Psalm 45
Psa. 45. The object is evidently the celebration of Messiah the King. The heart feels it is inditing a good matter. When Christ is before the soul, it is enlivened and roused. Here, doubtless, as king, and in His victories, so that there is more of human triumph than in the Christian's estimate of Him. The power of evil will then be put down, and the heart exult in it. Now the joy is deeper and more divine. Collectively, we expect the Bridegroom; individually, the Savior, who is not ashamed to call us brethren. When we think of Him as a divine Person, we feel the depth of that divine work in which God met sin, and in which it has been put away for us, a work which none can fathom; and dwell on that glory into which He is entered, and of which He is worthy, both in His person and by His work. Still, we can understand the exultation of the delivered Jew, or, at least, one anticipating deliverance thus by Messiah. But there is, besides this joy, a principle of deep importance contained in this psalm: the call to the daughter to forget her own people and her father's house, so shall the king desire her beauty. So, as to blessing, instead of father's she shall have children's. Association with Christ breaks off previous associations which nature has had, and forms wholly new ones. This is, of course and evidently, a principle which is of an absolute and decisive character. But this is put in the strongest way here; “so shall the king greatly desire thy beauty.” For the Christian, then, that he may walk so that the Lord may have delight in him, there is an entire breaking with all that nature is linked up with. The doctrines on which this is founded are not laid down here: that would not suit the Psalms. It is the state of the soul. It was to forget all that had a claim on it according to nature. It is the coming in of Christ which calls for this. He has Himself done it—broken with the world by death, and entered on a new world in resurrection. His claim is absolute, and in contrast with all others. According to nature, there was no link, no association with the blessings He brings into.
It was another order of relationships. These claimed the heart naturally in their place; but Christ takes to Himself, founds new ones, of which He is the center, and has a divine claim. The old ones are left, and the new ones entered on by redemption out of them. He must have the whole heart, as a divine claimant, who, by giving Himself for and to us, brings us into a new scene of relationship with Himself. No counter claim can be allowed. It is not owning His. It is giving up our nature and place, and going back into the old things. Being His is all our being. As Scripture expresses it, “Christ is all.” This is denied if concurrent claims are allowed. This is true as to religious claims. The Jew, when Christ reigns, must give up his glorying in his fathers to glory in Christ. So we; whatever legal or fleshly religion may have been indulged in, is all given up. All that was gain is loss. The past is gone—we are taken out of it. Christ, and the future He gives, are all. Christ may place in present duties connected with human relationships, and He does; but he who looks back is not fit for the kingdom of God. All was failure before: Christ is joy and gladness, and that stably and in power. See the full doctrinal and experimental statement of this as to the Christian in 2 Cor. 5: “Yea, if I have known. Christ after the flesh, yet henceforth know I him no more. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away, behold all things are become new.”
Psalm 46
Psa. 46 gives us one most simple truth, but a most solemn and weighty one—one much needed by Christians in the heavings of this world, and in the tendency to seek relief by human effort. “Be still, and know that I am God.” That is the exhortation. The encouragement is this: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” But if GOD takes this character, the waters may rage and be troubled, and the mountains shake with their swelling; we can be still. For no matter what power or swelling there is, if God be there, our refuge. Only we must wait, and wait till He comes in: and here it is faith is tried. Hence, “and know that I am God.” This may be by the exercise of patience, or the resisting the tendency to human effort. But the truth contained in the psalm is a most blessed and precious encouragement, which no one trouble can touch; for trouble is at the utmost from the creature, and God is God. But it implies that nothing else is a refuge, and this is perfect reliance, and implies that all else may be against us.
The great point is, that it is God as such who is our refuge and strength. He does not say, “The Lord” (Jehovah). Further on in the psalm, where relationship is in question, he does. Here the point is, that it is God in His nature contrasted with man—indeed with every power; for if God be for us who can be against us? Faith gets hold of this. He is a refuge, where we may resort for safety; and He is strength, so that no adverse power can reach or succeed against us. It supposes that trouble, yea, insolent swellings of power, are there; but He is a present help. This secures fully; but the help is not always a present, apparent one. But God Himself is looked to; and the fact that we are left wholly to Him, and that no other resource is there, makes all the power of evil immaterial to us; for it is nothing against God. “What is this confidence?” said the King of Assyria to Hezekiah. Other help we might calculate and compare the value of. This only requires faith. “Ye believe in God.” Against this help all effort is unavailing; only we must wait for it. Human effort shuts this help out. It is another kind of resource which is not faith. God may command activity, and faith acts confidently. But this is never man's way; and when the matter is in God's hands, when there is not a duty, then our part is to be still, and we shall soon know that He is God. Human effort only spoils all. No human planning is ever right. God will come in, in His own time and way. There are duties. When there are, do them: but. when the power of evil against us is there, and there is not a duty, the path is to be still. Human efforts prove want of faith and restlessness, and planning is mere flesh. Elsewhere we have seen that integrity is needed to trust God, because it is God's holy nature which is trusted. This absolute trust is called for when the power of evil is rampant, and endurance till deliverance is the path of the saint. There is another thought here. God (the Most High over all the earth) has a dwelling-place, where the rivers of His grace refresh) then the city of God, Zion and the temple; now the Church. There the streams of refreshment run, and He will preserve her (not now as Zion, the city of God's solemnities, but in a better way), and there He enters into the proper character of His own relationship. And there He gives peace, having destroyed all the power of the enemy. Then will he who has waited know who is God—we in yet brighter and holier scenes.
Psalm 47
Psa. 47 I have but few words to say on this psalm. It is the triumph of God's people when deliverance is come in, prophetically announced. That which will be useful to remark is, how entirely the government of the world is connected with Israel. God Most High is a great King over all the earth. Then the peoples and nations are subdued under Israel, and God chooses the inheritance for the remnant of His people—His beloved Jacob. But this issues in the praises of God Himself, awakens praise in His people, and whatever the blessings and glory of God's people, their great delight is in the glory of God Himself. First, the power of God is celebrated, and the peoples, there in relationship with Israel, are called upon to triumph in it, for it is their deliverance and blessing, and that at least, Israel knows, and is the proclaimer of it to them. There Israel gets its place. But this makes God pre-eminent in Israel's thought. Thus it ever is when the soul truly knows blessing. It turns to the blesser. But this draws out, not merely thanksgiving, but the celebration of all that God is as known in blessing to those He blesses. But His own proper glory is their joy. I say, “known in blessing;” but not simply because of blessing, but in His own glory as so known. Thus ver. 5-8 celebrate what God is, as thus displayed and known. So in Rom. 5:11, it is not only the statement of salvation, but “we joy in God, by whom we have received the reconciliation.” Further, praises with understanding are called for. The relationships of God are stated in verse 8. This, too, is a point neglected by the saints—the living and praising in and according to the relationships in which God stands with us. We have to say, “The Father” and “Christ the Lord.” Here, in the kingdom, it is He sits upon the throne of His holiness, and He reigns over the heathen—only, now, that which is power on the earth. The princes of the peoples are gathered in recognition of, and association with, one peculiar people—the people of original promise—the people of the God of Abraham. The shields of the earth belong to God: He is greatly exalted; for this must be the last and possessing thought of the saint. I will only add, that this takes up the reign of God in its great general principle and connected with divine exaltation, though in connection with Israel who celebrates it.
Psalm 48
The following psalm connects it more with local details, and the judgments by which His throne is established in Zion. Psa. 49 is a full commentary upon all this, showing man's place in it.