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Introduction Book 1 Psalm 1 Psalm 2 Psalm 3 Psalm 4 Psalm 5 Psalm 6 Psalm 7 Psalm 8 Psalms 9 and 10 Psalm 11 Psalm 12 Psalm 13 Psalm 14 Psalm 15 Psalm 16 Psalm 17 Psalm 18 Psalm 19 Psalm 20 Psalm 21 Psalm 22 Psalms 23 and 24 Psalm 25 Psalm 26 Psalm 27 Psalm 28 Psalm 29 Psalm 30 Psalm 31 Psalm 32 Psalm 33 Psalm 34 Psalm 35 Psalm 36 Psalm 37 Psalm 38 Psalm 39 Psalm 40 Psalm 41 Book 2 Psalms 42, 43 Psalm 44 Psalm 45 Psalm 46 Psalm 47 Psalm 48 Psalm 49 Psalm 50 Psalm 51 Psalm 52 Psalm 53 Psalm 54 Psalm 55 Psalm 56 Psalm 57 Psalm 58 Psalm 59 Psalm 60 Psalm 61 Psalm 62 Psalm 63 Psalm 64 Psalm 65 Psalm 66 Psalm 67 Psalm 68 Psalm 69 Psalm 70 Psalm 71 Psalm 72 Book 3 Psalm 73 Psalm 74 Psalm 75 Psalm 76 Psalm 77 Psalm 78 Psalm 79 Psalm 80 Psalm 81 Psalm 82 Psalm 83 Psalm 84 Psalm 85 Psalm 86 Psalm 87 Psalm 88 Psalm 89 Book 4 Psalm 90 Psalm 91 Psalm 92 Psalm 93 Psalm 94 Psalm 95 Psalm 96 Psalm 97 Psalm 98 Psalm 99 Psalm 100 Psalm 101 Psalm 102 Psalm 103 Psalm 104 Psalm 105 Psalm 106 Book 5 Psalm 107 Psalm 108 Psalm 109 Psalm 110 Psalm 111 Psalm 112 Psalm 113 Psalm 114 Psalm 115 Psalm 116 Psalm 117 Psalm 118 Psalm 119 Psalm 120 Psalm 121 Psalm 122 Psalm 123 Psalm 124 Psalm 125 Psalm 126 Psalm 127 Psalm 128 Psalm 129 Psalm 130 Psalm 131 Psalm 132 Psalm 133 Psalm 134 Psalm 135 Psalm 136 Psalm 137 Psalm 138 Psalm 139 Psalms 140-143 Psalm 144 Psalm 145 Psalm 146 Psalm 147 Psalm 148 Psalm 149 Psalm 150 |
The atoning sufferings of ChristHere the sufferings of Christ have another and deeper character. We have before us that great work which is the foundation of all the blessing developed in the other psalms, and of every blessing and eternal glory, making the interest He takes in the saints possible, because it makes it righteous, and the very way of glorifying God. This psalm, as it has been already observed to be a common principle of their structure, gives us the theme in verse 1. Christ had suffered from man — from men alike heartless and violent: dogs had compassed Him, fat bulls of Bashan closed Him in. But if the measure of this was extreme, and felt more and otherwise than ordinary sufferings from men because it was wholly unrighteous and for Jehovah's sake, for whose name He suffered reproach; yet others had in some measure borne the suffering of violence and reproach from heartless men too, and for Jehovah's sake. If He in grace was the leader and finisher of faith, others through grace had trodden — it was their granted privilege, but His willing grace — some steps of that divinely marked-out path. But they trusted in Jehovah and they were delivered. Jehovah never left or forsook them. He had promised He would not. They knew in their consciences that He had never failed in one good or gracious thing He had promised. A new, unrepeatable scene — the righteous One forsaken of GodBut here was a suffering out of the reach of promise, yea, which was to lay the ground of its righteous accomplishment. It was a new scene, which none had been ever like, nor ever will be, in the history of eternity; which stands alone, The Righteous One forsaken of God. It cannot be repeated a second time; it would have lost its character and the repetition destroy or deny the witness of the first — God perfectly glorified, morally glorified, about evil; He has not been, if it has to be repeated. It is once for all, complete and perfect. The nature of God has been made good in testimony, morally, in the universe. How should that be repeated? I say again, if it had to be, neither had done it; but it is done. The divine glory is perfectly, eternally, made good. But for this in respect of good and evil — that righteousness and grace, or love, where feebleness and evil are, should be made good — all that God is against evil must be verified and made good. Against whom? Who should endure it? Against the sinner it were everlasting misery, nor was love then displayed; what God is, not manifested. But the Lord gives Himself for this; — He who was able to bear it, and, in the lowest humiliation of those He took up, to accomplish it in their nature, He bears in His soul all that God is against evil. Tremendous moment! Righteousness and judgment as felt by Christ the submissive One
It is this alone which makes us in any way apprehend what
righteousness and judgment are. This is what is shown to us
here. It is shown in the utterance of Christ, showing the fact and
His sense of it. What it was in its depths no human heart can
fathom. It is the fact which is given here, but as felt by Him. Yet
we see the consciously righteous One, but the perfectly submissive
One; the sense of His own nothingness as to His position, of the
certain and immutable perfectness of Jehovah. He is righteous; He
can say, "why?" — submissive: "yet thou continuest holy"; no working
of will, calling God's ways into question; the clear and perfect
state thus, which sees God's perfectness, come what will. For it
was the one righteous One who had glorified God in all His ways, an
exception from all God's ways in righteous grace with such. He is
forsaken, cries, and is not heard. He is a worm and no man. But
this could not last for ever, no more than He could be holden of
death, having perfectly glorified God in going to the close of
trial and awaiting His time. He who was the very delight of Jehovah
all through could not be heard till all was accomplished; though
more gloriously, and deservedly more gloriously, Jehovah's delight
than any living righteousness, though ever so perfect, could claim
to be. In that living righteousness He had glorified God about
good, perfect in His obedience as man, and perfect in manifesting
His Father's name of grace, declaring what God was, cost what it
might. The reproaches of those that reproached God fell on Him. But
now He glorified God in the place of evil as made sin. This, as we
have seen, stands alone. "Therefore doth my Father love me, because
I lay down my life that I may take it again." There in the place of
sin before God, that is, as made sin, yet in that wherein obedience
was absolute and perfect in entire self-devotedness to God — the
contrary of sin — where God's righteousness found a motive for love,
yet where it was made good in forsaking Him; there the foundation
was laid of everlasting righteousness and everlasting blessing;
there God perfectly glorified, the foundation laid for the
accomplishment of all His counsels in glory.* God glorified; Christ heard
Then, when the work is complete, the moral work of glorifying
God, He is heard from the horns of the unicorn. Man and all around
was hidden, by a darkened heaven, from view, when all of God, and
of the power, and powerlessness, of evil as against the sovereign
goodness and righteousness of God, was brought to this divine
issue, and God glorified about it. And all is between the soul of
Him who is an offering for sin and the righteous Jehovah. And it
was closed. He was perfect, had secured the glory of God, had
glorified Him when He could not be heard, and was heard and it was
finished. He goes down indeed into the grave, that trusty and
irrefutable witness that all was closed of this great question of
which death was the appointed witness, but only to rise without one
element wanting that the work of propitiation and of glorifying God
in respect of sin was completed, and the victory over every and the
last enemy fully won. He was heard. Who could call it in question
who knew that He was risen? And now what remained? Not sin; it was
as regards the work to be accomplished for that purpose wholly and
for ever put away as in God's sight though not in full result yet,
but perfectly for those who had a part with Him.* Wrath for such?
The cup had been drunk. Judgment against the sin, or of the sinner
for it, where faith is? He had undergone it. The power of death
upon the soul? It was overcome. Of Satan who wielded it? It was
destroyed. But there was the full light of the Father's countenance
and love, the delight of God in divine righteousness, and for
us. Into this relationship Jesus now entered as established there
in righteousness on the ground of what He had accomplished to
glorify His Father; not merely in the everlasting delight which God
had in His Person. Hence it was immutable for those who had a part
with Him in this place, and for eternal blessedness in the new
heavens and the new earth. The place was won for sinners in the
putting away of their sin, and founded on the righteousness of God Himself. Into the full blessedness of this name (that is, true
relationship with God revealed according to it) He now entered as
man.** The declaration of the Father's name to His brethren after His resurrectionBut He had His brethren — those at least, with whom He associated Himself and whom He had at heart first of all after His Father's glory. He was entered into this cloudless place of delight. What remained for His heart was to declare the name which expressed it, and to know which was the being brought into it, to His brethren. "I will declare thy name unto my brethren." And this most precious witness of His love was exactly what He did after His resurrection: "Go, tell my brethren, I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God." Remark, He was heard from the horns of the unicorn. It was on the completing the work, or His subjection of soul to death as divine judgment, that He was heard. When the obedience unto death was complete, hearing became righteous and necessary. The resurrection was the proof to man. But He could say, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit," and deliver it up to Him, and assure the thief he should be that day with Him in paradise. Judgment executed and passed, followed by wide, outspread blessing on earthI have already remarked an infinitely important characteristic of this psalm, so opposed to those which speak of Christ's suffering from man: I mean that all is grace — no word of judgment. Who was to be judged, when God had been the One to inflict the suffering — the hiding of whose face rather was the suffering — and the men who had a part in it, believing, had their sins put away by it? It was as to them the judgment, and the judgment executed and passed. Hence what follows is the wide out-spreading of wave beyond wave of blessing and nought else. We may remark, however, that the blessing here is all on earth: so much does the Lord confine Himself to Israel and the Jews in the Psalms. And though we have seen His own resurrection, and we shall see His ascension brought in, and the path of life thus opened up to faith into the presence of God Himself, yet the heavenly place for the saints is not unfolded. We know well that the truths on which the blessing is based carry us farther; but the psalm does not speak of them. The widening circles of blessing and praise"In the midst of the congregation will I sing to thee." The remnant then gathered is the first circle gathered into the place of praise; then millennial blessing — all Israel. Those that fear Jehovah are to praise Him. Men fear Jehovah, and only fear; but this work makes those that fear praise. Those that feared Jehovah in that day and suffered might take courage, for Christ was their warrant for deliverance and confidence (and could be, having made atonement), but for positive deliverance also; for Jehovah had not turned a deaf ear to the affliction of the afflicted, nor hid His face from him. When He cried, Jehovah heard. He had been for a time there: that had only wrought atonement. And now, heard when that was accomplished, He could assure others of deliverance also. The meek of the earth should now eat and be satisfied, and be at peace. But the blessing would not limit itself to Israel. All the ends of the world would remember themselves, and turn to Jehovah, and worship before Him; for the kingdom will then be Jehovah's. All should bow before Him. Nor was it confined to that generation: to the people that should be born those should declare that Jehovah had done this. The wonderful work of Christ in Psalm 22 as to the outward, the expiatory sufferings on the crossI cannot, in explaining the Psalms, meditate on the wonderful work on which this psalm is founded. I say founded, because the psalm speaks directly of the feelings of Christ under it, rather than of the work itself. I can only desire that this constant and exhaustless theme of the saint may have all the power on my reader's soul, as upon my own, that poor, but renewed, human beings, even by the power of the Holy Ghost, can be capable of. Our comfort as to peace is that God (as indeed His love gave it) estimates it fully; and, while He has glorified Jesus, has Himself accepted that work for our peace. My part here is to unfold, as well as I can, the structure of the psalm itself. As to the outward sufferings the reader will remark how deep they were. But Christ alone, of all the righteous, must undergo forsaking of God; and, having often declared His confidence in, and intimacy with Jehovah, and taught His disciples to trust in Him, as ever hearing prayer, has publicly now to proclaim that He is not heard, but forsaken. What a tale it tells of what that hour was! But what is important is, as has been already remarked, that His sufferings from man bring judgment on His enemies; His forsaking of God, being expiatory, is a bearing of the judgment, and all that flows from it is unmingled grace. This work being expiatory, once He is heard from the horns of the unicorns, all is grace. A stream of grace flows out for the remnant, then for Israel, for the world, for the generation to come — all from the sure and divinely perfect work of atonement in the death of Christ. In the work, in the suffering, He was alone. Once that was finished, He takes His place in the congregation with which He surrounds Himself. Remark how perfect must Christ's knowledge of, and consequent joy be in, the name of God and Father, into the enjoyment of which He entered as man, consequent upon having put away sin, and the delight of God in Him and His work: all that God was against Him then, for Him, according to the virtue of this work, now. How well He must know what the deliverance out of His sufferings on the cross into this light is! Now this is the source of His praise. Such must be the character of ours, founded on the blessed certainty of being come out of the place of sin, death, and judgment, into the perfectness of divine favour. All that is not thus in the spirit of it is out of tune with Him who leads our praises. |
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