the feet of Jesus, but right on to that great master-thought of Godliest mercy and compassion. God said to Moses, “I will have mercy, on whom I will have mercy.” The law of Moses is like a magnificent glass, to discover whether man had really met the mind of God the Creator when a ruined creature, and if he do not get beyond the thought, “God is examining me to see how well I walk,” he does not know God at all.
Have you been in the same class David was put into? into that place where the creature is under the light of God’s eye, and knows himself there, finds all the hypocrisy and double dealing of his own nature trying to push off the mercy, which is, his portion for eternity? We must be in it one way or another because God, the Holy Ghost, makes a quotation from this Psalm when speaking of God’s principles of dealing with man, in His gospel of grace now; and it gives out the principle of blessing at God’s hand.
In Romans 4 we get Paul’s statement of God’s principle of blessing. He does not bless a man according to his works. In God’s dealing with man, He finds all the positive evil in man, and not only says, “If I am to bless you it must be without works, but the blessing is the very test of the character of the man whose works are bad. The mercy of God is the only pathway for Jew or Gentile into the favor of God.”
This is God’s declaration in His gospel, verse 1 “Blessed is the man,” &c. What do we understand by “Blessed”? The primary idea of the word is “prosperous;” and a prosperous man before God is one who knows his sins, and finds the answer to them in God. This is true of a man marked by happiness. When we look at man, not only as in time, but for eternity, there is no man so prosperous as he who says, “I have nothing but sin in myself, but all my rest is in God.” That man has something to sing of, in which—whichsoever way he turns it—he finds some fresh note of gladness and joy connected with it.
“Transgression forgiven; Sin covered”! Transgression is quite different from sin—transgression is when a person has wandered from a marked path. Sin is the principle of self-willed independence in the heart of man. David made discovery of both these things in himself, and that they did not suit the heart of the creature in the presence of God. Directly he got them forgiven and covered then he could understand what prosperity it was to find that all the wanderings might be sung of as connected with God who had forgiven them. Have you got some knowledge of having come short of the glory of God? Has God come in and said, “I have nothing to reckon to you, nothing against you?” Do you find in yourself the principle of self-willed independence? It often breaks out still in the child of God, though in a different form from David or Job. God says, “I know all about it, but I have put my hand upon it and covered it. Your ground of confidence is not that I do not know about it, but that I have judged it.” Does God know all about the transgression and the independence? Paul, all rapturous of Christ and wanting to serve Him, had to go back and learn it all, though the sins were all forgiven and covered by God. It is a searching question to put to our own soul—how far I know that, as a creature standing before God the Creator (apart from the work of redemption), there is nothing seen by God in me but iniquity—nothing fit for His presence. When the eye of God comes down on me, when I look at what my nature is, do I know what it is to say, “it is iniquity?” I ought to know it if it be the Lord’s pleasure not to impute it. He has hid it, and asks urn what I think about Christ, who bore the punishment, being in glory now, or would I rather have a good thought about myself? What a different ground for a soul to be on, to say, “I know all—nothing can ever rise and startle me at all—I know it, for it was all imputed to Him more than 1800 years ago and judged by God on the cross.”
“In whose spirit there is no guile.” This has nothing to do with guilt—guilt is the condition of a man having transgressed who has not got an answer to his sin; guile is artifice. While David was trying to patch up himself he was forgetting that it was all exposed before his people. To think that, he could try to be before God as an unruined creature, when, the man of God’s own heart, he had taken the place of a model sinner! It would not do. God says, I know all the iniquity, but I do not impute it. Why then wear any false appearance any longer? I know it all and make you know that I know it and do not impute it. A man can take his place before God, not as a guileful sinner, but knowing God as one who says, “I have mercy of my own to forgive and not to impute.” As soon as David knew of mercy he could get up and walk without any attempt to cover anything. He knew the blessedness of the man in whom there is no guile.
Verses 3,4. Often a process goes on in the mind (and a terrible experience it is) when the natural man won’t recognize God’s mercy and compassion as the ground on which he is placed and accepted before God, and is trying by artifice to pass things off and cover the heart a little better than it was covered before.
“My bones waxed old,” &c. are figures used to show the pain of the lesson David had learned. Has the Christian got to pass through that now? Not in the same way, because the first thing presented to our mind is Christ crucified, dead, and risen again for us. When I read the Romans, I find Paul learning the ruin of human nature and the creature—and through the learning of those doctrines on himself, he was put through a very deep process, and he is brought down entirely to his wits end. Then he cries out, “Oh! wretched man that I am,” &c.
People often do not see that the difficulty is not in things around, above, or below, but in one’s self. “Who shall deliver me from myself?” Has God saved me from myself? Yes. He that is identified with Christ is identified with Him in crucifixion, death, and burial, therefore, I am to reckon myself dead.
But I am not dead, you say, I find myself alive – But I have to reckon myself dead. This comes with a great struggle, because these principles are not fully established in our hearts. But the doctrine of Rom. 6 and 7 must be learned.
The way that David got deliverance was, he just simply opened his bosom and poured out all that was there! What have you got to give God? What has man got to give? One thing (though he may start at the thought) sin and sins! That is all! If ever you gave God anything that He accepted it was your sins. Give your sinful self to Him, and let Him write up death and judgment on it, and everything will come afterward. Then He will not turn from the lowest thing you can do. Nothing is too little. The first thing is to understand what our relation to God is. That is God’s thought. Do you wonder at it? There is a great deal of appearing in the best colors before man—God wants reality. If He has one leading trait it is “He cannot lie.” God’s mind attaches so much importance to reality He cannot do away with it for a moment.
David had not reckoned about this. What did he do when he found God’s ground. God says, “Are you on the ground of making yourself out a little sinner? How are we to get on? Is God to be satisfied with it? You, my representative on the throne, how can I say it is a little thing you have done? I am upon the ground of mercy.” Directly it got hold of David’s soul, and he was driven in, then he opens his bosom and pours all out. Have your souls got there? What is to startle me if my soul is in this place, that I do not know on earth a person in nature more completely come short of the glory of God, than my own self—but just because God was not ruined where I was ruined, He says, “I shall take occasion by your very ruin to shew my mercy. The very fact of your being a sinner is the motive of my coming out to glorify Myself. You know My Son has died for such, and is now at My right hand.” Am I there? What further discoveries can come out if, to my mind, the blood of the Lord Jesus shed on Calvary be the measure for all my sins, and the judgment of the cross, the condemnation of the iniquity of my nature? If God wants to have a people whom does He choose? A righteous people? No a people who when all the earth shall be under the power of darkness and sin, He shall save and redeem to Himself, a people that shall be made to slip Satan and live for Him in spite of what they are.
God has a people who find they cannot get along unless they know their ruin, and how God has even turned that to His own glory, and know God as a refuge from their ruin. He is their hiding place. There is a height in Him of grace altogether beyond what the creature can measure. Who could have thought of such a thing as that the unruined. God should come in and say, “I know how to turn your very ruin to my glory. I am altogether above you in the range of my thoughts. I shall do as I choose.” “I will have mercy, on whom I will have mercy,” &c. Who is to say to God, stop, “Thou wilt not?” He is the only One who can say, “I will,” and it shall stand. What else does it show? God, as the God of resources! It seemed utterly impossible that now, if God’s character were what it was said to be, the rays of His character could so blend, as to meet the sinner. But He was a God of resources: He had one Son, and in Him on the cross all the rays of the character of God could be shown out, and God stands forth inviting, attracting, alluring, commanding the ruined creature, not to stand out for the first Adam, but to come to God and acknowledge his sinnership, and confess his sins on the ground of the Person and work of Him, whom God delighteth to honor. The beauty of the Lamb that sits on the throne of God is part of my felicity as a poor sinner.
Is that a ground that will break down? No! When the heart is simple in the renunciation of everything one has as a mere creature, and gets on the ground of Christ’s work in salvation and redemption, Satan himself has nothing to say against it. If all the devils come, if my conscience accuse me, they can say nothing to what God has said against me, when He put His Son on the cross for me. I can say, “What do you think, Satan, of this, that Christ bore my curse?” I have boldness before God, when the Lamb is my boldness. Ruined in myself I no doubt am, and not worth speaking about, but my ruin is taken occasion of by God, because God wants a people on earth who can speak well of Him, walk as His Son walked and resist Satan, strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. If this is to be, you must know your ruin. You must take God’s exposition of what His divine counsels were about the sin found in us, and you will find a standard of ruin a standard of happiness for the Christian, that in the darkest pit in which he could be, he has the mercy of God, and the power of the Holy Ghost sealing on the heart the bright light of the truth that God has found an answer to the ruin. The devil will have his own way with you if you look for any good in yourself. If you are to stand up in any way you must be emptied of all fancied goodness and human strength and have God’s mercy meeting your ruin, and Christ’s strength made perfect in your weakness.