By J.G. Bellet
Psalm 19
This is the meditation of a true worshipper of God, honouring Him both in His works and His word. The Gentiles should (but did not, Rom. 1) have known God from His works, and Israel should (but did not, Rom 2) have kept His word or His law. The true worshipper here, therefore, condemns both, and glorifies God in His two great ordinances or testimonies.
The works and the word of God have these two qualities--they glorify God and bless the creature, as this Psalm shows. Thus: the firmament declares the divine handiwork, but it also carries the sun which gives its heat to all creation. So the law is perfect, thus glorifying its Maker like the firmament, but it also converts the soul. God's glory and His creatures' blessing are equally cared for in the great scenes of divine power and wisdom. But there is no effort, no indisposedness in the earth to receive blessing from the heavens; but man is to stir himself up, as the Psalmist here does, to get the blessing to his soul which the law or the word carries for him.
This Psalm is referred to (Rom. 10: 18) by the apostle for the purpose of gloriously identifying the ministries of the heavens and of the gospel. The service which one renders the earth is like that which the other renders the world, both so diffusing themselves everywhere that nothing may be hid from either the fertilizing or saving heat thereof. The ministry of the heavens to the earth, in its universality, is the pattern of that of the gospel to the world. And the Lord in His own divine ministry was just this also. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men; and that light lighteth every man in the world. (John 1: 4, 9)
Such was the competency or quality of the light or the ministry of the Son of God. In principle it reached all. Nothing in creation is hid from the heat of the sun, and no man in the world from the testimony of the gospel. (Col. 1: 23)
NOTE.--We get notices of presumptuous sins in Num. 15 and Deut. 17, and I believe that when we come to the scriptures of the New Testament we see them in Heb. 6 and 10.
Psalm 20
I read this Psalm as the utterance of the Jewish Remnant exercising very lively faith in their Messiah in the day when He will take their trouble upon Himself, and come forth to assert His kingdom against His and their enemy. They accordingly commend Him to the care of Jehovah, and anticipate His victory, and that they themselves shall therefore, like their fathers (Ex. 17: 15), have a banner in Jehovah, though in conflict with the true Amalek.
The people in this spirit commended Joshua to God's care as he was going out to his battles. (Joshua 1: 17, 18) And according to the divine ordinance, when Israel went out to battle, they were to encourage themselves in God, and not be afraid of the multitudes--of the enemy, or of their chariots and their horses. (See Deut. 20: 1) Jesus, as one fully obedient to this ordinance, here goes forth to the warfare in this spirit.
In the full power of verse 3 we see our Lord leaving His priestly services in heaven, now that He is about to take this other service, this duty of "the God of battles," the Redeemer of the inheritance, upon Him. And this present action, His going forth in due season against His enemies, had been pledged to Him as soon as He took His seat in heaven. (See Ps. 110: 1) And He had been expecting it. (Heb. 10: 13)
Psalm 21
This is a continuation of the language of the Remnant which we had in the preceding Psalm. They first address Jehovah, owning that they have a full and glorious anticipation of the victory of their King, and of His establishment in His kingdom, because He had trusted in Him, his God. (See Ps. 18: 2, 3; Heb. 2: 13; Heb. 5: 7) Then, in what may be called the second part, beginning with verse 8, they address Messiah as still in the heavens, but telling Him as it were of His coming victories; and they close by desiring His exaltation, owning Him Lord.
His crown is one of "pure gold" (v. 3); that is, of unsullied righteousness; and therefore His kingdom such as will last (Heb. 1: 8, 9); "length of days for ever and ever" (v. 4).
David was the type of the true King thus in victory. And David's desire was fulfilled. (2 Samuel 7: 19); as here Messiah's is in verse 4.
Psalm 110, I may observe, is another instance of a worshipper addressing Jehovah and Christ by turns, as he sees them gloriously seated in the heavens. What characters of communion are our souls entitled to! what discoveries of heaven as it now is does scripture make to us! What sights of glories yet to come do we get there!
Psalm 22
This Psalm was the language of the soul of the Lord while He hung on the cross. (Matthew 27: 46) He uttered, perhaps, only the first words of it, but His spirit went through the whole. He begins as though His cries for deliverance from death (Heb. 5: 7) had not been heard, since He was now under the darkness of the withdrawn countenance of God. This was the death of a victim, not of a martyr. It was death under the judgment of sin. Nothing ever could be of like kind. See how the death of the martyr Stephen is different from that of the Lamb of God. (Acts 7) But still the perfect sufferer entirely vindicates God--the faithful God of the fathers, and His God from the womb hitherto.
He therefore still cries, presenting all the features of His present distress from the hand of men before the eye of God. (See vv. 7, 8, 12, 16, 17, 18) And it is strange, how the enemy, in that hour, were fulfilling the word of God against themselves to the very letter of it. (See v. 8 and Matthew 27: 43) But at last the blessed sufferer seems conscious of having been heard (v. 21)--heard from the horns of the unicorns--heard, doubtless, by Him who was able to save Him from death. (Heb. 5: 7) For we may observe that the cry of Jesus on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" was after an interval followed by another, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." That second cry would naturally arise from a consciousness of the first having been heard. And it may therefore be thought that the Lord here in v. 21 expresses His sense of having been heard by His deliverer from death.
Under this He makes His vows:--1st, to declare God's name to His brethren; 2nd, to praise Him in the congregation (of Israel), and in the great congregation (of all the nations). The first He began to pay immediately on His being delivered from death (John 20: 17), and is still fulfilling in all the saints (Rom. 8: 15); the second He will pay in the kingdom when Israel and the nations are gathered, the seed of Jacob glorifying God, and the kindreds of the nations worshipping before Him. For then, as Jesus here pledges, the kingdom and all its offerings shall be the Lord's.
But upon this Psalm I must further observe, that while the Lord Jesus, in the days of His life and ministry on earth was saving and not judging, stooping down and writing on the ground as though He heard not, rather than casting a stone at a guilty one, yet He did refer the world in its wickedness to the judicial eye and observance of God. In John 17. He does this, when He says, "O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee." This same thing He seems to me to do in this very peculiar and affecting Psalm.
