I come now, beloved, to speak on a subject bearing a close relation to that which has been before us, and one of the deepest importance; yet which is but little before the people of God. I allude to the resurrection from amongst the dead. You find this subject frequently treated as just the topmost branch in the great tree of God’s revelation, instead of being one of those momentous truths connected with Christ and Christianity; the very sort of resurrection by which He rose from among the dead—the seal of the perfection of His person, and the declaration of His being the Son of God in power—as raised from amongst the dead by the glory of the Father; the sort of resurrection which will be ours, who believe in Him as the seal of the perfection other work of Christ in which we stand.
What was it for Him then? The mark of God’s love—of the glory of Christ’s person—God’s seal upon everything that He did.
What will it be for Him? The mark that God delights in us—that we are accepted in the Beloved; that to which, “If by any means”—even if martyrdom were in the way of it, Paul says— “I may attain unto the resurrection from out of the dead.” It is the mark of the condition of the child of God, before the rest of the dead are raised for the settlement by judgment of their state.
Those for whom Christ died—who are washed from their sins in His precious blood and saved—are to have a totally different resurrection in time, condition, everything, from the wicked.
But I shall have to go carefully through Scripture in order to carry home, through grace given me, the truth and the conviction of the truth to every heart as to the manner in which this special truth is unfolded. Many have accepted it on the faith of others, and for such, as for those to whom it is unknown, I desire that their faith may stand, not in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God.
We have seen how that He who left His people with uplifted hands, and passed to His glory who still with uplifted hands watches over them to intercede and bless, will return. He is coming back at an hour we think not-at a moment only known to the Father—to receive us to Himself; to put us by an act of His power into the place for which He has fitted us, and which He has prepared for us. Already “meet for the inheritance of the saints in light,” “in the twinkling of an eye” we shall step from this scene of darkness to the light of the glory. We shall draw one breath for the last time in this scene, and, to use a figure, the next in the glory of God.
This is one side of the truth—the Lord’s side. The subject I now have before me is ours—the response of the redeemed to the voice of Jesus, from on high.
First of all, then, let us begin by the great fact that in no place in Scripture do you find the common thought of a general resurrection. A general judgment has no place in Scripture, nor has a general resurrection. The mingling of the righteous and the wicked does not take place, whether in resurrection or in final judgment. In the scene of Matt. 25, where the separating of the living nations take’s, place before the “Son of man,” it is but a small portion of the vast myriads who have peopled the earth whom you find; those found alive at the last moment of that interval during which the Lord has been causing the judgments of His hand to pass over the earth, precursory of the millennial kingdom and glory. They are separated, as is well known now to many, and sentenced according to their reception or rejection of the “brethren”—the third party in the scene, who, no doubt, are the godly Jews of that day who have testified of His coming kingdom and glory.
It is said that every well-taught Jew believed in a resurrection of the dead; at least, that all Jews would rise; the Gentiles he looked upon as dogs. Martha’s word to the Lord, in John 11, tells what a Jew believed. But it was not a resurrection from the dead at all. “I know,” she says, “that he shall rise again in the resurrection of the last day.” Now the Lord announces to her another thing; but, alas! which she could not then understand. “I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and he that liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?”
A resurrection of the dead would embrace all who have died in one common category. A resurrection out of or from the dead—not merely from death, but from the other dead, leaving them behind—is another thing.
If we turn to Mark 9:9, 109And as they came down from the mountain, he charged them that they should tell no man what things they had seen, till the Son of man were risen from the dead. 10And they kept that saying with themselves, questioning one with another what the rising from the dead should mean. (Mark 9:9‑10), we shall see with what wonder the first announcement of it was received by the disciples of the Lord, as He spake it to them after coming down from the Mount of Transfiguration. They had seen the wondrous sight—Jesus transfigured before them, with His face shining as the sun, and His raiment “exceeding white,” as no earthly fuller could whiten it; men in this same glory, too, speaking familiarly to their master-knowing divinely all that was to come.
When they descended from the mountain, He “charged them that they should tell no man what things they had seen, till the Son of man were risen from among the dead” (ἐκ νεκρῶν). But mark their surprise as they questioned “one with another, what the rising from among the dead should mean.”
They did not question the rising from death, or the rising of the dead. They never doubted for a moment what all godly Jews believed. But the separating of the righteous and the wicked, and a class to be raised in this way, leaving others behind, was a totally new thing, which had not heretofore been seen. It was coming.
Read with me a passage in Luke 14:13, 1413But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: 14And thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee: for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just. (Luke 14:13‑14), also. It shows how the thought was spoken of by the Lord as one becoming known from the Transfiguration and onwards. “When thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: and thou shalt be blest; for they cannot recompense thee: for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just:” a special thing for them only, when the rewards for faithfulness here would be awarded.
Pass on to chapter 20:33-40, where we have the Lord dealing with the infidel Sadducees of that time. They refused the thought of a future state of rewards and punishments, and they came and put a case to entrap the Lord Jesus, as they supposed. They imagine a case of seven brethren, the first of whom had taken a wife, and dying childless, the second took her to raise up seed to his brother; and so on to the seventh. Who then of these brothers was to have her in the resurrection?
The Lord’s reply contains one remark of deep importance amongst its details—a remark which is the real root of all infidelity and ignorance at all times: “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.” (Matt. 21:2929He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and went. (Matthew 21:29).) Two things-ignorance of Scripture, and want of faith in God’s power-lead to a thousand mistakes and errors. You will find too, when we bow in faith to these things, that another thing hinders as well; we bring our own thoughts to Scripture, and seek to make it endorse them. We settle in our minds that such and such are true and thus we come biased in our minds to read His word. Much of the teaching of this nature leaves no impression behind, and produces no fruit in the hearers, for it is not really the word of God sown in the heart, but the ideas of man. If you bring a thought to Scripture, you dim so far what God has to say; if you receive a thought from it, you have received it from God Himself.
Here the Lord shows that a special class, and they only, would partake in the blessings at this resurrection out of the other dead. In such a state too, human relationships here below would be a thing of the past. We do not rise as husbands and wives, parents and children; but as the angels of God, so would the elect be.
Now, when Christianity is introduced, Jesus having risen out of the dead, amongst whom He had entered in grace, and become the firstfruits of that sort of resurrection, the Holy Ghost was sent down from the Father by Jesus, and on this ground Peter addresses the Jews. Remark, too, how, in chapter 1 of the Acts, Judas having gone to his own place, Matthias is chosen of the Lord, by the lot of the disciples, “to be a witness of his resurrection” (v. 22). This was the important point, the resurrection of Him who had walked amongst them here.
When Peter therefore preaches, in chapter 3, offering the Jews the return of the rejected One, and that the glory and kingdom would then “come from the presence of the Lord,” if they would now repent. “As they spake unto the people, the priests, and the captains of the temple, and the Sadducees”—those instruments of evil in opposing the truth— “came upon them, being grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection—that which is from among the dead.” (Acts 4:1, 21And as they spake unto the people, the priests, and the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees, came upon them, 2Being grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. (Acts 4:1‑2).) The passage here is most emphatic, pointing out the kind of resurrection which the apostles announced. The Sadducees hated the thought in general; but they specially hated a resurrection which would leave others behind.
Paul too, preaching at Athens (Acts 17), announced “Jesus and the resurrection” (v. 18), and that God had raised Him up from among the dead, in token that He would, at a day appointed, judge the world in righteousness by Him.
Thus far we see that the common thought of a general resurrection held by the Jew is corrected, and the revelation distinctly made of the resurrection of a class of persons to take place at a special time, leaving other dead behind.
There is a passage in Rom. 8:1111But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. (Romans 8:11) which also bears much on our present state, and that resurrection out of the dead, being the fruit of it:— “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus our Lord out of the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by (or ‘on account of’) his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” The saint is raised because of this, for his body has been a temple of the Holy Ghost.
Thus we find three great reasons why the truth of resurrection should be before us. First, it was the witness of the glory and perfection of the person of the Son of God; second, it is the mark of God’s delight in us who are thus saved through the perfection of His work in which we stand; and third, we are raised because our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost.
Now we will turn to the fifteenth chapter of 1St Corinthians. Some at Corinth had been denying the truth of the resurrection. Satan had succeeded in bringing in wrong thoughts through the laxity in practical righteousness amongst the saints. They were asleep to righteousness. This is the way the enemy has ever succeeded. The loins are engirded, the conscience is not good, and the enemy thus gains access for thoughts which are not of God.
Still, how true is the old adage— “Out of the eater came forth meat.” God makes these very errors the occasion for fresh and fuller unfoldings of His truth and His ways.
The chapter I shall divide into seven distinct parts. It is a lengthy one, and some may understand it better thus.
1. The facts of the resurrection attested by the witnesses (vv. 1-11).
This section unfolds the blessed and simple story of the Gospel-the work of Christ dying for our sins, “according to the scriptures.” The thoughts and counsels of God thus recorded must be carried out, for the salvation of the saints depended on this. It would not be enough to say, as Hezekiah, “Thou past cast all my sins behind thy back;” or like David, “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.” No, it was Jesus taking up our sins in the full burning blaze of the holiness of God, and there that burning holiness burst with all its tremendous power and wrath upon the head of His Son, and all were borne and swept away with His own blessed righteous hand forever. The Surety goes down to the grave, when thus “made sin for us, who knew no sin,” and then He comes up from the grave in the majesty of a conqueror, by resurrection. God has set His seal upon the work and shown His acceptance of it by raising His Son. Then the witnesses proclaim the fact that “He is risen.” Paul enumerates the manifold list of them, until he comes to the “last of all,” himself also, “as of one born out of due time.”
Remark, too, how this sweet story of grace touches his heart-how the moral power of his words finds an echo in his soul! “For I am the least of the apostles, that I am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which (was bestowed) upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me” (vv. 9, 10).
Surely we can say too, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” What am I? A child of God, without a spot upon me in His sight-as white as snow-meet for the inheritance of the saints in light. How is this? Is it by the efforts of my own heart? Nay, all “by the grace of God;” God’s unasked, unmerited favor to me, when He had demonstrated and conscience owned, that I was lost.
Paul goes on to unfold the story of grace in the light of the resurrection of Jesus. “If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.” Then I may add, if Christ be raised, my faith is not in vain, I am not in my sins (vv. 17-19).
When once he has reached the present result of the resurrection to us, his heart cannot remain there; it launches away to the distant future—the boundless ocean of eternity (vv. 20-28), where the glories of the age to come, and the state of fixed purity of the “new heavens and the new earth” flow from, and are founded on the precious work of Christ and His resurrection from among the dead. I may remark too that up to v. 19, it is the general thought of a resurrection which he reviews. But in the twentieth verse and following, it is a resurrection from among the dead which becomes the defined thought. Christ was the firstfruits of that sort of resurrection to which the righteous would attain. And it was something to “attain,” as Paul could testify: “If by any means I might attain to the resurrection from amongst the dead.” (Philippians)
If a general resurrection were the thought of Scripture, why does he thus labor and run to attain to that which even the most wicked man on earth would have as well as he? These results, reaching on to the eternal glory, flowing from the resurrection of Jesus, are found in these verses (20-28), commencing with the resurrection of Jesus from amongst the dead; then of those who are Christ’s “at his coming;” and then he passes over the thousand years of glory in the world. “Then cometh the end,” when the kingdom of glory is over; when “the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” This sentence hints to us of His power put forth in emptying the graves of the wicked dead for judgment, after His earthly reign in the kingdom is past; but it is the only notice taken of the wicked in the whole chapter.
Now we come to exhortations to the Corinthians, or any who heed such (vv. 29-38). And then to the heavenly and earthly glories, and how, when glorified, it will be the same bodies we shall have as to their identity; but different as to their state.
This he applies to the resurrection out of the dead (v. 42), but introduces the “second man” the “last Adam” in His glories and victories in contrast to the first.
Enemy after enemy rises before his mind, under which the “first man” had succumbed and fallen: “Sin” had come in to Paradise at the first, and “death” came in by sin. The “law” was given which was “the strength of sin”-forbidding the lusts of the heart, which was prostrate as a slave under these lusts. “Dishonor” and “weakness” were but the portion of those who thus had fallen. The “grave” followed dishonor, weakness, and death. “Corruption” ensued as to the bodies of those held for a while in the graves till the “second death,” “the lake of fire.” Thus sin, the law, weakness, dishonor, death, the grave, corruption—all had done their work. The first man had succumbed and was prostrate, a captive to them all, awaiting the final judgment. But the “Second Man” had stepped into the scene of ruin. (The “first man,” was but a name to characterize the myriads and myriads of his fallen race.) He had gone down in the dishonor, the weakness, the death of His cross. Here He exhausted all the divine wrath of God as to sin, and He has borne our sins and put them away. From the cross He is taken and laid in the grave. Then God enters the scene. The Son of the Father had entered death to glorify God. By the glory of the Father He is raised from amongst the dead, and “saw no corruption.” He thus breaks the bars of death asunder, and emerges from this phalanx of enemies, their Conqueror. He has brought “life and incorruptibility to light by the gospel.” God then turns in the magnificence of His grace, and hands us over in divine love and goodness these spoils, so that we can say, “Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Cor. 15:5757But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:57).)
Thus the sorrowful tale of the first man’s history, from Eden to the cross, is told; the Second Man enters the scene when the first has failed under every trial. He was weighed in the balance and found wanting. But just as the first man is not named such until he had begun outside of Eden as the head of a fallen race, so the Second Man is not named such until He rises and ascends on high. The first man was that in title before he left the garden; the Second Man is the second in title, before He emerges from the ruin of the first in resurrection; but neither receive the name, until the one is driven out from earthly Eden, and until the other has been crowned with glory and honor in the Paradise of God!
Why, then, seek anything from that man from which “no good thing” can ever come? Why re-open the history of him whose history God has closed? Why not bow in faith to the demonstrated ruin of the first Adam, and pass to the place and standing, of the last Adam by faith also? No more to be a child of Adam in anywise, but a child of God. Jesus then is that “Second Man” looking retrospectively to the “First.” He is the “Last Adam” prospectively, for there is no advance beyond the Adam in whom is all the delight of God.
Doubtless we have in us plenty of the first man to contend with and subdue; but it is as belonging to and having the place of the Last in divine grace before God forever. This is the secret of Christian responsibility. “As is the heavenly, so are they also which are heavenly,” and this even now. “And as we have borne the image of the earthly, even so shall we bear the image of the heavenly”—this in time to come.
But with all this, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” Not merely is it that sin cannot inherit it; but the natural life we now have cannot. How, then, do we reach the place where the last Adam unfolds His glory forever? “Behold, we show you a mystery,” says the apostle, and his glowing pen briefly touches the way in which it will come to pass. “We shall not all sleep,” he says, “but we shall be changed,” and more quickly than the eye-lid flashes upon the apple of the eye to reject the mote which, poised in the sunbeam, nears its tender surface. The trumpet shall sound, and the mighty army shall rise-the bodies of the saints who sleep shall come forth unheard, unseen by the sleeping world; “the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” Jesus’ power put forth for His own will impart to them His own condition in glory— “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.”
Too late then to judge if they are fit for the scene, when they are already raised in glory. All our lives will come out then: we shall repass our history, and see it as God has seen. it. But for us there is no judgment-the resurrection from among the dead was the result of our present state of acceptance “in the Beloved.” The responsive song of the church is heard then, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Death was the door to judgment, now it is the path to glory.
The last section comes now:— “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord” (v. 58). The Corinthians thought but of the blessing and reward in this life; they were forgetting the truth of resurrection. No, says the apostle, we are going to have it in another life, beyond this passing scene; “therefore, be ye steadfast;” all that is of Christ in our pathway here will abide; all that is not will die down and perish with the scene we leave behind.
Meanwhile, let us seek to know Him, and the power of His resurrection. Let us seek to walk as men who have died and risen with Christ, learning the fellowship of His sufferings, and conformity to His death, if by any means we may attain to the resurrection which is from out of the dead. (See Phil. 3 passim.)
God’s King.-No. 5-On The Cross And In The Congregation.-Psalm 22
“Because of Thine indignation and Thy wrath” are words uttered by the Lord in Psa. 102 with reference to the reason of His death. How they can be reconciled with what He deserved, as His walk and His ministry show, Psa. 22 clears up. On the cross He bore God’s wrath, but as the sinner’s substitute.
That this Psalm treats of Him, the sin-bearer, who died upon the cross to make atonement, the New Testament makes plain. The first words of it were uttered by Him on the cross, when for the first and last time they were used in all their fullness. The language of the 8th verse was the language of the chief priests to Him as He hung in agony on the tree, unconscious that, they only made themselves the mouthpiece to express, what David beforehand had declared the Lord’s enemies would say. The action described in verse 18, we are expressly told, was fulfilled at the foot of the cross, when the soldiers parted His garments among them, and for His vesture, woven without seam, they cast lots. The first part of verse 22 was accomplished by the Lord Himself on the day of His resurrection, the historical account of which John gives us, and the doctrinal teaching of which the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews brings out to us. (John 20:1717Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God. (John 20:17), Heb. 2:1212Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee. (Hebrews 2:12).) None, therefore, with these facts before them, can doubt of whom the Psalm speaks—nay, more, who it is who speaks throughout it; for one person only, can we say, here speaks for the instruction of God’s saints. He, who cries out at the beginning, leads the praises of the redeemed in verses 22-25. He before whose eyes the soldiers divided the garments, and whom the chief priests derided with their taunts, describes the grand results for Jehovah which would accrue from His death upon the cross. It was proper, we must admit, that the Lord Jesus should Himself proclaim to men and the universe the glorious results of His agony and death.
What a condition was that to which Messiah, God’s well-beloved Son, stooped! God’s saints can find comfort in the remembrance, if called to suffer for the truth, that they have part in the sufferings of Christ. (2 Cor. 1:55For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ. (2 Corinthians 1:5), Col. 1:2424Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church: (Colossians 1:24); 2 Pet. 4:13); but He had to say that, in one respect, in suffering for God, He stood alone. “They trusted,” He says of saints at a former epoch, “and thou didst deliver them. But I am a worm and no man, a reproach of men, and despised of the people.” It was indeed so when servants of the chief priests buffeted Him, and soldiers of the Roman Governor mocked Him. An object of contempt and ridicule too for the multitude was He made, every feeling of a man outraged, every right of a man violated. These were ingredients in that cup in which bodily suffering was added to mental trial. Beside all this, and far deeper than all these sufferings, He experienced what no human language can portray, for no human thought can conceive the agony which drew from His lips the cry with which the Psalm opens, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Here, and only here, in the whole Bible, have we any clue to what He must have passed through, when dealt with by God as the sinner’s substitute; yet it is but a feeble clue after all, for the negative manner of expressing His greatest suffering cannot convey to our minds the positive agony that He then underwent. Just enough is conveyed by the words to teach us that those sufferings were inexpressible, and inconceivable by man, though real, and really borne. For it was not as anticipating something which lay in His path, that He uttered that cry on the cross; but, as having already experienced it, He thus cried out. The extent, intensity, and character of His sufferings men knew nothing about till just at their close.
Of both suffering from God, in making atonement, and suffering from man, the Psalm speaks, but in markedly different terms. Of the former the Lord has to say, “So far from helping me.” Of the latter He cried, “Be not far from me, O Lord: O my strength, haste Thee to help me.” (19.) Sufferings, needful to be endured to make atonement, He sought no respite from; sufferings from men, who took advantage of His condition in grace, he asked deliverance from, and received it. The Lord heard Him, and delivered Him. From what formed no needful part of the momentous work He came to perform, He asked for help, and, we learn, received it; but from that which could not be averted, if God’s will was to be done, and man’s salvation to be secured, He shrunk not, nor received relief.
“That all was done, that all was borne,
Thine agony, Thy Cross, can tell.”
The Psalm then divides itself into two parts in verse 21. Throughout the first part we meet with turmoil, discord, rage, and enmity—men attempting and accomplishing all they desired, in putting Him out of the world who was the object of their unrelenting hatred. In the second part we meet with an atmosphere of peace and blessedness. Throughout the first part the Lord is passive, suffering from God and from His creatures; throughout the second He is active. Men’s thoughts, motives, and desires are disclosed in what they did to Him; His thoughts and actions are told out in His own words. But, though in the second part all is peace and quietness, there is no silence. The din of this world’s discord had been heard when He hung on the tree, beset by the bulls of Bashan, and taunted in His bodily agony by those who professed to be leaders and teachers in Israel. All that quieted down by the death of the object of their hatred, the noise of men’s opposition giving way to the wailing of the women and others who lamented Him. Night set in, and the darkest day, which the world had ever seen, became a thing of the past. His enemies returned to their homes and to their families, to resume, when the Sabbath was past and the feast was ended, their wonted occupations. His body was laid in the tomb, the stone rolled to the door, and all seemed secure. The guard of soldiers kept watch over the grave of Israel’s Messiah. Men had done all they could, pursued Him to the latest hour of His life on earth, and only stopped, because death effectually barred all further action against Him.
The silence which ensued on His death He first broke, and thereby showed what was in His heart. “I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.” Not a word of judgment, not a thought of vengeance, only love, and a desire for God to be known, we learn, then occupied His thoughts. Love was manifested in thinking of others, and the desire to make God known was expressed in the resolution to praise Him openly. “Both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one; for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren,” (Heb. 2:11,1211For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren, 12Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee. (Hebrews 2:11‑12)), tells us, what the Psalm does not, something of the personal excellence of Him who hung upon that cross. “All of one,” i.e., one lot or company as men, He is not ashamed to call them brethren. Marvelous grace, that such a statement should be made in God’s Word, connecting together those who were otherwise wide as the poles asunder—the Sanctifier and the sanctified. He first declared it, and the Holy Ghost, by the Apostle, enlarged on it. It is not, however, universal brotherhood, embracing all the race, that we here read about. Such a tenet is foreign to Scripture, and only betrays gross ignorance as to God’s nature and man’s condition. This brotherhood is only predicated of the Sanctifier and the sanctified-terms suggestive of man’s condition by nature, which needs that he should be sanctified, as well as of the nature of Him who sanctifies those otherwise unsanctified for, what a mere man, however holy, could never affect, He does, and provides that they should know it at the earliest possible opportunity.
On earth, before the cross, He had proclaimed in what close relationship to Himself He would regard all those who heard and did God’s will (Luke 8:2121And he answered and said unto them, My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God, and do it. (Luke 8:21)). To His disciples He had said that He was their master, and all they were brethren (Matt. 23:99And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. (Matthew 23:9)). Now, after His resurrection, He first addresses them as His brethren, being not ashamed thus to describe them. To Mary first (John 20:1717Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God. (John 20:17)), then to the company of women returning in haste from the sepulcher to announce the Lord’s resurrection (Matt. 28:1010Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me. (Matthew 28:10)), He entrusted a message to His brethren. To whom were they to deliver it? What class of people could this be? They all knew without a doubt, and carried the message without hesitation to His disciples, who were His brethren. At that time, therefore, there were those on earth whom He thus owned, and the women recognized them as such. Are there any still? Thank God there are! For all who hearken to God’s Word are born of God, and are of that class styled by the Lord as His brethren. Found on earth in the company of the saints (Psa. 16), acknowledging a common position with them even after His resurrection (Psa. 40), He here announces that they stand in the closest relationship with Him, for His Father is their Father, His God is their God. As God’s Son from all eternity, He might have said, “My Father and your Father,” without any implication (doctrinally) of having taken human nature; but as a man born of the Virgin, He adds, “My God and your God.” Between Him and the saints the difference is immense, and must ever remain so; but the relation to God is similar. His words tell of a distinction whilst declaring the relationship—My Father, my God, your Father, your God.
The relationship confessed, the saints declared to be His brethren, we learn what He would make known. God’s name He would tell to them. His public ministry ceased when the Jews finally determined to crucify Him. But death and resurrection could not separate Him from His brethren. On the very day that He rose, He was found in their company in Jerusalem. The doors shut, for fear of the Jews, could not hinder intercourse between Him and His own. He stood in their midst, and taught them the fulfillment by His death of the written Word of God. None but His disciples did He then, or afterward, own as the saints of God, or the assembly of God. The Jews had cast Him out; but outside of Judaism, and apart from the temple ritual, in the room where His disciples assembled, He was found. A company, whom the Chief Priests and Scribes, with the Pharisees and Sadducees would disown, He acknowledged, and to them He declared God’s name, i.e., what He is, evidenced by what He says and does. The Jews thought they knew about God, His name, however, was to be declared by Christ, and that only to His own brethren. That company, to be afterward known as the sect everywhere spoken against, had a special interest for Him, and has still. To those composing it He declared what God is, i.e., His name; and besides this, in their midst, the only congregation which God could then, as now, own, He was to praise God. How contrary was all this to men’s thoughts! Those who seemed but fit subjects for the executioner’s weapon, unworthy to live, to proscribe whom and to persecute whom even unto strange cities was an act, it was thought, well pleasing to God, these were the only people after the Lord’s resurrection amongst whom He would be found, and to whom He would declare or tell out God’s name. “Away with such a fellow from the earth, for it is not fit that he should live” (Acts 22:2222And they gave him audience unto this word, and then lifted up their voices, and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it is not fit that he should live. (Acts 22:22)), lets us into the thoughts of the Jews about the disciples of the Lord Jesus. And yet it was to this class alone that the Lord here says He would address Himself, and amongst them strike the keynote of praise. The songs of Zion might resound through the temple courts, but the keynote of praise, to which God could now hearken, was struck elsewhere. First struck by the risen Saviour, it has never yet died out. From age to age, from country to country, has this song of praise spread, and heaven itself will forever ring with the full, rich melody flowing forth from each one, and the unbroken harmony of countless voices uniting in praise to God and to the Lamb. In the church, an assembly gathered on new ground apart from Jewish ordinances, the true note of praise was first raised by Him, who came from God and went to God. Praise for the heavenly people was rightly started by Him who belongs to heaven. At the Red Sea, Moses and the children of Israel, with Miriam and the women with their timbrels, praised God for their deliverance. In this Psalm He who is Jehovah, as a man, leads the songs of the redeemed.
There is a reason for this. He has suffered, and has been delivered; therefore He can sing, leading His people in their songs of worship, because of God’s mercy and God’s delivering power. As having experienced it, He can sing of it, and thus teach His people the suited language to use before God. In Psa. 40 His deliverance He states would be an encouragement to others; in Psa. 102. God’s answering the prayer of the destitute is to be instruction for a future generation; but in Psa. 22 it is not encouragement for others, nor instruction for a future age, but the suited language for God’s saints now, that He would illustrate by His own example.
The deliverer has been Himself delivered, their Saviour has known God’s salvation for Himself (24). His song, therefore, His people can join in. But here we are taken beyond Judaism to the sheep outside the fold-the two flocks, as we know elsewhere, now made one, composed of believers from amongst the Jews and from amongst the Gentiles. Into depths greater than they have ever sunk, Christ has gone down, and from them has been brought up, the witness to them that God answers prayer; the witness, too, by His resurrection, of the perfect acceptance of that work because of which He had to cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
But a time is coming when the praises, led by Him, of the congregation of God’s saints, as at present owned by God, will cease to be heard upon earth. Caught up to be with the Lord in heaven, their place and their service will be found no more on this globe. Will praise on earth then forever cease? No; Israel will again be brought forward as God’s earthly people, and praise will ascend from the godly remnant of them, manifested as the people that Jehovah has formed for Himself. Who will lead them in praise? The Psalm answers this question. Christ will do it. Again will He strike a keynote, and God’s earthly people will respond to it:— “My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation. I will pay my vows before them that fear him” (25). He alone has been in circumstances similar to those they will pass through; but, having gone down into death for them, “died for that nation” (John 11:5151And this spake he not of himself: but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation; (John 11:51)), their deliverance is secured, who will have experienced a trial similar to His, anticipating the outpouring of God’s wrath—in their case deserved, in His case endured as the substitute and the sin-offering. That we are here on the ground of the earthly people is clear, for the next verse (the consequence of what is celebrated in verse 25) tells of the meek eating and being satisfied; which will only take place when the Lord appears to reign. Contrast verse 26 with verse 24. In the latter we have the consequences of the Lord’s deliverance, which saints now can share in. In the former we have what will only be made good to those who shall inherit the earth. Then follows the full result as it affects the whole globe:— “All the ends of the world shall remember, and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds (families) of the nations shall worship before thee. For the kingdom is the Lord’s, and he is the governor among the nations. All they that be fat upon earth shall worship; all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him; and none can keep alive his own soul. A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.”
Thus the counsels of God about the kingdom will be made good; and in this Psalm, which shows us the depths into which the King in His grace descended, we have announced the certain and full accomplishment of all that God has purposed about this earth. Dying on the cross, all might appear lost; so here, where the former is set forth, the latter is also reaffirmed. Not one thing has failed, Joshua could say, “Not one thing shall fail,” we can add. All will be done, the kingdom be Jehovah’s, and His Son be the King, who is Jehovah; for “the word of our God shall stand forever.”