By J.G. Bellet
Psalm 138
This Psalm is one of peculiar interest to the soul. In Psalm 56 the soul rejoiced in the word above all. All in God was matter of praise, but above all, His word, His promise, His covenant. "In God will I praise His word." (v. 4, 10)
In this Psalm the word is praised again--esteemed above all God's name or revelation of Himself The worshipper owns that he had cried, and the Lord had heard him. This was to the honour of His word; this was the faithfulness of His promise. But we know that it is only in the Son of God, Jesus Christ, that all the promises are thus yea and amen (2 Cor. 1: 19, 20), and that He Himself, in an eminent sense, is the word. So that this Psalm is as the language of a soul upon its discovery of Jesus. He learns "the Word" (John 1: 1) or "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ," and sees that God has magnified Himself in that revelation beyond all other, and that there He shines, full of loving-kindness and truth, or, in the language of the New Testament, of "grace and truth" (v. 2, John 1: 14). God has published His Name again and again in the progress of this world's history. He has successively unfolded the glory of it. He is "God," "the Lord God," "God Almighty," "Jehovah;" and now He stands revealed in fulness in the light and glory and blessedness of His New Testament name.
Upon this discovery, all manner of joy and blessing is anticipated; for the cry of the sinner has been answered and the soul has been strengthened. Kings are heard not merely fearing or falling down (see Ps. 72, Ps. 102), but singing in God's ways. The lowly are exalted, the proud are abased, according to the ministry of Jesus (Matt. 23: 12), and the preaching of His apostles (v. 6, James 4: 6, 1 Peter 5: 5) joy in trouble, victory in the face of enemies, yea, revival or resurrection, are anticipated, and the full accomplishing of all that concerns the soul which thus apprehends and trusts this precious revelation of God. For such an one is God's own work, as the Gospel teaches--"We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus," as is here, with true Gospel confidence and liberty, pleaded. And this is the highest and most blessed confidence--the believer making his cause God's cause. As the prophet said, "the battle is not yours but God's," (2 Chr. 20: 15), when he would, through the Holy Ghost, encourage the host of Israel and king Jehoshaphat., The saint's blessing is thus God's cause: and the confidence is, that it shall never be forsaken.
Psalm 139
This Psalm appears to accompany the previous one. It is like the feast of unleavened bread attending on the Passover. For there the grace, here the holiness, of our calling in Christ Jesus is set forth. For light is light of God, comforting the sinner but rebuking sin.
The believer begins by confessing the terribleness of the fact that God knows him. This was overwhelming to a soul duly convicted of sin. But he finds full relief and occasion for praise in this, that he knows God;--knows Him, too, in the mystery of the grave of Christ and the new creation there. (Eph. 2: 5) This is the fearful, wonderful workmanship; Eve taken out of the sleeping Adam. This at once puts praise into the lips, the desire of further purifying into the soul, and a readiness, not a fear, to be searched out by the inquiring "word of God" (Heb. 4), that no leaven may be found in that which is now consciously an Israelite's dwelling. The sense of the richest grace is thus in company with the exactest jealousy of holiness. (138, 139) The passover and the feast of unleavened bread are still together.
Perhaps there is no place in the Scriptures of old where the mystic oneness of Christ and His saint is more distinctly owned.
NOTE.--The human body is, we know, treated as the symbol of the Church or mystic Christ Both have been fearfully and wonderfully made. And this "great mystery" is looked at in this Psalm.
It is heard as on the lips of Christ Himself (v. 14-16). For personally, if I may so express it, Christ is heard in these verses. The theme was so worthy of His own lips and of His own personal presence. The convicted saint, led by His Spirit, had, as we have observed above, owned the searching light of God, aid it was solemn to the soul (1-13); but now, having listened to this welcome and cheering interruption from the lips of Christ (14 - 16), he goes on with his meditations and communion, but in the full relief of one who had, in spirit, drunk in the refreshing of such a mystery. (17-24) And now the happy saint can desire (in his love of God and of the holiness and righteousness of His power) present spiritual judgment of himself and the coming destructive judgment of evil. He invites that searching which the convicted saint had dreaded.
Psalms 140-150 form another little Book, giving us the cries first, and then the praises, of the Israel of God in the last days. They may have been indited to serve different times and persons (as we have observed upon Psalms 120-134), but they are here together, suiting, in their full and final application, that Jewish election, whose sorrow and deliverance will close this age and usher in the kingdom. And thus they form a seasonable and beautiful close to the whole Book.
The Israel of God speak here rather as martyrs than penitents. And this is still morally fitting. For they are now on their direct way to the kingdom.
The Spirit of Christ is heard distinctly in the midst of His Israel. He takes up their sorrows and expresses them as in His own person. It is the language of one suppliant, and the enemy is addressed or referred to individually also. But it is Christ in sympathy with His Israel, and the enemy is but the head of a great faction, as other scriptures so fully tell us.
These sorrows of the Psalmist are as those of David from Saul, and not from Absalom. And those were the sorrows (martyr-sorrows) which led, in like manner, directly to the kingdom. He had consolations, however, as well as trials. The enemy persecuted him as a partridge in the mountains; the ungrateful men of Keilah, and the time-serving Ziphites, betray him; and even his companions, in the heat and anguish of a trying hour, speak of stoning him; but he has the sword of Goliath, and the prophet, and the priest with him; the refreshing too of the faith of Abigail; and the strength of the Lord against the Amalekites (in the moment of their fullest pride), that bitter and ancient enemy of Israel, whose spoil he is able to share with his beloved ones in the land. And all this is David in 1 Sam. 21, 30, the days of his exile from Israel through the enmity of Saul.
And these are the days too of Jacob's trouble, as the prophet Jeremiah speaks (Jer. 30: 7); but Jacob shall be delivered out of them, as the anointed exile was led by his sorrows up to his kingdom; and as these Psalms begin with a soul in the heaviness of the night, but leave him in the joy of the returned and eternal morning--the day-break of the kingdom.
Psalm 140
In this Psalm the afflicted Israel are brought into trial with "the violent man" and the "evil speaker" and those who are associated with them. They (or Jesus, their great forerunner and also their sympathizing Lord in all this affliction) cry for protection against the devices of these enemies and for judgment upon them, especially the judgment of "fire" and the "pit" upon the chiefs or "heads." (See Rev. 19: 20; Rev. 20: 1) He then expresses His confidence that the Lord whom He makes all His trust, will maintain His cause as that of the poor and righteous one.
The enemies contemplated are too clearly, I would say, to be questioned, the great infidel apostate ones of the last days--"the Beast" and "the False Prophet," and their army or associates.
At different times in the ripening of human iniquity, there has been this confederacy of kings and counsellors against the Lord's anointed. Pharaoh and his magicians withstood Moses; so Balak and Balaam afterwards. Saul took counsel of the witch, that deep abomination in the land; so did Absalom and Ahithophel meet together against David. The Jews and Caiaphas, with Herod the king, are in company against the true anointed One. And so in latter days will the beast and the false prophet resist the righteous seed in the earth, and affect the power and honour of the Lord Himself. Whether in Egypt, in Midian, in Israel, or in Christendom, thus it has been and will be (and in spirit ever is), man putting forth all his powers, his strength and his wisdom combining. But the Lord is to prove that He sitteth above all water-floods and reigneth king for ever. He will have them in derision.
