(Psalms 22, 23, 24)
I DESIRE to bring before you the blessed Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and, by His grace and help, to present Him to you in three different positions. I would not overlook the fact that there may be more than one reader of these pages who does not know Him. To such I could not say less than that I am heartily sorry for you, for if you die without knowing Him there will be nothing for you but eternal damnation. Remember this, the judgment to come and the lake of fire are not mere human fancies, but solemn, eternal realities, and it is God’s goodness to tell you about them. The rich man in hell (Luke 16) cast a reflection on that goodness when, in effect, he said, If I had my will I would warn people of these things; I would be kinder to my five brethren than either God or His servants have been to me.
Was this insinuation just? Far otherwise. I believe God has let men know, and it would be no kindness on the part of His servants if they did not tell you that there is hell everlasting for every man who dies in his sins. The blood on the lintel shows that God can have nothing to do with sin but judge it. He must either wipe the sin out in judgment or wipe the sinner out forever. But the sheltering blood is of God’s own providing.
Some reader of these pages may be anxious about this matter. You long to be at rest. Well, one thing is certain, you will never find satisfaction by analyzing your own feelings, nor by occupation with your own faith. Perhaps you are like a person of my acquaintance who was disturbing herself by a wrong use of Scripture. Referring to that sentence in Matthew 9:29,29Then touched he their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you. (Matthew 9:29) she said, “Does it not say, ‘According to your faith be it unto you’?” She was evidently looking at herself, and measuring God’s blessing by what she thought of her own faith, and doing this till she became quite downcast about it.
I showed her that it was not her business to be looking at her faith, but the Lord’s. It was the Lord who said to the two blind men, “According to your faith be it unto you.” They did not go to Him and say, According to our faith be it unto us. The language of their hearts was rather this, According to Thy ability be it unto us; for they believed He was able to open their eyes, and this was all the Lord wanted to know. They said nothing about His willingness to do it, but He did not diminish the blessing because of this. He did not give half-sight for half-faith; He opened both eyes. To those who believe on the Lord Jesus a little bit of faith brings an eternity of blessing.
Prince Bismarck said shortly before his death, speaking of his royal master, “We could not always get him to make up his mind as quickly as we should have liked in important matters of the State. He was so slow, so deliberating. But when he did make up his mind you might build castles on his word.”
How much more confidently, then, may we build on God’s sure word! I want nothing better for the assurance of my faith than Christ. Christ is the only Saviour for a sinner like me. “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”―then, just as though Paul had said, Wait a bit! I will put my own name down as belonging to that class― “of whom, I am chief.”
It is God’s declaration, and without a shadow of question I can put my name down as belonging to the class to which that declaration refers― “SINNERS.”
There are two important things to notice in this 23rd Psalm. The first is that having got Christ as my Shepherd I have got the guarantee that all my wants will be supplied, and far more. “He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty” might be able to say, “I shall not want”? Oh, yes, but far more than that. “That ye through His poverty might be rich.” Having got Christ I have got what I want. But there is something, if possible, still sweeter. For having got us He has got what He wants. That is the end of the psalm, “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” He wants me there. I was so bad, I could not do without Him; He was so good, He would not do without me. Both are mutually satisfied.
Psalms 23 is often called the “Shepherd-psalm,” but we may regard all these three psalms as Shepherd-psalms.
Psalms 22 is the Shepherd’s outward journey in search of the sheep. Psalms 23 gives us His care of the sheep on the homeward journey. Psalms 24 is His own grand reception when He reached home, and such will be His reception when He takes us all home together. Are you surprised when I say that I pity the one who does not know Him?
At God’s right hand there is One who loves me. And, oh, such a love is His! It is not restricted to the times when I go on well. It is a love that never changes even when I walk badly. It is quite true in the latter case, as another has said, He will change His manner towards me. True love will always do this. But He loves me through all (John 13:11Now before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. (John 13:1)). Why does God choose a mother’s love as a picture of His own? Is it not this, that a mother loves, not so much because of what her object is, as because of what she is? Her child may have crooked limbs, and a miserably disfigured countenance, and you would naturally say, What a mercy it would be if the Lord took it! But the mother does not think so. She loves it with a mother’s heart, and God makes choice of such love as a picture of His own, although He has to show in the very next sentence that the figure breaks down. A mother may forget; her love may break down―His NEVER!
“‘Tis this that humbles us with shame,
To find that Thou art still the same.”
He may have to chasten us. “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten,” as He says to Laodicea (Rev. 3:1919As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. (Revelation 3:19)). “Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth” (Heb. 12:66For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. (Hebrews 12:6)). But this is because He has no other way of expressing His love to us at the moment.
There is a lovely verse in Jeremiah 2. The state of Israel had become very bad. What does the Lord do? He seeks out a tender-hearted young man to weep with Him over the desolations of His people. He had many things to complain of through His prophet, but note how He begins addressing them. “I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after Me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.” That is to say, In your darkest day I do not forget your brightest. And He is the same today. He never forgets that bright beginning of yours, my reader, when you sang so heartily―
“Happy day, when Jesus washed my sins away”
Perhaps you have got away from Him since then—got into the world. But the love of Jesus never changes. If you will not turn to Him and let His love shine on your face, it will shine on your back. He may have to make you suffer great loss, and bring you through deep sorrow, but through it all He will surely bring you and bless you too. He loves you, and nothing can change His love. He interests Himself in us when we are walking well, and even when we are walking badly the same loving interest continues. “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2). He pleads our cause in heaven.
He engaged Himself to reach His wandering sheep, and take it safely home. But before He reached it He went through death to meet the deep, deep need of the foolish wanderer.
In Psalms 23 the found one says, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me.” But in Psalms 22 we find a striking contrast to that. His language on the cross is prophetically stated in this psalm. “Why art Thou so far from helping Me?” In Psalms 23 the Lord will not leave His sheep; but in Psalms 22 He is Himself the absolutely forsaken One. “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” “Lover and friend hast Thou put far from Me.”
There are two places in these psalms where the Lord is seen alone. He was alone when dying for my sins (Psa. 22); He was alone when He ascended in triumph to God’s right hand (Psa. 24). What an entrance does that psalm present! What a contrast to the place man had given Him on the tree!
How wondrous was His mission to this world He came from God, and went to God. The One who set the starry firmament moving in perfect order, and keeps it so, is the One who has visited this little planet we call Earth, to seek and bless His fallen creature man. He came to declare what God’s heart is to man. That blessed adorable One has been to the cross and died for my sins! Wonderful! Are you surprised when I tell you that I want you to know Him? But more than this, God wants you to know Him. He was on the cross for our sins, and He is now up there in heaven without them. If He was there on the cross, He was bearing sin’s judgment. If He is now on the throne, sin’s judgment is passed forever for the believer. So that I do not cling to the cross now, I look to a living Saviour at the right hand of God. I believe on Him as I know Him there.
He was, as we have seen, alone on the cross, and He went up alone. But I want now to call your attention to one position where He is not alone. “Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.” What was the rod for? Not for beating the sheep. It was for the direction and counting of the flock. When an Eastern shepherd wants to number his flock he puts out his rod, and as the sheep pass under it he counts them. The “staff” is for another purpose. It was a kind of club, and was used to defend the sheep from the ravages of wild beasts.
Here we have the figure of a double source of comfort for the believer in Christ. He is able to defend us, and He takes care to count us. Why does He count us? Because He does not intend to lose one, not even the least. He will say at the end, “Behold, I and the children which God hath given Me.” He will not leave one out. Then there is the staff. He is determined that no foe shall harm us. And He will exercise this double care to the end.
Someone may say sadly, I am away from the Lord now, and how shall I get back? Go to Him and judge yourself—that is, go in self—condemnation. When you do this you are in a line with what God has done. The moment you are in conflict with evil you have the sympathy of heaven. The moment you condemn sin you get the benefit of the full succor and sympathy of God’s High Priest in heaven. His service as Priest is not confined to this, but it includes it notwithstanding. And I would rather have His sympathy in a ditch than be on a throne without it.
It is a great thing to know the Lord, to know that He is touched with the feeling of my weakness here, and that He can extricate me from the deepest ditch into which my own folly has brought me. What a comfort to know there is One at God’s right hand who loves me! He never takes His eye off me. He talks to His Father about me.
We are most of us acquainted with that hymn which says―
“No subject so glorious as He,
No theme so affecting to us.”
And it is true, every word of it. But there is no theme so affecting to Him as that of His dear saints below, even when their hearts are not right. He is thinking of His saints down here, scattered up and down, in their homes and offices, in their fields and workshops; His eye sees, His heart cares for them all. Do not keep to your own side so much. Think of what He is thinking about. Someone once said to a fellow-Christian, “Why don’t you get up, and look down sometimes?” But whether you do so or not, you cannot look up without finding the Saviour looking down. He never has taken His eye from you yet, and He never will. Every believer is bound up in His affections eternally.