Both the plain and the intricate features of nature and revelation are so explanatory of each other that we can look upon them as complementary. Reading the Scriptures is like taking a walk in the country. Some enjoy the physical delight of swinging along breathing the sweet fresh air and appreciating the general greenery of field and wood, but the naturalist not only enjoys these, he has the added delight of discovery too as he pauses to examine the nooks and crannies where lesser known plants and creatures live and have their being. And many a lesson of life you can learn from him of the varied life-cycles of God’s creation if you are not particular about getting home for a given time.
Reading the Scriptures is like this. We can swing along through the readings, or we can pause and examine the text with loving care. And really we ought to make time to do this oftener. We miss so many delicate, fragrant flowers of thought because of the hurry of our rationed moments. If we read through the Psalms with the thought uppermost in our minds that most of them are Messianic, either wholly or in part, we soon find that our reading receives an impetus. We no longer merely amble along covering distances of connected words; we find that we are searching as we go.
Psalm 16 is very obviously one pointing forward to Jesus, as witness verses 8 to 11. Both Peter on the day of Pentecost, and Paul in the synagogue at Antioch, quoted this psalm with reference to the resurrection of Jesus, a prophecy which had been on record for 1000 years in their days, and which had just been fulfilled beyond the shadow of a doubt. The closing verses are very clear with regard to the rising again and the ascension of Jesus, but what of the verses which lead up to these?
“Preserve me, O God; for in Thee do I put my trust.”
David, putting forth his own request to God, is actually setting down something to be fulfilled in the life of our Lord. But we might ask,
“Was not the life of Jesus angelically preserved? Did not Psalm 91 promise, ‘For He shall give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways?’ “.
It certainly did; and yet Jesus did not call into-action the angelic legions, not even in the crucial hour. He was a man of prayer; the man of prayer who
“supplicated with strong crying and tears, Him Who was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared” (Heb. 5:7).
Had he called in the heavenly legions it would have been to save himself from the terrible hours before him. A greater salvation was involved. The Captain of Salvation had to bring many sons unto glory, and without his perfect sacrifice this could not be done. He was made perfect through suffering. So Jesus was preserved from Herod in infancy and when he was brought to the brow of the hill to be cast over to the rocks beneath, and all through his days until the final sorrow of Calvary, and even after that when the resurrection brought the final preservation for all time.
It was a result of his never-faltering trust in God and the strengthening work of the angels. There never was, before nor since, in all the history of the sons of men, a greater truster in God than Jesus. Besides being his Father, He was Jehovah, his King and Lord and everything all the sacred names of God implied. As verse 2 says (R.V.)
“he had no good beyond God”. “Why callest thou me good?” he asked of the man who came to question how he could obtain eternal life, “There is none good but one, that is God”.
The realisation of this goodness—”Thy goodness Lord, our souls confess”—is an attitude of mind which distinguishes the saint from the sinner. It sets believing men and women apart from the rest of mankind and produces in them an excellency of character in which the Lord delights. The distinction between them and the rest of their fellow humans is brought out in verse 4. They are styled, “those who hasten, or exchange the Lord, for another god”. The Psalmist was well aware of the gods many and lords many before whom some of his own generation of Israelites, often secretly and sometimes openly, prostrated themselves. He knew the names of their gods and the licentious associations and practices attendant upon their worship, and he determined not even to let their evil names befoul his lips.
In the days of Jesus this class of Israelite, worshippers of objects of wood and stone, had ceased to exist. The Babylonian captivity changed the character of the nation in this respect. Idolatry amongst the Jews in New Testament times was more subtle. Amongst the masses, the mammon of earthly riches, and amongst the priestly classes, the exaltation of the ritual of the Law, had become obsessions which shut out the realisation of the goodness of God. These subtler idolatries cut men off from the life of God and doomed them to die in their sins.
But the emphasis of the psalm is not on idolatry and death but on the worship of God and life. Whatever portion or lot or inheritance the idolater had chosen, be it ever so glamorous and appealing to the mind of the flesh, it was not for the Psalmist and his type of men. Life’s portions and inheritances, at their best, are limited by the tenure of our seventy year leasehold. But at least we can fill them as full as we can of the goodness of the Lord while we live, and in response to our efforts in His name He will certainly maintain our lot. Then we shall be able to say with Jesus and David, despite all the setbacks and tribulations of our probation, “The lines are fallen unto us in pleasant places; yea, we have a goodly heritage”.
“I will bless the Lord Who hath given me counsel; yea, my reins instruct me in the night seasons.”
The holy men called upon by God to set down His word for succeeding generations, were not cold calculating types. They felt the influence of His counsel in their inward parts as well as in their minds; they were “moved” in body and in mind. The Spirit Word was powerful. It possessed them wholly. In the beginning God spake and it was done. Darkness was dispelled and voluminous waters thousands of miles in extend and miles in depth were parted.
The same power will be seen and felt in the earth again ere long, not only to move and counsel one of His writers in the night seasons, but to shake terribly the earth. He will utter His voice and the earth will tremble. The long silence will be broken by the voice of the archangel and the trumpet blast calling the dead in Christ from their resting places.
The last four verses of this psalm are intensely Messianic. Only one could say, “I have set the Lord always before me”. Only one had God so intimately at his right hand. Only one could prophesy his own death and resurrection on the third day a few weeks before it happened (Mk. 10:34) on the surety of this psalm’s fulfilment. For Jesus in the last hours, verses 9 and 10 must have shone forth like a star.
“Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoiceth; my flesh also shall rest in hope. For Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt Thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.”
Death there must be, yet just as assuredly there was to be resurrection on the third day, before corruption set in. The joy of Hebrews 12:2 pervades the space between verses 10 and 11 of this psalm—”Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith who, for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God”. Which leads us to our final meditation in the last verse which we might well entitle “A glimpse into immortality”.
“The path of life” takes on an exalted meaning in this setting. Jesus in mortality was the Way, and was the one who was teaching this Way of life in precept and practice. He was born, lived, died and rose again in mortality. God was, sometime shortly after his resurrection from the dead, to show him the path of life—to give him immortality. As with the after fruits, so with the firstfruits. “This mortal must put on immortality.” What transports of joy must attend the passing from corruption to incorruption! The fleeing of the vile body before the glorious never-dying one! Every ache and pain exchanged into an eternal ecstasy and multiplied a thousandfold! This Jesus experiences now and has done for nigh on 1950 years.
“In Thy presence is fulness of joy.”
No human being, not even Jesus in the days of his flesh, has ever experienced fulness of joy. He was the man of sorrows, and he carried our sorrows too. Joy came only in brief glimpses like the sun glinting through on the cloudy and dark day. Now, for him, there is eternal cloudlessness in the presence of the God of Light.
“At Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.”
From this word “pleasure” we must entirely disassociate every paltry and ephemeral pastime of mankind, and link our thoughts with such thoughts as
—”Bless ye the Lord … ye ministers of His, which do His pleasure” and “They that are in the flesh cannot please God” and “Thou art worthy, O Lord … for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are, and were created”.
What is Jesus doing at his Father’s right hand? He is our advocate, the Great High Priest in the Heavenly Holy of Holies who is pleased to receive our prayers and praises and to place them before the Throne of Grace, and God is pleased to hear and respond through the blessed name of His Son. He is there to prepare a place and to come again, and the prophet Isaiah says (53:10)
“… he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand”.
Life, death, resurrection, and immortality have passed before us in our ponderings, an ascending scale of values. The highest value is the gift of God, eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let us strive to lay hold upon it.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One