Psalms 80–83
Psalm lxxx. is bold in its appeals. It passes from Egyptian deliverance to the knowledge, not of Christ, but of the Son of man. Still it looks at Him as the branch which God has made strong for Himself. It is not, “I am the true vine, ye are the branches,” which makes the introduction of that 15th of John clear. Still it goes now far in owning the man of God’s power, the Son of man, whom He made strong for Himself. But if, in this confidence in God, and looking to the Son of man, it speaks boldly, and refers all to grace. It is thoroughly Jewish. It refers to the order of the tribes in the wilderness. It knows God as sitting between the cherubim. Israel was His own vine; btit it takes the fullest Jewish light — the Son of man. But it has no hope but God’s turning them again. It is this expression, which characterizes the cry of the psalm, which we must examine a little. It is found in verses 3, 7, 19. “We may find it again in the same use in Jer. xxxi. 18, 19, and Lam. v. 21 — a similar cry. This gives it much interest. Mere discipline in itself does not turn to God. It may break the will, humble where God is working, and so do a preparatory work; but it does not turn to God. So they are brought here; and in the desolations of Ephraim and Judah, when they are down to the lowest, because nothing less would do, to say, “Turn thou me,” “Turn us again.” It is not simply godly sorrow and the consciousness of sin. Nor is this exactly the thought or feeling here. There is the sense of belonging to God, being God’s people, and the rebuke of God being upon them — “they perish at the rebuke of thy countenance.” It is the dealing of God with His people, or a saint in his testimony as now, when God deals with him in it. There is the sense of being His, but God’s work, which is repassed when it was carried out in blessing by God, is seen foiled and a witness of the enemy’s power; but this power is not what faith rests on, but the rebuke of
God. Faith turns to Him, to Him as the original source of blessing and power that wrought it; as the One whose work it is that is always interested in His people. It rests on the beauty and delight of God’s work to Himself, as He had planted it, and now it was rooted up; and hence draws the conclusion of His present intervention in grace. But it looks for this first as a turning of themselves. The state they are in is connected with the ruin, though not the main thought; they cannot separate their own state from God’s interposition. They needed it, but His first act must be restoring them, turning them. Blessing is their thought, but God’s blessing them as He blesses; hence beginning with them and turning them. But with this God’s face would shine on them, and they would be saved. How well that we can look to God when our face is set wrong, that He may turn us, and so His face shine on us, as to bring blessing and present deliverance on His people. It looks to God; remark, too, returning and visiting the vine, but it does not look for the restoration of the original state of things (that is not God’s way), but to the setting up the branch God had made so strong for Himself. And so we now; we look to Christ’s being exalted even in details. If we have failed, it does not become us to look to God’s setting it right as before, as if nothing had happened — this could not be for His glory — but to the coming in of Himself to show His goodness in that which manifests His own grace, and hearing the cry of His people. “Let thy hand,” says the faith of Israel, “be on the man of thy right hand.” Here they see their strength and safety — their being kept right. “So will ‘wo not go back from thee.” So it will be fully with Israel in the last clay, and so with us practically. His presence is what keeps us. There is another thing that faith seeks. Dulness and death are in turning away from (iod, and going their own ways. They need, in being thus turned, to be quickened — the reviving life-giving power which calls the heart back to God. It then, with increased seriousness and new confidence, calls upon Him. It is more than the prayer which cries in trial. It is the heart confidingly calling on God, as turned again to Him. The prophetic scene is clearly the restoration of Israel. God does not hide His face from His saints now — He has from Israel: but in their work, and service, and state, as a body, they may find these ways in government.
But I would turn for a moment to the connexion of this with personal turning and repentance in the similar passages to which I have alluded. In Jeremiah, we have first, “Turn thou mc and I shall be turned.” First, then, we have the action of God in grace turning the sinner round, converting him. He was looking away from God, had turned his back on God, and now in heart and will turns round towards Him. Repentance comes after this — “surely after that I was turned I repented.” I set about, and as brought into the light, my heart towards God, I judged all my ways in my departure, my state of heart, and all. Instructed, then, in true blessing, having the mind of God as to good, one is confounded, one could have thoughts of such vanity and evil with desire. But another thing is brought before us in the Epistle to the Corinthians. The turning of God brines into sorrow.
(2 Cor. vii.) The apostle’s first epistle came with the power of the Spirit to their souls. It was not yet a full judgment of their state in the light, but the will being divinely arrested, there was grief in the sense of having gone wrong: conscience, not will, began to be at work; self may have partially mixed itself with it. Still it was godly sorrow, a broken will, brokenness of heart; the feeling — I have been following my own will, I have forgotten God. The illusion of a perverse will is gone, and the effect of having to say to God, the working of God’s nature in us begins. It is not with fear where rightly felt; no thought that God will impute, condemn, but sorrow and grief of heart at the perverseness and delusion of self-will having been followed. This works a far more active, deliberate judgment of evil, called repentance here. Godly sorrow worketh repentance which we shall never regret. The soul by being turned, having by the operation of God’s grace been brought to grieve at having listened to will, now re-enters (or enters it at first) into the natural effect and working of the new man at liberty. It judges with spiritual energy the whole evil as God judges it in principle. The sense of fault is not gone, but what characterizes the state is judgment of the fault — of self as far as self is in it. The heart is clear of the evil when it judges it as God judges it, and separates it from itself as a thing external to itself, as God does. And this is holiness, often deeper from better knowledge of self than before. We see an example of this in Peter’s address in Acts ii. Their sin was set before the people. They were pricked to the heart, and said unto Peter, What shall we do?
The boisterous will was gone: no more, “Crucify Him, crucify Him.” Sin has done its act, and can no more undo it. The folly of it comes home with distress to the heart. “What shall we do 1” They arc turned, have come to distress and godly sorrow. What are Peter’s words? Repent and be baptized every one of you for the remission of sins. Turned they were, grieved at heart at their folly in sinning, they had yet to repent. It is a larger, deeper, fuller thing of a soul brought into the light, and the new man exercising its judgment on what self had been. Not now as pressed on by God, and bowing in sorrow of heart to the effect of His grace and presence in the sense of the evil, but in our own spiritual rejection, with God, of the evil as such from the standing ground of the new man with God. This is accompanied with brokenness and lowliness of heart, but the soul has re-entered into its own liberty with God. True repentance is there when self is proved clear in the matter, when the new standing has possession of the judgment and will, and judges freely as a rejected thing all that the flesh delighted in and had been misled by.
From Psalm lxxxi. I have only a few brief principles to state as to the government of God. On the restoration of blessing, the precious ways of God are considered. Had there been faithfulness, there would not only have been peace instead of trouble, but rich present blessing. Whereas the effect of not hearkening to God was, that God gave them up to their hearts’ lusts, and they walked in their own counsels and soon oumc under the power of their enemies, even stronger than the people of God on their own ground. God has delivered ns. We have been delivered from the bondage and burden of sin. Answered by divine power when in trouble and distress under it (a power which, while manifest in its effects, had its source of operation in the secret of the divine counsels), we are, as regards present dispensed blessings, put under responsibility, yet in the place of fullest ministered blessing. “If thou wilt hearken” — truth of heart to God is that which is looked for; not merely avoidance of actual evil, but no idol in the heart. This tests the heart — truth in the inward parts with God. But God calls to this as being already our God — now we say Father — who has delivered and saved us: and calls us in the path, no doubt, of obedience; to open our mouth wide that He may fill it. It is to this we are called, to enlarge our ‘hearts to receive blessing. God has largely and richly for us, and calls us to open our mouths wide. All His mind is to fill it from His own riches. But of blessings of grace from His own hand, the unsearchable riches of Christ are ours, and dispensed to our souls. But, alas! very often we are like Israel, “My people would not hearken to my voice.” There is then as chastisement, a giving up of the saint to eat the fruit of his own ways: a terrible judgment sometimes to be humbled and feel the bitterness of the power of the enemy; sometimes, what is worse, to think he is finally given up. This is seldom the case when the soul has really been already emptied of self and subtle self-righteousness. Still the flaming darts of the wicked are terrible to the soul. It is not at all the same thing as the legal doubts of an exercised soul, but the dread of God as now against the soul; not the uncertainty whether He
will lie for it, whether it can escape. This last is legal doubt; the former, despairing doubt from Satan, li’ the saint walks faithfully, he has surely enemies, Satan and his machinations, to contend against; but the Lord really subdues them. It is after the patience of faith, the encouraging proof that the Lord is with the believer in his way. Our adversaries are the Lord’s: the consciousness of this is an immense force. Those that oppose us in the Lord’s path are, at any rate in that respect, the haters of the Lord. They arc found liars, and empty in their pretensions. And at peace through the Lord’s power, the saint would walk in a constant path. “He that docth God’s will abides for ever;” he is fed with the finest of the wheat, with the most precious knowledge of Christ; and the sweetness of divine grace refreshing and satisfying the desire of the spirit.
On Psalms lxxxii. and lxxxiii. I have no remark to make in connexion with our present object in commenting on the psalms. Tn psalm lxxxii. the reader will observe that God judges the judges, especially those who in Israel had the divine law to guide them. They fall thus from wielding God’s authority in the earth, into the place of responsible man, and God arising judges the earth. Here iniquity towards man, the reparation of judgment entrusted to man from righteousness, is dealt with by God. In psalm lxxxiii. it is the way in which man is guilty of active enmity against God in his hatred against God’s people, using craft, conspiracy, and violence to destroy their remembrance oft’ the earth — the result being that Jehovah alone
r (the God of Israel) is the most high over all the earth; for such is the effect of man’s efforts. Oppression downwards in those who represented God in the earth, rebellion upwards against God shown in hatred against God’s earthly people: such are the characters of man, and the object of God’s judgment on the earth.