Still another utterance of the same suppliant in the same condition. But there is more desire after the house of God, longing for the ark and habitation of the Lord; and thus an advance still in the experience and liberty of the soul may be observed in this Psalm, as in the preceding.
This Psalm may have been the breathing of our blessed Lord while He was standing silent before Caiaphas (Matt. 26:6363But Jesus held his peace. And the high priest answered and said unto him, I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God. (Matthew 26:63)). False witnesses were then rising up against Him; but those who came to eat up His flesh had already fallen. (See Matt. 26:5959Now the chief priests, and elders, and all the council, sought false witness against Jesus, to put him to death; (Matthew 26:59); John 18:66As soon then as he had said unto them, I am he, they went backward, and fell to the ground. (John 18:6).) At that moment also He anticipated His glory. (See Psalm 27:66And now shall mine head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me: therefore will I offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of joy; I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the Lord. (Psalm 27:6); Matt. 26:6464Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. (Matthew 26:64).) And we know that in those trying sufferings He was sustained by hope. (Psalm 27:1313I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. (Psalm 27:13); Heb. 12:22Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2).)
The strong and abrupt change in the current of the soul at Psalm 27:77Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice: have mercy also upon me, and answer me. (Psalm 27:7) is easily understood by the Lord’s history. It is just what might be looked for, as He passed from witnessing the divine favor expressed in the garden, to become the captive of the wicked (John 18:6,126As soon then as he had said unto them, I am he, they went backward, and fell to the ground. (John 18:6)
12Then the band and the captain and officers of the Jews took Jesus, and bound him, (John 18:12)).
But I am quite prepared to refuse the suggestion which has long been made by some who have exercised their thoughts (and that too in a spirit of reverence) over the Psalms, that if the Lord be seen or heard in one verse of a Psalm, the whole of it must be received as belonging to Him. The word of the Lord to David by Nathan in 1 Chronicles 17 would be witness against this; for there the words “I will be His Father, and He shall be My Son” are applied to the Lord Jesus (Heb. 1:55For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son? (Hebrews 1:5)), while at the same time we may most fully assure ourselves that the whole of that divine oracle could not be so applied to Him.
In the last verse Jesus, as it were, delivers a word of exhortation to His saints, as the fruit of His own experience, as I may say He does at the close of Isaiah 1, and still more surely at the close of Matthew 11; and I may add that we see one of His saints very much with Him in the spirit that animates Him here; for here we find confidence, though in the midst of the din of war and trouble, just because the heart was set upon one thing—desire to dwell in the house of the Lord. And “the same spirit of faith” is found in St. Paul when he says, “Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord ... .We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5).