THE
ATONEMENT
CHAPTER XVI.
The Testimony of the Psalms.
IN the Psalms we have some of the most wonderful
unfoldings of the cross in its inner meaning that Scripture furnishes. It is
striking that whereas in the gospel narratives themselves it is mostly the
external sufferings of the Lord which occupy us, in the Psalms the divine
Sufferer utters freely His heart out. The one cry of abandonment which does
indeed expose its mystery, and which Matthew and Mark record, finds its full
interpretation only in that twenty-second psalm, the language of which it
borrows, and to which it thus guides our thoughts. And here we find, under a
vail, if we may so say, the vail removed. As the priests, able to enter within
the tabernacle, could behold the glories of it, so we whom faith brings within,
can listen to the very heart of Christ outpoured, and see earths failed
foundations laid afresh and for eternity by One standing where no other could
stand but He. Typically given, according to the Old Testament character,
unbelief may doubt or deny the revelation. It is to faith that God reveals
Himself; Christ, dumb before His accusers, displays to His disciples His true
glory.
There are five psalms which we shall briefly look at in
connection with our subject, and which give us different aspects of the cross.
Three of these, the twentieth, twenty-second and fortieth, are in the first
book; the sixty-ninth is in the second; the hundred and second in the fifth
book. I have elsewhere shown the way in which these five books of the Psalms
identify themselves respectively with the five books of Moses. Here it will be
seen how the Genesis-book - the book, as we may say, of the divine counsels,
maintains its character in the way in which it opens up to us the work of
Christ: in the twentieth psalm, as victory over evil; in the twenty-second, as
meeting the requirement of the divine nature as against sin; in the fortieth,
of that which, like the sweet-savor offerings, shows the infinite moral
perfection which delights in God, and in which He delights.
The
twentieth psalm begins then, where the story of grace began in Eden, with the
announcement of the cross as victory over the enemy. The way in which it is
introduced is perfect as all else. The first book (psalms i.-xli.) divides into
three parts; in the first of which we find, as connected with the sufferings
and deliverance of His people, Christ rejected (ps. ii.) and glorified (viii.).
His people are always here Israel, and in the second part (ps. ix. - xv.),
their sufferings in the last-day crisis, out of which they are finally
delivered, are detailed. In this second part Christ is not found. In the third
(ps. xvi. - xli.), we have Him in a new character which, penetrating to the
heart of the subject, explains and perfects the whole counsel of God. He is
seen amongst the people in the lowly grace of perfect manhood, for God, for
man, redeemer from misery as and because from sin. The sixteenth psalm thus
shows Him in the place of dependence and trial, God His one portion and
sufficiency in that path that passes through death itself into the joy of His
immediate presence: the path of life through death, for us henceforth open.
Thus the seventeenth psalm shows how He can now associate others with
Himself; giving the righteous through the only righteous One their ground of
appeal to God. While the eighteenth psalm speaks of His victory over all His
enemies, a victory which involves others with whom He is pleased to associate
Himself.
The next three psalms show, on the part of His people, the
faith which attaches them to Him. In the nineteenth psalm, first of all,
setting its seal to Gods other testimonies of creation and the law, but
to rest only with full satisfaction and delight (in the two following psalms)
in Him who is alone their kinsman-redeemer, while psalm xxii. completes the
picture by adding to the knowledge of redemption by power that of redemption by
purchase, "not with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as
of a lamb without blemish and without spot."
The twentieth psalm is in
other respects a remarkable one, but, as far as we have now to do with it, is
of very simple character. The anointed (or Messiah), king of Israel, is seen in
distress and difficulty in the presence of his enemies (compare xxi. 8, i i).
It is conflict on account of others; and the name of the God of Jacob - i. e.,
of grace toward sinners, is appealed to in his behalf. From the sanctuary in
Israel, and out of Zion, seat of electing love, the help is to come. It is
connected with the establishment and triumph of the people plainly, and
Messiahs offerings and burnt sacrifice secure this. Hence, in his
deliverance they rejoice aloud, and in the name of this God set up their
banners. Jehovah, their covenant God, saves, and to the king also (to Messiah
Himself) they call. The next psalm enlarges upon this deliverance and victory.
The twenty-second psalm now unfolds the reality of the sacrifice upon
which all is based. It is the well-known psalm of atonement, so solemn and so
dear to the Christian heart. It is the sin-offering, - the requirement, as I
have elsewhere said, of the divine nature. The forsaking of God is the
necessary result of the holy One being made sin.
This is what is
throughout put in contrast with all other sufferings. All felt as they are, and
no indifference to any, the bodily anguish, the shame, the heartless wickedness
of the assailants, yet one agony which outweighs all the rest is this forsaking
of God. "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me, far from helping Me, from
the words of My roaring? O My God, I cry in the daytime, and Thou hearest not,
and in the night-season, and am not silent!" "Be not far from Me, for trouble
is near; for there is none to help." "But be not Thou far from Me, O Lord: O My
strength, haste Thee to help Me!"
This forsaking is also carefully
distinguished from any thing that a righteous man ever suffered. "Our fathers
trusted in Thee; they trusted, and Thou didst deliver them: they looked unto
Thee, and were delivered; they trusted in Thee, and were not confounded. But I
am a worm, and no man." Yet a long line of martyrs witness to us that, as to
deliverance simply from the hands of enemies, multitudes have cried and not
been delivered, the sufferings through which they passed only proving that they
were not forsaken, but on the contrary maintained and enabled for whatever they
passed through by a power manifesting itself thus the more How many before and
since have proved Pauls experience, "Persecuted, but not forsaken"! None
of these patient sufferers, precious and acceptable as their patience was to
God, touched even the border of the darkness of the cross, - when the cry of
the holy One found no response.
What to Him that desertion was, He
Himself alone could know. "Thou art He that took Me out of the womb; Thou didst
make me hope even upon My mothers breasts; I was cast upon Thee from the
womb; Thou art My God even from My mothers belly." To us, born in sin and
shapen in iniquity, to whom estrangement from God is the natural condition, and
who, even when by grace redeemed, can so readily slip out of communion with
God, how little is it possible to realize the agony of this condition! With us,
too, when out of communion, it implies a state which prevents realization. The
spiritual sense is blunted, the spiritual affections are not in play; and if
even in this state sorrows and troubles surprise us which make us feel vainly
after Him, the consequences of the terrible loss are sure to overshadow and
obscure the spiritual loss itself; while at the most the dark, ness that can
envelop one who has ever known God is the darkness of a clouded sun compared
with a night of total absence in the case of Him who was made sin for us.
Alone in human weakness, with every element of bitterness in the
dreadful cup which was His to drink, - He could ask, as none among men beside
could, "Why hast Thou forsaken Me," yet proclaim at the same time the holiness
of Him who had forsaken Him. "But Thou art holy: dwelling amid the praises of
Israel." Is not here, in fact, the reason of this forsaking, that the holy One
would dwell amid the praises of a redeemed people? That worship could never be
but for the cross. He must be in the outside place of darkness, that we might
be, children of light, in the light with God.
The consequence is, that
after He has been brought into the dust of death, and is heard from the horns
of the unicorns, the blessing that flows out answers in perfect contrast to the
suffering endured. The Son of God, as the fruit of His own abandonment,
communicates to now-acknowledged "brethren" the Fathers name. He who was
in that unique, solitary place, praises in the midst of the congregation which
He gathers, and whose praise He leads. Yea, "the meek shall eat and be
satisfied: they that fear the Lord shall praise Him" the heart of the redeemed
shall taste the joy of eternal life (26). To the ends of the earth, and to
perpetual generations, the wave of blessing spreads, - joy out of sorrow,
praise out of desertion, light out of darkness, Life out of death; the
subjection of adoring worshipers to a Saviour-God, and His righteousness
declared in the accomplishment of this great salvation.
Thus ends the
wondrous twenty-second psalm, of which atonement in its central feature - He
who knew no sin made sin - is the theme throughout. Any full exposition is not
here within our scope. But it is the foundation of all true blessing to
understand it; its words will give the deep tones to our praise forever.
A number of psalms follow which give us, in very various character, the
exercises and experiences which find their answer in, or are the fruit of, this
blessed work. At the close of the book are two psalms which give, by way of
conclusion, as it were, the moral of the whole. The heart of Christ is shown in
its innermost depths, His life in its one principle, in the fortieth psalm. In
the forty-first the heart of man is seen in relation to Him who has come into
the place of poverty and reproach for men - into a humiliation so low that
unbelief can misconceive and discredit His true glory.
The fortieth
psalm is significant in its very number, which is that of perfect probation;
and here again we find the Lord in those sufferings which were the trial of His
perfection, and which brought out the sweet savour of His blessed sacrifice,
here put in contrast with all other sacrifices.
In the twenty-second
psalm we have seen the Lord taking the sinners place, that God might
dwell among the praises of His redeemed; here we see what was in His heart
Godward who did so. It is the perfect Man, with ears which never needed the
anointing of blood to consecrate them to God; who, marked out in the book of
Gods counsels from the beginning, now comes forth simply, as none else,
to do the will of God; His law within His heart. "By which will," says the
apostle, "we are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once
for all." This perfect devotedness He manifested there where, in the sharpest
and most terrible contrast to it, He cries, "Mine iniquities have taken hold
upon Me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more in number than the
hairs of My head; therefore My heart faileth Me." Yet, says He, "I waited
patiently for the Lord;" even in the "miry clay" of that "pit of destruction."
Plainly this is the psalm of burnt-offering, though the sacrifice
represented take the place of all the other offerings. Indeed it is quite in
character that it should be so. The burnt-offering was the "continual
burnt-offering," as that which was emphatically a sweet savour to God. The
sin-offering is what the necessity of man craves and obtains; so with the
trespass, and so with the peace-offering; but the burnt-offering, as it goes
wholly up to God, expresses that which is the object of His unceasing delight.
Thus, when no other sacrifice was there at all, the burnt-offering kept its
place upon the altar, which from it, indeed, received its name; for this
blessed work it is in which the moral glory of His person (which is what the
altar speaks of) shines out most fully.
Here, accordingly, it is not
the outside place that His cry expresses, but the "iniquities" which, as taking
them upon Him, He could call "Mine:" this was the miry clay of the pit into
which He who came to do Gods will had descended. This, therefore, is the
character of suffering most suited to display, as a dark background, that
personal glory. Unbelief might indeed take such confession to justify its
rejection of the holy One, while faith, adoring, finds in it its eternal
blessing. And this is the key to the psalm which follows this.
THE next
psalm of atonement we find in the last section of the second book. And here,
whatever difficulty of interpretation may attach to it otherwise, there is
nothing to dim the assurance that the sixty-ninth psalm gives us the
trespass-offering. The very word for sins - " My sins are not hid from Thee" -
should be rather "trespasses." While the restitution character of the
trespass-offering comes out with unmistakable plainness in the fourth verse
-"Then I restored that which I took not away." In the words of the eleventh
verse we may discern with little more difficulty the ram of the
trespass-offering. The difficulties of the psalm belong rather to its
exposition, which I am not attempting here. With this brief notice, therefore,
we may pass on to the final psalm.
This is the hundred and second,
whose place in connection with the book to which it belongs is full of
interest. The fourth book speaks, as the fourth book of Moses does, of the
world as the scene of mans strangership through sin. Its first psalm, the
ninetieth, shows him thus; his link with eternal blessedness snapped with his
link with God. It is a strain of the wilderness, a lament over that generation
of men who because of their unbelief died there, and who thus could be used as
a fit exemplification of the general condition. The Lord, mans
dwelling-place, has been forgotten. He who brought man from the dust bids him
return to it. Sin and Gods righteous anger explain this terrible anomaly.
"Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy
countenance; for all our days are passed away in Thy wrath; we spend our years
as a tale that is told." The psalm concludes with a prayer: "Return, O Lord,
how long, and let it repent Thee concerning Thy servants;" but no ground is
given for such repentance till we come to the following psalm.
And here
we have, not the first man, but the second; and in plain contrast to the first.
Man has forgotten the name of his God: how clearly this comes out in
Moses question at the bush! -"And Moses said unto God, Behold, when
I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your
fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say unto me, What is His name?
what shall I say? " (Ex. iii. 3.)
But this lost name of God is
the key to mans condition. It reveals him as a wanderer (how far!) from
the Fathers house, "without God in the world; without, therefore, a
hiding place from the forces of nature now in league for his destruction! How
wonderful that "a Man shall be as a hiding. place from the wind, and a covert
from the tempest," - a Man, but the "Second Man"! It is He who, abiding in the
secret place of the Most High, shall lodge under the shadow of the Almighty; He
who in the path of faith takes Jehovah for His refuge and fortress, His God, in
whom He trusts. Here is One who, at least for Himself, can claim fully the
divine protection - an unfailing, perfect Man.
But how does this avail
for men? Gods name revealed is "Jehovah;" and "Jehovah" is "the God of
redemption"- the name under which He intervened to redeem His people of old.
Redemptions too, by power is seen in the following psalms. Jehovahs
throne is established upon earth; the wicked are destroyed; the righteous
flourish. The earth also is set upon a permanent ground of blessing - "The
world also is established, that it cannot be moved." Jehovah comes (96 - 100)
to His restored creation; which claps its hands, rejoicing in His presence.
This closes the first half of the book, but the fullness of the
blessing is not yet told out, nor the ground of it. This, redemption not by
power but by purchase, and at the hands of the Kinsman-Redeemer, can alone
disclose.
In the hundred and first psalm we find accordingly once more
the Second Man, into whose hands now the earth is put, King of Israel
evidently, but with another name and a wider title soon to be declared. For in
the hundred and second psalm, not only Zions time of blessing is come,
but for the earth also to be blessed, "when the peoples are gathered together,
and the kings also, to serve the Lord."
But all this blessing waits
upon One who in the meanwhile is seen, not only in human weakness, but under
the wrath of God. Alone in the presence of His enemies, His heart smitten and
withered like grass; and why? "Because of Thine indignation and wrath; for Thou
hast lifted Me up and cast Me down."
But how then is the blessing to
come, if Israels King, the Second Man, upon whom all depends, is cut off
under the wrath of God? "He weakened My strength in the way; He shortened My
days. I said, O My God, take Me not away in the midst of My days: Thy
years are throughout all generations.
What, then, is the answer
to this prayer? It is the amazing declaration as to this humbled One: -
"Of
old hast Thou laid the foundations of the earth; and the heavens are the work
of Thy hands: they shall perish, but Thou shalt endure; yea, all of them shall
wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be
changed: but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall have no end."
Thus
Creator and Redeemer are the same wondrous Person: Jehovah, whose throne is set
upon earth, is that very second Man into whose hands the restored earth is
given; and this, and the blessings resulting from it, the hundred and third and
hundred and fourth psalms celebrate. This weakness of man is the power and
grace of God for mans salvation. Gods name is indeed decisively
declared, and man finds his happy hiding place in God Himself, never to be a
wanderer again.
How fit a conclusion to the picture of atonement which
the Psalms, and indeed the whole of the Old Testament, present! May our joyful
adoration grow in equal pace with our apprehension of them.
Go To Chapter Seventeen
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