This Psalm is the praise of the Jews, i.e., of Christ as having sustained their righteousness. It is the answer of thanksgiving to the last Psalm-their latter-day blessing, upon the coming in of the glory, recurring to the sure accordance of it with the testimony to Moses, His acts to the children of Israel, and the unvarying uniformity in faithfulness of the divine character, with the full acknowledgment of grateful truth on which all our comfort, as converted, shall rest, " He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities." Man is as grass—the link of God's mercy forever. Christ is the sustaining link of truth—verse 19 marks the time. It is the rest of praise to the Angels, to the ministers of His pleasure; perhaps the saints executing vengeance in that day, when He will do His pleasure on the heathen, and after in blessings, and all works in all places of His dominion—reconciling all things unto Himself by Christ Jesus—the scene in heaven and earth, and blessing there. The celebration is still of Jehovah.
The glory of the Person of Jesus having been established in spite of and through His sufferings, in the midst of His sufferings the extent of resulting blessing in the character of Jehovah is estimated and spoken of, i.e., the Spirit of Christ, in the midst of the Jews, calls upon His soul, as one of the people, to bless and celebrate Jehovah. Jehovah then is blessed and celebrated in Israel—forgiving iniquity and healing diseases, as shown by Jesus in the paralytic, therein acting as Jehovah, declaring Himself yet as Son of man on earth who redeemeth, who does not always chide, who has removed their iniquities now, and who pitieth them as a Father His children. "Man," says Israel, "cannot be trusted," but the mercy of Jehovah is from everlasting to everlasting on those faithful to His covenant—so with the Remnant. The extent of this judicial economy of grace is then stated—Jehovah has prepared His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom ruleth over all. We are in the heavens, seeing the Father in the Son. The Jew, blessed with Messiah on the earth, recognizes the throne of Jehovah in the heavens—he, the Jew, not being there. But Angels, Hosts, and all His works alike render the testimony, and are called to magnify His power and glory in His necessary and righteous exaltation.
There are the ways of God, as in this Psalm, and the acts and works of God, Rev. 15. These last lead to the knowledge of what God is afterward, as His works of course must. But in the knowledge of His ways, the secret of His mind is known, revealed in communion. So it is said of the saints, “Who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counselor? But we have the mind of Christ." Christ is the key to all.
We may compare this Psalm with Isaiah 40—the answer of the saints to the mercies there announced on God's behalf, and how God says He has done twice too much, and the people say they have not been rewarded as they deserved for their sins. And so see how truly the Spirit of Christ identifies itself with
US, so as to produce in us feelings suited to a man though according to God (compare Rom. 8:2727And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. (Romans 8:27)) and, as created by Him in the heart, are ours, such as we ought to have—divine feelings in man, and different from what God announces by His Spirit in His heart—this through Christ, as having taken the place of Psa. 102, because as He was the expression of God's heart, so also He really took the place in true feeling, as Himself in it, in which He was and felt all the consequences of it; see the beginning of Psa. 102, and verses 23, 24—lifted Me up as Messiah among men, and then had to be rejected. Thus His Spirit really felt what should be felt as a man in that place, and so in us according to what our position is, "according to God." Study this.
It appears to me that this Psalm and Psa. 104 are the blessings of the perpetuity of Jehovah in the Man-Messiah, thus revealed, Psa. 103 being the Jewish blessing, i.e., concerning the Jewish man proved nothing in this matter—Jehovah everything, Him we have seen revealed in Messiah. In Psalm 104 the Creation glory spoken of in detail elsewhere which was shown to belong to Messiah (Psa. 102) is here celebrated. I apprehend these to be the expressions of Messiah's soul, who alone has the fullness of the Spirit to do it, but the testimony of the Spirit for us, for Messiah is also Jehovah, the Creator; compare, in connection with this, as to the Church also brought in, Col. 1:1313Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: (Colossians 1:13), or rather 12-22.