Psalm 142

Psalm 142  •  3 min. read  •  grade level: 9
 
Here we find the loneliness of Christ, and, consequently, of His Spirit in the Remnant. But Jehovah was the refuge in loneliness, and where all failed of man He did not; and the voice of groaning was the glory of the Lord's only faithfulness.
The Spirit of the Righteous and Holy One was overwhelmed; so of His tzad-di-kim (righteous ones) in the latter day. But Jehovah knew His path, terrible, troubled, and trying as it was, and no man would know Him—not only of the peoples none was with Him, but none of His people—and so shall iniquity abound in that day. So are the saints ever tried; look at Paul, "No man stood by me; but the Lord stood by me and strengthened me." See the account of these very latter days in Matt. 24 But when His faithfulness was proved, the righteous would compass Him about. This then is desertion, while His persecutors, stronger than He, pressed on Him, i.e., as to "the land of the living."
This Psalm is the expression of entire destitution, and therefore resting only on the Lord—the profit of chastisement. It is therefore the voice of perfectness of the Spirit of Christ, for the Remnant, in the day of their latter trial, in its extreme state during and in the extremity of the Apostasy, in which the voice, called for by Joel, is drawn out from the Remnant by the operation of this very Spirit of Christ here signifying it, showing before the Lord His trouble. There was nothing else for it. It is the cry, the actual complaint, and to the Lord, which was perfect faith, for there was none but He, quod nota; for this is faith—confession to Him in sin—cry to Him when no help—and this is the blessed Spirit of Christ expressing this. The help is only in Jehovah, and here (and here only) the Spirit of Christ comes in, sympathizes with the perfect misery, but in the cry of faith. Before they were only pressed down, compare Deut. 32:3636For the Lord shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left. (Deuteronomy 32:36). Now there was no help, therefore there was help, not help only but the assumption of all things so into Jehovah's hand, because the enemy, by taking it into his, had raised the question, that all question ended. But the expression of the passage of His Spirit through the sorrow is exquisitely beautiful, for He knew heaviness with them. The proper time to which it, futurely, applies is the last pervading power of Antichrist, when it is Help, Lord, for there is not one godly man left." Christ had learned it before, when all forsook Him and fled. Hence His Spirit in them, and pleading of a truth from Himself.
4. I know how specially Jewish this is, and Christ speaking as looking for Jews upon earth.
7. This is the deliverance of Christ, being the occasion of His being compassed about by the righteous.
It is then Christ in the sorrow, perfect in His reference to the Lord. He speaks from His sufferings, through the Antichrist, on to the times when the righteous shall surround Him.