Table of Contents

"Why do the heathen rage?"

"Who will show us any good?"

"The Son of Man" and "The man of the earth."

Man in Contrast with God

Psalm 36.

How to meet Tribulation

The Enduring Name

Psalms 40, 41, 72.

Defeat and Victory

The King: His Victory, His Coronation, His Palaces

Psalms 45, 46, 47, 48.

Salvation and Satisfaction

"He that ascended, descended first."

"The God that doest wonders."

"Cut down" - "Set on high."

Mercy and Judgment

Poverty: Patience: Power

"The headstone of the corner."

Psalms 114-118.

"Out of the depths." "Into thy rest."

Psalms 130, 131, 132.

The Great Hallelujah Chorus

Psalms 146-150.

FBHOLE - On the Psalms

Psalms [1]

F. B. Hole

This document may be found online at www.stempublishing.com

You are welcome to freely access and use this material for personal study or sending to other Bible students, compiling extracts for notes etc, but please do not republish without permission.

With the prayerful desire that the Lord Jesus Christ will use this God-given ministry in this form for His glory and the blessing of many in these last days before His coming. © Les Hodgett (contact@stempublishing.com) (2011)

"Why do the heathen rage?"

"Why do the heathen rage?"

Psalms 1 and 2.

F. B. Hole.

(Extracted from Scripture Truth Vol. 27, 1935, page 10.)

This question opens the second Psalm. It was first written therefore about three thousand years ago. It is not, because of that, wholly out of date, and without any application for today, only interesting as throwing some light on affairs of hoary antiquity. The Bible deals with eternal values, and when it touches the passing things of time it is to disclose the underlying currents that flow in human affairs which do not alter from one age to another.

The word translated, "heathen" is the one that frequently occurs in the Old Testament to indicate the various nations of the earth apart from Israel. A more literal translation renders the opening words thus, "Why are the nations in tumultuous agitation, and why do the peoples meditate a vain thing?" With this simple explanation the words become luminous, and express exactly what any one of us might wish to enquire concerning the agitated nations of today.

The question is not merely asked in this Psalm, it is conclusively answered. Moreover the answer is given with the prophetic insight which goes to the roots of things, and the foresight which carries us to the end of things, when the agitation and rage of the nations shall cease. If we profit by this prophetic insight — and especially if we discern the contrast between this Psalm and Psalm 1 — we shall gain much in the way of moral instruction. If we profit by the prophetic foresight afforded we shall not be unduly disturbed though dwelling in the midst of the agitation.

There are innumerable causes of strife amongst the nations, causes which lie upon the surface of things, and which vary from age to age, and even from year to year. The inspired Psalmist probes beneath the surface and discerns that the real root of all is the innate lawlessness of fallen man, the desire to be rid of the restraint which the Lord and His Anointed might impose upon them. This lawlessness is the very essence of sin.

The Man contemplated in Psalm 1 is the exact antithesis of this. He is wholly separate from the ungodly, their thoughts and their ways. His delight and his meditation is in the law of the Lord. The very law, which the natural man finds to be an intolerable restraint, He finds to be a perfect delight. As a consequence He is like a tree planted by the softly flowing river, full of prosperity and fruitfulness — a simile which conveys no thought of agitation and tumult but the reverse, placidity and prosperity.

The Lord Jesus is the only one who ever has fully answered to the description of Psalm 1. He only could say, "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work." Since this characterized His life He could speak later in John's Gospel of His own peace — "My peace I give unto you" — unruffled by the storms without. The years of His ministry were spent amidst a whirlwind of opposing and contradicting forces, yet He abode at the very centre of the will of God, with full delight in that will, and in perfect serenity.

Now we are called to follow His steps. His path is our path, though we follow so often with feeble and hesitating feet. We may depend upon it however that the measure in which we find our delight in the will of God, and are marked by obedience, will determine the measure of our peaceful prosperity and fruitfulness.

Why are saints of God so frequently found in a state of tumultuous agitation? Because they are out of harmony with the will of God, if not in a state of open warfare against it. Only let us delight in His will and meditate day and night in the Scriptures, wherein His will and purposes are revealed, and we shall be fruitful and prosperous.

The various races of mankind, ever since they had existence as nations, have always been in a state of unrest and pursuing vain objects, yet the Psalmist with prophetic vision sweeps on to a moment now drawing near — as we believe — when their raging will reach a climax under kings and rulers of extraordinary genius and power. There is to be a last great concerted rising against Jehovah and against His Christ, with the object of ridding mankind once for all of those bands and cords which they feel to be only the relics of a less enlightened, a less scientific age, and therefore an intolerable check on human progress and glory. A day is coming when the Christian religion will be almost universally regarded as a relic of a darker age, to be no longer tolerated.

This prediction occasions no surprise to any who are observant of the drift so visible in Christendom. Then the cry will be, "Let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us." That is really just what the leaders of a large part of Christendom are saying today, only they express their sentiments in rather different terms. It is just the modern attitude towards the Bible.

Many there may be who will pay tributes to the Bible in glowing terms. As ancient literature it is declared to be incomparable. Its maxims, its moral tone, the ethics it inculcates, surpass anything found elsewhere. The Figure portrayed in the Gospels, Jesus of Nazareth, is confessed to be absolutely unique; the life He lived without a rival. Moreover our Authorized Version is eulogized as a literary wonder, a well of pure English undefiled, so that no education is completely rounded off except the student has some acquaintance with it. All this and more may be said, and yet in another aspect of it the Bible may be rejected with scorn.

Whether these beautiful and complimentary things said about the Bible are intended as camouflage we cannot say, we do know however that they often act as camouflage, and hide the stubborn refusal to regard the Bible as any kind of authority. Immediately anyone quotes the Bible as an authority as to the things of God and religion, the modern "kings" and "rulers" of the religious world are up in arms, and empty the vials of their scorn. They accept it as giving an interesting history of the develops ment of religion up to the first century of the Christian era, but that is all. A Luther, a Calvin, and many more besides, might quote it as the supreme authority, and gladly embrace its bands and cords, as also many a believer does today: they wish to be free to reason, and speculate to their hearts' content, and so will have none of it.

So for well over a century the attack on the Bible has proceeded, with the sole object of undermining its authority. It has succeeded all too well with the mass of unconversed adherents of the Christian religion. The increasing lawlessness, the loosening of restraint in morals and behaviour, so noticeable in Protestant lands, witnesses to the way in which the bands have been broken and the cords of the Divine Word loosed.

The attack has not yet been pushed to its full length. It will culminate of course in the apostasy, and the revelation of the man of sin, as predicted in 2 Thessalonians 2 — "who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped." When that point is reached every restraint will be res moved, and the only "deity" that will remain will be man, in the person of "the man of sin."

Then indeed the nations will be in tumultuous agitation, and the peoples will vainly imagine themselves to be free to work out a glorious future without any restraint or interference. The "raging" of those days may take the form of an enthusiastic propaganda of adulation and applause.

And all this may seem very, very wonderful to those who are duped by Satanic power. To those who fear God it will be very terrible. To God Himself it will simply appear to be laughable.

The Scriptures do not often represent God as laughing. Three times in the Psalms they do so, and once in Proverbs, and in each case the same thing is in view. If men refuse His mercy, if they maltreat His people, if they lawlessly deny Him and His Anointed, deriding His authority and His Word, they will be judged in due season. And not only judged, but cast down in such a way as to make them supremely ridiculous, the objects of derision to all created intelligences. The "laugh" will be on God's side in that day. Divine wrath and displeasure will be then poured out as verse 5 says; and the Son will execute that wrath, as the last verse indicates. Only He will not need to exert Himself. When His wrath is kindled but a little they will perish. The little finger of His wrath will be much thicker than the loins of their combined strength.

The ragings, the imaginations, the counsel that is taken by kings and rulers, all comes to nothing, and God's counsel stands. His purposes are not delayed one hour, and His King is set exactly as intended upon His holy hill of Zion. The word "set" is literally "anointed" as the margin of a reference Bible shows. The rulers and the kings will depart in judgment, the shouting and the tumult will die, and Jehovah's King will be anointed according to the decree.

Now let us put together the striking things concerning our blessed Lord, which greet us as we read the two opening Psalms. In the first place He is "the Man" who was wholly apart from the smallest taint of that which is evil, who found all His delight in the will of God, revealed in His word; and who consequently was fruitful in everything, carrying all to a prosperous issue to the glory of God. He was not the negation and denial of God's thoughts as the first man had been. The rather, "all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him Amen, unto the glory of God."

But secondly, this Man is "His Anointed," that is, Jehovah's Christ. He is the One anointed to carry out all the Divine pleasure, and sustain everything in a way that shall be worthy of God. This explains why Satan's malignant hatred is directed against Him, since once he was "the anointed cherub that covereth" (Ezek. 28: 14). Behind the raging and plots of men lies the craft and power of Satan, as the book of Revelation makes so plainly manifest.

Thirdly, the Man who is Jehovah's Anointed is "My King." The kings of the earth and the rulers of the last days will have a great overlord  - the first beast of Revelation 13. He will be a king of kings, and control the destinies of the revived Roman Empire. Satanically inspired, he will be the type of strong man that will mightily appeal to the mass of men, and so be emphatically man's king. To him Satan will give "his seat" as well as his power, and he will be found on the "seven mountains" of Rome.

Sinai was the mountain characterized by the holy demands of God, and abject human failure. Rome has the seven mountains of human pride and glory, where the king of man's choice will have his seat. Jehovah's King will be anointed upon "Zion, the hill of My holiness." Zion has become the symbol of the sovereign mercy of God which leads to holiness and glory.

We may well thank God that we "are come unto mount Sion," and not to either Sinai or Rome.

And who is this Man who is both Anointed and King? In verse 7 we hear His voice speaking to us, and we discover lastly that He is Jehovah's Son. This is the decree, "Thou art My Son." As Son He is the Heir of all things, and well able to make good His title to the earth by judgments.

This seventh verse is worthy of special note. It is quoted by the Apostle Paul, as recorded in Acts 13; and he applied it to the raising up of Jesus at His first Advent. It is also quoted in Hebrews 1: 5, and there it is placed alongside a quotation from 1 Chronicles 17: 13, of words which in the first instance had reference to Solomon. It is not unusual to find that these inspired utterances, given originally in connection with important persons or things, had in them a depth of meaning which was by no means apparent when first uttered. And further that predictions which in the fulness of their meaning will only be fulfilled at the second Advent, have a fulfilment at the first Advent. So it appears to be here.

Another illustration of the same thing is found in Psalm 89, where David and not Solomon is in question. There we read, "I will make him My firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth" (ver. 27). David was that in a certain sense. Christ will be that in every sense of the word. So in our Psalm He is the Son, acknowledged as such as He is introduced into the world, whether at His first Advent or His second. Being the Son He is the Heir of all things, with the power to make good His title. Meanwhile He is the test for every man.

The hour of His public glory and of the overthrow of all human opposition and pretension is not yet arrived, so a word of admonition is given to the kings and judges of the earth and all others besides. There is still time to tender submission to the Lord and to serve Him. Then though trembling at the remembrance of His might, one may rejoice at the coming vindication and glory of the Son. If any would tender submission they must do so by honouring the Son. "Kiss the Son," is the word; that is, salute Him by way of submission to His authority, render Him the homage that is His due.

No one will do this except they trust in Him. Hence the note upon which the psalm ends. The word used here for "trust," is one which has the sense of "take refuge." Blessed are all they that take refuge in Him. Amazing fact! Before the hour strikes when He will deal in righteous judgment, making good His kingly authority, ruling as with a rod of iron even the remotest of the nations, poor sinful men may trustingly take refuge in Him. It reminds one of the saying attributed to Augustine that, "The only way to flee from God is to flee to God."

Blessed are all that have fled to Him. Do we not know it? If the blessedness was apparent in Old Testament days, how much more apparent to us who live in the light of the New Testament? Let us rejoice in the blessedness that is ours.

And do not let us forget that though He alone fully answered to the beautiful description of the godly in Psalm 1, yet that we are left to tread in His steps. The godliness there described is to characterize us today. We are to be marked by a careful avoidance of all that is evil, and of the evil men in whom these things find expression. We are to find our delight in the will of God our Father. We are to make His Word our continual meditation so that we may be instructed in His thoughts, and in His will in which we delight. Then we too — in the measure in which these things do characterize us — shall be like trees that are fruitful for God, and be prospered in the things that concern His Name.

"Who will show us any good?"

"Who will show us any good?"

Psalms 3 and 4.

F. B. Hole.

(Extracted from Scripture Truth Vol. 27, 1935, page 27.)

Trouble of one sort or another is the common lot of man. Eliphaz the Temanite made the assertion that,"Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward," (Job 5: 7), and it can hardly be contradicted. The child of God is not accorded any special exemption in this matter. Indeed it would seem that he gets an increased quantity, for he is confronted by opposition from the world, if not persecution, which, in the very nature of things, is unknown by the child of this world. With it however he gets the support of God, and ultimately he will get a salvation equally divine.

Sometimes the child of God is found in a position where he is smarting under trials and sorrows that he has really brought upon his own head. In His holy government God has placed His hand upon him, and he has to reap what he has sown. This perhaps is the severest test of all. When David wrote Psalm 3 he was in this plight, for he was fleeing from Absalom his son. That was perhaps the blackest hour of all his varied history, for its details bore a strongly retributive character. He had sown to the flesh and was now reaping a perfect whirlwind of corruption.

In that dark hour the number of those who troubled him had greatly increased. Many had risen up against him under the leadership of his rebellious son; and again many others there were who discerned the hand of God in it, and hence they concluded, "There is no help for him in God."

In this conclusion they were absolutely wrong. Precisely the opposite was true. There was no help for him anywhere but in God, as the next two verses show. Jehovah was a shield of protection to him. He was also the One in whom he could make his boast, the One who would lift up his head when men sought to cast him down. To Jehovah he cried, and was heard "out of His holy hill."

In this there is very great comfort for us. How many times have we come under the disciplinary hand of God. Sometimes we may have been conscious of it; though more frequently we may not have realized that we had brought our troubles upon ourselves. Whichever way it may be however, the aim of the devil would be to keep us from turning to God; and he will never lack many to voice his desires and insinuate that God will no longer be on our part: there is no hope or help for us in Him. Let us learn the lesson that this is a lie. David under discipline was not shut out from God, and neither are we.

Someone, however, may wish to tell us that we need not drag the devil into this matter, since as far as they are concerned their conscience works with sufficient acute. ness to keep them away from God. That is so of course, if there has not been honest and thorough confession of the sin.

We venture to say that David would never have written thus in Psalm 3, on the occasion of his flight from Absalom, if he had not previously written Psalm 51, as the outpouring of his heart in the confession of his great transgression. But having judged himself, and acknowledged his sin, he was restored to communion with God; and therefore was able to face with confidence in Him the tribulation that came on him according to God's governmental dealings.

Let us then keep short accounts with God. If we sin we have an Advocate with the Father, so our course is to judge ourselves, and confess, when we shall be restored to communion with God, and be able to accept whatever may come upon us in the way of discipline, without losing confidence in Him. Then in the midst of the trouble we may find God to be our Shield and Glory, and ultimately our Deliverer. The latter part of Psalm 3 gives a beautiful picture of David calm and sustained and unafraid in the midst of his afflictions, and then finally delivered out of them.

But this is by no means all. Psalm 3 is followed by another Psalm of David, which, though not distinguished as being written at the same time, yet follows most appropriately as regards its theme. In it we are enabled to see that his time of trouble led to other desirable things. He gained, (1) spiritual blessing and enlargement for himself; and, (2) capacity for rendering testimony to others.

In the first verse of Psalm 4, we encounter this remarkable statement "Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress." The word for "distress" in the original is the same as that for "trouble" in the first verse of Psalm 3. It apparently has in it the thought of straitness, narrowness, pressure.

In Darby's New Translation the words are rendered, "In pressure Thou hast enlarged me." Here indeed is an extraordinary thing. As far as things material go, we should certainly associate in our minds pressure and contraction. A certain substance is placed in a powerful press in process of manufacture. As the result of heavy pressure it is solidified and strengthened. That we understand and expect. But we certainly do not expect to discover it to be enlarged by the process, but rather diminished. The working of the spiritual is in this case the opposite of the natural and material.

No "distress" can be otherwise than troublesome and grievous, yet if God takes it into His hands and uses it as a press it greatly enlarges us. Illustrations of this fact abound by the ten thousand in the experiences and lives of God's saints. Trouble in itself does not enlarge: it is going through trouble with God that enlarges. It is when He takes up the trouble and skilfully uses it as a press that the blessing results.

If we understood this more fully we should not be so anxious for a trouble-free life. We should not yearn to be always sailing under blue skies; always walking a smooth road with pleasure as a companion — And this is true even when sorrow comes to us, not as the result of our faithfulness to Christ and His service, but as discipline, the fruit of our own folly and sin.

"I walked a mile with Pleasure,

She chattered all the way,

But left me none the wiser

For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow

And ne'er a word said she

But, oh, the things I learned from

When Sorrow walked with me."

It is experience that counts. In the hours of our distress, that which heretofore had been merely doctrinal now becomes experimental and consequently practical. There is many a thing as to which the youngest and most inexperienced believer can say, I believe that because the Bible affirms it. God has said it and that commands my faith. In after years the same believer, no longer young and inexperienced, is saying, And how fully have I found it to be true; and what enrichment of heart and life has come to me in the proving of it, even though the process of proving it has been a painful one.

Take two well-known Scriptural cases as illustrating this point. The Apostle Peter sadly broke down and denied his Lord. This involved him in painful experiences, culminating in the probing he underwent at the hands of the Lord Himself, as to his ways and motives, as recorded in John 21. Yet he was enlarged thereby, for being restored himself he was to strengthen his brethren and feed the lambs and sheep of Christ's flock. Moreover he did not fail in either courage or boldness when face-to-face with the foes, as we see in the early chapters of Acts.

Again, consider the case of the Apostle Paul, as he himself presents it in 2 Corinthians 12. The discipline under which he came was preventive and not retributive, but that did not make the "thorn in the flesh," any less trying. "Thorn" is we understand, a rather inadequate word. It should rather be "stake." Now to have a stake driven through one's flesh must be a fearful and crippling business. This Paul had. But by it he learned experimentally that the grace of Christ was sufficient for him. He discovered how the strength of Christ could be perfected in his weakness. He learned to glory in his infirmities with the power of Christ resting upon him.

Come now, what do we know in practical reality of the grace of Christ, the strength of Christ, the power of Christ? Do we know as much as Paul? We do not indeed! Why not? Because we do not know much about a stake in our flesh. In our cases, we do probably only have experience of a mere thorn.

Paul, we must remember, had been caught up into the third heaven, where he heard unspeakable things. That must have been a tremendous experience, and brought him amazing enlightenment as to the things of God. But we venture to think that it did not accomplish with him what the stake in the flesh did. In the trying circumstances of weakness and cripplement there was an opportunity for the experience of the grace, the strength and the power of Christ, not afforded amid the glories of the third heaven.

See also, in Psalm 4, how David, enlarged in soul, learned to differentiate between the "godly" and the "sons of men." The sons of men turned his "glory" into shame. Jehovah was David's glory, as the third Psalm has told us. But Jehovah was nothing to them; indeed worse than nothing in their estimation. Vanity was what commended their hearts, and the objects of their pursuit were but a lie. From all that those who feared God were separate.

They were separate, not because they fancied themselves better than others, but because Jehovah had set them apart for Himself. God had claimed them, and just because He claimed them He disciplined them. The sons of men may pursue their vanities and their lies with apparent impunity. They are not dealt with, as God deals with those who are in relationship with Him. They are allowed to heap up judgment to themselves against the coming day of wrath. But God keeps short accounts with His people. And that is why we do well to keep short accounts with Him.

However, the godly are called to render testimony in the presence of the sons of men; and when, like David, they have been reamers in the school of discipline, they are the more qualified to do so.

The pursuit of vanity does not bring any satisfaction to the sons of men. The very reverse. Itleaves them sadly discontented, in just the same frame of mind as it left Solomon, who came to the conclusion that all was vanity and vexation of spirit. Consequently their cry is, "Who will show us any good?" They ask that question evidently with the air of those who believe that there is no real answer to it, because no real good is to be found.

Many there were who asked that question, just as there were many who asserted of David that there was no hope for him in God. Pretty clearly both the assertion and the question sprang from the same root of utter unbelief. And without a doubt the many who asserted and asked were wholly wrong on both occasions. There was help for David in God, and only there. Absolute and eternal good exists, and there are those who can show it when challenged. David accepted the challenge and proceeded to show the good. He not only knew it theoretically, but also experimentally.

In the first place he declares that good is found in the light of Jehovah's countenance. No "good" is to be found in the darkness of this world: to obtain it we must stand in the light of God. David knew this, but how much more ought we to know it, seeing we are in the light of His countenance, fully shining in Christ. In the advent of our Lord Jesus the very face of God has indeed been lifted upon us, and not merely His "back parts" as in the case of Moses. All true good is to be found in the knowledge of God and of Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing surpasses, "the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus" our Lord, nor will surpass it to all eternity.

The light of Jehovah's countenance was, in a general way, David's answer to the question. However he evidently felt that details of a more particular sort were called for. These details he supplied in the two verses that end our Psalm. As we draw to a close we will note the three things upon which he dwells.

First, there is gladness. But take particular note that the gladness of which he speaks comes from God, has its source in God, and consequently is independent of earthly things. It is heart gladness, and not the superficial, frothy article in which the world deals. It was God who put it into the heart of David. We are not surprised therefore to discover it is of the sort that flourishes above all that can be produced by earthly good, the sort that continues when the other fails. In David's day a great deal of the wealth was represented by corn and wine, which thereby became symbolic of the good things of earth. When bountiful harvests caused them to increase it was an occasion of gladness. But the gladness which has its source in the light of God's countenance is far better than that.

A further and greater contrast is furnished in Habakkuk 3. Even when the corn and wine and all else fail, the gladness of heart which is of God abides. It is eternal.

In the second place there is peace: such peace that David could lay himself down and sleep in happy forgetfulness of himself and his troubles. Jehovah was a shield unto him, so why should he not do so? If God cared for him why should he be consumed or distracted with care for himself? This again be it noted, was the fruit of an earlier experience. When many had risen up against him under Absalom's leadership he cried unto the Lord, he was heard, and then in childlike confidence he lay down and slept, and awakened sustained of the Lord. What he had done once he could trustfully do again. And he could testify to the sons of men that he was prepared to do it, no matter what the distress or pressure he was under.

And in the third place there was the safety that was guaranteed to him by the presence of the Lord. Men might threaten and imperil, but the Lord, and the Lord alone, made him dwell in safety.

The generation of the disappointed, the discontented, the disillusioned, has not ceased out of the earth. We suspect the rather that it has multiplied amazingly. There are still many who say Who will show us any good? Still they challenge us in this way. Are we ready and glad to answer them? And can we do so out of glad hearts that not only have tasted, but also are in the full enjoyment of the grace of our God?

We can point them to Jesus, the Son of God in whom God is known to us. We can speak of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And then we can tell of the gladness and peace and safety, which have been brought to us by the gospel. Only perhaps we should reverse their order, and speak of safety, peace and gladness. Safety, certainty and enjoyment are indeed the foundation of the "good" which the gospel has brought to us, and of which we gladly testify to others.

And the more we are enlarged under pressure the brighter will our testimony be.

"The Son of Man" and "The man of the earth."

"The Son of Man" and "The man of the earth."

Psalms 8 and 10.

F. B. Hole.

(Extracted from Scripture Truth Vol. 27, 1935, page 51.)

The name of Jehovah our Lord is excellent. Beyond all question it excels every other name. Its excellence is fully acknowledged in the heaven of heavens, but not yet in all the earth. In the larger part of the earth it is still blasphemed. The day approaches when the statement made in the first verse of Psalm 8, and repeated in the last verse, will be gloriously fulfilled. But for that day we have to wait.

Today we should have to exclaim the rather,  -  O Lord our Lord, how dishonoured is Thy name in all the earth! There is a reason for this, and our short Psalm identifies the source of the mischief in one word — "man." Having done so, it passes on at once to dwell upon the great Personage who is going to make the name of the Lord excellent in all the earth — "the Son of Man."

If we pass on to Psalm 9 we get a good deal more about the "man" who is the root of the trouble; and this sorrowful theme is continued throughout Psalm 10. Indeed in this latter Psalm the theme seems to rise to a climax, and the character of "man" is fully exposed, until we reach mention of one who is to come, in whom human evil will rise to its heights. In the last verse of Psalm 10 he is designated as "the man of the earth."

In the Old Testament several words are used for "man." One of them is enosh, which, we are told, has the significance of "frail mortal man," being almost a term of contempt. This is the word used when the Psalmist asks the question in Psalm 9, when he says, "Arise, O Lord; let not man prevail;" and also, "Put them in fear, O Lord; that the nations may know themselves to be but men." It is used again in Psalm 10, when he speaks of "the man of the earth."

Now this is very instructive. "Enosh" may be a pretty big fellow in his own estimation, and in the sight of others. When he rises to his full height he may do many pretentious things. He may defy God. He may oppress those who fear God. But after all, he is only "the frail, mortal man of the earth." With heaven he has nothing to do.

Will our readers scrutinize this tenth Psalm in which the character of unconverted man is exposed. They will discover that five times over he is called, "the wicked." He is not only called that, but also what constitutes his wickedness is described: in one word, it is the pride of his heart.

He doth persecute the poor but it is his pride that moves him to do it. He is covetous and "blesseth the covetous" (ver. 3), and his pride leads him to boast of this evil feature. Again he has no desire for God: "God is not in all his thoughts" (ver. 4), and this is because of the pride of his countenance. He totally excludes God from his thoughts, and this is because he is filled with self-sufficiency and imagines that he will never be moved. Further, the question is asked, "Wherefore doth the wicked contemn God?" (ver. 13). The answer is obvious. Only the most insufferable pride could lead him to treat God with contempt. No wonder then that in verse 15 we have the prayer, "Break Thou the arm of the wicked and the evil man"; a prayer which will be answered in due time.

This description of the wicked was penned some three thousand years ago, nevertheless it exactly fits the present leaders of the world of the ungodly. They completely rule God out of everything. They exclude Him everywhere, as far as their thoughts are concerned. They deny His action in creation. They do not admit His presence in Christ: the Jesus of history is to them merely a superior kind of man. They do not recognize any moving of His hand in the affairs of today. He is outside the scope of all their politics, their business, their science, their philosophy. And if some of them cannot do without a religion of some kind, they take care that even there He shall be pushed far into the background, as a vague and shadowy Being who can be pretty safely ignored.

From the Psalmist's day to our own, throughout the three millenniums, this wickedness has been manifested. Today it is evidently working up to a climax. We will let the New Testament sum up the situation for us: "The mystery of iniquity [or, lawlessness] doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that wicked be revealed" (1 Thess. 2: 7, 8). The lawless pride of man has been working, but being held in check it has taken on mysterious or secret forms. The greatest activity of this evil has been in and amongst the Christianized nations; but just there the restraining power of the Holy Spirit, indwelling the saints, has been most felt.

That restraining power will however be withdrawn in due season, and then the iniquity no longer held in check will blaze forth and reach its culmination in "that Wicked"; spoken of in our Psalm as, "the man of the earth." His leading characteristic is opposition to God. Thessalonians emphasizes this, as also does our Psalm, which also discovers to us that he will be an oppressor of God's people. Those two things of course go together. He will express his opposition against the God whom he cannot reach by oppressing the saints whom he can reach.

He is the man of the EARTH. Even in the apostolic age Paul had to write of some as, "the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things" (Phil. 3: 18, 19). He will be all this carried to its highest power. Earth will fill his every thought: it will bound his horizon, and there will be no sky line for him. The average modernist, whether minister or layman, is exactly on those lines today. They travel in that direction, though they have not as yet reached the terminus.

The saints whom the man of the earth will oppress will doubtless be those raised up of God after the church has been translated. Their character is very beautifully portrayed in Psalm 10. Five times over are the features of the wicked mentioned, and the character of the saints is also presented under five headings.

They are "the poor" (ver. 2). That is, of course, poor in spirit, and not merely in worldly possessions. Their poverty of spirit is the exact opposite of the pride which is the distinguishing feature of frail mortal man.

They are "the innocent" (ver. 8). They are not party to all the cursing, deceit, fraud, devices that fill the lives of the wicked.

They are "the humble" (ver. 12). The margin has it "the afflicted." They neither have big ideas of themselves nor do they make big claims. Hence frequently they get pushed on one side and troubled.

They are "the fatherless" (ver. 14). They have no natural protector; no one on earth to stand up in their defence, and protect their rights.

They are "the oppressed" (ver. 18). Being of God, they become the special object of the hate of the adversary; and the man of the earth will become the devil's instrument for their oppression.

Notice that the list begins with "the poor," and ends with "the oppressed." In this it agrees with the beatitudes of Matthew 5, which begin with the blessedness of "the poor in spirit," and end with the blessedness of those "which are persecuted," whether for righteousness sake or for the sake of the Lord Himself. So we may be sure that whether it be the day in which the Psalmist lived, or when our Lord was on earth, or our day, or the day when the man of the earth will flourish for a very short space, the moral features which God loves to see in His saints are the same.

Let us take good note of them, and be exercised thereby. For we may be sure that one reason why we come so little into collision with the men of this age is that we are so little marked by these features which are so sharply in contrast with them. The wicked in his pride doth persecute "the poor." He does indeed, no matter what the age may be. As soon as "the poor" is in evidence he simply itches to persecute him. The wicked we have with us right enough. But where is the poor? Well, if the wicked of this age compliment us and pat us on the back, it raises some serious questions!

When "the man of the earth" seizes power for a few brief moments he will display in highest measure the hideous deformities of fallen man. Then David's question in Psalm 8, "what is man, that Thou art mindful of Him?" will take on an added significance. David asked that question, and saw him dwarfed into nothingness by the splendours of God's inanimate creation. He also saw him set aside, that out of the mouth of even babes and sucklings He might give forth and establish His Word. "The enemy and the avenger" — who may perhaps be identified with "the man of fhe earth" of Psalm 10 — is to be stilled not by the efforts of mortal man, but by God Himself, working through the feeblest and most ins significant instruments. That work is reserved for the Son of Man Himself.

Now when the Spirit of God inspired David to write Psalm 8, and verse 4 was reached, He led him to change the word for "man." He avoided the word enosh in the title, "Son of Man." The first part of his question was, "what is enosh?" The second part was, "and the Son of Adam that Thou visitest Him?" Adam is the generic term for man, and does not carry of necessity the reproach and contempt that is connected with enosh. Our Lord was truly the Son of Adam as the genealogy given in Luke's Gospel so definitely shows. But when He is thus traced up to Adam the line given is that of Mary His mother; involving the virgin birth, by which the natural entail of sin and death connected with Adam was broken. He was truly Son of Adam, and yet Man of a new order.

What is the Son of Man that He should be visited by Jehovah? Why, He is everything. He is all that Jehovah Himself could wish. Verse 5 gives us first His humiliation and death; but also His present glory. Verses 6 to 8 give us the public glory and dominion that shall be His in the coming day.

We are told in 1 Peter 1: 10 and 11, that the prophets of old had to inquire and search diligently to discern the mind of the Spirit who spoke through them. Often doubtless they had to search the very words they had just written with anxious enquiry as to their full meaning. It may very probably have been thus with David when he had written verses 5 to 8 of our Psalm. Even then did he discern, we wonder, what words referred to the sufferings of the Christ, and what to the glory that should follow? Could he have detected that the very glory that should follow would be divided into that which is His now in private, and that which presently shall be His in public display?

It is perfectly obvious to us. But then we have the privilege of that light which is shed by the New Testament writings. We have the inspired comment of Hebrews 2: 6-9. In the light of that passage all is plain.

Man's place in the original scale of creation is a little lower than the place of angels. He, whom we know as Son of Man, was not in that lower place to begin with. He entered into it by an act of God. It was not what He was, but what He became. This lower and lowly place was His as ordered of Jehovah, and He took it that thereby He might become obedient unto death. The man of the earth displays the apotheosis of human pride and lawlessness. The humbled Son of Man became the holy Servant of God to accomplish all His good pleasure. That pleasure included the tasting of death for all, and the triumphant bringing of many sons to glory, as Hebrews 2 reveals.

But He was rejected on earth, and hence as risen He is gone from human sight into the heavens, and meanwhile poor enosh monopolizes the earth and drags out his sad story to culminate in the man of the earth. Jesus is crowned with glory and honour in the presence of the Father. There it is we see Him by faith. The splendid priestly vestments that were made in the wilderness for Aaron, and which apparently he wore but once, were "for glory and for beauty." Our High Priest sits in the heavens, "crowned with glory and honour." There and thus He is today.

The hour approaches when another act of God will take place. Three times over do we get an act of God in these verses: one for the the past, one for the present, one for the future. Jehovah made Him a little lower than the angels. Jehovah has crowned Him with glory and honour. Jehovah will yet set Him over — or, make Him to have dominion over — the works of His hands, with all things under His feet, as the Psalm predicts.

The prediction is a very sweeping one, commented upon twice in the New Testament — 1 Corinthians 15, and Hebrews 2. The former scripture points out that inasmuch as the putting of all things under His feet is an act of God, He who acts must be excepted from the statement. The latter scripture asserts that, subject to this solitary exception, the statement is all-inclusive, there is absolutely nothing that is not put under Him.

In that day consequently everything will be as He orders it, and at long last, as a result the name of Jehovah will be excellent in all the earth. Instead of setting forth the evil pleasure of the will of man, everything will declare the excellence of the good pleasure of God. The Divine glory will be set above the heavens in the person of Jesus.

So the world to come is to be placed under Man. What an amazing development this is! When Adam in innocence was placed in the garden he certainly was granted dominion over this earthly creation. When he fell and became subject to death all was slipping from his hands. Who would have imagined for one moment that MAN was yet to dominate ALL THINGS? From Psalm 8, it is true, we could only discern that He is to dominate all things on earth. Hebrews 2 reveals that the "all things" has so wide a meaning as to embrace things in the heavens also.

Well may our hearts sigh and long to see the Son of Man in that exalted place, and Jehovah's name covered with glory. Well, we are going to see it in its season. We wait to see our Lord Jesus in the place of which He is so worthy.

Meanwhile we continue to sing,

"Lord, haste that day of cloudless ray,

That prospect bright, unfailing

Where God shall shine in light divine,

In glory never fading."

Man in Contrast with God

Man in Contrast with God.

Psalm 36.

F. B. Hole.

(Extracted from Scripture Truth Vol. 28, 1936, page 34.)

The Scriptures are full of contrasts which convey to us very effective teaching. By contrasting this with that the true character of each is made manifest, and we grasp it for our profit. Psalm 36 is a notable example, for in it God and man are set One against the other. The nature of both is made plain. That we should know God is the most important thing of all. Next to that it is important that we should know man.

The first four verses of the psalm describe man. Verses 5 to 9 set God before us. Verse 10 prays for the continued manifestation of all that God is. Verses 11 and 12 pray for the removal of that which man is. We have only to understand what man is and what God is to heartily endorse the prayers of the Psalmist. It is remarkable that in this psalm, man comes first. It begins with what he is, and ends with his removal. In our consideration of the Psalm however, we venture to begin with God and what He is.

Very much is said of this in verses 5 to 9, far more than we can enlarge upon: we think however, that what is celebrated can be summarized under three heads.

1. The FAITHFULNESS of God. "Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds," he says, as if to express the fact that it is lifted high above man's reach and all the corruption which he imparts to all that he touches. His faithfulness does not stand alone in these verses, it is coupled with His mercy, righteousness, judgments and lovingkindness. Nor does it stand alone in His character and nature, it is of necessity connected with all that He is. Standing, as we do, in the light of New Testament revelation. we can say that "God is light," and that "God is love." Because He is light we have to speak of righteousness and judgments. Because He is love we can celebrate His mercy and lovingkindness. And both light and love support and maintain His faithfulness.

The faithfulness of God! What a glorious fact this is, and how little have we grasped it. He must ever be faithful to all that He is, and to all that He has said. He cannot deny Himself. nor can He deny the one who stakes everything upon Him and the truth of His Word. Therefore it is that "the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings." as the psalm says. If our souls really hold to the faithfulness of God that is what we must inevitably do. We see that He is wholly true, and therefore He is to be wholly trusted.

In these later times perhaps no one has more stressed the faithfulness of God, and lived in the power of it, than the late Hudson Taylor, who may be termed the apostle of the Chinese. It seems to have been his distinguishing feature. He was accustomed to quote the words, "Have faith in God," as meaning, "Hold God's faithfulness." He had some solid ground for this, inasmuch as a very competent scholar assures us that the Greek word for faith, together with the Hebrew and the Latin words, as also the English, "hover between two meanings; trustfulness, the frame of mind which relies upon another; and trustworthiness, the frame of mind which can be relied upon. Not only are the two connected together grammatically, as active and passive senses of the same word, or logically, as subject and object of the same act; but there is a close moral affinity between them. Fidelity, constancy, firmness, confidence, reliance, trust, belief — these are the links which connect the two extremes, the passive with the active meaning of faith." The faithfulness of God, gloriously buttressed by His mercy, His righteousness, His judgment, His loving-kindness, does indeed reach to the clouds, and we may safely count upon Him.

We venture to quote a few of Hudson Taylor's remarks. He wrote, "Hold God's faithfulness. Abraham held God's faith, and offered up Isaac, accounting that God was able to raise him up. Moses held God's faith, and led the millions of Israel into the waste howling wilderness. Joshua knew Israel well, and was ignorant neither of the fortifications of the Canaanites, nor of their martial prowess; but he held God's faithfulness, and led Israel across Jordan. The Apostles held God's faith, and were not daunted by the hatred of the Jews, nor by the hostility of the heathen . . . Satan too has his creed 'Doubt God's faithfulness. Hath God said? Are you not mistaken as to His commands? He could not really mean so. You take an extreme view — give too literal a meaning to the words.' Ah! how constantly, and alas, how successfully, are such arguments used to prevent whole-hearted trust in God, whole-hearted consecration to God. All God's giants have been weak men, who did great things for God because they reckoned on God being with them. See the cases of David, of Jonathan and his arrnour-bearer, of Asa, Jehoshaphat, and many others. Oh! beloved friends, if there is a living God, faithful and true, let us hold His faithfulness."

God is faithful to all that He has revealed Himself to be, to all that He has spoken. If we have His word for it, we can rely upon it. How deeply important then it is that we should be very familiar with His Word — our hearts and minds thoroughly saturated with it.

2. The FATNESS of God s house. God's house is the place where He dwells, and fatness signifies fulness of supply. There must of course be an infinite supply of all that is good in the dwelling-place of God, and thence flows what the Psalmist speaks of as, "the river of Thy pleasures." The word for pleasures is really Eden, only it is in the plural — "The river of Thy Edens." The Eden of Genesis 2: 8 had a river, but outside it parted and became four heads. It was a case of one Eden with a plurality of rivers. The psalm speaks of a plurality of Edens with one river.

A river brings with it fertility and refreshment, and where rivers exist all is well. Where they do not exist all is desert. They express in the world around us the bounty of the Creator. In the Scriptures they represent the outflow of the goodness that is in God, whether we consider the river of Eden, or the river that will flow forth from under the threshold of the House in the millennial Jerusalem, as predicted in Ezekiel 47 or the river that is to flow out of "the throne of God and of the Lamb," from the heavenly Jerusalem, as we find in Revelation 22.

Here, then, we have God's house with its infinite supply, and the outflowing river which takes its rise in His many Edens, and the wonderful thing is that all is available for those that put their trust under the shadow of His wings. He is not, as Satan insinuated in Genesis 3 a God who withholds from His creatures that which is for their good and blessing, who desires to repress them. On the contrary He desires to fill them full out of His own fulness, so that they shall be "abundantly satisfied." But this abundant satisfaction must of necessity be restricted to those that put their trust in Him. Those who do not trust Him would not desire it.

We may put this into New Testament language by quoting from the Epistle to the Ephesians. We, who "have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace," may become so acquainted with "the unsearchable riches of Christ" that "strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man ... Christ may dwell in your [our] hearts by faith." Thus we may be "filled with all the fulness of God." This indeed is abundantly satisfying. All the Divine pleasure is centred in Christ. Every Eden is connected with Him and from Him the river flows.

3. The FOUNTAIN of life. This fountain is with God and nowhere else, whether we think of life in its lower manifestations in connection with the natural world around us, or in its higher manifestations in the world of spirit. That was quite plain to the Psalmist in his day. It should be more abundantly clear to us now that Christ has been revealed. Just think of what we have more especially in the writings of the apostle John.

We open his Gospel, and after reading of the Lord Jesus as the Word, who was in the beginning with God, and who was God, we reach this great statement, "In Him was life." How right then was the Psalmist when addressing God he said, "With Thee is the fountain of life." He, in whom was life, was in the beginning with God.

How truly inspired was the Psalmist when he used the word, fountain, in this connection; Life surely lies inherently and equally in each Person of the Godhead, yet He who is the Word is particularly and specially the Fountain of it to others. This becomes more clear when we turn to the first epistle of John. There He stands before us, not simply as the Word in whom was life, but rather as "the Word of life": that is as the One in whom life has been perfectly and exactly expressed. "In Him was life," tells us that the life existed in Him. "The Word of life," assures us that the life is expressed in Him.

Moreover the life expressed, of which the Epistle speaks, is life of the highest character. The apostle John proceeds to say, "The life was manifested." Life, as we know it in the realms of creation may take many forms, but only one life can be spoken of as THE life, and that is, "the eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us." The Fountain of life truly was with God, but since the Psalmist's day all has come forth into manifestation in the Son incarnate.

One thing more is needed if we are really to know the full blessedness of this manifestation: we must become possessed of the life which has been manifested. This, thank God, has been brought to pass for those of us who believe on the name of the Son of God, as the last chapter of the epistle declares. "This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life." Not only therefore do we derive life from the Word as the creatures of His hand — for, "all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made" — but we also have eternal life (which is THE life) in having Him.

It may be that some glimpse of these good things to come was granted to the Psalmist, and that this led him to add, "In Thy light shall we see light." The God who dwelt in the thick darkness in connection with the giving of the law has now come forth into the light, giving a full and clear revelation of Himself in Christ. "No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him."

There is the very closest connection between life and light. We not only find them brought together in the ninth verse of our Psalm but they stand connected in the passages we have already referred to in the Gospel and Epistle of John. The statement that "In Him was life," is immediately followed by the complementary words, "and the life was the light of men." So too the statement that, "the life was manifested," is closely followed by "the message . . . that God is light," and also by the fact that, "He [God] is in the light."

The words then were highly prophetic: "In Thy light shall we see light." David spoke as a prophet gazing on into the future. As for ourselves, we have seen it, thank God! THE life has become THE light. Both life and light as abstract conceptions are beyond us. We cannot attempt to define them. But their display in Christ is wholly for us, and we rejoice in it. As we contemplate the life lived out by Him, God Himself becomes luminous before us. The life has illuminated us. And even more, the life has become ours, so that in the light of the Fountain of life we shall walk to all eternity.

And now we turn to consider the character of poor man. What a contrast! He is designated, "the wicked" in this Psalm, and also spoken of in the plural as, "the workers of iniquity." It may be that the Holy Spirit had before His mind that sinister personage who is called, "that wicked," in 2 Thessalonians 2: 8, and that therefore he used the singular in verses 1 and 11, while He passed on to the plural in verse 12, inasmuch as both the Antichrist and all his followers will be engulfed in ruin. Verse 3 speaks of his words, and verse 4 of his way; and all are but deceit and mischief. Verse 11 shows that his hand is against God's people because He is against God.

Yet, after all, "that wicked," the "man of sin," is just man at the height of his powers in open defiance of God. So we may take this Psalm as giving us man in contrast with God; and we can again summarize what is stated under a few heads; in this case, four.

1. No FEAR of God. The fear of God is commonly referred to in Scripture, and the word mostly used is one having the force of reverence. Here, however, a less common word is used signifying, dread. Sinful men universally have no proper reverence for God, though they may secretly dread Him. The man we have before us here however has no dread of God. That of course will very precisely be true of Antichrist, who sets himself up as an object of veneration above all that is called God, and even God Himself. It is increasingly true too of the men of our day. They have such large ideas of themselves and of their own powers that thoughts of God — if they believe in His existence — put no fear upon their spirits. They feel that they can safely disregard Him.

2. He FLATTERETH himself in his own eyes. Men dearly love a mutual admiration society. Flattery is the commonest thing imaginable in the world, and many a man has been lured on to his overthrow by the fulsome flattery of his fellows. The individual before us, you notice, flatters himself — he does not wait for others to do it for him — and it is in his own eyes rather than in the eyes of his fellows. This, we again remark, will doubtless have a special application to Antichrist, since he will be a terrible tyrant. He will be out to magnify himself, hence self-flattery will be imperative. He will blow his own trumpet first and foremost, leaving others to blow trumpets of flattery in his honour, if they wish to keep in his favour.

Flattery is absolutely impossible when God is in question. All praise and worship offered to Him falls short of that of which He is worthy. We cannot rate Him higher than He is. On the other hand it is almost impossible to avoid flattery when we begin to praise men. We see one or two features, on the surface of their characters or their doings, which appeal to us; but many other features, deep below the surface, which would not appeal but appal, we do not see. Hence our praise of man has in it inevitably an element of flattery even when we have not the slightest desire to flatter. As saints let us beware of the praise of men. By indulging in it we damage each other. though it is very sweet to the flesh.

The average man of the world loves it, and loves it openly. Having no fear of God, he naturally flatters himself. If God shone forth upon him, like Job he would abhor himself.

3. The FOOT of pride. Verse 11 refers to this. It is the next step downwards after flattery. The sequence is quite plain. First God is dismissed from his thoughts because he fears Him not. Then he entertains high and mighty ideas as to himself, and he lets others know it. He flatters himself he is this and that. As the direct consequence of this pride fills his heart and he is quite ready to direct "the foot of pride" against those who do entertain the fear of God. He cannot lift the foot of pride against God since He is far beyond his reach; but he will lift it against the saints of God, who are within his reach. The saints however need not cringe in abject fear. There is a limit to his pride and his power.

4. There are the workers of iniquity FALLEN. At the end there comes the inevitable crash. Poor little man may look imposing enough for a time, and the godly may cry out, "Let not the hand of the wicked remove me." It is the wicked who is removed, not the godly. He is to be destroyed by the outshining of the coming of the Lord. He and his helpers are to fall, and once cast down they will not be able to rise.

We may apply all this to man in a more general way. It is really the story of the first man and his race. One of the great sayings of our Lord is, "Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." The first part of the saying gives as the history of the first man in epitome: the second part has been supremely exemplified in the wonderful story of the holy and blessed One that uttered those words. Who would trust the one? And who would not trust the Other?

The contrast then is complete. GOD: characterized by faithfulness, by fatness, by the fountain of life. Man: characterized by shutting out the fear of God, by flattery, by the foot of pride, and by a terrible fall at the end.

Well did Isaiah say early in his prophecy, "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?" (Isa. 2: 22.) And well does our Psalm say of God, "Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings."

How happy for us if that is what we are doing in the fullest sense of the words.

How to meet Tribulation

How to meet Tribulation.

(Psalm 37)

F. B. Hole.

(Extracted from Scripture Truth Vol. 28, 1936, page 60.)

If Psalm 36 gives us the wicked in contrast with God's character, Psalm 37 sets before us evildoers contrasted with the godly. The contrast is twofold: first, as regards the present life, when the evildoers are the great majority and in the ascendant; second, in the coming age, when evildoers shall be removed in judgment and the godly shall enter into the liberty of glory. In the present age the godly are often oppressed and always in more or less tribulation, so that they need instruction from God as to the way in which they should go through it, and the spirit in which they should meet it.

If the psalm be read in its prophetic significance, it doubtless furnishes instruction to saints upon whom the great tribulation will burst in fury, though one great element of that tribulation is not made prominent. We have to go to the New Testament. and particularly to the book of Revelation, to discover that the great tribulation will not only be a time when there will be a climax of human wrath, and when the devil will be confined to earth, "having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time." but that, most serious of all, it will be the time of the outpouring of the vials of Divine wrath upon the earth. The wrath of God is to be poured out upon nations in this world, and particularly on the Jew who primarily has been guilty of the murder of the beloved Son.

It is important that we should understand that the great tribulation of prophecy is marked by this tremendous feature, for it settles at once the vexed question as to whether the church is to go through it. We have the most explicit assurance that, "God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thess. 5: 9). The great tribulation being the outpouring of the wrath of God, we are not appointed to it, but shall obtain the salvation involved in the coming of the Lord for His saints, as described in 1 Thessalonians 4.

Tribulation is the certain and common lot of the saints of God in the present age, though the great tribulation they shall never see. We may therefore read Psalm 37 with much profit, and discover that it has very close application to ourselves. The strict interpretation belongs to the godly remnant of Israel and the coming age, when they shall be delivered and "inherit the earth," when they shall "inherit the land and dwell therein for ever." An application, however, may happily be made to such as ourselves, only with alterations and adaptations necessitated by the change of dispensation. We do not look to inherit the earth or the land, but to be translated to our heavenly portion by the coming of the Lord. They will be delivered and so shall we; only in differing manners and with a different portion in view.

Now let us take note of the instruction which the psalm gives; and as it starts with a word of counsel as to what we should not do, let us take the negative instructions first.

First of all we are not to "fret" ourselves because of evildoers. This "fretting" is a complaint which is dreadfully common, and Christians are by no means exempt from it —  indeed by reason of the fact that they have a keener sense of what is evil and a keener appreciation of righteousness, they may be more prone to it than any. We have only to look forth upon the world around us and numberless evils and injustices meet our gaze, and it is very natural for us to take particular note of those which have some bearing, even of a remote kind, upon ourselves. Then we proceed to draw very disturbing comparisons. We seem to be in so many awkward situations, and the evildoers seem to have so easy a time! Nothing is easier than to envy them — and fret.

Alas, it is this envy that lies at the bottom of the fretting. We are under trial, and the worker of iniquity seems to be having such an easy time. We cannot bear it! We are like a child in a nursery, who pouts and frets because the other child has an apple a size larger than the one given to it — and the possessor of the big apple was the naughty child of the nursery! Oh, what mischief can envy work in the heart of a saint! And what misery too, it can produce, and what sin!

And moreover, it is all so futile! The workers of iniquity are not going to continue for ever, as verse 2 shows. Subsequent verses make this abundantly clear. "Evildoers shall be cut off" (ver. 8). Again, "Yet a little while and the wicked shall not be" (ver. 10); but the judgment which shall terminate his career is the act of God and not an act of ours. It is well indeed that it is an act of God, for we are far too small, and partial in our thoughts, and self-centred, to be entrusted with it. Our anger and our wrath against sin cannot be marked by the elevation and holiness which characterize God.

Hence we get a second instruction — still of a negative order — in verse 8. Our anger and wrath would be useless even in the day of judgment. Well, let us cease from the one and forsake the other today. This was appropriate instruction in the Psalmist's day; it is far more so in our own, inasmuch as ours is the day of grace and of salvation. We cannot cease from seeing the sorrowful doings of the workers of iniquity; to do so would only be a shutting of one's eyes to facts, and a walking in a fool's paradise. We should not cease from feeling the wrongs and oppressions and strifes; that would be to crush all the divine sensibilities and sympathies which are within us, as: being born of God. But we should cease from fretting, from cultivating anger or wrath concerning them; for that will only land us into what is wrong ourselves.

"Fret not thyself in any wise to do evil," are the very next words. That is just it. When anger and wrath take possession of our spirits — even though they be provoked by sin — we become fretful in our views and judgments, and ultimately are entrapped into something sinful ourselves. And what a tragedy that is! Sinning ourselves, because angry against something sinful!

And yet we have done it ourselves, as well as seen it in others. Again and again the tragedy happens amongst the people of God, in the gatherings of saints. Things are weak, mistakes are made; errors in thought or practice creep in. Then a brother rises up; he is better instructed and more far-seeing than most, possibly more spiritual than any there. He will stand for truth, and put things right. But he does not cease from anger and forsake wrath, and so he cannot have patience and wait for the Lord with full confidence in Him. In result he does not succeed in putting others right. He only puts himself wrong.

Hence lower down in the Psalm again, we find a third instruction of a negative kind. "Depart from evil" (ver. 27). This carries the matter a step beyond verse 8, for we are to keep clear of evil of every kind. In the presence of very much evil we are to be marked by the absence of evil. We can all see the great importance of this. Without it any testimony we may render is nullified. The Psalmist adds, "and do good", and in these words he carries us from the negative to the positive. The negative — at which we have been looking — is of great importance, yet it is not sufficient of itself. Positive good must be brought in, for God's ways in the moral realm abhor a vacuum, just as they do in the realm of created things.

Now let us turn back to the earlier verses of the Psalm in order that we may take note of the instructions of a positive kind. And first of all to verse 3, where also we are bidden to do good, but here it is mentioned in connection with the root out of which it springs.

"Trust in the Lord, and do good," is the word. The fretful spirit is like a root out of which springs a good deal of evil. Confidence in God is a root out of which nothing but good springs. It sets the heart at rest: it calms the spirit: it delivers from fretfulness. The evildoers may be terribly irritating and vexatious, even provocative to the last degree: but after all the Lord is on high and He has not relaxed His grip on things. He is infinitely good, and wholly to be trusted. Confidence in Him will so set our hearts at rest that freed from our fretting we may go calmly onward occupying ourselves with good.

It is good then, to trust in the Lord, and to trust Him wholly, for as the poetess has said,

"They who trust Him wholly,

Find Him wholly true."

Still we must never forget that His trustworthiness does not in the least depend upon the worthiness. Or otherwise, of our trust. "If we believe not [are unfaithful! yet He abideth faithful: He cannot deny Himself" (2 Tim. 2: 13). It is therefore most happily true that they who are weak in faith, and consequently do not trust Him wholly, yet find Him wholly true. This is a fact calculated, above all things, to reinforce and increase our trust in the Lord.

The latter part of verse 3 supports what we have been saying. We do not expect to "dwell in the land," for heaven is our home, but the succeeding words apply to us, "verily thou shalt be fed," — fed "in truth or stableness," as the margin of a reference Bible puts it. Another version renders it, "and feed on faithfulness." If we do sincerely trust in the Lord then verily we shall feed on faithfulness God's faithfulness. We shall so experience His faithfulness that it becomes our very food and drink.

A second instruction of a positive sort occurs in verse 4. "Delight thyself also in the Lord." The Psalmist discerned nothing in his surroundings that awakened delight, indeed the very opposite, the evildoers pressed in on every side with their persecuting and irritating ways. In the presence of all this it is good to trust instead of fretting, but it is also good to find an unfailing spring of gladness wholly outside the world which the evildoers dominate. This spring of joy is found in the Lord. The Psalmist here is anticipating that which more than once Paul said to the Philippians — "Rejoice in the Lord."

If we delight ourselves in the Lord we are sure to enjoy the happy consequence which the Psalmist indicates. The change of dispensation has made no change in this. We shall find that the desires of our heart are given to us. If any ask why this should be, the answer is simple: because delighting ourselves in the Lord we delight in His holy will. His thoughts become our thoughts, His desires become our desires. When our thoughts and desires are altogether astray from His then naturally our desires are not fulfilled. When our desires are partly in keeping with His, then our desires are only partly fulfilled. When our desires wholly coincide with His, then, and then only, are all our desires fulfilled. It is good to find pleasure in the saints, and joy in the work of the Lord; but if we delight ourselves in these instead of in the Lord, we are in for some big disappointments.

The Lord is not only worthy of our trust, but of our delight also. He is trustworthy indeed, but He is also the embodiment of all that is lovely, of all that appeals to the renewed heart as a source of joy.

A third instruction is in verse 5. "Commit thy way unto the Lord," or, as the margin has it, "Roll thy way upon the Lord." How often are we in such perplexing and trying circumstances that our way seems hedged up and impossible: sometimes we may be misjudged, oppressed and even persecuted. What can we do? We can roll the responsibility of our way upon the Lord, and rely on Him. There is immense relief in this. The load is taken off our feeble shoulders, and placed upon His shoulders of strength.

This committing of our way unto the Lord supposes of course that we are in the midst of tribulation and testing from the adversaries. Let us remember that it is not the first item of instruction, nor the second, but the third. It takes for granted that we are trusting in the Lord, and finding our delight in Him. Then, and only then, shall we be prepared to roll our way upon Him, and know that as a happy consequence, "He will bring it to pass."

Bring what to pass? we may ask. Bring to pass His own designs of blessing in connection with our trials, and in particular bring to pass that of which verse 6 speaks. It is His holy pleasure to bring forth a full vindication of His saints, when His disciplinary work within us has reached full fruition. Oppression and defamation are very hard to bear, and doubly so when they proceed from those who are friends. When Job was defamed by his friends he felt it most keenly, but for a long time he fought for his own character instead of committing his way to the Lord. When at last he did this, it did not take long for God to bring forth, His righteousness as the light and His judgment as the noonday. Directly he condemned himself and justified God, his righteousness became clear and God Himself bore witness that at last he had spoken the thing that was right. Then as a consequence his judgment was as the noonday, for he was vindicated before men and blessed of God.

True godliness, or piety, puts the soul into the presence of God. It promotes God-consciousness, and so we see the hand of God at work in the circumstances of life, where the man of the world only sees confusion, or perhaps "luck." The instruction, "Roll thy way upon the Lord." is a hard saying where piety is at a low ebb. Where it is a full-flowing tide it is easy and a delightful relief.

A fourth instruction follows in verse 7. "Rest in the Lord," or, as the margin says, "Be silent to the Lord, and wait patiently for Him." This follows in obvious sequence. Having rolled our way upon the Lord, so that the responsibility and weight of it are now His, we rest in Him and wait for Him to act. The wicked may still appear to flourish and bring his wicked devices to pass, but that no longer frets us. God is wholly competent to deal with all that, in His own time and way. We wait patiently for Him and rest the meanwhile. We are relieved of the whole business, it is His, not ours.

The Hebrew idiom, "Be silent to the Lord," is very expressive. The inference seems to be that we have so really committed our way to Him, and are so fully prepared to wait patiently for His intervention, that we have nothing more to say. When faith is low we become like querulous children, fretful because others seem to be more favoured than ourselves, and constantly interrupting our parents with questions and complaints. We are happy indeed when faith is vigorous, and as far as questionings and complaints are concerned we are silent to the Lord.

Verse 34 adds one further thing. We are not only to wait patiently for the Lord, but also to "wait on the Lord, and keep His way." Waiting for Him means exercising trustful patience until He intervenes. Waiting on Him means the maintaining of that holy intercourse and communion with Him that ensures obedience to His will, while we wait for His intervention.

This is the happy end to which all the instruction leads. The tribulation and oppression and difficulty that surround us may still persist for a little while — "yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be" (ver. 10) — nevertheless we may be relieved of our natural fretfulness, and so be set free to find our joy in the Lord, to maintain communion with Him, and consequently to "keep His way," and do His will in glad obedience.

The Enduring Name

The Enduring Name.

Psalms 40, 41, 72.

F. B. Hole.

(Extracted from Scripture Truth Vol. 28, 1936, page 86.)

The Psalms are divided into five books, each of them ending with a doxology. Psalm 41 is the last of the first Book: Psalm 72 the last of the second Book. There is a very striking connection, and yet a contrast, between these two Psalms.

Psalm 41 is also closely connected with Psalm 40. Both are psalms of David, yet in the former there is a great deal more of that which goes right beyond anything that he could say of himself to that which is distinctly prophetic of Christ — things that could only be said of Him. In Psalm 41, on the other hand, we find the experience of David, though here and there, as we can now see the language is so framed by the Spirit of God as to be applicable to Christ. This is the case of verses 5, 9, 12. It is particularly clear and definite in verse 9. David was doubtless thinking of Ahithophel, but the Spirit, who inspired him was thinking of Judas Iscariot; for the Lord applied it to him in John 13: 18.

David was a man surrounded by enemies who spoke evil against him and wished him nothing but evil, desiring that his name should perish (verse 5). He had given them some cause for this, as is shown by his confession to the Lord, put on record at the end of verse 4. Yet all his adversaries were as nothing to those who united against Jesus and hated Him "without a cause" (Ps. 69: 4). Very early in His ministry the religious leaders of Israel plotted His death, being "filled with madness" against Him. Matthew 12, Mark 2, and Luke 6 tell us about

this. Later, as John 11 shows us, the High Priest avowed their determination in the most cynical fashion, although the Holy Spirit seized upon his utterance and gave it a prophetic significance which he never intended. Their determination was that His very Name should be blotted out from under heaven.

The early chapters of the Acts bear witness to the bitter way in which the leaders tried to suppress the Name of Jesus. They could not object to the healing of the lame man, but they objected most strenuously to the virtue and power of that beneficent work being attributed to the Name. In chapter 4 we see how boldly Peter confronted them with the might and glory of that Name. They retaliated by threatening them, and later by flogging them, if only thereby they might quench the testimony to the Name that they abhorred. They spoke of Him only as "this Man," or "that Deceiver," and in this they have been followed by the mass of the Jews to this day, who only speak of Him as "the accursed One," and spit at the mention of His Name by others. When indeed will His Name perish?

His Name has not perished, and verse 9 heightens the wonder of it. Men there have been, not a few, who have become leaders of a cause which for a time has seemed to prosper. Then a blight has fallen upon it and their followers have dwindled, until even their closest friend has become an opponent. But that is a sure sign of their utter downfall and that their name will fade into oblivion. Thus it has been with many, but thus it has NOT been with Christ. Judas Iscariot sold Him for the price of a slave, and all His disciples forsook Him and fled, but His Name has not perished and never will. Now why is this?

The answer is found in the previous Psalm. It is because He was the One who came forth from God, as decreed in the book of the Divine counsels, to perfectly accomplish the will of God. In order to carry out that will He had to go through sorrows beyond all human computation or understanding. He had to say "innumerable evils have compassed Me about" (ver. 12). The evils that would have crushed and obliterated all others never extinguished His Name. But that was because He had come forth to be the great Sacrifice of all the ages, when every kind of Jewish sacrifice had been manifested as being without any intrinsic worth, and valuable only as types of His supreme Sacrifice to be accomplished once for all. Hebrews 10 is the inspired commentary upon this matter.

We may point out that in our Psalm there are three "innumerable" things. The innumerable evils thronged around Him and reached their climax when He took upon Himself vicariously our iniquities. "Mine iniquities ... are more than the hairs of Mine head"  - that is only another way of saying they are innumerable. There is only one sense in which such words as these can be accepted as coming from the sinless, holy lips of our Lord, and that is the sense of substitution — the fact that, "The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquities of us all." As we sometimes sing,

"Our sins, our guilt in love Divine

Confessed and borne by Thee;

The gall, the curse, the wrath were Thine,

To set Thy ransomed free."

It was our innumerable iniquities that brought the innumerable evils upon His sacred head.

But, most wonderful to say, there was another factor in the case; one which we usually arrive at last though it is the first mentioned in this Psalm. Verse 5 speaks of it — the many and wonderful thoughts and works of God, which are "more than can be numbered" that is they are innumerable also. He died sacrificially not only to blot out our sins, but also to bring into expression and accomplishment the glorious thoughts and purposes of God. The works which He has done are indeed many, but His thoughts are more, for a whole multitude of them are not yet wrought out in works. They will be however, wrought out and brought into display unto His eternal glory, in the ages that are yet to come.

The thoughts of God were by no means fully declared in David's day, yet he was quite conscious that they were so many as to be innumerable, and so great as to elude all definition or comprehension by us. We have a far fuller unfolding of His thoughts in the New Testament: it was given to Paul to "fulfil [complete] the Word of God" (Col. 1: 25); that is, to complete the whole circle of revealed truth. Much more then have we to confess as to God's thoughts, "they cannot be reckoned up in order unto Thee." If we attempt to formulate and tabulate them, after the fashion in which we are accustomed to treat all human thoughts, human learning, human systems, we shall in result only manifest our own foolishness.

It is well to remember this, for there has always been a great desire with many to reduce the truth of God to a philosophic system, everything duly ticketed and pigeonholed according to the most approved schemes of human logic and wisdom. Every such attempt is bound to result in error, because starting with the supreme error of assuming that what is infinite in its bearing can be confined within human boundaries. This can no more be done than the rolling seas can be compressed into the largest of human measures. One of the great poets saw this when he wrote (we quote from memory),

"Our little systems have their day,

They have their day, and cease to be:

They are but broken lights of Thee

And Thou, O Lord, art more then they."

What he stated of the Lord Himself is true also of the innumerable thoughts which have proceeded from Him. We may apprehend them, though it is beyond us to fully comprehend them.

Those thoughts have been conveyed to us in the Holy Scriptures, and, bearing in mind what has just been said, it is not difficult to see how absolutely imperative it was that "All Scripture" should be "given by inspiration of God" (2 Tim. 3: 16). The holy men of old wrote, "not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth" (l Cor. 2: 13), and consequently there was a fulness about their very words which was divine. We are conscious of that fulness as we read our Bibles, in spite of the fact that ours are only a translation from the original. All theological systems, all creeds are human, Scripture has come from God. We do well to pin our faith to it, and not to them.

The thoughts of God to which the Psalmist particularly alluded were those which are "to us-ward." It is a glorious fact that the thoughts of God are towards His saints. This always has been so, but it was never so plainly manifest as when the word was fulfilled, "Lo, I come .. . I delight to do Thy will, O My God." Then it could be said, "I have not concealed Thy loving-kindness and Thy truth from the great congregation" (ver. 10): words which are an inspired forecast of the fact that, "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ" (John : 17). Now that the full truth has come to light we may rejoice not only in the fact that God's thoughts are toward us in blessing, but that we are bound up with their glorious accomplishment, since "all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him Amen, unto the glory of God by us" (2 Cor. 1: 20).

Psalm 40 was fulfilled in the first advent of Christ. It was then that He came to be the Sacrifice of eternal worth, and so lay the basis for the accomplishment of the good pleasure of God, whether towards us or towards the whole redeemed creation. It was then that He went down into the "horrible pit," and the "miry clay," and the "innumerable evils," and came face to face with the adversaries, of which the closing verses of the Psalm speak, and who are again alluded to in Psalm 41. Then it was that His own familiar friend lifted up his heel against Him, so that His foes might put Him to death and congratulate themselves that His Name must now perish for evermore.

As we reach the end of Psalm 41 we are assured that His Name will not perish. In verses 11 and 12 we find words which are most happily applicable to Him. He could say to God, "Thou favourest Me," or, "Thou delightest in Me," hence the enemy could not triumph over Him. Not only did He delight in Him, but He upheld Him in His integrity, and has set Him before His face for ever. In these words we see an inspired forecast of those lovely words in John 13 — "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God be glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him." He was upheld of God even in death, and has now been lifted to the Father's throne, set before His face in glory, long before the glory of the kingdom is manifested.

Our faith to-day as Christians reaches to the Lord Jesus thus hidden in the heavens. We see Him though He is unseen to mortal eye. "Whom having not seen ye love," says the Apostle Peter: but the writer of Hebrews says, "We see Jesus, . . . crowned with glory and honour." Even the Psalmist broke into a doxology when he had reached this point in the spirit of prophecy. He uttered blessing to the Lord God of Israel from eternity to eternity, and then he added "Amen and Amen" — So be it, and again so be it. Well, SO IT IS, thank God! Christ is crowned with glory before the face of God; and as for ourselves, we may well be rejoicing with "joy unspeakable, and full of glory."

This, however, is not the end of the matter as it concerns His Name. How could it be, when it is still dishonoured on earth though so highly honoured in heaven? His Name was to perish on earth, according to the desire of His foes. On earth then it is to be vindicated and magnified.

Psalm 72, which closes the second book, predicts the glory of His coming kingdom. David commenced to write his desires for Solomon in poetic form: the Holy Spirit caught him up in the current of His thoughts concerning the One of whom Solomon was but a feeble type. The KING of this psalm is One to whom the kings of Tarshish and the isles, the kings of Sheba and Seba shall render tribute. He is so great that "all kings shall fall down before Him: all nations shall serve Him." He is most evidently the King of kings. No one is that but Jesus.

When the once rejected Jesus takes the throne there will at last be seen in the earth an administration marked by absolute perfection. In the first place there will be the establishment of righteousness — the first four verses are full of this. When Jesus died, condemned alike by both Jew and Gentile, judgment was divorced from righteousness in the most outrageous way. When He returns in His glory and establishes His kingdom in power, the moment will have come of which it is said, "But judgment shall return unto righteousness: and all the upright in heart shall follow it" (Ps. 94: 15). As it is said here, "He shall judge Thy people with righteousness."

This of course will involve the deliverance and vindication of the oppressed and afflicted. Verses 2 and 4, and also 12-14, state this. It is true that all through the ages it is the poor and needy who have been downtrodden in the scramble of life, but "the poor and needy" contemplated here are without a doubt the godly folk who will be persecuted by the antichristian powers of the last days. The coming Roman leader shall "wear out the saints of the Most High" (Dan. 7: 25), whereas the King of kings will bring in deliverance.

The deliverance will be followed by blessing. "Men shall be blessed in Him" (ver. 17). Blessing of an earthly sort is contemplated in the Psalm. Verse 16 speaks of "an handful of corn . . . upon the tops of the mountains," — a picturesque way of expressing great fertility, for at present the mountain tops are cold and bare. Verse 6 also is very graphic. The scythe of judgment will have mown the earth, and the great ones and their glory will be but withered grass, as long ago the Scripture had said. He will come down upon the earth after judgment has been executed, like gentle showers upon the thirsty ground, and hence the righteous shall flourish in His days. In that day there will indeed be "the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed," (Gen. 27: 27), and the blessing wherewith Isaac blessed his Supplanter son, who became Israel, will find a glorious fulfilment.

As the result of the blessing "abundance of peace" will at last be reached. Peace is much desired among the nations yet how often it eludes them. If they enjoy it at all it is in very scanty measure. Abundance of peace there has never yet been; but there will be in the glad day of the kingdom. When righteousness reigns, when the needy are delivered, when blessing fills the earth, then an abundant peace will be the happy consequence.

And all these most excellent things will be traced up to what? —  or rather we should have said, to whom? "Men shall be blessed in HIM," we read in verse 17. He was once considered to be the accursed One, for they thought Him to be stricken and smitten of God. Now they see Him to have been the great Sacrifice, as detailed in Psalm 40, and therefore the Source from whom all their blessing flows. Their glorious King is the Fountain-head of all their blessing.

This discovery must of necessity provoke their praise in return. They will bless His Name. And not only they, for the blessing will roll out world-wide to all the nations. Consequently "all nations shall call Him blessed." When we to-day address Him, or speak of Him, as "our blessed Lord," we are but anticipating that which will be universal presently.

"His Name shall endure for ever." Here we find God's answer to man's evil question. When shall His Name perish? It shall never perish, but endure for ever.

Psalm 40 ends with the humbled Christ lifted up and set before God's face for ever. Psalm 72 ends with a glorified Christ publicly established as King of kings, filling the earth with righteousness, blessing and peace. In both cases a doxology is provoked, but the second is rather fuller in its character. God can now be blessed as the One who alone does wondrous things. Men may appear to be doing wonderful things to-day with all their inventions, but they are not. Their inventions will yet, in all probability, fall disastrously upon their own heads. When the King of kings takes His throne in glory, nothing will appear wonderful but what God has done in and by Him. In that day the whole earth will be filled with His glory, and the name of Jehovah will be everlastingly blessed.

Once more we have the repeated Amen. So be it, and again, so be it. That this may all be fulfilled in its season is surely the fervent desire of all our hearts.

Until that day is reached we are left in the place of expectation and dependence and prayer, waiting for the first movement connected with the ushering in of that day; namely, the coming of the Lord Jesus for all His saints.

When David saw, by the spirit of prophecy, the coming glory of Christ, his prayers were ended, nothing remained for which to pray. It is indeed a satisfying prospect. What will the realization of it be?

Defeat and Victory

Defeat and Victory.

Psalms 44 and 45.

F. B. Hole.

(Extracted from Scripture Truth Vol. 27, 1935, page 151.)

The experiences of God's saints, if considered in detail, present a picture of almost endless variety. The dispensation in which their lives are cast differ. The ages comprised in any one dispensation often differ greatly. The circumstances surrounding them in any given age are different. And even where the age and the circumstances are the same, the characters and temperaments of individuals differ. Yet, with all this, there are certain underlying features which are the same in all cases. These two Psalms furnish us with an illustration which is to the point. No saint is to be found, no matter what his dispensation, his age, his circumstances, but knows the bitterness of defeat: and none but shall know ultimately the joy of victory. Some there may be who lose ten thousand battles, but even they are victors in one battle — the last.

Psalm 44 is very obviously a Psalm of defeat. It begins with very confident expectations which are not realized, and it ends with an agonized cry from the dust for help and succour from on high. Psalm 45, with equal clearness, is a Psalm of victory. The Victor is introduced and immediately everything is changed. Both Psalms are highly prophetic and await their fulfilment at the end of the age. Yet, of course, they abound with instruction for us. If we begin by noting their prophetic interpretation standpoint we shall better be able to make a right application of them to ourselves.

In Psalm 44 we hear the voice of godly Jews, who will be a true remnant of Israel in the coming day of trouble. Right through the Psalm it is "we" and "us" with the exception of verse 6. This is striking, for practically all the preceding psalms are in the first person singular, the plural only occurring very rarely. Psalm 44 then is the voice of a company, though verse 6 lets us know that the psalm is the work of an individual, who was inspired to utter the thoughts of many. It falls quite naturally into four sections; verses 1 to 8; 9 to 16; 17 to 22; 23 to 26.

In the first section this true remnant allow us to hear how confidently they expect to be used of God to accomplish a great deliverance in the earth. They unbosom to us three steps by which they have attained this confidence. The three steps follow one another in a logical sequence, in which it is not easy to find a flaw. In the first place, they have heard and believed the tidings of God's mighty intervention for their fathers in the days of old. They are not of the liberal or modernistic type who believe in nothing miraculous, and hence discredit even the well attested facts of their own national history. On the contrary, they whole-heartedly accept them.

Then, in the second place, they know that the God who thus wrought in ancient times is their God today. They can say, "Thou art MY King, O God;" and He is ever the same. He is to be trusted therefore by them, just as He was trusted of old.

From this they deduce, in the third place, that victory must be on their side. In verses 5 to 8 this confidence is expressed. They do not trust in their own prowess.

They know that there is no salvation in their own weapons. They make their boast in God, and they do confidently expect to push down their enemies in the name of the Lord.

In the second section of the psalm their failure and disillusionment is very graphically described. Instead of victory all is defeat. They are put to shame, spoiled, scattered. They become a scorn, a derision, a by-word, a shaking of the head among the people. The transition from verse 8 to verse 9 is very striking. From confident boasting in God and the praise of His Name they fall as with a crash into dejection and shame.

Two or three expressions in this part of the Psalm are very interesting from a prophetic point of view. In verse 16 an individual is mentioned as, "him that reproacheth and blasphemeth." In the same verse "the enemy and avenger" is spoken of. Both these expressions may refer to the coming of the "beast:" the first one clearly does so, in the light of Revelation 13: 6, 7. The second expression also occurs in Psalm 8: 2, and it may refer rather to the false prophet, the second beast of Revelation 13, who exercises the power of the first beast and avenges amongst the Jews all resistance to his authority. However that may be, we have here an unmistakable reference to the great antichristian powers of the last days; just as, in verse 9, we have reference to the armed resistance to that power which will be offered by zealous sons of Israel, many of them doubtless really godly people anxious to preserve the pure worship of God when the attempt is made to foist upon them abominable idolatry.

In Revelation 13 we are told that it is given to the blaspheming beast "to make war with the saints, and to overcome them:" and in verse 10 of that chapter a warning against armed resistance is conveyed in the words, "He that killeth with the sword, must also be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and faith of the saints." We believe that our Psalm shows that the warning is not unnecessary, and that, notwithstanding the warning, armed resistance is just what they have recourse to, in the full expectation that God will be miraculously with them as once He had been with their fathers before Jericho, and as He had been with the valiant Maccabees when Antiochus Epiphanes defiled God's holy land and temple.

One line of Scripture foretold the doings of the Maccabees, which took place during "the four hundred silent years" which preceded the coming of Christ — "The people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits." (Dan. 11: 32). Now it seems that, in the days of antichrist, God-fearing Jews will feel that they too know their God, and they also will do wonderful things. They overlook the Lord's own warning recorded in Matthew 24, to the effect that, when the abomination of desolation appears, not fight but flight is to be their action. Whatever God may have done through His people in the lesser crises of earlier days, it is plainly revealed that in the last great crisis all human instruments will be set aside and He will fight the great fight, and deal the one mighty, effectual, knock-out blow by Himself alone. The word is, "I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with Me." (Isa. 63: 3).

In keeping with this Revelation 19 shows us the beast and false prophet plunged into ruin and unutterable damnation, not by God working through saints on earth, but by the revelation of the Lord Jesus in flaming fire from heaven. Saints are there, but they are heavenly saints, and they do nothing but merely follow the One who does everything.

When it has been a question of God acting in government, then again and again He has been pleased to use His people as instruments of His government. Now that it is a question of His grace being heralded through the earth, His normal way of acting is through human servants. But when it is neither grace nor government, but God executing wrath and vengeance on men in whom human sin has risen to its dreadful climax, then He acts alone. He has said, "Vengeance in Mine; I will repay." It is His sole prerogative. No other may share it with Him.

The third section of our Psalm is very touching. In it these godly souls, though weighed down by defeat and terrible sufferings, express their integrity of heart, and fidelity to the Name of the Lord. Broken and overthrown they may be, even as Job was of old, yet their faith is divinely sustained, and it holds fast. They have been self-confident, as once Moses was, thinking that by them God was going to effect a mighty deliverance. They may not have grasped what the Divine programme really is, yet they are wholly devoted to God: killed all the day long like sheep. And in being "counted as sheep for the slaughter," approximating in likeness unto their Lord.

The forth and last section of the, Psalm is one intensive cry for deliverance. All hope of any success or victory on their side is gone. If deliverance is to come it must be as the fruit of God's redeeming mercy. It must be His work alone. They fully realize this now.

So much for the prophetic bearing of this Psalm. But has it any voice for us? It most certainly has.

What Christian is there, who has not tasted the bitterness of defeat? We are not face to face with antichrist, though antichristian forces are very manifestly in the world today. Still we have all the power of the world, and the flesh (that most subtle inward foe), and the devil against us; and again and again, when singly or in combination, they have come against us, we have fallen before them. We know what is right, yet we fail to perform it.

So often too, our experiences run just after the pattern of this Psalm. We begin by knowing right well how God can and does deliver. We can say that we have heard with our ears of all God's delivering power, since we listened to the "fathers" of the Christian faith. Ever since we listened to the Apostle Paul, by reading the epistle to the Romans, have we known how God commands deliverances for His people. Then we are apt to take it for granted that victory is ours as a matter of course: and then comes the disillusionment! We are shamefully defeated. Yet though broken and humbled and sorrowful, we are conscious of a certain integrity. We do not turn aside from the faith of Christ, nor do we for one moment contemplate the possibility of doing so.

Sometimes, too, the Christian is oppressed by persecution, and he remains undelivered. Then the Psalm has an even closer application. Such an application is made by the Apostle in Romans 8: 36, when he quotes verse 22. We may be living sheltered lives in these favoured lands, but many a saint in the last few years has suffered even unto death, apparently unheard.

If it be a question of the defeats we suffer when battling against the spiritual forces of evil, we shall find in verse 5 of our Psalm that which largely explains them. What they say is, "Through Thee will WE push down our enemies: through Thy name will WE tread them under that rise up against us." The idea is that we accomplish a victory by utilizing the power of God. That is not God's idea for them, and we think we may say it is never His idea for any. His power is not placed at our disposal for us to use as best we may. It is rather that we are to be at His disposal, for Him to use us. If God placed His power at our deposal it would leave us in the primary place with the responsibility of planning the campaign. NO, He has the primary place, and the plan of campaign must be His. Our places are very, very secondary — just instruments that He is pleased to use.

It is when we realize this that we cease from ourselves, our plans, our efforts, and cast ourselves wholly upon God, in keeping with the cry that fills the closing verse of the Psalm. This is, of course, the lesson of Romans 7. It is when we cease from ourselves, and our eyes are turned to Another who is outside ourselves that deliverance comes. For so long as our attitude is, "How shall I deliver myself?" difficulties and defeat dog our footsteps. When at last our cry becomes, "Who shall deliver me?" then we discover the delivering power of Jesus Christ our Lord, and of the Holy Spirit, who is "the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus."

As we commence reading Psalm 45, it is as though we have been transported into a new world. Excellence, splendour, victory, blessing, fill the whole scene. The agonised cry that concluded the previous Psalm is suddenly exchanged for a heart which is bubbling over with good matter, and a tongue which utters praise with the flowing ease of a ready writer. What has brought about this change?

The answer is simplicity itself. The Christ of God, who acts for God and yet is God, has appeared upon the scene. As part of the heading of this Psalm appear the words, "A song of loves," or more accurately, "A song of the Beloved." We know who the Beloved is, seeing we ourselves are "accepted in the Beloved" (Eph. 1: 6). Well, the Beloved, in whom we are accepted is going to appear in His glory. Everything hinges upon that. He will execute judgment. He will accomplish deliverance in victorious power. And He will do it by Himself alone.

In verses 3, 4 and 5, He is pictured as He comes forth to lay low every enemy. It is very similar to the picture presented in Revelation 19. He is everything and man is nothing  - it is, "Thy glory," "Thy majesty," "Thy right hand." His arrows never fail of their target. The people fall under Him, and victory is achieved.

The Divine Victory however will not merely be a display of power: it will also be a vindication of those qualities and features which please God. He will ride prosperously in His majesty "because of truth and meekness and righteousness." His victory will mean the establishment of these excellent things. The world, as we know it, is full of untruth and pride and unrighteousness. These former things must pass away and a new order of things be brought in.

When the saints of the coming time of tribulation pass through the sad experiences of Psalm 44, they will be under the oppressive domination of "him that reproacheth and blasphemeth . . . the enemy and avenger." These men, who are elsewhere designated, "beasts," will in their characters sum up all the evil that is found in them. In them Satan's lie will find its embodiment. In them human pride will rise to its climax. All their actions will be characterized by "the deceivableness of unrighteousness." These things are plainly seen if we read 2 Thessalonians 2. When the Lord Jesus appears in His majesty He will "consume with the spirit of his mouth . . and destroy with the brightness of His coming" these evil men, and the whole system of things that they dominate, with a view to bring in an order of things wholly according to God.

We too are waiting for His coming. But while we wait for Him, and for the public display of the glory of God, it is not God's thought that we should be overcome by evil of the world without or of the flesh within. We have already noted how our spiritual experiences often run very much on the lines indicated in Psalm 44: we have now only to point out how victory for us lies exactly upon the lines which are celebrated in Psalm 45.

The world is full of programmes, for fallen man is very fertile in ideas.

One and all however combine in this feature — they SHUT CHRIST OUT. The Divine programme is very simple and effective — BRING CHRIST IN. Now a great many of our spiritual struggles proceed on exactly analogous lines. We want to be in the enjoyment of victory; so we resolve, and try, and pray, and seek God's help, and yet realize we are very ready to bring Christ in, if it be a question of the forgiveness of sins and our fitness for heaven; yet are not so ready to bring Christ in, if it be a question of practical sanctification and holiness and victory. Yet there is no other way to the desired end.

We have already alluded to the end of Romans 7. We refer to it once more, coupling with it the closing verses of Romans 8. In the last verse of chapter 7 Jesus Christ our Lord is brought in. Through Him God delivers the wretched men who is utterly sick of himself and all his struggles. In the last verse of chapter 8 the delivered man finds himself in the embrace of the love of God "which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." That is it. God's delivering power is through Him: His enveloping love, from which nothing can separate us, is in Him. Christ is all.

BRING CHRIST IN — that is the way of victory. Let Christ be enthroned in the heart's deepest affections, let Him dominate the thoughts, the aspirations, the life of service, and all must be well. It is simply impossible to overthow Him. He is victorious always and everywhere. He rides prosperously in His majesty through hearts and lives, though even of the feeblest character in themselves, if simply yielded up to Him.

The King: His Victory, His Coronation, His Palaces

The King: His Victory, His Coronation, His Palaces.

F. B. Hole.

Psalms 45, 46, 47, 48.

(Extracted from Scripture Truth Vol. 27, 1935, page 175.)

An atmosphere of great enthusiasm and triumph pervades the whole of Psalm 45, which is made all the more striking by the sudden transition from the gloom of depression and defeat which pervades the whole of Psalm 44. In that Psalm, the heart of the Psalmist pours forth its confusion and its cries. In this, it overflows with a good matter. The Divine hand has, as it were, drawn aside the curtain and revealed THE KING. As HE steps upon the scene every cry is hushed, and every heart is turned to praise.

A vision of the coming King burst on the writer of this Psalm, whether David or another of the prophets, and he at once found no difficulty in voicing his feelings. His heart simply bubbled up with its glorious theme, and his tongue became as the pen of a ready writer. It is just the same for us today, though we are not inspired as he was. Let Christ fill faith's vision, and our  spirits are moved, our tongues are free.

For the Psalmist it was a vision of Christ, riding in splendour at His second advent. We too may  rejoice at this sight in faith and hope, while we have something of a more intimate nature which seems to go beyond it. In Revelation 4 the glory of God in creation comes before us, and all is as clear and as cool as the crystal sea which is before the throne. But in Revelation 5 there appears in the midst of the throne "a Lamb as it had been slain," and all creation is moved to fervent adoration. Both love and praise begin to burn with a most vehement flame. Nothing moves our hearts quite so much as the sight of the Suffering One who died to redeem us. Still the contemplation of Him in that glory, which presently is publicly to be His, is very moving to us also.

The first thing that impressed the Psalmist was His personal excellence. He eclipses the sons of men. He is the vessel of Divine grace, which is poured into His lips, that it may flow forth from thence. He is the One on whom the blessing of God rests, and who is the source of all blessing for others. We know, in the light of the New Testament, why He is fairer than the sons of men. It is not because He is the finest specimen of Adam's race, but because He is not of the first Adam at all. He is "the last Adam," the Head of a new race. He is "the second Man . . . the Lord from heaven" (1 Cor. 15: 45-47).

This fact at once reveals that He stands absolutely alone in His excellence. He is not the first among many who are more or less His equals: He is the altogether income parable One.

Then, in vision, the Psalmist sees this incomparable One take to Himself His great power, and ride forth that He may be displayed in majestic splendour. Nothing stands tees fore Him. He rides prosperously, "because of truth and meekness and righteousness;" that is, in order that truth, meekness and righteousness may be established in the earth. Truth stands in opposition to that which is false and unreal — to the devil's lie: meekness in opposition to pride and self-sufficiency: righteousness in opposition to all that is lawless, and out of right relations with God. If truth is manifested man must of necessity take his true place in meekness before God, and thus the rights of God be fully established. He who rides forth in majesty to bring these things to pass is Himself the Righteous One. He is the Truth. He is meek and lowly in heart.

To accomplish this He acts in judgment. The prophet tells us that, "When Thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness" (Isa. 26: 9). Also he added, "Let favour be shewed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness," and that is being abundantly verified at the present moment. The next age is to be ushered in by very sore judgments, and hence in this Psalm the Messiah is seen girding His sword upon His thigh, and sending His arrows into the heart of the King's enemies. The Psalmist is permitted to have a glimpse of the scene more fully described in Revelation 19, when the Rider on the white horse comes forth to tread the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. As a result of these judgments the throne of God is permanently established amongst men, and a sceptre of uprightness is wielded.

The Son of God is addressed in verse 6. This is hardly apparent as we read the Psalm, but is made very clear by the inspired quotation of the verse in Hebrews 1: 8. The deity of "the King" is plainly stated, for He is Son, and it is to "the Son" that these words are uttered. In His throne the throne of God is established in the earth.

But if verse 6 states His deity, verse 7 no less definitely presents His humanity. Having become Man, He is the perfect Man. God is His God: He is the lover of righteousness and the hater of wickedness. Moreover He has "fellows," or "companions," and amongst them He stands supreme in His gladness. He is not only more fair than the sons of men, but more glad than all His companions. And this is fitting, for in the days of His flesh He suffered more than any.

It is wonderful indeed that He should have "fellows" at all, for He had none in the days of His flesh. Then He was the single "corn of wheat," (John 12: 24) abiding alone. Here we view Him in the day of His triumph and glory, and the "fellows" are by His side, sharing in His gladness, though in a lesser degree. And it is still more wonderful when we remember that He is saluted as " the Man that is My Fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts" (Zech. 13: 7). He is Jehovah's Fellow in His Manhood, as much as He was in His pre-incarnate estate. Yet He associates others with Himself, who in His risen life become His fellows. A true Mediator He is indeed!

We may also place verse 7, in our minds, alongside verse 22 of Psalm 22, where the Lord is said to praise in the midst of "the congregation." This, when quoted in Hebrews 2, becomes "the church." Verse 7 is quoted in Hebrews 1: 9, and the word translated, "fellows," there is translated "partakers," in Hebrews 3: 14. Darby's New Translation renders the two passages thus: "God, Thy God, has anointed Thee with oil of gladness above Thy companions . . . For we are become companions of the Christ . . . " So again we find how an Old Testament scripture has such as ourselves in view.

We may summarize, then, the first seven verses of this Psalm by saying that they set before us in prophetic vision the King in His beauty. We can perceive His personal excellence, His glorious appearing, His execution of judgment, His righteous kingdom established, and Himself crowned with supreme gladness in the midst of His glad companions. And we have the happy assurance that when the glad day arrives we shall be amongst His companions there.

The remainder of the Psalm portrays in symbolic language the blessing and glory of Israel in her cities, and even of the cities of the Gentiles, consequent upon the establishment of Messiah's righteous throne. Israel will no longer look back to her fathers and make her boast in them. She will rather (as verse 16 shows) boast in her children, who will be the princes of the earth in that day. And the Name of the once rejected Jesus will be remembered and praised for ever and ever.

We pass on to Psalm 46, and we find a very graphic picture of the great victory that will be achieved by the King when He comes forth in His glory. The first three verses give the confidence of the godly, when at last they see that all their help and strength and refuge is in God. The. waters — symbolizing nations and peoples in tumultuous movement — may roar and the mountains — the great established powers of the earth — may shake under the impact. This tidal wave of humanity, lashed into action by the power of Satan, is about to fling itself against the city of God.

But Jerusalem, the city of God, is "the place of the tabernacles of the most High." Faith therefore, recognizing the true character of Jerusalem, whatever may be its actual state at the moment, is full of confidence in the presence of God in her midst. At the actual moment, when the nations assemble against her like a flood, she will be defiled by the oppressions of Anti-christ, with the abomination that maketh desolate in her midst. Nevertheless she is the city of God, and faith lays hold of that fact, and expects God to manifest Himself in her midst for her deliverance. "God shall help her, and that right early."

"Right early," means, as the margin shows, "when the morning appeareth," or, "at the dawn of the morning." Faith's expectation will not be misplaced, for the dawning of the morning without clouds will take place when the King rides forth in majesty, and His right hand teaches Him terrible things in judgment. No true morning will rise upon earth's night until that morning appears.

Verse 6 is a very brief, but most graphic, description of God's great victory and man's utter defeat. The little verse is like a drama in four acts.

"The heathen raged." We see the nations in a state of excitement bordering on frenzy. They are full of fury and threatenings and slaughter. The opening verses of Psalm 2 have told us why they are in this raging condition. Their real animus is against God and His Christ. They desire to break their bands asunder and to cast away their cords from them.

"The kingdoms were moved." We now see the kingdoms of men in a state of flux and dissolution. Some kings are overthrown, according to Daniel 7, as "the beast" rises to his place of dominating authority. All are in a condition of change and transition.

"He uttered His voice." Quite a simple thing, this! None of the fuss, and scheming, and elaborate arrangements which characterize men when they go forth to war! The Lord Jesus appears in His glory, and "His Name is called the Word of God." Further, "Out of His mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it He should smite the nations" (Rev. 19: 11-15). He has merely to utter His voice and His adversaries are overthrown.

"The earth melted." In these graphic words the overthrow is described. The whole earth is represented as reduced to such a state of fluidity as renders it ready to be remoulded by His mighty hand for the millennial age that He is about to introduce.

When these things come to pass Israel will indeed know that the Lord of Hosts is with them, and stripped of all their former self-confidence they will find their refuge in the God of Jacob. They will be able to address any who fear the Lord, and are the spared from among the nations, to come and tees hold the great work of God in judgment, how He has desolated the seats of man's pride and, breaking all his weapons of war, has made wars to cease. By the imposition of His supreme will upon men He will quell their fighting spirit.

In view of all this the way of the saint is very simple. It is to cease from fruitless efforts to accomplish what will only be accomplished when the Lord Jesus appears in His glory. Our business is not to put the world right, but to be witnesses to our absent Lord. When He comes He will soon put the world right; and meanwhile the word to us is, "Be still, and know that I am God."

In Psalm 47 we are permitted, in the spirit of prophecy, to contemplate the coronation of the great King. All the peoples, that are found after judgment has taken its course, are invited to rejoice and triumph. Jehovah is seen to be the Most High — His Millennial Name — as also He was seen to be in the previous Psalm; and He has proved Himself to be terrible in the judgments He has executed. Also, as a result, Israel holds the primary place on earth with the nations subdued before them, and their inheritance enjoyed as chosen of God.

The Psalmist sees God ascending the throne. God reigns over the nations. God is King of all the earth. God is gone up amid the shoutings of the redeemed. It is not now God as shrouded in the Shekinah cloud, but God revealed and well-known in the person of Jesus Christ our Lord. He is the great King, and the crown rests upon His sacred head, that once was crowned with thorns. He becomes the theme of universal praises. Once He was "the song of the drunkards" (Ps. 69: 12), now He is surrounded with those who sing "praises with understanding."

"The heathen," (ver. 8) means, as in other places, the various Gentile nations who had not the knowledge of God as Israel had. When the Lord Jesus ascends the throne, then indeed will it be said, "God reigneth over the heathen." The nations will have been subdued by judgment, but not only this, there will also be found those of the nations who have gladly received Him. In the New Translation the first part of verse 9 reads thus: "The willing-hearted of the peoples have gathered together with the people of the God of Abraham." This makes the matter pretty clear.

The people of the God of Abraham are Israel — the true Israel of God, who enter the millennial age. Then also there is going to be "a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues," who are going to stand "before the throne" (Rev. 7: 9) — "the sheep" of Matthew 25: 33. They will be in a very true sense the willing-hearted of the peoples. The "shields of the earth" which belong to God will have flung their protection around them, equally with the godly rems nant of Israel, and brought them safely through the judgment to the age of glory. They, together with Israel, will clap their hands end triumph when Jesus assumes the crown. They will swell His praises, and celebrate earth's jubilee. That will be the day when "HE IS GREATLY EXALTED."

Lastly, in Psalm 48, we are given a prophetic glimpse of Jerusalem in her millennial glory, when she will be the dwelling and palace of God on earth.

Her excellence and beauty, as the place on earth where God manifests Himself, is celebrated in verses 1 and 2. The Jerusalem before the mind of the inspiring Spirit of God, is doubtless the one described in Ezekiel 40-48; and it is significant that this prophecy follows two chapters (Ezek. 38 and 39) which describe the final overthrow of the nations by an act of God. The temple, which will be the crown and glory of that city is described as, "the place of My throne, and the place of the soles of My feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever, and My holy Name, shall the house of Israel no more defile" (Ezek. 43: 7). It will be "the mountain of His holiness."

In her palaces God is known. As Ezekiel tells us, "The name of the city from that day shall be, The Lord is there [Jehovah-shammah]" (Ezek. 48: 35). In the first place He will be known there as a refuge, or high fortress, for Armageddon has just taken place. The kings of the earth were assembled "to the battle of that great day of God Almighty" (Rev. 16: 14). They have been utterly discomfited and broken; so much so that the spared of Israel will say, "As we have heard, so have we seen . . ." They had heard of God's great work of deliverance in the days of old (See, Ps. 44: 1) and had been grievously disappointed when they expected Him to accomplish a like deliverance through themselves. Now, when the Lord Jesus has come forth in His glory, and accomplished at one stroke, and by His mighty arm alone, a deliverance which goes beyond the highest hopes of men, they acknowledge with thankfulness that the work is done. They have seen with their own eyes all that they had heard and more than they had hoped: and the beauty of it is that in contrast to any previous deliverance, which lasted only for a time, this deliverance abides, "God will establish it for ever."

And now God is known in her palaces in another way: not only as a refuge, but in that loving-kindness which is proper to Himself. Now will be fulfilled that prophecy of Zephaniah, which is so exceeds ingly beautiful that we quote it at some length: "Sing, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel; be glad and rejoice with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord hath taken away thy judgments, He hath cast out thine enemy: the King of Israel, even the Lord, is in the midst of thee: thou shalt not see evil any more. In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear thou not: and to Zion, Let not thine hands be slack. The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; He will save, He will rejoice over thee with joy; He will rest [be silent] in His love, He will joy over thee with singing" (Zeph. 3: 14-17). The great JEHOVAH, revealed as JESUS, will be rejoicing in His redeemed people resting in His love. No wonder then that they think of His rovings kindness, and are filled with His praise.

They think of His love as those brought into nearness to Him. They can say, "We have thought of Thy loving-kindness, O God, in the midst of Thy temple." Formerly they had been thinking of their own desolations and sorrows, far from the house of God in the "land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar" (Ps. 42: 1-6). All is altered now. The King of glory has been manifested. His right arm has been victorious. He has mounted His throne and assumed His crown. Mount Zion rejoices. She has towers and bulwarks, and she has become a palace, for God is there. From her as a centre there goes forth the praise of God to the ends of the earth.

That praise is to be according to the Name of God, as verse 10 tells us: that is, the praise will be according to the way in which He will have made Himself known, it will be in keeping with it, for it will spring out of it. God will be known not only in a suffering Christ, but also in a victorious Christ. What praise will spring out of that knowledge!

We close with the last verse of Psalm 48. Here we seem to have the conclusion of the matter, as it concerned the Psalmist himself and the saints of his day — and as it cons cerns ourselves also. He speaks of "THIS GOD.'' What great depths are found here! The God who is known in this wonderful way is before us: and He "is our God for ever and ever." Is it not so? We are to have the light and power of this knowledge of God. And we are not merely to have it as onlookers, for we have a vital interest in Him: He is our God. Nor is it a transient interest, but for ever and ever. All this that we have seen God to be — revealed in the victorious Christ — He is abidingly for us. We may count upon Him. We may wait patiently for Him.

The difficulties that confront us today may be very different to those contemplated in these Psalms, but our God is no different. THIS GOD is our God, right enough. And everything hinges upon that. We may be defeated. Being ignorant of Satan's devices — though we ought not to be — we may be defeated a hundred times, but the last conflict even for the church, is when the Lord intervenes. One battle, the last, lies altogether in His hands. He will break the bands of the grave for us, and meet the church as His completed body in the air, which has been the stronghold of the adversary's power.

Salvation and Satisfaction

Salvation and Satisfaction.

Psalms 62 and 63.

F. B. Hole.

(Extracted from Scripture Truth Vol. 27, 1935, page 198.)

The special character of Psalm 62 is more easily discerned if we observe that one word — "only" — occurs in it no less than six times. In our Authorized Version this is a little obscured since the word, "truly," is used in verse 1, and "surely," in verse 9. If any of our readers are able to consult Young's Literal Translation, they will see how strikingly the word marks the Psalm. If they cannot, at least they can for these two words substitute the word "only" in their minds, and so catch the idea.

We shall then see that no less than four times does the Psalmist express his confidence and hope in God only (ver. 1, 2, 5, 6). In verses 4 and 9 he exposes fallen man, and expresses his distrust in him, because he is only set for the downfall of what is good, and hence he himself, whether of low degree or of high degree, is only vanity and a lie.

We shall also see that this trust in God only, to the exclusion of every other hope, is the way of salvation, and also the basis of the assurance of salvation. While, on the other hand, this distrust of man since in him there is only evil, to the exclusion of all good, brings us face to face with our need of salvation, shutting us up to God.

Verses 2 and 6 are almost identical. The only difference is in one word, "greatly," which is introduced in verse 2 to modify the statement. In the earlier verse the Psalmist speaks with a certain hesitancy, or at least with extreme caution. He is not going to say more than he is absolutely assured of. He is sure that he will not be greatly moved — moved a little, perhaps; but greatly, No. Many of us, without a doubt, have been just like the Psalmist in this respect. Our trust has been in God, indeed in God alone; and yet we could not altogether forget ourselves. Hence an element of uncertainty remained in our minds. We hated the self-confident spirit. We felt sure, in a way; but we did not wish to speak too confidently. We believed and hoped that all was well; but we did not feel inclined to go beyond), "I shall not be greatly moved."

The fact is we remembered only too well earlier experiences when we were filled with self-confidence, when we were amongst the wicked of the world and feared nothing. We remembered too how all our fancied security collapsed like a house of cards, and we were terribly moved. Once bitten, twice shy. So we felt very reluctant to invite being let down again.

Now the Psalmist had had just such an experience, or at least he had seen it in connection with others  - that is, if we may assume that David was also the writer of Psalm 10. In that Psalm "the wicked" is described. He shuts God out of all his thoughts, which is the exact opposite of trusting exclusively in God. He is marked by cursing, deceit and fraud; he is the persecutor of the poor. He declares that God has not seen his sin, or that if He has, He does not mind and will never require it of his hand. And so with the utmost assurance he says in his heart, "I shall not be moved: for I shall never be in adversity" (Ps. 10: 6). Before the end of that Psalm is reached however we find that he is moved. The God whom he contemns seeks out his wickedness, and breaks his arm, and destroys him out of the land. He is not only moved, but removed in judgment. His boasted security turns out to be a lie.

Psalm 62 corroborates all this. Proud, boastful men, who delight in lies, prove to be nothing but a lie themselves. Once lay hold of the fact that each of us, if we view ourselves simply as men in the flesh, are only that, and all our confidence in man, or in self, is gone. We turn to God and to God alone.

The Psalmist is very emphatic on this point. His soul waited upon God alone. Literally, it is that his salvation came from Him, and that He, and no one else, was his Rock and his Tower of defence. This being so, we might take it for granted that he was in a place of absolute security and of full assurance.

However it was not so! And some of us can look back to a time when it was not so with ourselves. We believed on the Lord Jesus Christ; we had faith in His blood, and in nothing else; we surely ought to have been marked by the full assurance of faith, but we were not. We did not get away from ourselves, and our experiences of earlier days. How glibly once we said, "I shall not be moved!" yet we were sadly moved. We will not repeat that folly, since our earlier expectations came to nothing.

Now it is just at that point that we discover a difference between verse 5 and verse 1. Not only does he exhort his soul to wait only upon God, instead of asserting that he was doing so, but he states now that his expectation is from Him. It is not that he has any doubt of his salvation being from Him, for verse 1 states that plainly. But it is very possible to be quite clear that salvation is of the Lord while still cherishing expectations which have their centre in ourselves.

"My expectation is from Him." How great a secret of spiritual liberty and blessing is wrapped up in those simple words. True believers may be found who have a good deal of expectation from the flesh, just as Peter had when he so confidently announced his readiness to go with his Master to prison and to death. Having confidence in the flesh they have expectation from the flesh. Both the confidence and the expectation are utterly wrong, for when Christians are described according to their proper character, we read, "We are the circumcision which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh" (Phil. 3: 3). But we do not learn the true character of the flesh in a day. We may humbly accept what Scripture says as to its badness, but even so we are not exempted from an experimental proving of its badness until we say with Paul, "I know [and not merely, I believe] that in me (that is, in my flesh), dwelleth no good thing."

Most of us know that in our flesh there is a great deal of evil. But if that were all there might still be a little bit of good, and upon that little bit we might base certain expectations. But the truth is that in the flesh good is totally absent. The fairest thing it produces is vitiated by selfishness and sin. If we have really learned its character, we shall have no expectation of sweet water ever proceeding from that fountain, nothing but bitter. With that lesson well-learned, all our expectations of good will centre in God. And we shall not then be disappointed.

Let us join with the Psalmist, and each of us call upon our soul to wait in silence, or rest peacefully, upon God alone, basing all our expectations on Him. Then He only, to the exclusion of all else, will prove Himself to be all that we need — our Rock, our Salvation, our High Fortress. Each of us will then be able to say with the full assurance of faith, "I shall not be moved." The soul that finds all its expectation, as well as its salvation, in God is in an impregnable position. All that is then needed is indicated in verse 8 — to trust in Him at all times, to pour out the heart before Him in every emergency, and He proves Himself to be a Refuge.

Salvation, and the assurance of it, however blessed in itself, is not an end, but a means to an end. The end is that God may possess Himself of the soul that is saved, and that the saved soul may possess itself of God. Psalm 63 is a fore-shadowing of this, tracing out more particularly the experiences of the soul in its seekings after God. The keynote of Psalm 62, struck in the first verse, is, My soul waiteth only upon God. The keynote of 63, also struck in the first verse, is, "My soul thirsteth for Thee." God Himself becomes our supreme desire, and that is exceedingly grateful to Him.

When David wrote this Psalm he was in the wilderness of Judah, which he calls, "a dry and thirsty land, where no water is." It was a place of no resources, utterly barren of the most fundamental necessaries of life; and yet in such a spot as that he was not crying out for food or water, and much less for any of the luxuries of life, but thirsting for God — His power, His glory, His lovingkindness. God had become infinitely attractive to him: he no longer feared Him but desired Him. His experiences, as related in the previous Psalm, had led him to say, "In God is my salvation and my glory," and this conducted him to a point where God also became all his desire.

Let us test ourselves as to these things. Are we at all equal to David as regards our desires? We should be, for the salvation that we enjoy is of a fuller and richer order than was available for him, just as the revelation which we have of God goes far beyond anything which he could have known. He thirsted for God up to the limit of the knowledge that was possible for him — "so as I have seen Thee in the sanctuary," are his words. He remembered how he had gone into the sanctuary and sat before the Lord; and then there had been to his soul rich unfoldings of His power and His glory and His love. Now that he was in wilderness circumstances, he desired nothing better nor beyond this.

We too are in the wilderness, for that is what the world becomes to those who have been saved out of it by the cross of Christ. There is nothing in it to feed the soul or satisfy spiritual cravings. We too have known God in His sanctuary, not now in that tent pitched over the ark, wherein David sought the Lord; nor in the gorgeous temple that Solomon built: but in that far more wonderful sanctuary to which our Lord referred when "He spake of the temple of His body" (John 2: 21). We have seen God, revealed in Jesus, through His Word. Having begun to know Him thus, we thirst to know Him better.

Thirst such as this is bound to be fully met. Hence we find the Psalmist again speaking of his soul in verse 5: "My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness." This signifies satisfaction of a very full and abundant order. Though in a dry and thirsty land without water, David was in the enjoyment of marrow and fatness: so too we are to be filled with satisfaction in the midst of an empty and dissatisfied world. Such is the desire and purpose of God for us all; and we venture to think that if Christians universally were characterized by a deep and abiding satisfaction, the men of the world would be more deeply impressed by it than by all the gospel sermons that ever could be preached.

The world is full of unsatisfied desire, which leads to covetousness. The word to us is, "Let your conversation be without covetousness: and be content with such things as ye have" (Heb. 13: 5). "Satisfied with your present circumstances" (N. Tr.). Are our present circumstances then so very desirable; are they just what they should be? They are the very reverse of that. They are so undesirable that a clean sweep will be made of them immediately this age closes. Why then are we to be satisfied with them? Because as Hebrews 12 has shown, they are appointed of God to act as chastening and discipline for us, and also because He has said, "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee." That is it. We may be satisfied in the midst of present circumstances because there is guaranteed to us the abiding presence of the One for whom we thirst.

It is not that we are to be satisfied with the circumstances themselves. There can be no rest, let alone satisfaction, with circumstances that are full of sin and sorrow and death. We are to be satisfied with them by being in touch with Him who is the Source of satisfaction while we are in the midst of the circumstances: so satisfied that we are filled with praise. In the Psalm the words, "My soul shall be satisfied," are surrounded with expressions of praise. "Thus will I bless Thee while I live." And again, "My mouth shall praise Thee with joyful lips.

And further, the One who satisfies us with the knowledge of Himself and His love, also casts over us the "shadow of His wings." The present circumstances may be oppressive, they may be like the burning sun beating down upon us, but if so, we may find shadow in His wings, as well as satisfaction in Himself.

Once more, in verse 8, the Psalmist speaks of his soul: "My soul followeth hard after Thee." We might have supposed that if, having thirsted for God, he had found full satisfaction in God, there was really nothing more to be said: there could be nothing beyond that. It is true of course that when our souls are in the full and absolute satisfaction of heaven the climax will be reached. But David was far from heaven when he wrote this psalm; he was in the wilderness of Judah.

We too are in a wilderness, and in Christ we have discovered the Fountain-head of satisfaction. So both for David and for ourselves the Source of satisfaction lies outside the scene and circumstances that surround us. Our satisfaction depends upon keeping in close touch with the Source of it, and to maintain that touch He must be pursued.

Hence the necessity for our souls to follow hard after Him. It is not that He avoids us; it is rather that the world, though a wilderness to us, is very full of distracting objects that appeal very strongly to the flesh within us, and so we are very apt to be like children who are diverted by every little butterfly that flutters across our way. Also there are times perhaps when our Beloved seems to withdraw Himself from us, that He may provoke us to a keener following. When the bride of Solomon's Song was somewhat lethargic, and felt for a moment that she could not put on her coat and defile her feet to open to her Beloved, she discovered that He had withdrawn Himself. Then she had to say, "I sought Him but I could not find Him" (Cant. 5: 6).

But this stirred her exceedingly, and fanned her love to a very vehement flame. She began to speak about Him and to describe Him to others, and there follows that glorious passage that begins, "My Beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand," and that ends, "His mouth is most sweet: yea, He is altogether lovely. This is my Beloved, and this is my Friend, O daughters of Jerusalem." Ultimately she found Him and came up "from the wilderness leaning upon her Beloved" (Cant. 8: 5).

These things are an allegory. Certain it is that if in the wilderness of this world we find a satisfying Object in Christ and our souls follow hard after Him, we shall learn how He can conduct us up from the wilderness to the heights of His own glory. We shall enter upon the experience so strikingly described by Paul in Philippians 3. We shall rejoice in Christ Jesus, and find that He eclipses all the best things connected with the flesh. We shall begin to count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord, and count them but refuse so that we may have Christ for our gain.

In thus following Christ we shall find that, as the Psalmist put it, "Thy right hand upholdeth me." We should put it thus, "Thy Holy Spirit upholdeth me." The Holy Spirit glorifies Christ, firmly attaching our souls to Him, and maintaining us as His followers.

He does more than this. He so fills us with satisfaction that we overflow in blessing to others. Out of our inward parts there flow "rivers of living water" (John 7: 38). There is not only the upward flow of praise, which our Psalm contemplates, but this outward flow of testimony. But these rivers of living water go beyond the Psalms and lead us into the full blessing of our Christian faith.

"He that ascended, descended first."

"He that ascended, descended first."

Psalms 68 and 69.

F. B. Hole

(Extracted from Scripture Truth Vol. 28, 1936, page 108.)

Psalm 68 strikes a very triumphant note, for in it God is seen as scattering His foes and blessing His people. It seems to be the climax of a short series. Psalm 64 anticipates that God will intervene for the deliverance of His people. Psalm 65 speaks of the blessing that will visit the earth when God has stilled the tumult of the nations. Psalm 66 expresses the joy of the godly when brought through fire and water they can praise His Name in His house. Psalm 67 shows that when God blesses and causes His face to shine upon Israel His saving health will be known among all the nations. Psalm 68 crowns the story by recapitulating the whole theme with greater fulness, and showing that all hinges upon the One who has ascended on high.

Psalm 69 commences another short series of three, in which not triumph but a cry for deliverance is predominant. It begins with the cry of One who entered into troubles far more deeply than any other. The truly marvellous thing is that the One who cries out of the deepest troubles is to be identified with the One who has gone up on high. Therefore it is that Psalm 72 closes the second book with a description of His millennial glory.

If human order and arrangement had prevailed in the grouping of the Psalms, it would pretty certainly have reversed the order of the two series. We should have arranged things in historic order, first His trouble and suffering, second His triumph and ascension, third His millennial glory. But doubtless we should have been wrong. The order here agrees with that observed in Ephesians 4: 9, 10, where, having quoted the eighteenth verse of Psalm 68, the comment is made "Now that He ascended, what is it but that He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth." The descent was first historically, but it is only mentioned parenthetically because His triumphant ascension is the main point before the mind of the Spirit. So it is in these Psalms, and 69-71 may be viewed as a parenthesis between 68 and 72.

He "descended first." So let us first consider Psalm 69, in which He is seen as sinking in "deep mire," and "deep waters" (ver. 2), and as going down into "the waterflood," "the deep," and "the pit" (ver. 15). Ephesians 4: 9 speaks of Him as descending "into the lower parts of the earth," an expression that occasions some little difficulty. If, however, we connect it in our minds with the Psalm before us the difficulty largely disappears. Indeed it may be that the Apostle Paul, when he wrote the words, had this Psalm in his mind, just as he had Psalm 68 in his mind and quoted from it in the previous verse.

The sufferings contemplated in our Psalm are not those that are connected with His soul being made an offering for sin. His atoning sufferings were from God, as we see in Psalm 22. Here the sufferings are endured for God. It is plainly stated in verse 7, "For Thy sake I have borne reproach." All through this is the dominant note. We see by the spirit of prophecy the holy, dependent Man altogether identified with God's interests, and by reason thereof going down into death.

The language of this Psalm cannot be applied to the Lord Jesus without any reserve, as is possible when we consider Psalm 22. Verse 5 is a case in point. The utterance of that verse would come most appropriately from the lips of the most devoted saint that has ever lived, but in no sense did it come from His lips. In Psalm 22 the sufferings He endured at the hands of men when on the cross are predicted, yet all are subsidiary to the supreme sufferings which were His as forsaken of God. Then it was that atonement was made, and hence He stands absolutely alone. No other enters into the question, even in the remotest way. In Psalm 69 He is not absolutely alone, for many a saint has known what it is to suffer from evil men, because identified with God's Name and cause. He is immeasurably pre-eminent in this, but there are others. This accounts for expressions in the Psalm which apply to the others, but which do not apply to Him.

A large part of the Psalm however, does apply to Him. The Lord Jesus quoted the opening words of verse 4 as applying to Himself in John 15: 25. We are told in John 2: 17 that His disciples remembered the opening words of verse 9, and saw that they referred to Him. Paul remembered the latter part of that verse, and saw that it referred to Him, as shown by Romans 15: 3. So also Peter saw a reference to Judas Iscariot in the 25th verse, as we are told in Acts 1: 20.

In addition to these we are furnished with many remarkable allusions to what He suffered. Hatred, reproach, shame, dishonour are all mentioned, and they reached Him, from all quarters. "They that sit in the gate speak against Me;" and it was the elders and judges who sat there — the most reputable of the people. But equally, "I was the song of the drunkards;" and they were the most disreputable of the people.

Then again, when reproach had broken His heart He had to say, "I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but found none." This was fulfilled in His disciples, for it was in Gethsemane that He was "sorrowful and very heavy," and even Peter, James and John utterly failed Him.

Verse 21 was fulfilled on the cross in the most literal way by the Roman soldiers who crucified Him.

So in this wonderful Psalm we get the whole range of suffering that came upon Him at the hands of men: whether from the leaders of the people, or from the very scum' of society, or from the Gentiles; whether from true disciples who really loved Him, or from false disciples who betrayed Him. He felt it all with an intensity that is altogether beyond our conception, and He was cast upon God in it all.

"Then I restored that which I took not away" (verse 4). These words found their fulfilment in Him. The first man Adam robbed God of His glory. He forsook obedience to, God and dependence upon Him, and became eaten up with self-interest and self-seeking. The second Man the Lord Jesus Christ was marked by absolute obedience and dependence; He was eaten up with zeal for God's house, and was so wholly identified with the interests and glory of God that, if any desired to fling reproaches upon God, the reproach naturally fell upon His head. Thus having taken man's true place, He restored to God as Man the place that was truly His as God. He glorified God where the first man had dishonoured Him.

But it was just this whole-hearted identification with God, and zeal for His house, that brought upon the Lord Jesus the full weight of man's hatred and persecution — a persecution which did not stop short of death. Adversaries surrounded Him on all sides; reproach, shame and dishonour were rolled in upon Him from all quarters. He did indeed descend. He had to say, "I sink." But this descending was first; that infers that there is something to be accounted second. There is a glorious sequel.

Psalm 68 very specially contemplates the great intervention on God's part which will overthrow every adversary and deliver His people, and thus inaugurate the age of millennial glory. Again and again men perpetually ask, Can there be a God? If so, why does He not rise up and do something? They do not realize what the fulfilment of their desire will entail. The day will come however when a Divine intervention will take place. God will arise and His enemies will be scattered. HIS enemies, be it noted; not yours or mine or Britain's or Ethiopia's or even Israel's. His enemies will be like smoke driven before the fire.

That intervention will mean the deliverance of all those that fear His Name. Many of them will be in a captivity that has been brought upon them by reason of their nation's sins. Isaiah asks the question, "Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or the lawful captive delivered?" (Isa. 49: 24), and in the next verse he answers it, saying, "Thus saith the Lord, Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered." Our Psalm shows that not only will the Almighty "scatter kings" (ver. 14), but He will lead captive every power that had enslaved His people. He will possess Himself of them by taking captive those who held them in captivity.

But, as we have seen, the Apostle Paul discovered that these words, while referring to the millennial triumph, had an application to the triumph won by the Lord Jesus at His first advent by way of death, resurrection and ascension into the glory. Many details in the Psalm can only refer to what will be accomplished at His second advent, but verse 18 has special reference to the first, and we may make a similar application of verse 1.

"Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered!" These are great words. Had there been fulness of intelligence and faith in the hearts of the disciples, they might have been on their lips as they awaited that glorious first day of the week when Jesus rose from the dead. They had neither the faith nor the intelligence at that moment, but doubtless as the myriads of holy angels looked down upon the grave of Joseph of Arimathea that is what they desired to say, and that is what they saw accomplished. Of a truth He was crucified in weakness, but He came forth from the tomb by the power of God — a power that was inherent in Himself.

It must have been a great sight when, in the little ship on the lake of Galilee in the midst of the storm, the apparently weary Man "arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm." It was a far greater sight when the apparently defeated Man arose from the dead, not only rebuking but scattering His spiritual foes, when, "having spoiled principalities and powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it" (Col. 2: 15). The thing was done openly or publicly. The triumph was over opposing evil spiritual powers, and it was public in the sight of all the holy spiritual powers.

When the triumph was effected men were wholly unconscious of it. The best of the disciples were still in fear and trembling. No human shouts of exultation greeted the arising of God and the scattering of His foes, but who shall say what transpired in the angelic realm? If the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy when the foundations were laid in creation, what songs and what shouting must have greeted the arising of the Son of God from death and the grave? There must have been a shout that reverberated to the farthest of the shining stars of God, though dull human ears perceived it not.

We believe that we do not trespass in thus applying verse 1 to the resurrection of Christ. We are sure that we do not in applying verse 18 to His ascension, for the inspired Apostle makes just that application, as we have seen. His application sheds a flood of light on the Old Testament scripture.

Verse 17 speaks of "the chariots of God." These are connected with angelic ministrations and power, as we see in the translation of Elijah. When he ascended on high he was fetched by the chariots of God. "The chariots of God are twenty thousand," yet none of them appeared when Jesus went up. The One who then ascended was God no less than Man. He was not fetched: He went up and in, as the Master of that holy place.

Moreover His ascension was in the nature of a triumph. A cloud received Him out of the sight of the disciples: the scene that transpired on the other side of that cloud was too bright for mortal eyes to gaze upon. The verse that we have already quoted from Colossians 2 has as much application to His ascension as to His resurrection. The powers of darkness, which had been holding man in captivity, were themselves dragged as helpless captives in His procession; and already there were found upon earth men, who though once the helpless captives of Satan, were now gladly captivated by Him. The handful of captivated men that He left behind Him have now increased through the centuries to a multitude that no man can number. We — readers and writer — are amongst them, conscious of the cords of His love.

"Drawn by such cords we'll onward move,

Till round the throne we meet,

And, captives in the chains of love,

Embrace our Saviour's feet."

When this verse is quoted in Ephesians 4 the point particularly before the mind of the Spirit is the gifts that were given to Him as Man on behalf of men. "Thou hast received gifts in Man" (New Trans.). The gifts were indeed received for men, but the language indicates more than this. They were received in Man; that is, by Him in His ascended and glorified Manhood, so that He, as the supreme and representative MAN, might bestow them upon men. He will indeed shed great gifts upon the men who, born again and redeemed, enter the coming age of glory. The point made in Ephesians 4 is the way in which He has given the gifts amongst His redeemed to-day.

The saints of today, who compose the church, are "a kind of firstfruits of His creatures." We have in anticipation blessings which will be bestowed in a more public way in the coming age. On the day of Pentecost Peter stated of Christ that "being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear" (Acts 2: 33); so here we have a statement which runs parallel to that of Paul.

Peter speaks of the gift of the Spirit Himself. Paul speaks of the gifts that accompany and flow from the gift of the Spirit. But in both cases the gifts reach men in the same way. As the ascended and victorious Man the Lord Jesus received of the Father the promised Holy Ghost, and then shed Him forth upon His saints below. As the ascended and victorious Man He received the gifts, which He proceeded to give unto men. By the gift of the Spirit Himself the saints were constituted His members, and His body was formed. By the gifts bestowed — apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers — the saints are to be perfected and the body edified.

These gifts are all in evidence today. The apostles are available for us, inasmuch we still have the inspired writings which came from their pens. We also have inspired writings which have reached us through men, who although not apostles, were prophets. Prophets, in the full sense of the term, were inspired men: yet, though inspiration has ceased, we still find that there are given to the church men of prophetic gift, who can unfold the mind of God. Evangelists, pastors and teachers are also to be found today.

The point in the Psalm is that the bestowal of these gifts is the fruit and manifestation of the triumph of the Lord Jesus. He descended first into death and all that was involved in it. He arose from the dead to the confusion and scattering of every adverse power. He ascended into the heavens having made captive the evil principalities and powers that formerly held us captive. Then, to crown everything, He received as Man the gifts which He bestowed upon men.

These gifts are even for "the rebellious," as the Psalm says: that is, for those who once were rebellious, but now have been happily subjugated through grace, are captives in the chains of His love. By-and-by, when judgment has run its course in the earth, there will be a great out-pouring of the Spirit and of the gifts of the Spirit upon once rebellious men. At last the earth — Israel and the nations — will be in sincere subjection to the will of God, and it will be seen that Christ is "the Head over all things" (Eph. 1: 22). In that glad day the gifts will flow to men from the glorified Man who is Head over all.

But the same verse in Ephesians declares Him to be "Head . . . to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all." The church exists today, and her Head is the One who — though "over all, God blessed for ever" — is over all things, the ascended and glorified Man. Hence the church has not to wait to receive gifts. They are hers today, and have been hers since she came into being. They have reached her from her exalted Head, and every one of them exists for the maintenance of His interests and the doing of His work in the world, which is the scene of the adversary's power. Every one of them is a witness to the triumph of our Head.

And every one of them has this in view — "that the Lord God might dwell." In the coming age He will dwell in Zion, as His rest forever. In this age He dwells in the church, as we are told in the last verse of Ephesians 2. What mighty results flow from the triumph of our Head!

Sing His blest triumphant rising;

Sing Him on the Father's throne

Sing — till heaven and earth surprising,

Reigns the Nazarene alone.

"The God that doest wonders."

"The God that doest wonders."

Psalms 73 and 77.

F. B. Hole.

(Extracted from Scripture Truth Vol. 28, 1936, page 135.)

We have taken our title from the fourteenth verse of Psalm 77, but we believe that it serves equally well as a heading to Psalm 73. Both these Psalms are highly experimental, but the experiences related are of a sort common to the saints of all ages, and therefore very pertinent to ourselves.

Our title shows that God was a present reality to Asaph. He quite recognized that God had wrought great wonders in the past, as the succeeding verses of the Psalm show. Still in saying, "Thou art the God that doest wonders," he laid the stress upon the present, and that is the great test of faith. It is comparatively easy to believe that God has done great wonders in the past, and that He will do them in the future. To genuine faith God is a present reality: He is a God that is doing wonders today.

Psalm 72 closes the second Book in giving us a glowing picture of the millennial reign of Christ. The great wonder of an earth filled with righteousness and peace will be brought to pass by God in that coming day. When however, we pass on to the next psalm and open the third Book, we are at once conscious of a great change of atmosphere. We leave the warm sunlight of millennial righteousness and glory, and enter the cold gloom of this present evil world, where the foolish, the wicked, the men marked by pride, violence and corruption are in evidence. The prayers of David the son of Jesse were ended as he foresaw the one, the heart-searchings and troubles of Asaph came to a climax as he looked round upon the other.

The first sixteen verses of Psalm 73 give us a very graphic description of the way in which the wicked frequently are prospered in this life. There is nothing very surprising in the fact that in an ungodly world there should be worldly prosperity for the ungodly: it is rather surprising that the godly should so often be upset as they behold it. There was some excuse for Asaph, for he lived in a day when heavenly things were not clearly revealed, and when God did speak of blessing Israel His people in their basket and in their store. We live in a day when heavenly things are clearly revealed, and when we have been plainly told as Christians that "we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God."

Still we often do exactly what Asaph did. We look around us and beholding the prosperity of the wicked we become envious of them, and in consequence our feet are almost gone, our steps have well-nigh slipped. In this we disobey the instructions of Psalm 37, we fret ourselves because of evildoers, and are envious against the workers of iniquity, and end by fretting ourselves in such wise as "to do evil." Asaph could find no clue in this world to the elucidation of God's dealings, neither can we. We shall have to do what Asaph did.

Asaph went into the sanctuary of God, and then he understood. The sanctuary of those days was the place where God granted His presence, and where He made known His mind for there was to be found the priest with Urim and Thummim. Asaph withdrew himself from the world and its perplexing circumstances that he might get into touch with God. Gazing around he was nearly stumbled for it looked as if God were favouring the ungodly and penalizing the righteous, but in the sanctuary he got a glimpse of things that lie far outside this world, and his perplexities ceased.

There is no earthly sanctuary today. There is no place of special sanctity whither we must resort. Neither in Mount Gerizim nor at Jerusalem do we worship. The Father has been revealed to us in the Son. We have received the indwelling Spirit and the full Word of God. Hence we may each of us retire from the world, and shutting our door, we may realize the presence of God, and receive the blessing and uplift that His presence brings.

Now what did Asaph get when he went into the sanctuary? This question is answered for us in the latter part of the Psalm — verses 17 to the end. Let us attempt to summarize what Asaph tells us.

In the first place he got the solution of the particular question that was agitating his mind. He was brought to an understanding of the end of the ungodly, which stretches beyond time into eternity. He saw that God's dealings with men in this life are provisional only, and preliminary to His final action in eternity. This puts an entirely fresh complexion upon the whole matter. An atheist American farmer one year carefully cultivated, sowed and reaped certain of his fields on Sundays and not week-days. When the autumn came he had excellent crops from those fields, and he wrote an exultant letter to the editor of the local paper, glorying in what he had done, and boasting that "this October" his crops were better than those of any of his Sunday-observing neighbours. The editor published his letter, but neatly punctured the inflated spirit which his letter breathed by inserting beneath it a brief editorial comment, to the effect that, "It must be remembered that God does not always settle His accounts in October!"

Asaph discovered that God intends to settle His accounts with the ungodly in His own time and way, and that He has unlimited time at His disposal wherein to do it. He is in no hurry, and He will do it in an hour of all hours most inconvenient for them. If we too have been troubled about this particular point, let us also lay hold of the fact that God's ways, whether with the ungodly or with His people, can only be interpreted in the light of eternity.

But Asaph got more than the solution of his difficulty when he went into the sanctuary — something entirely different, we suspect, from anything he anticipated. He got an overwhelming sense of his own foolishness. As a chief singer and an intelligent man he went in; but, once in, he very soon found himself to be like an unintelligent beast in the presence of God.

We venture to say that no one can ever know the reality of God's presence without making a like painful discovery. Those who most eminently have worn the character of God's saints have most profoundly realized their own nothingness and foolishness. The more we live before men, or even in the presence of our fellow-believers, the less we realize it. The more we live as in the presence of God the more we realize it.

But Asaph was not left to grovel before God as a beast, for together with this overwhelming sense of his own folly and ignorance he got a sight of the grace and glory of God. "Nevertheless," he says, "I am continually with Thee: Thou hast holden me by my right hand." In spite of all that he was, and had learned himself to be, God took him by his right hand, lifted him up, and set him continually in His august company. This was astonishing grace. But grace also set glory before him, and undertook to give him guidance on his way to the glory.

These things were true for Asaph; they are more abundantly true for us. Grace, guidance and glory for a man who discovered himself to be like a beast before God! That is the Old Testament story. And the New Testament story is like unto it, only going beyond it. Titus 2: 11-13, gives us a yet more wonderful story of grace going on to glory, and with guidance granted in between, so that we live soberly, righteously and godly, in this present world.

But all this, great as it is, conducts us to an even greater end, which is very clearly indicated in this Psalm. The end for Asaph was this, that God Himself became infinitely attractive to his heart. Not only did He fill all heaven for Asaph, but He completely eclipsed all objects of desire upon earth. It is this second thing that tests us most. We know so little of heaven, whereas earth we know pretty well. The desirable things of earth cast their spell over us, except we know God in the practical way that Asaph learned to know Him.

Gaining this heart-knowledge of Him we find Him indeed to be the strength of our hearts and our portion for ever. With God for our strength and portion we are no longer "envious at the foolish," nor troubled because we see "the prosperity of the wicked." It is possible, we believe, to be so rejoicing in God as our portion that we are no longer troubled at the apparent success of evil men, even though we do not know the solution of the problem created by their success. The God who works within us to such an end is a God who works wonders indeed.

The Psalm ends on this note, that it is good to draw near to God. Asaph started to draw near because he wanted an explanation of his difficulties. He ended by drawing near because of the excellence of the knowledge of God Himself.

May a similar experience be ours.

So much for the troubles that spring out of the disordered state of the world. Asaph, however, had other troubles which he relates in Psalm 77. The source of these was not external, but internal. They proceeded not from the world without, but from the flesh within.

We have only to read the first six verses to discover that, when he began this Psalm, Asaph was extraordinarily occupied with himself. He details his miserable experience. He analyzes his miserable feelings. He looks back with longing to the brighter experiences of earlier days. He speaks of, "My trouble .  . . my sore . . . my soul . . . my spirit . . . mine eyes . . . my song in the night [which he used to sing] . . . mine own heart." It is all himself. In the Gospel of Luke we read of a woman who had a spirit of infirmity and as a consequence was "bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself." In her case the spirit of infirmity affected her body and bent her double so that she could look no higher than herself. The spirit of infirmity that had laid hold on Asaph had affected his mind in similar fashion. He was bowed in upon himself.

How many of us have had an experience like Asaph? The easy-going, the worldly-minded amongst believers are not troubled in this way. They are not sufficiently keen to be well pleasing to the Lord, not sufficiently earnest, to face things. The careful and conscientious believer is the one to be plunged into these distresses. They are the ones who look within their own hearts, and are filled with grief at what they find.

It is true that in these verses Asaph says, "I remembered God," and that sounds promising. But he immediately adds, "and was troubled." So each thought of God inspired him with fear and not delight. He looked at God through the dark and distorting spectacles of his own miserable state of failure and self-occupation.

Now see where this led him! One might have imagined that it would lead him to a deep and thoroughgoing distrust of himself. But verses 7, 8 and 9 reveal that he was entangled in a loss of all confidence in God. He argued in his mind from himself to God, from his feelings to God's feelings; and this of course is the principle of law and not of grace. He felt that if he had basely slid away from God, God would be likely to cast off from him.

And so we get the six terrible questions that fill those three verses. Every one of them casts an aspersion upon God. Having communed with his own heart, and his spirit having made diligent search, he might very well have cast any number of aspersions upon himself. He might well have questioned whether his own goodness was not "clean gone for ever," whether his own promises and powers would not "fail for evermore." He had no logical reason for questioning God, yet that is what he did; and exactly what we are inclined to do, when in a like case.

This of course is the great object of the adversary. At the outset he broke man's confidence in God, instilling doubts into his mind. He loves to do it still. And alas, when we are self-occupied we readily fall into his trap as Asaph did. Let us realize that it really is a trap, for something is gained when we are alive to that fact.

The trouble is that to some minds this chronic and excessive self occupation appears to be a virtue. We at once concede that the main tendency today is towards a lack of keenness and conscientiousness, towards a far too easy-going type of religion that is not very deeply concerned about anything. Still that does not make the opposite extreme any more right. To be continually brooding over one's failures and trouble and weakness only breeds further weakness and failure; and moreover, since the tendency to this kind of thing is nearly always coupled with a legal mind, it inevitably generates loss of simple confidence in God. There are some too who, while not indulging in self-occupation of a personal sort, yet are marked by something akin to it, only in a collective way. Their minds become obsessed with the failure and trouble and weakness that exists in their brethren; and their constant occupation with it only tends to increase the very things they deplore.

A moment happily came in Asaph's history when his eyes were opened to the true state of the case. He puts the matter with great brevity — "And I said, This is my infirmity" (ver. 10). He had evidently been viewing it as a virtue; as though there was something pious, and almost holy, in this continual moaning over his own delinquencies. But now he became conscious that it was by no means a virtue but an infirmity, a weakness. A great discovery this, for it broke the kind of spell that it had cast upon his mind. It would be a very great thing for us all to make a like discovery, and enter upon a like deliverance.

This discovery in Asaph's case shut the door upon the whole realm of dismal things connected with himself, in which his mind had been dwelling: it opened a door into another realm of things connected with God — things of greatness and power and glory. We have only to read from verse 10 to the end of the Psalm, to see the striking way in which his mind was switched from the one to the other directly he understood the true character of his self-occupation, as not virtue but weakness.

In verses 2 to 6, it was all, "my" — my this, that and the other. In verses 10 to 20, it is all, "Thy" — "Thy years . . Thy wonders . . Thy work . . . Thy doings . . . Thy way . . . Thy strength . . . Thine arm . . . Thine arrows . . . Thy thunder . . . Thy path . . . Thy footsteps." What I deliverance, what blessing, what strength there is in looking at God's things, after the weakness and humiliation of looking at our own.

Formerly he had before him "the years of ancient times," evidently in connection with his own experiences: now he has before him "the years of the right hand of the Most High." We spend our years as a tale that is told, whether in the ancient times or to-day. His years are throughout all generations, since from everlasting to everlasting He is God.

Formerly he was considering the "days of old," and finding no comfort in so doing: now he is remembering "Thy wonders of old," which must have been a very welcome change.

Formerly he had to say, "I am so troubled that I cannot speak;" he looked back to a song in the night that once had been his, but which now was only a dim remembrance. Now, meditating upon all the work of the Lord, he found his tongue once more. He had found something which gave him a worthy theme. "I will . . . talk," he said, "of Thy doings."

Formerly his own misery oppressed him down to the earth, for we might sum up all his utterances in the first part of the Psalm as really saying, "Who is so miserable a man as I am?" The point he reaches in the latter part is just this, "Who is so great a God as our God?" What a magnificent change!

"Thou art the God that doest wonders," sums it all up. Asaph also got his eye on the wonders that God did of old, when He redeemed Israel out of Egypt and led them like a flock through the wilderness and into the promised land. We know this, and have the benefit of that knowledge, just as Asaph; but we also know what wonders He works today. What wonders does He not accomplish in the hearts and minds of His saints? — lifting them out of themselves, in their littleness and feebleness, into the greatness and strength and love which is found in Himself. It is by faith that His people are enabled to endure, and out of weakness are made strong, for Hebrews 11 tells us this plainly. Still it is God who does it, and faith on our side simply lays hold on His strength. And what wonders will He not accomplish in the days to come!

And one thing more. Let us take note that what God does for one of His people He will do for all. Some of us may feel sorely oppressed at the low, the divided, the often distracted state of the flock of God. This would particularly be the case on the part of those who may possess the pastor's heart. Well, it is good to. feel it, but not to be over-pressed with it. Who is so great a God as our God as regards the shepherd care of His people?

Once He led His people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron — the one the apostle, the other the high priest of that dispensation. Neither apostle nor high priest was perfect, yet He landed them into the promised place. Today we are called upon to "consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus," and in Him is found perfection. He never fails.

Therefore all fears on our side are groundless. It is meet that we should confess our failure and take the lowest place. It is the only place that becomes us. But at the same time we have all confidence in our great Leader. Our Apostle and High Priest has become "the Captain of our salvation," and He is leading us as many sons to glory. Every one of us is going to get there! This great wonder is going to be added to the many other wonders He has wrought.

Well may we exclaim once more, "Who is so great a God as our God!"

"Cut down" - "Set on high."

"Cut down" — "Set on high."

Psalms 90 and 91.

F. B. Hole

(Extracted from Scripture Truth Vol. 27, 1935, page 279.)

The heading of Psalm 90, attributing its authorship to Moses, should arrest our attention to begin with. It makes it pretty certain that chronologically it is the first of the psalms, being written some hundreds of years before the rest. Moses, the writer, is spoken of not as the prophet or law-giver but as the man of God; and it is a prayer, though we find nothing in the nature of a petition throughout the first eleven verses.

Two songs are attributed to Moses. The first was sung by him and the children of Israel at the beginning of his forty years ministry, when they had crossed the Red Sea (Ex. 15: 1-18). It is full from beginning to end with what God is, what He had done, and what He was going to do In fulfilment of His purpose. The second was composed at the end, just before he died. It does not appear ever to have been sung. The instructions were, "Now therefore write ye this song for you, and teach it to the children of Israel: put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for Me against the children of Israel" (Deut. 31: 19). The song is written in Deuteronomy 32: 1-43, and Moses came and spake all the words of this song in the ears of the people. They would hardly be likely to sing it, for while in the earlier part it celebrates God's kindly dealings with them, and in the closing part His ultimate intervention and deliverance, the main burden of it is their folly in forsaking God and turning to idols, and the chastening and retribution that this was sure to bring upon them.

But in addition to the second song Deuteronomy furnishes us (in Deut. 33) with "the blessing, wherewith Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death." So we have in the Pentateuch the two songs of Moses and the blessing of Moses, and in the Psalms the prayer of Moses. In both the songs Moses spoke as the prophet-apostle of the law dispensation: in the blessing and the prayer he speaks more simply as the man of God. There is a definitely prophetic element in both the blessing and the prayer, but the more prominent thought is that as the man of God, called to be mediator of the old covenant, he mediates both the blessing from God to man, and the prayer from man to God. It is with the latter of these that we now have to do.

All the petitions that compose the prayer are found in verses 12-17; the earlier verses recite in very graphic fashion the plight in which man is found, which leads to the petitions being offered. Man is seen, stripped of all the false glory with which he surrounds himself, as a poor, fallen, dying creature.

Jehovah, as the Eternal One, is the true dwelling-place of His people in all ages. He pursues His even way from eternity to eternity without the shadow of turning. In contrast to this mortal man is turned to destruction, for as children of Adam we lie under the original sentence, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" (Gen. 3: 19). In verse 3 of our Psalm the word "destruction" is literally "crumbling." In the New Translation it is rendered, "Thou makest mortal man to return to dust, and sayest, Return, children of men." Man stands before us a poor, feeble mortal creature; and the point is, that he is this by the express act of God.

Various figures are laid under tribute by the Psalmist; a flood, a sleep, a bundle of withered grass. God's sentence upon man is as irresistible as a flood. Man's uncertain existence here is quickly over, as quickly as seems to pass a night of sleep. He is cut down and He withers as swiftly as a handful of grass. Three score and ten years were the ordinary measure of his days. This, we may observe, was specially applicable to the people amongst whom Moses moved in the wilderness. All those who were numbered from twenty years old and upward came under that word, "Your carcases shall fall in this wilderness" (Num. 14: 29); so those who were in their prime at thirty, when coming out of Egypt, cannot have lived to be more than seventy, with the exception of Caleb and Joshua. It is remarkable that God should have used a man who lived to one hundred and twenty, and who when he died at that age was still full of vigour, to declare three score and ten to be man's days.

But why is man so frail, so mortal? Because he has fallen under the Divine displeasure. It is not an unreasonable accident that he is in this plight. He was not created thus. It is simply and only that anger and wrath from God lie upon him. An hard saying this, but a true one. It is the only explanation of the sad state in which man is found.

Moses does not stop at this point however: he traces the matter back one further step. Why is man under the Divine displeasure? Why does wrath lie upon him? He furnishes us with the answer in verse 8. "Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance." That is it! Sin lies at the root of the mischief; and even if men sin in secret, it avails not. All stands out clear and distinct in the light of God's face.

Such, then, is the pitiful state of mortal men, the children of Adam, as brought to light by the man of God who was also the lawgiver. No wonder that it moved the heart of Moses to a fervent prayer.

Before considering the prayer let us turn aside to note the great contrast between these earlier verses of Psalm 90 and the earlier verses of Psalm 91. The one is a picture of man in extremes" weakness and misery. The other gives us a view of man honoured of God, and not to be touched by any adverse power. The one is "cut down" to wither like grass. The other cannot be touched: no evil shall befall him, and ultimately he is to be "set on high."

The extraordinary contrast might perplex us were it not that we notice one thing. In Psalm 90 "man" is generic. The whole race of Adam, the first man, is in view, and consequently all through the pronouns are in the plural. It is we, us, our they, them. In Psalm 91 the word man does not occur, though clearly enough a Man is in view. The personal pronoun is used all through, but invariably in the singular. It is he, him, thou, thee, thy. Some particular Man is in the mind of the inspiring Spirit of God. We have no difficulty in identifying Him. He is not the first man, Adam, nor any of his race; but the Second Man, the Lord from heaven.

And so at once the whole atmosphere is changed. Instead of feebleness and misery and sin and the dust of death, we find ourselves rejoicing in One who abides under the shadow of the Almighty, who is untouched by any snare or pestilence or terror or destruction or evil or plague; One who is the object of angelic ministry. The arrows may fly thick and fast, and a thousand may fall at His side and ten thousand at His right hand, but not one arrow can come nigh Him. He cannot be touched by any adverse force.

We find something analogous to this in the history of David, who is spoken of as the man after God's own heart, when he was still in rejection yet under the Divine protection. Abiathar the priest, having escaped from the massacre of all his father's house, fled to David, who greeted Him with the word, "Abide thou with me, fear not: for he that seeketh my life seeketh thy life: but with me thou shalt be in safeguard" (1 Sam. 22: 23). Astute observers may have characterized Abiathar's move as great folly, as a jumping out of the frying pan into the fire — for after all was not Saul's animosity against the priests only secondary, and all his primary animosity reserved for David? That was indeed the case, and yet at that hour there was no safer spot in all the land of Israel than standing by David's side.

David was at that moment the man of destiny, the elect of God according to His purpose, and nothing could touch him. Saul's archers would bend their bows in vain as far as he was concerned, and to be with David was to be in safeguard. He had made Jehovah his refuge and habitation, not perfectly of course, still in a very real measure. He was a type and foreshadowing of the Perfect One who was to come.

Our Psalm gives us a lovely picture of that Perfect One. He always dwelt in the secret place of the Most High and under the shadow of the Almighty. He was perfect in His dependence upon God. Hence He could pass through every form of evil and it had no more effect upon Him than the burning fiery furnace had upon the three Hebrews of Nebuchadnezzar's day Angels had charge concerning Him. and He could tread down all forms of Satanic power, whether represented by lion, adder or dragon.

That this really was so the Gospels themselves bear witness. Satan himself knew that angels were concerned as to Him, and quoted, or rather misquoted, this very Psalm.

And we are permitted to have glimpses of this ministry of angels to their Lord, both after the temptation in the wilderness and the agony in the Garden. Moreover He touched the leper, but the leprosy could not touch Him. He was led, to the brow of Nazareth's hill, but every hand that would have pushed Him over was smitten with impotence. Nothing could prevail against Him or touch Him till His hour was come.

Now even Psalm 91 indicates that an hour, a great hour, was to come in His history; but before we contemplate it let us return to the actual petitions of the prayer of Moses, as recorded in the six closing verses of Psalm 90.

Verse 12 gives us the first request which it is easy to see, exerts a controlling influence on all the rest. We are but the feeble dying children of Adam, and much is gained if we only recognize that fact. For so long as we do not number our days aright, and consequently imagine ourselves to be something other than what we are, we apply our hearts to pleasure or money-making or sport or a hundred and one things of small importance. When we number our days aright and realize the plight we are in, we apply our hearts to wisdom, and the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. But we have to pray to God to teach us to do this, for we shall not do it of ourselves.

Moses was taught to apply his heart to wisdom in an eminent degree, hence he prayed with divinely given intelligence for exactly that which we need. He uttered a four-fold cry: —

1. "O satisfy us early with Thy mercy"

2. "Let Thy work appear"

3. "And Thy glory"

4. "And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us."

All four of his requests are centred in God. Man being what he is, there is no hope in him and nothing to be expected from him. God's mercy, God's work, God's glory, God's beauty were his desire.

Now see how wonderfully all these things were realized in Christ. Just before His birth the prophet spoke "the tender mercy of our God; whereby the Dayspring from on high hath visited us" (Luke 1: 78). The coming of the Son of God into the world was the supreme expression of God's mercy. So too the activities of the Son of God in the world, culminating in the Cross, were the supreme expression of God's work. He Himself said, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work" (John 5: 17). Again His whole life displayed God's glory. The Word having been made flesh and dwelling among us full of grace and truth, the apostles were able to say, "We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten ot the Father" (John 1: 14). Moses had desired to see the Divine glory in connection with the giving of the law, and had been refused, for no man could see that glory and live. Nevertheless he prayed that the glory might appear in due season, and it has appeared. When the Word was made flesh it shone forth, but so softened down by grace that human eyes could gaze upon it.

The fourth of these requests is marked by astonishing boldness. David knew that the beauty of the Lord was to be seen in His temple (see Ps. 27: 4); but to behold it is one thing, to ask for it to be upon such as ourselves, so that we should be invested with it, is quite another. It is to be "upon us," and Moses has just been telling us what sinful, mortal creatures we are. Moses, we might ask, how did you muster courage to ask for so amazing a thing as that? How came the conception of a thing even to enter your mind?

There is but one answer to such questions. It was by inspiration of the Spirit of God. So great a design as that was in the mind of God for His saints, and in due time, when His mercy, His work, His glory had appeared, the basis for it was laid and the fact of it came to light. The gospel today introduces us into "the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved" (Eph. 1: 5, 6). Acceptance in the Beloved involves this, that we stand before God in all His favour: the beauty of the Beloved is upon us. No greater beauty than that could possibly be ours. Moses' request was a bold one, but not too bold. It has had an abundant answer.

By this time we can certainly see that the main burden of the prayer of Moses was an earnest cry for the advent of the Christ of God. A glorious answer was given at His first advent, and the finishing touches will be given at His second advent. It is not surprising therefore that Psalm 91 should foretell His excellence and sufficiency, and set Him before us as the Second Man in sharpest contrast to the first.

But not only does it set Him before us thus, it also indicates in its three closing verses that the greatest hour of all would come in His story, when very opposite conditions would prevail to those stated in the early part of the psalm. An hour would strike when He should be in trouble, when He would need an answer to His call, in the shape of deliverance and salvation. How could this be? Have we not just been hearing that angels have charge concerning Him, and that not one of the forces of evil can touch Him? If He is so fully under the shadow of the Almighty that no arrow that flies by day has any terrors for Him, how is it possible that He should need salvation, or to be satisfied with long life?

Many a saint of Old Testament times may have been puzzled by the paradox involved in this, and longed to arrive at an incontestable solution. That solution, thank God, is ours. The wonderful Person portrayed in this Psalm, the Second Man so different from all other men, intrinsically holy, with life untainted and altogether unforfeit, will go into death on behalf of the feeble dying men so graphically pictured in Psalm 90. The hour struck, and into death He went of His own free will otherwise He had never been there, for He said, "I lay down My life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again" (John 10: 17, 18). He, over whom all evil and even death itself had no power, because having no claim upon Him, went into death impelled by His love. He permitted death to have dominion over Him for one brief moment, in order that He might redeem us and recreate us for God's pleasure.

Of old it had been predicted that the Seed of the woman should crush the serpent's head. In verse 13 we accordingly read of Him treading on the adder and trampling under His feet the dragon. But the prediction also stated that in doing this His own heel should be bruised. In verses 14 to 16 we can see something of what this means by simple yet very plain inferences. The time would come when He would need deliverance and to be shown the salvation of God: then evidently He must be in weakness and adversity. He would be set on high: then evidently He must have been brought low. He is to know what trouble is. Again He is to be not only delivered but honoured: that indicates that He must pass through a time of dishonour. And yet again He is to be satisfied with long life: that infers that He is to come face to face with death. Such is the wonderful story.

When He died and came forth in resurrection, the mercy, the work, the glory of God came perfectly into view, and as a result the beauty of the Lord rests upon His saints. In all His acceptance we are accepted.

One thing more remains to be said. We have noticed the opening petition of the prayer of Moses, and also the four-fold cry of verses 14 to 17. The closing words of the Psalm voice a sixth request based upon the other five. It concerns not God's work but our work — "the work of our hands." He desired that in addition to the beauty of the Lord being upon us the work of our hands might be established upon us. What exactly did he mean?

It may be difficult to say just what was in his mind, but we think we catch a glimpse of what it means for us. We know the mercy of God. Our souls rest upon the work of God. We have seen the glory of God. We stand in all the acceptance and beauty of the Beloved before God. Now we have the great privilege of putting our hands to work of such a character that in its blessed results and fruitage it may be established upon us for eternity.

Work of this sort is outside the range of the man of the world. He cannot touch it. He applies his hands to work of many varieties, yet it all decays. His empires, his pyramids, his skyscrapers, his giant businesses, his elaborate scientific speculations, all of them, and much more beside, will come in their sum total to exactly — nothing.

We go further, and affirm that work of this sort lies very much outside the range of the carnally-minded believer. We may well ask ourselves how we stand as to this point. Come now: what activities are really filling our lives? Are we going with the stream of present-day religion? Are we just fulfilling certain duties, attending certain meetings, and then filling up the rest of our time with pleasures of a respectable and innocuous sort? Are we seeking to get as much as we can out of the earth and the world, or are we seeking first the things of the kingdom of God?

Moses, the writer of the Psalm, threw up his brilliant work and prospects in Egypt in order to put his hands to the work of God. It will be established upon him, and he must have begun to see it when he stood with the Son of God on the holy Mount. Saul of Tarsus had immense advantages, yet he esteemed them but refuse and chose a path of suffering and death, putting his hands with abundance of spiritual energy to the work of the Lord from the start of his Christian life to the finish. When the day of Christ arrives he is going to have the Thessalonian converts, and a multitude more beside from many a city between Jerusalem and Rome, as his joy and crown in the presence of the Lord Jesus. When his detractors and their works are all forgotten, the work of his hands will be established upon him in glory.

And so too it MAY be for us. The early Christians at Corinth were carnal and not very promising on this line, yet to them Paul said, "Be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord." If we are keen in the work of the Lord, and we do it in the Lord and for the Lord, we shall not work in vain and without results that abide for eternity.

We know, with Solomon, that what God does He does for ever. It is certain therefore that if God establishes upon us the work of our hands it will be forever. Just think of it! You and I have at the present moment the opportunity of putting our hands to work, the results of which will never disappear. The work of kings and statesmen, of conquerors and diplomats and builders of big business, is as nothing compared with it.

We are fully blessed in Christ, yet just because of that how foolish should we be were we to fritter away our lives in the pursuit of irrelevant trivialities, instead of grasping firmly and with joy the golden opportunity that is within our reach.

Mercy and Judgment

Mercy and Judgment.

Psalms 101 and 102.

F. B. Hole.

(Extracted from Scripture Truth Vol. 28, 1936, page 157.)

I will sing of mercy and judgment." These are the words with which David opened the Psalm which stands as No. 101 in our collection, and in the remaining seven verses of it he gives the details of the way in which he proposed to translate these principles into action in connection with the kingdom with which God had entrusted him. Again and again he repeats the words, "I will ..." as he tells us that which he proposed.

Reading this psalm, long after his kingdom has passed into history, we may feel tempted to observe that it is fairly easy to say, "I will " do this, that and the other, but that his performance did not come up to his promise. But we must remember two things: first, that he was doubtless putting on record the ideal which he had before him, showing that he had caught the thought of God; and second, that the Spirit who inspired the psalm was leading him to write words which should have an absolute and perfect fulfilment in Christ and in His coming kingdom. With these two thoughts before us let us run our eyes over this Psalm.

It is a great point in David's favour that when he began to consider what should mark his kingdom he started with himself. When we propose to legislate as to other folk we cannot do better than begin with ourselves. He speaks of a perfect way, and of behaving himself wisely in it. He speaks of walking with a perfect heart, and of setting no wicked thing before his eyes. All perfection marked our Lord Jesus Christ, but in David's case it was just in this matter of getting some wicked thing before his eyes that he so grievously failed, as 2 Samuel 11 shows. Still there is the ideal, and the ideal has been, and ever will be, gloriously fulfilled in the Lord Jesus.

Once get an absolutely perfect King seated on the throne and all the other features, mentioned from the middle of verse 3 and onwards, fall into their place. He must hate and repudiate all that turns aside from the Divine standard: He must decline to recognise all who are evil. Moreover He must act in judgment against the slanderer and against the proud, as also against the deceiver, the liar and all who are workers of wickedness.

On the other hand He will look in mercy upon those who are "the faithful of the land," and accept service from such as walk "in a perfect way." This is the one point in the note of mercy being struck. The word "mercy" does not occur, yet we know that such people as are described in verse 5 only are found as the fruit of the mercy of God, as they themselves would be the first to acknowledge. They would all agree in telling us that they only stand in Divine favour because, "His mercy endureth for ever."

Now is it not remarkable that in a Psalm which starts by saying, "I will sing of mercy and judgment" there should be so much of judgment and so little of mercy? It certainly is, and yet there is a very sufficient reason for it. Man being what he is, judgment is a stern necessity, whilst as for mercy it can only be extended upon a righteous basis. In Psalm 101 that righteous basis does not appear. Hence judgment almost entirely fills up the picture that is presented.

What is lacking in Psalm 101 is amply supplied, however, in Psalm 102. We have only to read as far as verse 10 in that Psalm to discover that there is some great Personage, who bears the indignation and wrath that the judgment of God entails, and when we reach verse 13 we find that mercy is to flow forth to Zion. The bearing of the judgment leads to the extending of the mercy. That is the wonderful story.

Now Psalm 102 is not merely a prophecy concerning the rejection and sorrow and judgment-bearing which marked our blessed Lord, and the mercy which as a consequence should flow to men: it gives us these things truly, but so that the recital of it comes to us as from His own lips, and we get His thoughts and feelings as He passed through it all. The heading of the Psalm is, "A prayer of the Afflicted, when He is overwhelmed, and poureth out His complaint before the Lord."

The Psalm seems to divide into four sections of unequal length. In verse 1 to 15 we hear the voice of the afflicted Messiah, relating His sorrow and anticipating the mercy which is to come. Then, verses 16 to 22, we have in a parenthetical way the inspired comment of the Psalmist. In verse 23, and in the first part of verse 24, we again hear the voice of the Messiah, completing His story by way of contrast with what has just been stated in the parenthesis. Lastly, from the middle of verse 24 to the end, we get the glorious answer which comes from the lips of Jehovah in reply to His complaint.

Time and space would fail us if we attempted to go into details, but it may be possible for us to take a rapid survey of these things.

As we consider the first section we are almost irresistibly reminded of what is recorded in the New Testament as to Gethsemane. There it was that He lifted up His prayer as One who was in trouble. There His heart was smitten, and there came forth the voice of His groaning: there He watched and was as a sparrow alone upon the housetop. There too it was that He wept. The Gospels do not mention this touching fact, which verse 9 alludes to, and which is stated in Hebrews 5: 7. Without a question it was in Gethsemane that He "offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from [out of] death, and was heard in that He feared."

It was in Gethsemane that He faced as before God, and in perfect communion with His Father, all that lay before Him, and more particularly the judgment on account of sin which He had to bear. He speaks of it in our Psalm as, "Thine indignation and Thy wrath." Jehovah had lifted Him up as the Messiah but now had cast Him down, that He might be the sin-bearer on the Cross; but before actually entering into all that the Cross entailed, He went through it all in communion with His Father while in the Garden. Indignation and wrath were before Him, but what was involved in them?

We will allow Isaiah 53 to answer this question for us. It meant that He was "wounded," and "bruised," and that "the chastisement of our peace " was upon Him. It meant that the Lord "laid on Him the iniquity of us all," that "it pleased the Lord to bruise Him," and to "put Him to grief," making "His soul an offering for sin." Hence it was that "He was cut off out of the land of the living," and that there came upon Him "the travail of His soul."

In this Psalm the Holy One is pictured as knowing right well all that was involved in the sorrows that lay before Him — that being cut off His days would be "like a shadow that declineth" — and as knowing the glory of Jehovah, who would "endure for ever." He knew too that though men might think that mercy had been forgotten, the moment would arrive when Jehovah would arise and have mercy upon Zion, and from thence His mercy be so dispensed abroad that the very heathen would be brought to fear the Name of Jehovah, and all the kings of the earth would see His glory. Mercy would be certain for men, but only if He went down under the indignation and the wrath.

Now comes the section in which the Psalmist speaks as a prophet, and gives a little summary of the blessed happenings when Jehovah turns to build up Zion in His mercy. This He will do when He shall "appear in His glory." Then "the prayer of the destitute" will be regarded, and "the groaning of the prisoner" will be heard, and those "appointed to death" will be loosed, and men will gather together "to serve the Lord," and sound forth His praise.

The Psalmist is led to recognize that more will be needed than the extending of mercy to sinful men, for he predicts that "the people which shall be created shall praise the Lord. In Psalm 22: 31, he says, "They shall come, and shall declare His righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that He hath done this." Here it is not the people that shall be born, but that shall be created. God is going to create a new kind of person to enjoy the blessing of the millennial age and to show forth His praise. Not a physical but a spiritual creation is here in view. A new creation order of things has already come to pass for believers today, as the New Testament bears witness. But then, as James tells us, we are "a kind of first-fruits of His creatures," and this infers that there is to be a big "after-fruits" of similar creatures following, though not all are called to just the same place of blessing before God.

When Jehovah appears in His glory, this is how the glory will manifest its power upon earth. There shall be judgment as we know from other scriptures: the point here is how it will be manifested in mercy.

There follows now the short section of one and a half verses in which again we hear the voice of the Messiah Himself. He resumes the recital of His sorrows, but now as directly contrasted with all the glory and mercy which yet is to be, and in contrast too with the enduring for ever which characterizes Jehovah. His strength is weakened, His days are shortened, He is to be taken away in the midst of His days by the act of God. Jehovah endures, the hour strikes for Zion to be remembered in mercy, the glory shines forth for the deliverance of newly created men — and the Holy One of God is taken away by death in the midst of His days. Is that the last word as far as He is concerned? How could it be?

There is indeed a colon in the middle of verse 24, but no full-stop. without the further light which the New Testament sheds we should certainly have read all the rest of the Psalm as being the address of the Messiah to Jehovah. We should have taken it for granted that it is Jehovah who is to endure for ever, who of old laid the foundations of the earth, and will at last fold up as a vesture and change both the heavens and the earth, being Himself the Same. In the light of the New Testament we find that the rest of the Psalm is the address of Jehovah to the Messiah; but that on the other hand we were indeed right in seeing Jehovah in the closing verses, for the Son is Jehovah equally with the Father.

Hebrews 1: 8-12, is very explicit on the matter. " Unto the Son He [God] saith, . . . Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of Thine hands . . . Thou art the Same, and Thy years shall not fail." In the light of this, the change of Speaker evidently comes in the middle of verse 24. Jesus, the humbled Man, speaks of being taken away in the midst of His days; whereupon the voice of God reminds Him that His years are throughout all generations. These words are specially striking if compared with verse 12. There it is the Messiah who speaks to Jehovah, and says, "Thy remembrance is unto all generations." Here it is Jehovah speaking to the Messiah and saying, "Thy years are throughout all generations." "From everlasting to everlasting Thou art God," may be said with equal truth of them both. Not till Christ became incarnate did the truth as to the Father and the Son come into view, but here we find a foreshadowing of it.

The humbled Man, who prayed and wept in Gethsemane, whose days were like a shadow that declineth, is the Son and the Creator, and He will endure beyond all these lower created things. When the present heavens and earth are worn out, when they have served their purpose, they cannot remain for they have been defiled by sin. They will be like a worn out garment which is laid aside and changed for another. " The heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire" (2 Peter 3: 7). Thus they will pass away.

Our Psalm does not advance to that of which Peter goes on to speak, saying, "We, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." He will bring in the new just as surely as He will remove the old. The new heavens and the new earth will also be the work of His hands. Creation, redemption, new creation, all are brought to pass by Him.

And He who does all this is the Same, whose years have no end; It has been pointed out that "The Same" is really a name of God. It occurs elsewhere in the Old Testament, though translated differently  - Isaiah 41: 4 and 46: 4, are cases in point, where, " I am He," is really the same expression. Every creature is changeable: only the Creator does not change. "Thou art the Same," is said of the Son in Hebrews 1, and He is none other than, "Jesus Christ the Same yesterday, and today, and for ever," as stated in Hebrews 13.

But though it cannot be said of any creature, "Thou art the same," it can be said that, The children of Thy servants shall continue, and their seed be established before Thee." There is "a seed" who serve Him, as we have been told at the end of Psalm 22, and they and their seed shall abide. This will have its fulfilment in the millennial age, but it also has a fulfilment now. At the present moment we may identify these servants and their seed with "the men which Thou gavest Me out of the world," and "them also which shall believe on Me through their word," (John 17: 6 and 20). We come in amongst those that have believed on Jesus through the Apostles' word. Linked up as we are with the One who is the Same, we shall abide for eternity.

If David could say prophetically, "I will sing of mercy and judgment, how-much more reason have we to say the same as we look back in retrospect. We can see how his words have been fulfilled, and how the very One, who presently will execute judgment in the earth, is He who once has borne judgment on behalf of others, so that mercy may flow forth in righteousness. We know too that the very One who once acted in creation has come forth into Manhood to stand on man's behalf; and that His Manhood was so real that He could speak of His strength being weakened in the way, and of His days being shortened by the suffering of death.

And we know not only that He shall continue, but that also we, who believe in His Name and are called to serve Him during this time of His rejection, shall continue, and be established before Him and His Father for ever. What we do not get in the Psalm is an unfolding of the relationships that have been established and in which we continue. These could not be made known until Christ had come and accomplished the work of propitiation and reconciliation.

It was perfectly evident however, even in the days of David, that the One who would pass through death and remain beyond it as THE SAME, would be able thereby to secure for Himself servants, who doing the will of God would themselves abide for ever.

Poverty: Patience: Power

Poverty: Patience: Power.

Psalms 109 and 110.

F. B. Hole.

(Extracted from Scripture Truth Vol. 28, 1936, page 176.)

The heading of Psalm 109 does not furnish us with any information as to the circumstances under which it was written, but judging from its contents it would seem very probable that like Psalm 13 it sprang out of the terrible experiences connected with the rebellion of Absalom. Then it was that David became the victim of "the mouth of the deceitful," and was rewarded "evil for good, and hatred for . . . love." Ahithophel remarkably fitted this description in his actions, just as Shimei seemed to love cursing, and to clothe himself with it, "like as with his garment." Absalom himself, upon whom David doted, fits the words, "For my love they are my adversaries.

This identification, however, though probable, is not certain, and is of no great moment. What is important for us is to discern in the Psalm, here and there at least, the very spirit of Christ. This is certain, for in verse 8 we have words that apply to Judas Iscariot, as is put on record in Acts 1: 20. This shows without a doubt that in this Psalm we find utterances that are prophetic of Christ.

David might speak of the wicked and deceitful as fighting against him "without a cause." True no doubt in a general way. But if these words are to be taken up in the most absolute and searching way, there is only One to whom they fully apply, and He has applied them to Himself, as we see in John 15: 25. No one but He could face the crowd of His hostile critics with the question, "Which of you convicteth Me of sin?" No one ever died the felon's death of crucifixion, as He did, and yet have such testimonies as those given by the judge, by a fellow-sufferer, and by the officer in charge. Their testimonies respectively were, "I find no fault in Him." "This Man hath done nothing amiss." "Certainly this was a righteous Man." Truly in the most absolute sense they fought against Him without a cause.

Then there was Judas Iscariot, of whom Ahithophel was a kind of type. He spent some three years in the light of His love, and yet became His adversary, rewarding Him evil for good, and hatred for His love. There were also the Jewish crowds, egged on by the envious, scheming religious leaders to a fury of cursing and bitterness, similar to that seen in Shimei. Shimei threw stones and cursed as he came. The Jewish mob shouted, "Crucify Him!" They shouted it "exceedingly," Mark tells us; and as Matthew says, "a tumult was made."

These things come before us prophetically in this remarkable Psalm. Now why was this? We know who He was. We know something at least of His power and His glory. Why should He be treated thus? The answer is that all these things came upon Him in the day of His poverty — the day in which He took a place that led to His saying, "I am poor and needy, and My heart is wounded within Me " (verse 22).

It has been rightly said to us, "Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor." It was what He became. Had He come to earth in order to wear the costliest of its diadems and the richest of its purple, He would still have been stooping to poverty. Rehoboam's brazen shields were but tinsel compared with the golden shields of Solomon, which he had lost. But Solomon's golden shields were but tinsel in the presence of the glory of God. So for Him to come down into man's estate at all was poverty, but to take up Manhood in poverty and need and affliction is more wonderful still.

He was truly and essentially God, yet He did not fall back upon His Divine power and glory in order to alter or mitigate the circumstances that Manhood involved. He entered into human life, taking man's place, with all its attendant circumstances and sufferings, in the fullest possible way, with this one great' exception  - all was wholly apart from sin. Hence many of the expressions in this Psalm can be read as coming to us from His lips.

His heart was wounded — and not merely His hands and His side. Who can estimate what that means? Perhaps the Christian poet did well to stop at the more external things in saying,

"See from His head, His hands, His feet,

Sorrow and love flow mingled down."

inasmuch as these deeper things frequently carry us altogether out of our depth, and it is beyond us to turn them into a matter of song. Nevertheless the fact remains — His heart was wounded, for He felt all that rolled in upon Him with an intensity of feeling that is beyond us. He had a Divine capacity for feeling. Our capacity is only human, and even that in us has been marred and weakened, by the fact that we have been sinners, though now redeemed and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. In Him every human sensibility was carried to its highest pitch of perfection. So that on both counts the wounding of His heart must have been infinitely beyond anything that we could know.

All the evil that thus afflicted Him, to all appearances prevailed against Him, so that He had to say, ' I am gone like the shadow when it declineth" (ver. 23). Eventide draws on, and the shadows lengthen. No matter how brilliant the day, longer and longer they grow until they decline to the vanishing point. They are finally gone when the sun is set. His sun was setting. When the literal shadows cast by the three crosses on the little hill outside Jerusalem were declining, it looked as if His sun had set for ever.

Still the closing part of our Psalm breathes an extraordinary spirit of confidence. The Holy One looks up to Jehovah owning Him as His God, and fully expecting His almighty intervention on His behalf. When Jehovah has acted men will know, as He says, "that this is Thy hand; that Thou hast done it." Hence He can praise in anticipation of the coming deliverance and vindication; "I will greatly praise the Lord with My mouth . . . For He shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him from those that condemn his soul."

In the day of His poverty Jehovah would stand at His right hand to deliver. This is as far as the Psalm goes.

But another day was to dawn, and we are introduced to this directly we begin to read Psalm 110. Jehovah has indeed been standing at His right hand all through His toilsome pathway and even to death — save for the hour when atonement was made, of which Psalm 22 speaks — and now He speaks to Him in resurrection, saying, "Sit Thou at My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool." He is acknowledged as Lord by Jehovah, and placed at His right hand, but it is "until . . . " There is a prospect before Him, and the seat He is to occupy, though high exalted, yet is provisional, until the prospect materializes. The day of His poverty is over. The day of His patience is begun.

To the Thessalonians the Apostle wrote, "The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patience of Christ." (New Trans.). That is why we speak of the present epoch, during which Jesus sits at the right hand of God as the day of His patience. It has already lasted for nineteen centuries. He is at the administrative centre of the universe, being Himself in fact the great Administrator. But He sits there, an attitude which bespeaks not action but rest. He bides His time, which is the time appointed of the Father.. When the time arrives He will arise and act.

Now it is remarkable that all the thirty-one verses of the previous Psalm are occupied with the day of His poverty, and verses 2 to 7 of our Psalm deal with the day which will succeed the present epoch. The day of His patience is mentioned in the first verse, and then nothing more is said as to it. No details as to it are given: it is not the subject of the prophecy.

But that is exactly in keeping with what we find elsewhere. The two advents of Christ are the subject of an immense number of prophecies: the epoch between them is not. Others have used the expression, "The Church parenthesis,"

Now that we know that there is this parenthesis between the advents, we can turn back to the Old Testament and note that it contains here and there brief expressions, which if they do not exactly announce it, yet allow for it. That is the case here. No word is said to indicate what is to transpire while He sits at Jehovah's right hand, nor as to how long He is to sit there.

The Acts of the Apostles opens with Jesus called to the right hand of God, and that book goes on to show us historically how the Divine purpose for the time of the parenthesis began to be unfolded. The various epistles work out for us the constitution and charter of the church — and much else besides —  after giving us the gospel foundations on which the church rests. We find that all really hinges upon Jesus being ascended to the right hand of God, since upon that depended the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, and the Holy Spirit was given that He might form and indwell the church, and also be the power for all acceptable worship and service in the Name of the absent Lord.

The distinguishing features of the present epoch are that Christ sits as Man at the right hand of God, and that the Holy Spirit indwells the saints below. These two great events having come to pass, the way was clear for the revelation of the whole purpose of God concerning Christ and the church. The first verse of our Psalm, as we have noted, only refers to the first of these great things. But it is the master fact from which all else flows. It is the fact that gives character to the whole dispensation.

With verse 2 we pass into a prophecy concerning the time which will succeed the church dispensation. It will be, as verse 3 tells us, "the day of His power."

Now as regards the day of His power we get three very striking details. First, it is to be characterized by the going forth of the rod of His power, so that He rules in the midst of His enemies. Psalm 2 told us about this rod, speaking of it as a rod of iron, by which He will subdue and dash in pieces every opponent. So, evidently, ruling in the midst of His enemies must not be supposed to mean that He permits His enemies to continue. He will step into the midst of His enemies with all power in His hands, and this will mean their utter discomfiture, their everlasting overthrow. Some details of this are given in verses 5-7 of our Psalm, where the day of His power is also called, "the day of His wrath."

There is just this difference however; the day of His wrath is a comparatively brief period, which ushers in the day of His power. Wrath will be needful for the clearing out of evil at the beginning of His millennial reign, but power will characterize every moment of that wonderful epoch which is to come.

The second detail we find is that in the day of His power His people will at last be willing. When first He came to His own things, His own people received Him not. Nor do they receive Him to-day. Individuals of Israel's race do so, as they ever have done; witness to which is borne in John 1: 12, 13. His people as a nation still reject Him. But in the day when the Lord intervenes from heaven to overthrow His enemies and theirs, a mighty work of grace shall take place in their hearts. Space forbids our going into details of this, but the prophecy of Zechariah may profitably be turned to. The early part of Zechariah 14 tells us about the intervention in judgment from heaven. The latter part of Zechariah 12 graphically describes the profound repentance that will be produced in the hearts of the people — produced individually in every one of them, when they at last behold Him whom they pierced intervening on their behalf — valid collectively because wrought individually.

The terrible stubbornness and pride, which have always characterized that nation, will collapse as with a crash in all their hearts, and a new nation from a spiritual standpoint will be born in a day. The "spirit of grace and of supplications" will rest upon them. They will see things in a new light, and be willing at last.

Verse 3 is a little obscure in our Authorized Version. In Darby's New Translation it runs, "Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power, in holy splendour: from the womb of the morning shalt come to Thee the dew of Thy youth." It seems therefore that the whole verse shows how the last scenes in our Lord's life are going to be exactly reversed. Then His people shouted for His death. They covered Him with unholy ridicule and dishonour. The youth of Israel departed from Him into a dark night of retribution for themselves. In the moment prophetically contemplated in this verse, He comes forth in power and splendour, and the youth of Israel — spiritually young at least, for they have all just been born again — flock to Him at the dawning of the millennial day.

The third detail we find in the fourth verse. The One who said to Him, "Sit Thou at My right hand," has also said to Him, "Thou art a Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek."

A substantial part of the Epistle to the Hebrews is occupied in unfolding what is contained in this short verse: Hebrews 5 to 8, with the exception of a somewhat lengthy parenthesis. It is evidently a statement of the utmost importance. It is, in fact, one of the key verses of the Bible.

One thing which stands out very clearly in Hebrews is that the priesthood of our Lord after the order of Melchizedek is an accomplished fact today. It is not something only to be brought about in the day of His power. This being so we might wonder that it should be set in this Psalm in connection with the day of His power rather than the day of His patience. We believe this is because though He is today a Priest of Melchizedek's order, He is not at present exercising functions after Melchizedek's pattern. This is shown quite plainly in Hebrews, where all the functions of His Priesthood are shown to be after the pattern of Aaron.

It was the Aaronic priesthood that had to "have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way," that had to "make propitiation for the sins of the people," that took the place of "a minister of the sanctuary." Melchizedek was concerned with none of these things. He united the function of king and priest. He was priest of "the Most High God" — the millennial name of God. He brought forth bread and wine for the refreshment of the victor. He blessed the Most High God on Abram's behalf, and blessed Abram himself, the man who had the promises.

Now when the day of His power arrives, the Lord Jesus will act after the pattern of Melchizedek. First of all He will, "strike through kings in the day of His wrath;" and in this He will be acting somewhat after the pattern of Abram. Then He will bring forth refreshment for the weary world, and abundantly bless those who are "of faith" as Abram was. He will also bring to pass an order of things in which the earth shall be filled with blessing and praise to God.

Being after the order of Melchizedek, His priesthood abides for ever. There shall be no cessation in the outflow of blessing to men or the upflow of blessing to God. All will be secured to eternity. We need not wonder that this priesthood in contrast to the Aaronic order has been constituted with the oath of God. We may remember that the blessing of Abraham was confirmed by an oath. Here we see that the Priesthood upon which the blessing hangs was confirmed by an oath; and so we may apply to it also that word that when "He [God] could swear by no greater He sware by Himself." The Melchizedek priesthood of Christ is of supreme importance.

The day of His poverty is over; never to return. The day of His power is approaching and may be upon us very speedily; still it is not here yet. The day of His patience is NOW; and we are in it. He sits at the right hand of God, a Priest after the order of Melchizedek; and it is good for us that He at present extends priestly grace, like Aaron did, in view of our infirmities.

He never fails. He will carry us through to the end.

"The headstone of the corner."

"The headstone of the corner."

Psalms 114-118.

F. B. Hole

(Extracted from Scripture Truth Vol. 28, 1936, page 204.)

These five Psalms form a distinct group by themselves, in which we are introduced prophetically to the coming day, in which the once rejected Christ is to be glorified and Israel His people are to be delivered. The climax of the story is reached in Psalm 118, but before we contemplate it let us note the steps leading up to it as unfolded in the four preceding Psalms.

In Psalm 114 faith looks back and sees in the deliverance of Israel from Egypt the power of the presence of God. The same power was to be seen too in Israel's crossing of the Jordan when they entered the Land. Other eyes may have gazed upon these stirring scenes and seen nothing but natural phenomena and remarkable coincidences, just as modern scepticism looks back and sees nothing more than that, if indeed they admit that anything happened at all. Blind unbelief is sure to err and scan God's works in vain, as the poet has told us. Even when it is driven into a corner and forced to admit that something did happen, it cannot for one moment discern what lay behind the something. We know by faith. It was the presence and power of God.

In Psalm 115 faith again speaks and claims that the God who did act in this fashion in the bygone day is the living God today. The idols of the heathen are utter vanity, and their folly is only equalled by that of the men who make them and then trust in them. Our God is in the heavens, and He still acts as He pleases. He is therefore worthy of all confidence, and the Psalmist calls upon Israel, the house of Aaron, and all those that fear the Lord to trust Him as their help and shield. The closing verses of the Psalm are the confident language of faith. Without a doubt God will intervene and bless His people and all who trust in Him.

Psalm 116 voices the sentiments of faith, just as God's fresh deliverance is being experienced. Still viewing the Psalms from the prophetic standpoint, we may see in verse 3 an allusion to the sorrows of the great tribulation, when the godly had been brought down to the very gates of death and "hell," or "Sheol." Looking back on that terrible hour, the confession has to be made, "I was greatly afflicted: I said in my haste, [i.e., alarm or agitation] All men are liars" (verses 10, 11). Now however, the speaker is delivered from death, from tears, from falling (verse 8).

Many a saint who enters the great tribulation will not be delivered, as is made very plain in the Book of Revelation. Verse 15 of our Psalm fits in with this. The death of those who fall before the persecuting power of Satan, who is the energizer of the "beasts," will be very precious in the sight of the Lord; and He will demonstrate this to be so by the special resurrection, of which Revelation 20: 4 speaks. Then, together with those who have been delivered and brought through the tribulation, there will be the sacrifice of thanksgiving in the courts of the Lord's house in the midst of Jerusalem, as is shown at the end of the Psalm.

Faith, however, looks on to the land of the living before it is reached, and that, whether it is to be reached by deliverance from death or by resurrection. "I believed, therefore have I spoken," is the language of faith. To this the Apostle Paul referred in 2 Corinthians 4: 13, saying, "We having the same spirit of faith." Death rolled in upon his spirit and also threatened his body, but in faith he had his eye upon the resurrection world and hence was able to boldly testify, just as the Psalmist did in his day, and as those, to whom the Psalm prophetically refers, will testify in a day to come.

Faith can speak before the Divine intervention has materialized and say with confidence, "I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living." This is what we may do today. Are we doing it?

Psalm 117 is a very short one, but it strikes a very definite note of praise. It also contains two very striking thoughts. The first is that the nations and peoples are called upon to praise the Lord because of His mercy to " us," that is, to Israel. The reason for this is expounded to us in Romans 11: 12-15. The receiving of them back into the favour of God will be as "life from the dead," as is indicated also in the first two verses of Psalm 67. It will mean an outpouring of blessing which will reach out to every people, and hence all the nations will heartily join in praising God for His mercy to Israel.

The second thought of much importance is the way that mercy and truth are linked together in the second verse. Neither mercy at the expense of truth, nor truth at the expense of mercy, would be for the glory of God and the blessing of men. In the coming day when God brings to fruition all His purposes concerning Israel the mercy of God toward them will be seen to be great indeed, and at the same time His truth will be established for ever. The foundation of all this has already been laid in the cross of Christ, and hence the same thing is true when the gospel reaches us today.

Psalm 118 picks up this theme and shows in a detailed way how the mercy will be displayed and how the truth will be established. In verses 2-4, the same three classes appear that we had in Psalm 115. "Israel" is of course the whole nation — the born-again nation that will enter into millennial blessedness. "The house of Aaron" is the priestly family, brought into special nearness to God. "Them that fear the Lord" is a description that would include the godly from among the Gentiles. In Psalm 115 they were all bidden to trust in the Lord who proves Himself to be a help and a shield. Here, in the light of what He has accomplished — as recounted in the rest of the Psalm — they are to praise Him and say that His mercy endureth forever.

Three verses follow (5-7) in which the Lord's intervention on behalf of His people is declared. The past tense is used but this is quite a common feature in prophecy, since the accomplishment of what is declared is so certain that there is nothing incongruous in speaking of it as already done.

The word that is translated "distress" in verse 5 is, we are told, akin to the word "siege." Without a doubt Israel's distress is going to reach a climax during the siege of which Zechariah 14: 2 speaks, and it will be just at that critical moment that the Lord's intervention on their behalf will take place, as the next verse shows. The answer of the Lord to their cry will result in their being brought into a large place and the destruction of their foes, as is indicated in verse 7 of our Psalm. As a result they will indeed be able to say, "The Lord is on my side, I will not fear: what can man do unto me?"

Verses 8 and 9 state the conclusion which they reach. Their confidence in man, even in princes, is broken. They recognize it is better to trust in the Lord. It has been stated that verse 8 is the middle verse of the Bible. If so, it is very appropriate. It certainly states one of the greatest facts that the Bible inculcates: the central fact upon which everything for us turns. How quickly do we put confidence in man; how slowly do we trust in the Lord! Yet to cease from man, and to trust in God is that which Israel has to learn. And we have to learn it too.

Verses 10-12 seem to link on with verse 7. All nations will indeed compass Jerusalem about when the day of the Lord is come: Zechariah 14. 2 expressly states this, as it also states that they do so to their destruction. This will be the moment when Jehovah appears for the deliverance of His people and the overthrow of their adversaries, and His feet shall stand in that day on the Mount of Olives. The feet that left the Mount of Olives in the vicinity of Bethany were the feet of Jehovah; and the feet of Jehovah, that yet will stand on that Mount, will be the feet of the glorified Jesus.

Thrice do we get the words, "In the Name of the Lord will I destroy them," or more literally, as the margin shows, "I cut them off," for still the past tense is employed in its prophetic significance. That the Psalmist should say, "I cut them off," is remarkable; but be it noted that he does it "in the Name of the Lord," which signifies that the power in which the thing is done is the Lord's, and not his own. This is fully acknowledged in verses 13-17. It is the right hand of the Lord that has achieved the victory, and the right hand of Jehovah is Christ. The Son of Man, made strong for Jehovah, is "the Man of Thy right hand" (Ps. 80: 17). Hence instead of the godly being brought down to death, they live and declare the works of the Lord.

So much for the great deliverance to be wrought in the last days, which will incite Israel to give thanks to the Lord, saying that His mercy endureth for ever.

Now notice another thing. In all these great events the eye of faith can penetrate below the surface. Put together the three sentences: — "All nations compassed me about" (ver. 10). "Thou hast thrust sore at me that I might fall" (ver. 13). "The Lord hath chastened me sore" (ver. 18). The first of these deals with that which will be public: all men will know when Jerusalem is the great bone of contention for all nations. The next deals with that which may not be so public. There is an adversary of a very special sort whose one object is to overthrow the people of God, just because they are the people through whom the Divine purpose for the earth is to be established. Satan is that adversary, though perhaps we may understand the "Thou" as referring to the antichristian power through which he would crush them; were it not for the fact that the Lord helps them, and becomes their salvation, just as Ho did when He brought their forefathers out of Egypt.

Only faith however perceives the third thing. The chastening of God was in all this. He becomes their salvation, but only after His dealings in chastisement have had their full effect, leading to the tremendous national repentance predicted in Zechariah 12: 9-14. God will deliver His people, but only after His chastening has achieved the happy end that it had in view.

All this is very instructive, for again and again do things work in just this way. In the remote past it was so with Job. There were the agents of his sorrows, quite open to public view — the Sabeans, the Chaldeans, the fire, the whirlwind. But behind these lay the sinister power of Satan, thrusting hard at him. Again, behind even this lay the chastening hand of God. Job's faith and patience was seen in the fact that he looked not at the third, or even at the second, cause. Ne looked straight through to Gad, and accepted all as from His hand. It is just the same in the present for ourselves. When trouble sweeps in upon us we are utterly distracted and often provoked if we look to second or third causes. If we bow beneath the hand of God we are greatly blessed.

The last part of the Psalm (verses 19-29) furnishes us with details as to the way in which the millennial blessedness is going to be secured. In the first place righteousness is emphasized (verses 19-21). In that glad epoch righteousness is going to reign; so the gate of entrance to it must of necessity be a gate of righteousness, and they who enter through it must be righteous. In the succeeding verses we find how the gates of righteousness are opened. The prophecy falls quite naturally under four heads — "The stone;" "The day;" "He that cometh;" "The sacrifice."

Christ, at His first advent, was the stone which the builders refused. This is put beyond all question by repeated quotations and allusions in the New Testament. When He arrived on the scene just over nineteen centuries ago men were very busy building their empires, their schemes, religious and otherwise. Had He been subservient to their ideas they might have been glad to work Him into their building, that He might adorn it by His supernatural powers. However, they discovered Him to be a Stone of such a shape and texture that they were unable to fit Him in anyhow or anywhere. They refused Him. Now He returns in glory to be the Head-stone of the building which is the handiwork not of men but of God. It will indeed be the Lord's doing, and we can understand how marvellous it will be in the eyes of those who at last see the truth, but who until lately looked upon Him as One rightly rejected.

In His glorious second advent He will be the stone cut out without hands, of Nebuchadnezzar's vision. He will fall with terrible and incredible velocity upon the proud kingdoms of men, and crush them beyond all recognition. The great winds of heaven will blow away the debris like chaff from the threshingfloor. Then the once-rejected Stone  - the blessed Lord Jesus — will inaugurate a new order of things, of which He will be both the Foundation and the controlling Head.

Before proceeding with our Psalm let us pause to note that today — before the second advent — the same thing is true in principle in connection with the church, as Ephesians 2: 10-22 shows. First, certain things are abolished. The "enmity" and also "the law of commandments contained in ordinances" are gone. Indeed both Jew and Gentile, in their characters as Jews and Gentiles, are gone. What is of God's workmanship, "one new man," remains. There is the new building, God's building, and of this "Jesus Christ Himself " is "the chief corner stone." Our business is to keep out in practice what God has put out, and to promote in practice what God is building. No small task this, and one to send us to our knees, even as it sent Paul there — see Ephesians 1: 16-20, and Ephesians 3: 14-21.

When the once rejected Stone is established as the Head, a new day will be inaugurated. Redeemed men will say with exultation, "This is the day which the Lord hath made," and what a day of glory and blessing it will be! Today we look round upon a torn and distracted world. Men's hearts fail them for fear, and Scripture speaks in no uncertain terms of what is coming upon the earth. We sigh and say, This is the day which man has made. The very term, "man's day," is used in 1 Corinthians 4: 3, though translated "man's judgment." Man's day is the day in which man insists on putting himself into the centre and forefront of the picture. It has been one long-drawn-out nightmare, and special horrors are predicted as marking its close when human iniquity reaches its climax. Man's day will be quenched in the night of judgment.

When Christ steps into the centre and forefront of the picture, the day which the Lord hath made will arrive. It will be a day of salvation and prosperity. Men will rejoice and be glad in it. It even makes us glad to contemplate it before it dawns.

Everything centres in a Person, and in verse 26 we are not allowed to forget this. When the Psalm was written "the stone" was quite impersonal, and centuries had to pass before the significance of the word became quite clear. But no centuries had to roll away before it was revealed that blessing for men was bound up with the advent of a Person who would come in the Name of the Lord. He would be Jehovah's Representative. Ultimately we discover Him to be the Son, who is Jehovah, equally with the Father.

When the Lord Jesus entered Jerusalem riding upon the colt of an ass, the multitudes cried, "Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord," (Matt. 21: 9). But that was the result of a sudden gust of enthusiasm, and had no permanent significance, as the sequel showed. Within a week He was crucified. The Lord knew the worthlessness of their excited cry, and hence a little later He said, "Ye shall not see Me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord" (Matt. 23: 39). The Psalm speaks of the moment when they will see Him again, and utter the cry of welcome with full truth and sincerity.

Lastly we come to the sacrifice, in the light of which God is known. At first sight it seems remarkable that we should come to this at the end and not at the beginning. The Psalm deals with His second coming, and His sacrifice was accomplished at His first coming. Yes, but it is only at His second coming that Israel will understand it. Then, and not till then, will it burst upon them as light from heaven; and what sacrifices there are in the millennial age will be bound to the altar as simple memorials of the great Sacrifice, that once and for ever was offered at Calvary.

In coming to sacrifice at the finish, we come to that which lies at the foundation of all. If He who was the refused Stone had not become the Sacrifice, He had never become the Head of the corner, nor would there dawn the day which the Lord hath made. When men transfixed Him to the Roman gibbet, He turned His cross into an altar. The cords that held Him there were the cords of a LOVE that was both divine and invincible.

God has indeed showed us light, for we have the knowledge of what His sacrifice has accomplished. In the light of that we are waiting for His coming which will usher in the day which the Lord hath made. Then the once rejected Stone, our adorable Lord Jesus, will stand forth in His glory.

We need not wait for that day to dawn in order to praise Him. Today we can say, "Thou art my God, and I will praise Thee: Thou art my God, I will exalt Thee. Oh give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good: for His mercy endureth for ever."

"Out of the depths." "Into thy rest."

"Out of the depths." "Into thy rest."

F. B. Hole.

Psalms 130, 131, 132.

(Extracted from Scripture Truth Vol. 29, 1937, page 22.)

A very rich vein of spiritual instruction runs through these three Psalms. As is so often the case in the Psalms, the instruction is of an experimental sort. We find ourselves face to face not with doctrine but with the spiritual experiences of David, which were real afflictions, but which qualified him to ultimately take up that which from the outset of his career had been his great objective. We shall not go straight through the three Psalms, but begin by drawing attention to the opening part of Psalm 132.

David is brought before us and all his afflictions. In thinking of him we are apt to remember mainly his successes of a military sort by which he lifted his nation into a leading position. After that perhaps we remember his great sins. But here his afflictions are to be called to remembrance, for it was by means of them that God disciplined his soul and made of him the sweet singer of Israel.

Now David's afflictions, as verses 2-5 make manifest, were in some way connected with a resolution, which he formed in his earlier years, that his chief object should be to give God His rightful place in the midst of Israel His people. To find out "a place for the Lord" became the master passion of his life. The historical books — "Samuel and Chronicles — inform us that when he had won his successes he wished to build the temple and was forbidden to do it, but we have to travel right on to this Psalm to discover that he cherished this desire from a very early period of his career — that it was in fact the secret purpose which governed his life. The fact here disclosed is very illuminating. It sheds light on a great deal in David's history, and goes a long way to explain how it came to pass that God acknowledged him as a man after His own heart.

There have been other conquerors beside David in the world's history, but each of them has been animated by ambition, either personal or national. With all of them the cry has been either, "A place for myself," or "A place for my nation." David stands quite alone in having as his cry, "A place for the Lord." In the midst of his afflictions he took the solemn oath that he would give himself no rest until that place was found.

This is indeed a striking picture. Here is David, not as yet the powerful and successful warrior-king. He is only the shepherd-lad, who though anointed of God is being persecuted and harried by Saul, chased as a partridge upon the mountains. Under such circumstances one could very well understand him praying for a quiet life, and vowing almost anything if only he might have a snug little house and a comfortable bed whereon he might safely give sleep to his eyes and slumber to his eyelids. Nor would it be surprising to hear him vowing that he would find out a place for the Lord, if only such peaceable surroundings might be his. But what would have been so natural for him was not at all what he did.

No. In the midst of these afflictions and distresses he was not thinking primarily of himself at all. He was thinking of what was due to the Lord. It was Saul who was thinking of a place for himself, and as a result was bent upon destroying David. And David was all the while thinking about the Lord, consumed with desire because the ark of the testimony  - which was the throne of the Lord in the midst of Israel — had gone into captivity to the land of the Philistines, and now that it had been returned by it panic-stricken captors, had gone into some obscure resting-place, no one seemed very much to care or know where. But somebody cared. David did.

This place for the Lord that David took an oath to find was evidently connected with the ark, for it is referred to in the little preposition "it" twice repeated in verse 6. Ephratah in that verse apparently stands for Bethlehem, and "the fields of the wood" for Kirjath-Jearim. This being so the little verse sheds a flood of light on the matter. When but a lad at Ephratah, before ever he became famous, he heard of the ark and its vicissitudes, and he realised that if God was to have His right place in Israel the ark, which was His throne, must be recovered and formally reestablished. As soon as he was firmly seated in the kingdom he went to Kirjath-Jearim to bring it up to Zion, as 2 Samuel 6 records. In verse two of that chapter the ark is said to be "called by the name of the Lord of Hosts that dwelleth between the cherubim." David knew that in finding a place for the ark he was in effect finding a place for the Lord.

It is one thing however to have a right objective even as David had; it is another thing to be in the right spiritual state for its accomplishment. This fact is evident as we read verses 1-10 of 2 Samuel 6, and is strikingly illustrated in the earlier Psalms which are before us. The afflictions which David endured were certainly permitted and perhaps even designed and sent of God, in order that he might gain the needed spiritual education. They are mentioned specifically in the first verse of Psalm 132, but affliction is also mentioned in the first verse of Psalm 129, and we find that Psalm and Psalms 130 and 131 are taken up with either affliction or what affliction is designed to effect in the souls of those who come under it.

The name of David does not appear as part of the heading of either Psalms 129 or 130, but their contents seem to point to him as their human author. How many times was he afflicted from his youth up! Much afflicted indeed, yet never did his adversaries prevail against him. What he could say as to his troubles Israel also will be able to say, for in this respect his life epitomised their national history, and they will never be out of affliction until they humble themselves and make a place for the Lord by enthroning Him in Zion, in the person of the once-rejected Jesus. Again and again through the centuries nations have plowed and made long furrows upon the back of Israel and looked like prevailing against them. They have never done so however. They have been like hammers smiting an anvil, and like an anvil Israel has outlasted her persecutors, and will outlast those who smite her to-day. As verse 5 shows, all those who hate Zion will be confounded and turned back.

David's afflictions increased until he was brought into the depths — not merely of trouble but of repentance. If the first three verses of Psalm 130 be attentively read, it will be seen that here we have the language of a repentant man, who knew he could not stand in the presence of the Lord as the marker of iniquities. The confession of personal sin and unworthiness is found in this Psalm, and in that it strikes a much deeper note than Psalm 25: 22. There we find a prayer. for redemption from all troubles, whereas our Psalm ends with the confident expectation of redemption from all iniquities.

The spiritual journey that David took, and which we are going to note, began in the depths of repentance, to which no doubt he was helped by the depth of afflictions. We look back into the depths from whence he emerged when his journey began, and we do so feelingly for our spiritual journey began in just the same place. If we have never been in the depths of repentance we have never as yet started on the journey at all. "Out of the depths" is the beginning of the story for each one, who have ever travelled that road which leads to so excellent a finish.

The next thing we meet with in this Psalm is forgiveness (verse 4), and thus it ever is in the history of souls. Repentance on our side becomes a door of entrance into the forgiveness which God bestows and the very forgiveness that we receive induces a reverential fear of Him from whom the forgiveness comes. It has sometimes been supposed that full and free forgiveness must produce carelessness and license; and so indeed it might be if we were forgiven apart from repentance, and apart from a righteous basis for forgiveness being laid in the work of redemption. But there is no forgiveness apart from these two things, and the Psalm makes it manifest, for it begins with repentance and ends with redemption.

Out of the depths — not only of affliction, but of repentance — the Psalmist came, and into forgiveness he stepped; only he could not enjoy it in quite the full and assured way that is possible for the believer to" day. He realised the forgiveness of specific iniquities, but he could not have his conscience once and for ever purged and made "perfect," as is stated in Hebrews 10: 1-4. He lived about a thousand years too early for that: he had to look on with hope to the "good things to come."

The language of the latter part of the Psalm exactly fits in with this. The Psalmist is in a waiting attitude, and hoping in the Word of the Lord. He calls upon Israel to hope in the Lord, because there is mercy and plenteous redemption with Him; but he adds that He shall redeem, not that He has done so. Mercy, expressing itself in redemption, does indeed lie at the basis of the forgiveness which is preached in the Gospel to-day, but we know redemption by the blood of Christ as an accomplished fact, and the full forgiveness we have received induces in our souls that fear of God which is such a very healthful thing. We fear lest we should grieve the love which has brought us so full a forgiveness.

Then again, there are certain fruits which are produced by the fear of God, when once it has really taken possession of our hearts. One of the first of these fruits is humility. Now this is exactly what meets us when we commence reading Psalm 131. We cannot really entertain the fear of the Lord without the Lord becoming the central and controlling object of our hearts. For so long as self is the central object we are bound to be haughty folk, though we may imagine ourselves to be humble.

Viewed prophetically, Psalm 131 looks on to the day when Israel humbled and born again will at last take their true place before the Lord. Their tendency all through the ages has been to look upon themselves as the head and front and centre of everything, and from this sprang the Pharisaic spirit which was so strongly condemned by our Lord. We can see the tendency working in those who really did fear the Lord, for instance in Luke 24, where the two going to Emmaus betray their inmost thought in saying, "We trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel" (verse 21). Again we see it after the resurrection, in Acts 1, when the disciples anxiously enquired, "Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel." They had to learn that the Christ is the Centre of all God's thoughts, and that their business was the simple and humble one of being His witnesses, even to the uttermost parts of the earth.

The same tendency works in us to-day, especially in those of us who have minds of a restless and enquiring order. Then it is that we are exposed to the danger of intruding into those things which we have not seen, vainly puffed up by our fleshly mind, or even of being led away as a prey by some man who approaches us with philosophy and vain deceit. Colossians 2 warns us against these things, declaring them to be "after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." All the truth that we need, and that we are capable of receiving in our present mortal condition, has been made known through the Apostles and is recorded in the Scriptures. We do well to rejoice in all that has been revealed to us, and we do equally well to resolutely refuse to exercise our minds in great matters which have not been revealed, and which consequently are too high for us.

In verse 2 David shows us that in his case the humbling process had been followed by a weaning process. Formerly he had been like an unweaned child, frequently yearning for the object of its desires, and fretful because unsatisfied. Now his soul was even as a weaned child. He was delivered from the fascinations of former days, and he "behaved and quieted" himself accordingly, or as another translation has it, he "restrained and composed" his soul. His fretfulness was all gone, and even if he did not gain all that he desired he was marked by calmness of spirit.

Thus too it will be for Israel in the coming day. They will be weaned from the love of the old evil things that have ensnared them all through their history, but that will only come to pass when they "hope in the Lord from henceforth and for ever." When they find in Jehovah the Object of all their desires the old desires will fade away.

How often, alas! as we pass through this attractive and ensnaring world, we are like fretful children. The Christian who can pass through it like a weaned child, restrained and composed in soul, is all too rare a sight. If we are unweaned and fretful, let us at least stop making excuses for ourselves. There really is no excuse. Christ is enough. We sing fairly frequently,

Jesus, Thou art enough,

The mind and heart to fill.

and it really is so. If He henceforth and for ever becomes to us the object of our faith and love and hope, we shall not be fretting ourselves over former pleasures which now are left behind. We shall be satisfied.

Now we come back to Psalm 132. David was humbled and weaned from his old loves, finding his hope in the Lord, and this reinforced the resolve he had made to find out a place for the Lord. Ultimately he found a place for the Ark in Zion, where he pitched a tent for it, as a provisional measure, while waiting for the building of the permanent house. David, as we know, was not permitted to build the temple: that was a work committed to the hands of Solomon, his son and successor. As a consequence of this the words, "Arise, O Lord, into Thy rest; Thou and the ark of Thy strength" could not be uttered historically until Solomon dedicated the temple, when he used just those words (see 2 Chr. 6: 41-42).

Now it is a remarkable fact that when at the end of his career David recounted the dealings of God with him, and the word that had reached him from the Lord forbidding his building the house and assuring him that his son should accomplish that work, he told the people, that it had been said, "Behold, a son shall be born to thee, who shall be a man of rest; and I will give him rest from all his enemies round about: for his name shall be Solomon." (1 Chr. 22: 9). This shows us that the man who accomplished David's cherished desire and built the house and said, "Arise, O Lord, into Thy rest," was himself "the man of rest." The Lord entered into His rest, and Solomon entered into rest also. The two things go together in this case, at least in figure.

The two things will go together, not in figure but in fullest reality, when the millennial age is reached. Then at last the Lord will enter into His rest and Israel will enter into a full rest also. It is just the same in principle also for the believer today. When the Lord has His rightful place in the affections, the soul reaches a rest which otherwise would be quite unknown. And not only rest is enjoyed, but also the blessing of which the rest of the Psalm speaks, and also the unity and the worship, of which the two succeeding Psalms speak, will be realised.

Therefore, we believe, without doing any violence to the proper interpretation of these Psalms, we may see a picture of a happy experience which is really Christian. Out of the depths do we come when we cry to the Lord in true repentance, for at once a full and free forgiveness may be known by us; a forgiveness as regards all our iniquities, and which reaches us in mercy and as based upon a plenteous redemption. It is a forgiveness moreover which induces in our hearts that reverential fear of God which preserves from sin, inasmuch as it promotes within us humility of a genuine sort. It weans us also from old loves, so that they dominate us no more.

The Great Hallelujah Chorus

The Great Hallelujah Chorus.

Psalms 146-150.

F. B. Hole.

(Extracted from Scripture Truth Vol. 29, 1937, page 63.)

There is very much encouragement for us in the assurance that as the outcome of all God's ways with men there will arise a great outburst of praise. There will be a chorus of Hallelujahs in which all creation will join, as is made very manifest in the last five Psalms. It is true that in all their intricacies "His ways" are "past finding out" (Rom. 11: 33); it is true also that they involve much trial and suffering and exercise for His saints as is shown in detail in Psalms 1 - 145, yet the end of it all shall be for the highest glory of God and the highest blessing of men. As His ways reach their close, and the bright millennial scene unfolds itself, the universe will reverberate with the great Hallelujah chorus.

The five closing Psalms form a group by themselves, and each begins and ends with the word, Hallelujah, rendered in our Authorized Version as, "Praise ye the Lord." Each Psalm calls for praise, yet each furnishes different reasons why the praise should be rendered to Him; and there seems to be an increasing fervour in the call until the climax is reached in Psalm 150. The earth and Israel are mainly in view, as befits these Divinely given poems which date from a thousand years before Christ came, yet incidentally they introduce many a thing which we can in the happiest way apply to ourselves.

In Psalm 146 the call for praise is addressed to those who have learned two things: on the one hand that man, even those who are princes, are not to be relied upon; on the other, that it is a blessed thing for men to have God for their help, and to find their hope in Him. In verse 4, "the son of man," does not refer to Christ. It is rather, "Put not confidence in nobles, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation" (New Trans.).

Most of us find that it takes us a long time to pass the vote of no confidence in man. It is not particularly difficult to distrust one's fellows. Indeed many of us may feel a good bit of sympathy with the Psalmist who said in his haste or agitation, "All men are liars" (Psalm 116: 11). The difficulty is to lose all confidence in the man who is nearer to us than any other — oneself. The point here does not seem to be the wickedness of man but his helplessness. The best of men may be in view, entertaining the kindest of thoughts. Yet suddenly he dies, and in that very day his thoughts perish. It is folly to put the weight of our trust on such a one as that.

But what help and hope we have in God! The rest of the Psalm presents Him to us in His character and actions. To begin with, He is the Creator: to end with, He will reign for ever. In between these two things we learn that He keeps truth for ever; He executes righteous judgment, He extends mercy in various ways to the needy, while turning the way of the wicked upside down. Who would not set his hope in a God who bears such a character as that? In this God will we trust and, when He reigns in Zion unto all generations, Hallelujahs will fill the earth. In anticipation of His reign our hearts are saying Hallelujah today.

The Hallelujahs of Psalm 147 are called forth more particularly by God's dealings with Israel and Jerusalem. His glory and might expressed in creation are contemplated, yet all that seems to be a background against which the kindness of His dealings with His people shines the more brightly. There will be the building up of Jerusalem and the gathering of the outcasts of Israel at the beginning of the millennial age. Then it is that He will cast down the wicked and lift up the meek, healing the broken in heart and binding up their wounds.

The grace that is expressed in such actions is enhanced to our minds when we remember His greatness. He can tell the number of the stars. Some six thousand stars can be detected by human eyes in both north and south hemispheres. Long since, this number has been expanded into millions by the aid of telescopic powers. With the monster instruments in use today the astronomers begin to talk not merely of stars, but of galaxies of stars running into millions; and of unimaginable depths of space which can only be measured in "light-years," that is, the distance that light, travelling at 186,000 miles a second, covers in a year. Our God has counted all the stars, for He made them, and not only so but to each He has given a name. Now the names that God gives mean something, because they describe the person or thing that He names. Every star is distinctive: He knows its distinctive feature and He names it accordingly. So great a God as that is ours.

But if verse 4 presents the wonder of His greatness, verse 3 shows us the wonder of His grace. The God who names all the stars stoops to heal wounds and heal broken hearts upon earth. The broken hearts, like the stars, are beyond our counting; yet we judge that what is contemplated here is "the broken and contrite heart," of Psalm 51: 17, and that is a much rarer thing than a heart merely broken by the trials and adversities of this sinful world.

By-and-by Israel will have the broken and contrite heart, when they look upon their Messiah whom they have pierced, and then it is that they will be gathered together and Jerusalem built up. While we wait for that day God is healing broken hearts by the gospel of His grace. He lifts up the meek by the gospel. What pleases Him is not mere animal strength but the right moral condition, as verses 10 and 11 show; and that is why He has shewed His word unto Jacob, according to v. 19.

The possession of His word and statutes and judgments was one of the great privileges conferred upon Israel; for we are told in Romans 3: 2, that one of the chief advantages they had was that "unto them were committed the oracles of God." He had not dealt in this manner with any other nation, and when His word at last has its proper effect upon them, producing the meekness and brokenness of heart that He desires, they will be blessed and break forth in a heartfelt Hallelujah. Through God's goodness His word is available for us to-day, and if it properly humbles us we shall be blessed and enabled to take Hallelujah upon our lips.

In verse 18 God is said to send out His word and melt the snow and ice; in verse 19 He is said to show His word unto Jacob, in order that the melting power of His word might be experienced by him. Jacob was his name according to nature, whereas Israel was his name according to God's grace conferred upon him.

Alas, their hearts were not melted, and when our Lord Jesus was here He had to look round upon men with holy anger, "being grieved for the hardness of their hearts" (Mark 3: 5). The day is coming however when the true Israel of God will have their hearts melted, then they will be marked by meekness and the fear of the Lord, and their broken hearts will be healed.

It is very possible for us to misuse the word of the gospel just as Jacob misused the word concerning His statutes and judgments. We may pride ourselves on the light that shines upon us, and our hearts remain cold. If however we are melted by the truth that we know, our state will be pleasing to God.

To recapitulate then, Psalm 146 voices Hallelujahs which spring from our turning away from feeble man to trust in a God, whose righteousness and mercy and power are known. Psalm 147 utters Hallelujahs based upon His word running very swiftly upon earth to accomplish the melting and humbling of human heart, the necessary moral preparation for His intervention in healing, in gathering His people, and in building up Jerusalem.

Psalm 148 follows with Hallelujahs which seem to reverberate throughout creation. It contemplates the glorious praise which will fill the millennial scene. Verses 1 to 6 are occupied with the praises that will fill the heavens. The Lord is to be praised from the heavens and in the heights. We can hardly dismiss this as being a poetic allusion to the angels, for they are specifically mentioned in the next verse. We venture to think it is another of those Old Testament sayings purposely left vague for the moment. Now that we have the added light of the New Testament we can see that God will have a mighty host of heavenly saints in their appointed place when the millennial age is reached, and that we through grace shall be among them. An innumerable host will be there to praise the Lord from the heavens.

Then the angels will praise Him, and all the hosts of those mighty spiritual beings that are spoken of as "principality, and power, and might, and dominion" (Eph. 1: 21), and after that the sun, moon and stars and all else that has been created and established to fill the heavens. So we see in these verses just that which is revealed in a much fuller way in Revelation 5. Moreover we see that just the same order is observed, for in that chapter we have first the worship of the heavenly saints, represented by the twenty-four elders then the voice of many angels round about the throne, and then every creature joins in the praise.

The creatures who praise are said in Revelation 5 to be, "every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea." So things terrestrial as well as things celestial will join in the chorus. In our Psalm the things celestial are contemplated in verses 3 and 4, the things terrestrial in verses 7 to 12. The word "dragons," in verse 7 is rendered by some, "sea-monsters," so the sea as well as the earth is in view in the Psalm as it is in Revelation.

The saints are not yet planted in the heavens, glorified in the likeness of Christ, as they will be. They are on earth amongst the kings and people and princes and judges, of whom verse 11 speaks, and their Hallelujahs are faint and feeble as yet. The kings and people are not yet brought into subjection to God, and all is disorder. The root of the trouble is there, for we have to confess that there is nothing much wrong with the snow and wind, with the mountains or trees or beasts or fowl, apart from the blight that the fall of man has placed upon them. When Satan is cast out of the heavens any blight that exists there will be gone; and when man is set right on earth the curse will be lifted off the face of creation.

The blight will be gone and the curse lifted when, as verse 13 tells us, the name of the Lord alone shall be excellent and His glory revealed. We know how that will come to pass. Psalm 8 had told us. It will be when the blessed Son of Man is visibly manifested with everything under His feet. Then the shoutings will wake the heavers! Hallelujah! And again, Hallelujah!

In that day the saints will be exalted, and Israel His people will be in their appointed place on earth as the people who peculiarly and specially are "near unto Him." Again we can say, Hallelujah!

In Psalm 149 the great King has been manifested in His glory, and the effect of this is twofold, as verses 2 and 4 show us. The children of Zion are joyful in their King, and the Lord takes pleasure in His people. In that day Israel will have been brought into the reconciliation of the Cross. We have been brought into it now, as we are told in Colossians 1. 21: they will brought into it then. But in both cases the effect of it is the same — God can find His delight in His people, and they find their delight in Him.

How this will work out we can see in the latter part of the Psalm. First, it will mean salvation for God's people, and that in the fullest sense. They will be in a fit state of heart and mind to receive the salvation when they can be described as "the meek," and the salvation they will receive will beautify them. Today God's earthly people — the Jews —  are neither meek nor beautiful, if we consider them in a national way; nor were any of us in our natural condition. If there is anything about any of us that is beautiful, it is the fruit of the salvation that has reached us. When Israel at last is humbled and meek she will be like her King, who was meek and brought salvation (See Zech. 9: 9, Matt. 21: 5). His salvation will have beautified her.

Salvation will be like a vestibule to the glory of which the next verse speaks. There will be a glory on earth as well as glory in the heavens, and in it the saints will exult and be very joyful. Their joy will be expressed in song and in the high praises of God.

Verse 6 is indeed remarkable. We may find it difficult to put together the high praises of God on the lips and a two-edged sword of vengeance in the hand, and regard the two things as quite incompatible. But that is because we are not Israel but Christians. At the beginning of the millennial age Israel is going to be used of God in the subjugating of rebellious peoples. We are called to set forth the grace of God before that age dawns, and so the only two-edged sword that we are called upon to wield is the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God. But having said this much, we have also to remember that we too shall have our part in judging the world in the coming age, as 1 Corinthians 6: 2 tells us; though this is not in the way of executing vengeance, but rather of administering the affairs of the world to come in a righteous manner.

"This honour have all His saints," is what our Psalm says. It is an honour to be used of God in any way, whether in grace or in judgment. But very specially is it an honour to be used in grace. This honour is ours today. Oh! that we esteemed it at its true value.

So in this Psalm we have salvation. glory, joy, praise and judgment. No wonder that it too ends with Hallelujah!

Psalm 150 brings this series to a finish. There is in it only one reference to what God has done: God Himself in His excellent greatness is before the Psalmist's mind. This is of course always the great ultimate theme of praise and worship.

God is to be praised "in" certain things: — in His sanctuary, in the firmament of His power, "for" or in His mighty acts. The first indicates His inner dwelling place: the second the vast expanse of creation wherein His power operates: the third the actual doings in which His power is expressed. In the world to come Israel will have the sanctuary of God established in their midst, and there they will praise Him. We shall be amongst the heavenly saints. Our part will lie in the heavenly city of Revelation 21 and 22, where "the Lord Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it." What praise will ascend from the sanctuary on earth! What endless praises from the sanctuary in the heavens!

In the firmament of His power dwell those bright unfallen spirits, who will as ever be filled with His praise, though they cannot strike the note of redemption as we do. They will have been the delighted observers of His mighty acts, not only acts of creation but acts of GRACE, which will provoke their Hallelujahs, and yet,

"One string there is of sweetest tone,

Reserved for sinners saved by grace;

'Tis sacred to one class alone,

And touched by one peculiar race."

As observers however they will praise Him to the full.

He is not only to be praised "in" but "according to" His excellent greatness. Now, who is sufficient for this? The creature, however highly blessed and exalted, can never rise up to the level of the Creator, and yet doubtless there will be an adequate uprising of praise in that day; such praise as will be satisfying to the heart of God.

The following verses show us Israel praising their God "with" all kinds of instruments of music. These instruments, the work of men's fingers, are used today, like all the other works of their fingers, for their own gratification and praise. Then they will be wholly for God. But even when they are thus used to His glory, they will be but lifeless instruments, men may praise with them, but the instruments themselves do not praise.

Praise can only spring from those that have the "breath" of life. In the coming age at long last there will be an adequate outburst of praise to the Lord, proceeding from everything that hath breath. The curse will be gone, and praise will fill the scene. The Hallelujah chorus will be universal and complete.

It is ours to catch the spirit of it even today.