Psalms 87–88

Psalm lxxxvii. God’s foundation which makes all assured. It is not that her foundation is in the holy mountain that calls out the interest, or assures the heart of faith, but that the city of God rests on God’s foundation — so we. The sure foundation of God abideth, and in the latter case it was when the Church was going on so very badly that the saint had to judge its state and purge himself from many in it. But God’s foundation abides sure. So we say, His calling and His inheritance in the saints. But the psalm brings out another point, hard for the activity of flesh. Faith attaches more importance to God’s city, than to all that man has built. The sentiment of the psalm is essentially Jewish. In writing up the people, the saints and Messiah Himself are reckoned to Zion. These are his grounds for glorifying in Zion — God’s view of the city. For us, no doubt, the thing comes in a different shape, as to the Church: Christ is of it, as its Head, not as born in it. God’s fresh springs are there. But, practically, when the Church of God is despised, when it is formed of people who are of no account in this world, do we make our boast of it because they are precious in the sight of God, rich in faith 1 or do the grandeurs of the Egypts and Babjdons, which God judges, eclipse it in our sight 1 Do we judge after God’s mind, or after man’s 1 Ts the appearance and vain show of this world of weight with us; or does the faith of the Lord of glory lead lis to estimate highly what God esteems, what is glorious 1 He has people whom He counts up. Is it the spirit of the world or the Spirit of God which forms our estimate of what is vile and what is valuable? Weigh the language of James’s epistle. But may our souls especially feel the value of what in those heavenly places will be counted excellent by God.

On Psalm lxxxviii. I have not much to say. God is known and looked to according to His revealed name as the only Saviour, and it is just to this point that the soul is brought by the exercises spoken of in the psalm; cast by the pressure of all around to find it comes from God’s hand, and more yet, God’s judgment so as to be therein a pure and sovereign salvation from Him. Jehovah, God of my salvation, governs the psalm.

The state was this: affliction was present, nature could not find its account there, acquaintance put far from him. But this was but the negative and outward part, because nature found no relief, as it could from nature’s sorrows more or less. The great point that pressed on the spirit was death, and death bearing the witness of ( Jbd’s wrath upon it. To this, the knowledge that the revealed God of promise was the only Saviour turns the heart; his life drew nigh to the grave. God’s wrath lay hard upon him. Still God was appealed to. It was nature without its sustainments, nature with death pressed on it, that is, its destruction and end. And God being brought in, and faith in Him, so far there as to own that all depended on Him, His wrath was felt in it all. And this is true. This is death when seen in its truth. So Christ saw it in Gethsemane, though He would not have said all that is in this psalm. So the convinced soul sees it, whose eye is opened upon God, in its Adam state. The psalm, however, does not look beyond this life. In this it ends in nature — .simple Judaism. But the faith in the revelation of God which has made it so feel what death is, as wrath from God, makes it look to Him who has inflicted it as a Saviour. And this is the value of such experience. It shows us our true state, our true relationship in God to nature. Nor is there way of escape, for it is our state by judgment before God. Hence self is done with if we arc delivered. This makes deliverance known as sovereign grace, as God’s deliverance, and the soul rests on revelation. And until the deliverance the soul cries to God. But when deliverance is obtained, the flesh, all that it is, remains as a judged thing under wrath. There is no deception so far as to trust it really, though we may forget its evil for a moment, and even have to watch and contend with it. But its status before God is ever counted as a condemned and evil thing. The psalm is the description of the process which brings the soul to this. Sometimes the soul only reaches this on its death-bed. This oi:ght not to be, but it explains what surprises many in godly persons. When it is not gone through really, the soul is not free. It stands on the ground of God’s salvation, in spirit, not in flesh. It is not seeing this, that has led many to live on experience, not on Christ. They speak of Holy Ghost work, and knowing the evil of the flesh, and the killing power of the law, which only means that they have not learned it. They are in this psalm. But they have not learned salvation and the gospel. They do not know that they are dead and risen with Christ. They are feeling death press upon them as wrath from God, according to this psalm — all well; but they have not received the sentence of death in themselves, through Christ’s having died in grace for them, so as to reckon themselves dead, crucified with Christ, to be nevertheless alive, yet not they, but Christ living in them, who had died and put away all this for them. They are under the pressure of wrath for what they are in nature — all true in its place — but have not learned Christ, and through Him, that they are not in the flesh but in Christ, in that He has borne and passed through this for them, and that now through Him they are free in the new man as risen in Him.