Psalms 65

Psalms 65:1-13

Immanu-El. To the chief musician: a psalm of David, -a song. As to the general scope of this psalm, I quote from another, to whom I am constantly and largely indebted.*
“That this psalm,” he says, “is the restoration of the Jews. or, more properly speaking, the replacing of the remnant (now a nation) in their old place with God, on the mediation of Immanuel, as introducing millennial blessedness, is, I think, evident. The Jewish portion of this is stated in verse 1, as expected and appointed, and that in the most beautiful manner possible, in the union, if one may so speak, of God’s interest and man’s in it, according to the promises. In verse 2 it is the Gentiles. In order to this, Christ must take it up; accordingly that which has prevented is stated in verse 3, but in Christ’s Person, as for the Jews, (as in Isaiah 53:1-12) -the latter part being the expression of this by the Jewish remnant. This leads them to celebrate their acceptance in the Beloved, the Man whom God chose. Then comes the manner of their deliverance as in answer to their faith; the extent of this (‘over all the earth ‘) and the fruition of blessedness by the removal of the curse from the earth.

Such is the scope of this beautiful psalm. The Psalms here open out more into the glorious results of the union of Immanuel with men.” If this be true, then “God with us” -Immanuel -may well be the title of the psalm: and this is in fullest accord with the place, numerically and otherwise, that it has in this series. Let us notice that, to the end of this now, the psalms are also “songs.” Thank God, this for us will soon be the end also, that all the psalms shall be songs.

1. The first section is a very simple one. The praise of God from the whole earth, as the second verse shows it is, waits for Him in Zion. Millennial blessing has, as we well know. its beginning and its centre there. While Jerusalem is down-trodden and desolate, the earth cannot come into its rest. Zion is God’s rest forever (Psalms 132:14), and there can be no rest, except as He rests: the principle is always true, whatever the apostle’s application of it in the passage in question, that we enter into His rest (Hebrews 4:5; Hebrews 4:11). Zion is the place which, as we see from another psalm (Psalms 78:68), illustrates God’s sovereignty in grace, when man has done all he could to produce utter ruin; and the apostle, in his comprehensive view (Hebrews 12:22) of the things which (by faith) we are “come to,” places it thus, as the earthly centre opposite to the New Jerusalem; the heavenly one. Zion itself means “fixed,” and the first place in which it is mentioned (2 Samuel 5:7) is when David takes it out of the hand of the Gentile “treader down” -the Jebusite (see notes). It becomes then “the city of David,” which, we rejoice to remember, means “Beloved,” and it will be yet the city of the infinitely glorious One, when the time of Jerusalem’s “treading-down” is over. “Fixed” empire in the hands of the Beloved may well awaken praise to the ends of the earth. Man, alas, rejecting Him at His first coming, in behalf of Caesar has had proof of all kinds of Caesarism ever since. And though it put on, as indeed at Rome itself it did, the forms of democracy, the character of rule is none the less apparent. HOW blessed now the fulfillment of the Oracle which the first David received, just as the sceptre was falling out of his well-proved to be in competent hands! and which seems so fully to answer to the present psalm: — “A righteous Ruler over men, A ruler in the fear of God; — Even as the morning-light when the sun ariseth, A morning without clouds: From the brightness after rain The herb springeth from earth.” This is the inspired picture, and the psalm brings us manifestly to Him whose picture it is, in the latter part of the first verse, which would seem to make the whole utterance here His own. The first psalm of the series opened with the King’s “vows,” which we long before heard of in the twenty-second also, where there is but One possible to whom they could be ascribed. Vows they are on the part of One competent to utter, because competent to fulfill them; and whose lips could say, like His, “Unto Thee shall the vow be performed”? They are the lips of Him by whom God has found a dwelling-place among men such as He desires, a habitation amid the praises of a redeemed people, and a throne of grace upon earth, -the Mercy-seat sprinkled with His own precious blood. How intimately is this “vow” of His, then, connected with the praise which is to awaken on Zion and to the ends of the earth! “The Desire of all nations” comes, the Answer to the unspoken wants of myriads that have never known the provision for them. Is HE not the heard prayer of the next verse, which brings “all flesh” to the sanctuary to worship? “I, if I be lifted up from the earth,” He says, “will draw all men unto Me” (John 12:32). Thus shall the vow be indeed fulfilled, and God in Christ be the joy of every one who has had divinely awakened in him the knowledge of his need. “O Thou that hearest prayer! unto Thee shall all flesh come.”
2. But the second section comes now to confirm the first, by carrying us back from the glory now near to come, to show us the hindrance that stood in the way of the blessing, and how it has been removed. The structure of the next verse must not be hastily passed over, nor the changes which it exhibits be confounded with the varying speech of mere poetry. It is by slight notice, and confounding divine inspiration with mere human composition, that much of Scripture becomes necessarily closed to us, as the righteous penalty of unbelief. Notice, then, the change from singular to plural, and the emphatic “Thou” of the second part: — “Iniquities have prevailed against Me!” cries the single Voice. And many voices take up what may well be the answer: “Our revoltings, Thou purgest them away.” Yes, this is surely the lesson of the Cross learnt at last: that which every sacrifice of the countless sacrifices in Israel pointed to and declared. “Purgation” is by blood-shedding “without shedding of blood is no remission.” And these “iniquities” which “prevail against” the innocent Sufferer are “our revoltings.” That seeming disaster and defeat, the prevailing of our iniquities over Him; is but their purgation: “Thou purgest them away.” How these two lines, then, show us at once in a divine way the hindrance and its removal, the faith also being manifest in them that works with repentance, in the acknowledgment of the sins and of the glorious Substitute! When Israel do this, then indeed the fountain will be opened to them for sin and for uncleanness, as Zechariah shows them (12, 13). And now, therefore, their mouths are opened to declare the effect for them of Christ being their propitiation: — “Happy is He whom Thou choosest and makest to draw near, to dwell in Thy courts! We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Thy house, -of Thy holy temple.” Here we have the same singular and plural as in the previous verse; the same partial disguise which we must be prepared for always in these mysteries of faith as they are given us, especially in the Psalms: a veil easily to be penetrated, if we only have our eyes open, and look carefully, that is, reverently, at what is before us. Put all that has gone before along with this, -let it speak as a whole; let the psalm find its place with the other psalms of the series; observe how the deeper meaning brings out a lustre, a glory, where otherwise there is what is comparatively commonplace; and you will realize that the Spirit that has inspired it all is the Spirit of Christ, and that you must get the point of view which is always His, to realize aright the inspiration. “He whom Thou choosest” might by itself, of course, be that election of which every saved sinner is an example; and so, naturally, most take inhere. But who is it of whom God in Israel says: “Behold My Servant, whom I uphold, Mine Elect, in whom my soul delighteth: I have put My Spirit upon Him; He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles”? (Isaiah 42:1.) God’s “choice” is no less, although far differently, manifested, when Christ is spoken of as the Object of it, than when a poor sinner is taken up in divine sovereignty. In Christ it is all the fullness of His delight in that which is completely according to His mind and nature, -His Beloved, in whom He is well pleased. And thus the acceptance of any poor sinner is, as we are given to know, “in the Beloved.” “And makest to draw near” would thus imply His priestly access, which is the result of the acceptance of His work in behalf of others; and thus immediately the voice of His people is heard, the third person exchanged for the first, and the singular once more for the plural. “We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Thy house, -of Thy holy temple.” This house will be Israel’s grand distinction and privilege in millennial days. There follows the intimation of how their acceptance is shown, the answer to their prayer in the day of their distress. “By terrible things in righteousness Thou answerest us, O God of our salvation.” But then, for the earth also, the sun glints through the storm: “the confidence of all the ends of the earth, and of the distances of the sea.” Thus the effect of righteousness is quietness and assurance forever" (Isaiah 32:17); and we go on to see, in the earth delivered from the curse, the full blessedness of this.
3. The next three verses, therefore, go on to show us, not simply a sanctuary in restored Israel, but the earth, so long disfigured with the marks of sin and distance from Him, now pervaded with this glorious Presence. It is not, as we might at first think, the common testimony of nature to Him. It is the time of peace after conflict, when “His tokens” are seen in the very “ends of the earth,” and acknowledged with reverent fear on the part of men. The condition of the earth is but the index of its new peace and reconciliation; as we see in the second verse here, where the stilling of the roar of the seas is connected with the stilling of the “tumult of the races.” And so the Lord manifestly connects things in looking at the tumult itself which is here referred to: “And there shall be signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars, and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring” (Luke 21:25). Now they are stilled: the earth is brought into a stability as yet unknown; the mountains are set fast, human governments now being established by the power of God.

He, coming out of the silence and stillness in which the things of earth so often have seemed as if matters strange to Him; girds Himself now with power in which He is manifestly active. Faith may so see Him now, but can little justify itself to men at large. They talk of “laws” as if they were an iron fence around Him; and nature merciless. Now He comes forth from this obscurity, hushing the fury of men’s passions, and quieting the earth that these have vexed. And men fear, in the uttermost parts of the earth, at His tokens: for a strange new gladness pervades all the changes of the day: morning and evening sing alike with joy! 4. The fourth section speaks more distinctly of the earth itself; the curse removed, its paradisaic beauty coming back to it; and all plainly at the touch of His hand to whom nature is still and ever perfectly obedient. It is God’s visitation: Egypt’s fertilizing flood, the type of that bountifulness by which its exhaustion is continually met and its strength renewed, is outdone by the ever full “river of God,” which knows no failure, no stint at any time, and which awakens everything to life and activity. The “living” -not stagnant -water is always in nature truly the “water of life.” It is what is needful for the activity of every organism, in every part. It is therefore the type of the Spirit in its cleansing, renewing energy, and that which does its transforming work in the land of Israel in the days to which we are looking forward (Ezekiel 47:1-23), and answers thus (though not in full measure) to that which laves with its glorious stream the New Jerusalem and the paradise of God (Revelation 22:1-21). From the sanctuary-throne they both flow, not like Egypt’s river, from a distant, perhaps unknown, source. God, enthroned among an obedient people, is the spring of this blessing, deep, wide, perpetual: His necessary, bounteous ministry to creatures who “live and move and have their being in Himself.” Fully it is traced here to Him, the power working everywhere, first preparing the land, then preparing the corn. This is traced more minutely in the following verses: first, the influence upon the land itself (ver. 10); then the seasons of the year arranged with bountiful care (11); then the wilderness receives its bounty (12); and then we have the result everywhere in flocks and crops in which nature with its lavish beauty sings and rejoices (13). Ah, how we, with our sinful independence of God, have stopped this song in nature, and then proclaimed it lifeless, joyless, godless! It is never this; and the day is coming in which such divorce of God from His works shall be no more permitted, -shall be no more possible.