THIRSTING OR OVERFLOWING
[p. 70] THIRSTING OR OVERFLOWING
I have no doubt that these Psalms give us very distinctly the experience and joy of the remnant of Israel in a day that is yet to come — their experience as disinherited and driven out of the place of privilege, and the subsequent joy of heart with which they will turn to their once-rejected Messiah and find supreme satisfaction in Him and in the anticipation of His reign. But I should like to say a few words at this time on these Psalms in connection with the fact that they bring before us two very distinct states of soul-experience. Nothing could be more striking than the difference between them. In the one we find a soul “thirsting”, in the other a heart “overflowing”. Psalm 42 answers to “If any man thirst”; while Psalm 45 answers to “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7: 37, 38).
It is a home question for every one of us, Am I “thirsting” or “overflowing”? Which of the two Psalms is more truly descriptive of the experience of my soul? It is our true blessedness to have CHRIST so before us that our hearts are really satisfied. There is satisfaction of which the Lord spoke to the woman at Sychar’s well when He said, “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst” (John 4: 14). It should be a cheer to the most tried and disappointed heart in this company to know that there is a satisfaction to be had of such a wonderful nature. So that instead of the murmurs of the wilderness being in the heart and on the tongue, the glories, perfections, and love of Christ so fill the heart that when the mouth opens streams of refreshing and gladness flow forth as in Psalm 45.
[p. 71] I trust every heart here covets to be in this blessed satisfaction. All the instinctive desires of the one born of God, and all the leadings of the Holy Ghost, must be in this direction, and I trust that every such exercise may be deepened in our souls. For there is no royal road by which we can travel into this blessedness without exercise. It sounds very easy and simple to say, “You must not be self-occupied, you must be occupied with Christ”, but it is not always so easy to act on this oft-repeated advice. Some of the most acute spiritual distress that I have met with has been in souls who were most anxious to be “occupied with Christ”, and whose great grief was that, in spite of much prayer and effort, they were painfully conscious of being “self-occupied”. There must be the learning of what self is; the exercise must be gone through in one form or another; but it is an immense encouragement to know that God has taken us up that He might deliver us, and introduce our hearts into the blessedness of conscious association with Christ. Would to God that we were a little more earnest in our desire to enter into the purpose of His love, for if there were a little desire on our part there would be a great answer of blessing on God’s part.
In Psalm 42 we have a soul in downright earnest. “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God”. If this is the language of your heart, there is great blessing in store for you. When believers are being turned upside down and inside out they are apt to be much discouraged, and to have their souls “disquieted” in them. But even amid the exercise God would give us the encouragement of knowing that He has taken us up to bring us into inconceivable blessing. “Hope thou in God”, says the Psalmist to his soul, “for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance”.
We must travel through these exercises, for the simple reason that if Christ is to be everything self must be nothing, and it is oftentimes a long journey to reach this point in the [p. 72] history of the soul. God has to bring self down to nothingness; and though the flesh can do very well with addition or multiplication, it has a strong objection to subtraction and reduction, and will never tolerate being made into a cipher. Hence the long, dreary, and painful years of “self-occupation” through which most believers drag their slow steps of spiritual progress. One point after another of self-sufficiency and self-importance has to be attacked and reduced, until at length the believer is brought — to use a phrase much more familiar than the experience which it describes — to the end of himself.
We may fix firmly in our minds the fact that “self” is the great hindrance to Christ in our souls. It may be good self or bad self, carnal self or legal self, worldly self or religious self, but it is self in some form that is before us, if Christ is not everything to us, and if our souls are not in the overflowing satisfaction of conscious association with Him. Now in Psalm 42 we see the Psalmist allowed to pass through circumstances which reduced him very much. I do not mean to suggest that we find here the full exposure of the flesh. That could not come out until the cross. But we do see the Psalmist reduced to extremity, and brought to nothing as to all that he was in himself, and that is the stepping-stone into the blessedness of Psalm 45, where Christ is everything and fills the heart.
There are many ways in which the soul learns the worthlessness of self. No one could be converted without learning something of what he was as in the flesh; and the young convert with his desires for holiness and his Spirit-wrought longings after Christ, finds himself in a school where he learns many lessons of the same nature. But perhaps no way could be more humbling — or more efficacious, if the exercise is gone through with God — than the one brought before us in this Psalm. Here we do not find the thirst of the awakened sinner, or of the one who has never tasted that [p. 73] the Lord is gracious, but the thirst of the soul that has lost what it once enjoyed. The Psalmist looks back to seasons of holy joy in the past. “When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday”.
If you have received “the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation”, and thus been brought to know the Lord Jesus as your risen and triumphant Saviour, I am quite sure you have known what it was to have great joy in your soul. When you saw that your sins were all put away, and that God imputed righteousness to you — righteousness the measure and expression of which is Christ risen — ,you entered into peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and received the Spirit, who shed the love of God abroad in your heart. I dare say many here can remember the deep joy that filled their hearts when the power and preciousness of the gospel first came home to them. I speak not of the awakening of the conscience, nor of the relief and assurance with which many are content, for neither of these gives the joy of God’s salvation. I speak of the moment when Christ Risen is really apprehended as the measure and expression of our righteousness, and of our title to stand in the favour of God. Such a moment is one of supreme joy. It could not be otherwise, for at that moment we measured everything by Christ. We were happily and completely taken outside ourselves both for righteousness and title to stand in God’s favour. We sang with triumph of His love, we exulted in His grace, and in some true, if small, measure we did “joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ”. How bright the meetings seemed, because we were bright ourselves. How attractive the children of God were to us, for we looked at them all in the light of the grace we had just learned for ourselves. We went with them “with the voice of joy and praise”.
But is it not true that for some hearts here this joy of God’s salvation, this rapture of “first love”, has passed away and left “an aching void”? They are thirsting now rather than overflowing. With some it is an eager thirst, for they have hope and faith in God for a divine answer to the longings of their souls. With others, perhaps, almost a despairing thirst, for years of exercise seem to have brought them no nearer to the deliverance they seek. While a larger class have accepted their present condition as being inevitable, and have settled down to take things as they are, and to comfort themselves with the thought of being very happy by-and-by in heaven, and with these the thirst is so feeble that it can hardly be called a thirst at all.
It may be well at this point to consider two questions which naturally suggest themselves in connection with this subject. (1) Is it absolutely necessary for one to go through an experience of this kind after he finds peace? (2) Why is such an experience necessary? With regard to the first of these questions, it may be remarked that some souls go through a much deeper process of self-knowledge before they enter into peace than do others; and in cases where this exercise had been very deep, and the soul had been under legal preaching, peace and deliverance might be entered into almost simultaneously. But when the gospel has been fully and clearly presented souls are often brought into peace thereby, and then afterwards have to learn experimentally what they are as in the flesh. In answer to our second question, it may be said that our hearts have a continual tendency to make self the centre. Even when, by God’s converting grace, we no longer make self the object of carnal gratification or of religious exaltation, we may, and do, make self the centre of the blessings which God’s grace has conferred. We can all remember that it was so with us in the beginning. We thought and spoke much of our blessings, of what we had got, of what God had done for us. I am not at all objecting to this; it is, if I may so say, natural to the infancy of the soul. It gladdens [p. 75] our hearts to hear the young convert speak of the blessings he has got, and of his new-found joy in those blessings; but we can often see very distinctly that he is wrapping all these blessings of grace round himself, and we feel pretty sure that he will have to learn some lessons presently that will take the shine out of him. He will have to learn what a poor wretched thing he is, as in the flesh, that his heart may be transferred to a new centre altogether. Nothing can be more distasteful to a spiritual mind than to hear people professedly giving a Christian testimony which begins and ends with themselves. However natural it may be to a new-born soul to talk of himself, it is a very disappointing feature in one who has professed to know the Lord for some time. It is for the effectual displacement of all this, and to transfer the heart to a new centre altogether, that the experience of which we are speaking is divinely necessary for our souls. God has to come in and detach us from that which is our natural centre; that He may link our affections with another Person — even with Christ — and make Him everything to our hearts, so that our association with Him may be known, and may become the deep, lasting joy of our souls. It is this that necessitates deliverance, and this is its blessed end.
In the eleven verses of Psalm 42 the words “I”, “me”, “my”, occur thirty-five times, and six times the Psalmist uses the expression”my soul”. He is thoroughly self-occupied, but he is not self-satisfied — he is thirsting for God. Unhappy as such a condition may be, it is ten thousand times better than Laodicean complacency and self-satisfaction. The latter is what characterizes Christendom today, and it is that which we ought to dread more than anything else. Self-sufficiency is a veil upon the heart, which blinds it to everything that is of God.
“Therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar” (verse 6). The three places here mentioned are suggestive, to my mind, of [p. 76] three ways in which self is reduced to nothingness in the believer. (1) By inward exercise. (2) By the testings of the wilderness. (3) By special discipline from God. We may look briefly at each of the three.
(1) In the latter part of Romans 7 we find the experience of one who, through grace, delights in the law of God after the inward man, and is earnestly seeking to carry out God’s holy will, but he finds a law in his members — a law of sin — to which he is in helpless captivity. He becomes painfully conscious that sin dwells in him, and eventually reaches the conclusion that in him, that is, in his flesh, there is nothing but sin — good he cannot find. It is by the law that he discovers this — by the effort to carry out God’s will — so that which was ordained to life he finds to be unto death. He is brought down to death. Death is that state out of which nothing comes for God, and if I am truly conscious that good does not dwell in me I am brought down to death — the “land of Jordan”. Paul reached this point in a very short time because he was in dead earnest. He learned in three days a lesson which it often takes a lifetime to learn. We are long on the road because we are so little in earnest about it. But all this is inward experience and exercise. Outwardly Paul’s life was most exemplary; it is not at all outward failure that others might see; it is the inward exercise in which the true character of sin in the flesh is discovered.
(2) The object of all the trial and testing of the wilderness was, as Deuteronomy 8: 2 tells us, “to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments or no”. God leads us by a trying and rugged path (Hermon means “rugged” ) that the naughtiness and pride of our hearts may be discovered. God loves us too well to allow us to be deceived as to our true character as in the flesh. He puts us in the very circumstances that bring it out. Not one of us can escape this testing and sifting. And as our true character is thus brought to light,
[p. 77] we fret and chafe and murmur. How inexpressibly vexatious it is to always have something turning up that gives occasion to our hearts to show what is in them! If we only had a path in which we could always acquit ourselves creditably, how different it would be! If things would only go as we should like, how well and happily should we get on! Yes, and how supremely self-satisfied we should become! But God will find us out, and so He causes us to traverse this land of the Hermonites until our hearts in their bitterness say, “Why does God put me into such circumstances as these? Why does He not make it easier for me? Why does something always occur to overturn my efforts to be good, and to make fruitless all my desires to be holy? If God would order things differently for me, my life would not be the contemptible failure that it now is”. Has you heart never uttered such language as this? Do you know what it means? Why, it is casting the blame of your sin upon God, and this is the outcome of satanic enmity. It is the bite of the serpent. In a thousand ways you have proved the goodness and mercy of God, and yet your heart is capable of turning round upon Him and suggesting that His ordering for you is to blame for all your failure. What a discovery this is of those hidden springs of enmity against God that rise in the carnal mind!
(3) The “hill Mizar” (the little hill) may represent any special discipline of God by which we are made consciously weak and small. When Paul came down from the third heaven there was given him a thorn for the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet him; and this, he tells us, was “lest I should be exalted above measure”. It was his “hill Mizar”. God allowed Satan so to act on Paul’s flesh, by some form of bodily suffering, that he was conscious of nothing in himself but weakness. You may say, “That must be a miserable experience”. Well, Paul was not miserable; he was supremely happy. He says, “Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my weakness, that the power of Christ may tabernacle [p. 78] over me ... I take pleasure in weaknesses: ... for when I am weak, then am I strong”. He was happy to have all his own strength reduced to nothingness, that he might prove instead the sufficiency of the Lord’s grace and Christ’s strength.
As to these three forms of self-reduction, the first two are instructive, while the third is rather protective. The inward exercise of Romans 7 and the testing of the wilderness serve the purpose of teaching us what sin in the flesh is, and what is in our hearts; while such special discipline of God as Paul’s thorn is rather to protect us from the unaltered tendencies of the flesh. The latter is always needed, and goes on in one form or other to the end of our course here.
It is well for us to get to the end and the bottom of ourselves, for when we really get to the bottom with God we reach deliverance. Paul no sooner reaches “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of this body of death?” than he exclaims, “I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord”. The children of Israel, bitten by the serpent and brought down to death, found the way of life opened up by beholding the serpent of brass. When we truly abhor ourselves, we are prepared to rejoice in the blessed fact that our old man has been crucified with Christ — that sin in the flesh was condemned when Christ died, that our whole history as in the flesh closed before God in His death — and that this is our title to be free. I have now a righteous title to have done with myself because Christ has died. To prepare me for this I have to learn the necessity for death in my own experience, but the death of Christ is my title to be free. It is by the appropriation of His death that I reach liberty and life; that death has severed me from all that I was as in Adam. “I am crucified with Christ”. I am free from myself, and free to have Christ before me, and to learn how I am associated with Him in new creation. In a word, I pass from the experience of Psalm 42 into that of Psalm 45.
The change is most striking. It is no longer “I”, “me”,
“my”, but “Thou”, “Thee”, “Thy”. The soul has got a totally new Object and Centre; it has come to God’s Centre. The old astronomers found the motions of the planetary bodies quite inexplicable because they looked upon the earth as the centre of the universe. It was not until a bold, free mind travelled forth into space and found a new centre that harmony and order were seen to reign where all had seemed confusion before. So long as the soul is self-centred it can make no real acquaintance with, or progress in, the thoughts and purposes of God. But when Christ gets His right place for our souls, we begin to apprehend the wondrous depth and perfection of those thoughts and purposes, and then our blessings are all, as it were, glorified. We are then able to leave self altogether behind, and to enter the atmosphere of divine love. Psalm 45 is called “a song of loves”; and so completely has it this character, that there is not a word in it about what the Lord has done; the heart is engaged with Himself. Love thinks more of the Giver than His gifts — more of the love than of the work which love has wrought. It is when the Person of Christ is thus before the heart that it begins to bubble over, and to burn as did those of the disciples on the way to Emmaus when the Stranger spoke of “the things concerning himself”. Then, verily, the heart is inditing a good matter; it is absorbed in the contemplation of the altogether lovely One. Self has been learned and given up as worthless, and another Person, who eclipses everything, is now before the soul. Four great and precious facts as to that Person come before the heart.
1. “Thou art fairer than the children of men”. It is only the believer who can see attractiveness and beauty in Jesus. To the natural man Barabbas is more lovely than Jesus; not that he likes Barabbas to break into his house or pick his pocket, but he can understand Barabbas, and he cannot understand Jesus. The Beatitudes (Matthew 5: 3 - 10) give us the portrait of the One who is “fairer than the children of men”. Poor in spirit, a Mourner in this world of sin and woe, meek, hungering and thirsting after righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, a Peacemaker, One persecuted for righteousness’ sake — these are the traits of His beauty. The natural man says, “These are poor things, and but of plain appearance. A man of such a character as that is no good in this world”. The man who will not assert himself because he feels that God has no place here, who will bear injury and wrong without murmuring, whose one insatiable desire is to do the will of God, though it entails nothing but suffering and persecution here, is looked upon by the world with contempt, and where the conscience has felt the power of his testimony, he is positively hated. “He is despised and rejected of men”. Christ was just the opposite to the world’s ideal man. A man who by brilliant genius, commanding personality, and indomitable perseverance has secured position, wealth, or fame, is the world’s ideal. The one who makes himself great in the eyes of men is the world’s hero, and I fear that Christians are often deceived by the glitter of fame and the acclamations of human applause, and they come to admire men who are the very opposite to the meek and lowly Jesus. Oh that we may be kept in the secret of God’s presence, so as to know what He appreciates in man! It is a proof of immense favour from God if in our heart’s estimation Christ is “fairer than the children of men”. It is easy to sing hymns, and to use the most precious expressions in Scripture in a sentimental way, but it is another thing for our hearts really to find rest and satisfaction in the moral perfections of Christ. It is blessed to find the heart thrilling with something of the ecstasy which the Bride feels as she describes Him — beginning with “The chiefest among ten thousand”, and ending with “He is altogether lovely” (Song of Songs 5: 10 - 16).
2. “Grace is poured into thy lips”. There has been One here in whom and by whom all the grace of God could express itself. The Son of God took a place of perfect dependence [p. 81] here as the Vessel of that grace, and in that dependent place the Lord God gave Him the tongue of the Learner, that He should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary (Isaiah 50: 4). Well might the Nazarenes marvel at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth. Well might those sent to take Him have to confess, “Never man spake like this man”. The evangelist Luke presents Him specially in the blessed character of the Minister of grace, and how full and matchless is the record! The synagogues at Nazareth and Capernaum, the sea-shore of Galilee, the house of Levi, the corn-fields, the gate of the city of Nain, the Pharisee’s house, and all the scenes of that holy ministry right on to Calvary, have their own sweet tale to tell of the grace that was poured into His lips, and which flowed forth from those lips in a fulness which nothing could stay. Nay, the very cavils and opposition of unbelief and self-righteousness only served to bring it out more fully, as the attempt to stay the flow of some mighty river might cause it to overflow all its banks. The grace of God has told itself out here in a Man. God has found the satisfaction of His heart in having One here who not only could, and did, fill the whole compass of man’s responsibility with perfection, but was the full expression of divine grace here, and this, withal, in perfect dependence. There was but one Person who could thus bring and express the grace of God in a world of sin, and He has done it perfectly. Blessed for ever be His sacred Name!
3. The “sword” and the “arrows” (verses 3, 5) bear witness that the One into whose lips grace was poured has been rejected here. Judgment awaits His enemies — judgment rendered inevitable by the fact that men have refused the grace of God, and rejected the One in whom it all came. This world has rewarded Christ evil for good, and hatred for His love. It is now the scene of His rejection — soon to be the scene of victorious judgment whereby God shall make His foes His footstool. But for the present Christ is dishonoured [p. 82] and disinherited here. He has been cut off and had nothing. He is cast aside as worthless by men, who see no beauty in Him that they should desire Him.
4. But in wondrous contrast to this we read, “Therefore God hath blessed thee for ever” (verse 2). Every step of that pathway of lowly and devoted love has had its answer. Not here, indeed, for that Blessed One had nothing here; none of this world’s honour graced His brow; its commonest civilities were denied Him; He had not where to lay His head; nor, so far as we know, did He ever possess a penny. His blessing is in another sphere; His exaltation is in heaven; He is crowned with glory and honour at the right hand of God. He is the Man of joy for ever now, for He has entered the fulness of joy in the presence of God, and the pleasures for evermore which are at His right hand. “Thou hast made him most blessed for ever: thou hast made him exceeding glad with thy countenance” (Psalm 21: 6). I referred a few moments ago to the Beatitudes as giving the portrait of the One fairer than the children of men, and I may now call your attention to a verse which follows them: “Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven” (Matthew 5: 12). The Beatitudes have their fruition in heaven Christ has His blessings, His reward and compensation, there. Everything was unsuited to Him here, but He is now in a scene where everything is suited to Him. Can we not truly say
“O Lord, ’tis joy to look above,
And See Thee on the throne” (474:1)?
We are still in the place of His rejection, but we joy in His exaltation there; and, through infinite grace, we are linked with Him in the place of His joy and His glory. What could be more wonderful and blessed?
“God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows” (verse 7). Here the marvellous fact is disclosed that Christ in glory has “fellows” — companions.
[p. 83] Upon earth He was alone in His beauty — the single Corn of wheat. There could be no link between the Second Man out of heaven and the sinful race of Adam. But in His death the whole race for whom He died was condemned and set aside in judgment, and as the risen and glorified One He has become the Head of a new race, to whom He has given eternal life, and who are associated with Him in His wondrous place as Man before God and the Father. By the will of God we are “sanctified” through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once (Hebrews 10: 10). That is, by His death we have been set apart from everything that we were as in the flesh, that we might be of Him in new creation — all of one with Himself — His fellows. “For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren” (Hebrews 2: 11). Beloved brethren, does not this captivate and satisfy the heart? To see that by the death of Christ I am entitled to be free from myself — to drop everything that I am as in the flesh — that I may pass into conscious association with that blessed One in glory. Now, indeed, my heart has got a new centre, and has begun to learn with God the greatness of the thoughts of divine love. I begin to realize the immensity of God’s purpose and grace, and to be lost in wonder, love, and praise. Thus we learn the character and dignity of the priestly company of whom Christ can speak as “my brethren”, and to whom He can declare the Father’s Name. For if we learn these precious things, as we must learn everything, individually, it is that we may know the character of the company to which, through grace, we belong.
Notice, too, that it is in connection with this we have the Holy Ghost mentioned. “God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows”. The gift of the Spirit is distinctly connected with the fact that Jesus is glorified (John 7: 39). It is with Christ in glory that the Holy Ghost links us. As the glorified Man He has received [p. 84] the Holy Ghost (Acts 2: 33), and this anointing He shares with His brethren. As Aaron and his sons were all sprinkled with the same “anointing oil” in the day of their consecration (Exodus 29: 21), so Christ and His “brethren” have this blessed anointing in common. Yet in this, as in everything else, He must have the pre-eminence; He is anointed “above” His fellows, and our faith and love rejoice that it should be so.
Then observe the peculiar character in which the Holy Ghost is here spoken of — “the oil of gladness”. In the New Testament we find again and again that Joy is connected with the Holy Ghost. “The disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost” (Acts 13: 52). “Joy in the Holy Ghost” (Romans 14: 17). (Compare also Ephesians 5: 18, 19.) Does not this throw a glorious light upon the character of the Christian’s joys? The Holy Ghost is the divine power by which our hearts are brought into conscious association with Christ; He is the “well of living water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4: 14). His indwelling gives capacity to taste of heavenly joys, the joys of that ineffable scene of divine affections into which Christ has entered as “the Father’s glorified”. Do we not long to taste of those joys? Are we prepared to go in for them? Do we really believe that the Holy Ghost dwells in us to make our hearts overflow with heavenly gladness?
The effect of gladness within is fragrance without. “All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad” (verse 8). The fragrance I take to be the fruit of the Spirit — the qualities, graces, and moral perfections of Christ — “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Galatians 5: 22). I have no doubt we should all like to be thus fragrant, but I am quite sure that this will only be the case as we are in the gladness of which I have spoken. It is not the clearness and accuracy of our scriptural intelligence,
[p. 85] or the ability with which we can present the truth, that impresses people so much as the fact that they can discern when we have an inward satisfaction and gladness to which they are strangers. I well remember hearing a beloved servant of the Lord speak of the knowledge of Christ in glory. I was greatly impressed, but it was not so much by the information imparted as by the conviction, “That man has something which I should like to have”. If others can see that we have something which they have not, it will set them thirsting to have it too. Nothing helps people so much as this, and they can soon discover when we have this heavenly “gladness” in our souls. If there is the gladness within there is sure to be the fragrance without.
May each of us prove the blessed reality of all this, so that instead of thirsting we may be satisfied and overflowing.