AN OUTLINE OF THE MASCHIL PSALMS - PSALM 44 (3) AND 45 (4)
AN OUTLINE OF THE MASCHIL PSALMS - PSALM 44 (3) AND 45 (4)
CAC We were looking at the Maschil psalms, or psalms of ‘instruction’, the first of which is Psalm 32. It speaks of the blessedness of forgiveness, of the justified man. It sets forth the knowledge of God as known in new covenant conditions. He is known in forgiveness, in justification; He is known as the deliverer, director, resource and joy of His people. This is exactly what is presented to us in the glad tidings, they bring to us the knowledge of God in that way, and it is made good in the soul on the ground of repentance.
The next Maschil psalm is 42. Psalm 42 and Psalm 43 go together. Psalm 43 is not headed, but if you read them you will see that the language unifies them, they are virtually two parts of one psalm. In them we get an instruction of the personal exercise by which God deepens His work in the souls of His people, so that, instead of merely going on with what is public and general, they should have a definite soul link with God personally. It is one thing to go along with what is general, identifying ourselves with the people of God and enjoying what they enjoy — “I passed along with the multitude” — but God wants to give us something more. It is very nice to pass along with the multitude, especially to the house of God, but that is something that we may be deprived of, and God wants to establish something in our souls that we cannot be deprived of, something in definite personal exercise, so that if we are deprived of the outward we may have joy in Him. The man in Psalm 42 is led to have intense desire after God; he has been deprived of what he enjoyed with the multitude and now he has intense desire to have something for himself so that his soul may be preserved. In Psalm 43 we have indicated how it is reached. “Send out thy light and thy truth: they shall lead me, they shall bring me to thy holy mount, and unto thy habitations. Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto the God of the gladness of my joy”. This man has the truth of Psalm 32 deepened; God has become more intensely and personally his s [p. 492] joy than when he first heard the gospel. It is only deep exercise that will give us Psalm 43, deep exercise as well as the work of the Spirit; there is no deep thirst for God apart from the Spirit. We have all known what it is to have been with the people of God, to have fallen into our place in the meetings and shared their joy; we have enjoyed things with the festive multitude, but in the ways of God we may lose that, we may have to learn what the Jordan is, what the land of the Hermons and mount Mizar are. We may have distress and pressure, all the things that reduce us and make us feel how little we have of the knowledge of God in our souls. It is what a man might feel when alone in prison. Many of us know what it is to have a disquieted soul when in circumstances that bring us down! There is not a believer here so young as not to have had a touch of it; but God’s object is to give us all the grace of the glad tidings in a deeper way. The psalmist says, “Send out thy light and thy truth: they shall lead me”. It is one thing to be led by the brethren, and quite another to be led by God’s light and truth.
What a deepening it is when God sends out His light and truth and they lead us! We have something that does not fail, and then we come to God’s tabernacle and altar. We are not carried by the multitude, but are carried along by our own personal experience to God, our exceeding joy. It is like a schoolboy going home for the holidays! There must come a moment in our souls when we feel that going along with what is general does not do. The soul has intense longing for God, and you feel you must have Him for your own satisfaction. You feel that merely going on with fellowship and love — sweet as it is — does not satisfy you. The goodness of God brings us to that. What a source of strength amongst the brethren is a brother or sister who has come to this! God’s light and truth have come to that soul and it has moved into the tabernacle of God through its own exercise, and has found God to be the source of exceeding joy. This is definite power that you cannot lose; it holds good if you are in prison, if you are isolated from the brethren, or sick, or laid on your back. What you have learnt cannot be taken from you.
In Psalm 44 there is another instruction. The soul can say, We have heard what wonderful things God did for His people in the past, and He is not doing these things now. What an exercise! It was once all victory, under Joshua, but now,
“[p. 493] But thou hast cast off ... . Thou makest us a reproach to our neighbours, a mockery and a derision for them that are round about us”. The psalmist is referring to all the people of God. In presence of exercises like that the soul learns to be faithful to the covenant. Though the conditions are changed, it is much like this in the times of the assembly; it is an assembly exercise in this psalm. We are not now in days when nothing can stand before the people of God. It is now a day of reproach and contempt like the days of Nehemiah when they said, “if a fox went up, it would break down their stone wall”, Nehemiah 4: 3. The Israelites were objects of derision, and that is our portion today — we have to learn this, and I doubt if anyone will be stable for God if he does not learn it. What are we to do in times of reproach? Verse 17 tells us, “All this is come upon us; yet have we not forgotten thee, neither have we dealt falsely against thy covenant: Our heart is not turned back, neither have our steps declined from thy path”. That remains for us even though publicly it is a time of reproach. God puts no distinction on us publicly, but we go on with the remembrance — the Supper — and fidelity, and we do not turn back from anything that has been marked out as the testimony of the Lord. We have the peculiar exercise of 2 Timothy, not only normal exercise. In Romans 8 we get the normal suffering that christians have to suffer, but now we have the abnormal suffering of 2 Timothy, the last days: we have the public reproach in which the christian profession is found, and the special reproach attaching to the faithful. Are we prepared to go on steadily through outward reproach and contempt? What is the gain of such a path? The consciousness of being inseparable from the love of Christ, and when that comes into the soul it prepares us for Psalm 45.
We have to be prepared for the path of public reproach. We hear it said, ‘There are wonderful things going on here, we have a thousand converted in our place, why do you not join us?’ Other say, ‘We can heal the sick and speak with tongues, we have everything as it was at the beginning’. There is human glory attached to that. If you want that you will fall into the hands of Satan. We have to accept reproach; Paul in prison is a pattern of the place of the testimony today. An evangelist once said to me, ‘We should preach in the finest buildings in the land’. I replied, ‘Judging by Scripture I should rather expect to see the evangelist locked up in the county gaol’. The testimony has always been in reproach, but there is a different aspect of things now. In the apostles’ day all the power of the world to come was there. We have not apostles now going about working miracles; the apostles turned the world upside down, but we have not anything like that now. If brethren had gone on without any division there would have been no reproach, but the history of divine movements in the assembly and the way they have worked out has resulted in our being in reproach. People say, ‘You are all cut up, no one knows how many parties there are’. We are objects of derision; but are we prepared to go on with the covenant and remembrance and not to turn back? On that line we should have our hearts full of Christ. Things are now committed to faithful men, and I include women in that. No other kind of persons would have their heart full of Christ. We sang the hymn just now, ‘Our hearts are full of Christ’. Is it true, or do we desire it? I could sing it in the form of prayer, and many other hymns I can sing in the spirit of prayer with an intense desire to be in the truth of them. Hymns are an indication to me of the line on which every desire can go. Hymns are like the permanent way for the train to run on; the desires and affections of the saints can travel along them.
Psalm 45 is perhaps in one way the centre and the crown of the Maschil psalms, because it indicates to us that God can reach such a blessed end with His people that their hearts are full of Christ and of what stands in relation to Christ for His pleasure. Nothing could be more blessed. This psalm is Christ as He will be known publicly in the world to come, and it is that brought into the hearts of the saints before the time arrives. Before we are in the world to come, the world to come is in us. “The world to come, whereof we speak”; we means all christians. What else have we to speak about but the world to come? What have we to say about this present world? There is no room for Christ in it. We talk about the world to come because God and Christ are going to be supreme in that world, and God and His Anointed have become supreme to us. Instead of being thirsty our souls are welling up and overflowing.
Ques Who is the speaker in Psalm 45?
CAC That raises a very interesting point. The speaker is plainly not God; it is not God telling us about Christ. In the [p. 495] gospel God tells us about Christ, but here it is the heart of a man and the tongue of a man. It is a man speaking about Christ, and that man might be any of us under the power of the love of Christ. The compensation for the position in Psalm 44 is that we get to know our inseparableness from the love of Christ, and if we have found compensation we can compose something: “I say what I have composed”. Did it ever strike you that you can compose something about Christ that has never been composed since the day of Pentecost?
It is a great thing to be in the position of lilies. Shoshannim means lilies (see heading of psalm). The lily in Scripture is a figure of the distinctive place that the saints have at the present time. The Lord in the Song of Songs says, “As the lily among thorns, So is my love among the daughters”, chapter 2: 2. That is the position today. You may say, ‘I know plenty about thorns pricking me and tearing my flesh’; but it is the thorns that give distinctiveness to the lily. How distinctive would a lily be among thorns! In a bed of lilies they are all alike, but contrariety gives distinctiveness. It is like Philippians 2, “harmless and simple, irreproachable children of God in the midst of a crooked and perverted generation”. That gives distinctiveness; it is the saints’ appreciation of Christ that gives it; that is what makes me a lily if I am one. A lily would symbolise purity, a purity of affection that takes account of Christ, and would say, ‘My heart is full of Christ and longs its glorious matter to declare’. The soul in this psalm is really doing that. What a wonderful thing to be liberated so as to say, “My tongue is the pen of a ready writer”. In the affections there is a composing of things so that, as we know Christ and appreciate Him, we can speak of Him as He will be known in the world to come. The epistle to the Hebrews deals with the world to come; the beauty and adornments of Christ as He will be known in the world to come are known now in the hearts of the saints.
Here we see God instructing us in what is most precious to God Himself. To give us a thought of Christ is more pleasurable to God than anything else He could give us. He is filling the soul with thoughts of Christ and teaching us comparisons; He teaches us to recognise the immense superiority of Christ to the sons of men; we have to learn that. It is not that He is superior merely to the sons of Belial, but to the sons of men, those who have fairness Godward, like Enoch, Abraham,
[p. 496] Joseph, Moses, David. It was said of Moses that he was “fair to God”, and all the other saints of God have been fair to God, but the One here is fairer, Christ is fairer than the sons of men. That is, what you see in a saint is of the same order but infinitely surpassed in Christ. We see a spiritual feature in the sons of men, but dimly at the best; there is a dimness about it, but you see all the features in undimmed perfection in Christ, so He is fairer than the sons of men. He takes that place before the heart; He surpasses everyone. We find in this psalm how He transcends even His companions, He is anointed with the oil of gladness above His companions. The more we see His features in the saints the more we can appreciate in a transcendent way what we see in Christ. Everything that is fair came from Christ. Suppose I see any feature that is fair in a saint, if it affects my heart rightly it leads me to the fountain, to the One in whom that and every other feature is seen without a flaw. It is not comparing Him with the wicked sons of men, but with those who have had fairness before God; and we have to learn under divine instruction to give Him that place, the transcendent place. The bride in Canticles says of the Beloved, He is “The chiefest among ten thousand”. Even the saints disappear then, none of the sons of men could be altogether lovely, but He is “altogether lovely”. In all things He has the pre-eminence; we see it on the holy mount. It was not two wicked men who had to disappear, but Moses and Elias. Peter had learned this, so when the Lord raised the question, “who do ye say that I am?” he was able to answer. Others said, John the baptist, or Elias, or Jeremias, or some other man who had fairness. They were all men who were fair to God, but He was fairer, and Peter says, “Thou are the Christ, the Son of the living God”, Matthew 16: 16. He was far beyond all the others. The bride in the Song of Songs says, He “is my beloved”. What a delight for God if such thoughts as these of His beloved One are expressed truly by any of our hearts! This psalm is a song of the Beloved, not only His moral perfections recognised, but He has become the Beloved of our hearts, He has become to our hearts what He is to God. He is God’s Beloved, and He is ours. How we are bound up in intimacy of affection with God and with the Beloved!
Up to this point in the psalm we have the Vessel; He surpasses, and transcends, and supersedes everything in this [p. 497] world that has divine beauty and fairness in God’s eyes. I used to read this verse as referring to the natural man, but it has helped me to see that everything that has been beautiful for God, “fair to God”, is transcended and transfigured in this One. Now, God says, as it were, ‘This is the Vessel whom I am going to fill with my grace that He may express it to you’. “Grace is poured into thy lips”. We see the Vessel first, what He is personally, and then grace poured into His lips. In that perfect One all the precious thoughts of God are expressed towards men; all was put into that Vessel so that it might flow out to you and me. This is the gospel of Luke; He is seen there as the Vessel, not the Source. We see the Vessel, and then what was put into it, and the delight of God in Him stands in that connection. In Proverbs 8 divine wisdom speaks as the nursling of God’s love, “I was daily his delight”; but in what connection? “Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth, and my delights were with the sons of men”. God’s delight in Him is in connection with the fact that God has expressed in Him all His thoughts of grace towards men in this world. So at His baptism when the Lord took His place with the repentant remnant, it was just there and then that God opened heaven to say, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight”. Just when He was taking His place with men, God finds His delight in the Vessel of His infinite thoughts of grace. God would fill our hearts with thoughts of Christ. Think of the grace in the gospel of Luke, in chapters 4, 5, 7, 14, 15, 16 and 23; it is a very flood-tide of the heart of God, the grace of heaven expressed in Christ! It will be publicly known in the world to come, and, wonder of wonders, we know it now.
“Therefore God hath blessed thee for ever” (verse 2). He has made Him blessed for ever; that carries us to the new position in which He is found. All the grace of which he was the Vessel here still subsists in Him as the exalted and glorified Man, blessed for ever at God’s own right hand. This is the whole subject of testimony in the beginning of Acts. Whatever was expressed in Him as the Vessel of grace, a lowly Man, is all expressed in Him as the glorified Man.
Everything in Psalm 45 is Christ-centred and Christ-filled, and this is the true fruit of spiritual liberty. If I have learned the lessons of Psalm 42, Psalm 43 and Psalm 44, this is the condition of soul that I shall be in; and if I am not in that condition it is a [p. 498] matter to pray about. And we can pray with no uncertainty, for it is the mind of God that we should have it, and He has brought us under divine instruction that we should have it.
In the world to come God will bring in publicly truth, meekness and righteousness; and if they are not accepted in the way of divine instruction they will be brought in in divine power. The sword and arrows (verses 3 and 5) come in so that these blessed things, truth, meekness and righteousness, should be brought in to fill the earth. But these are things that have come into the hearts of the saints now. If truth and meekness and righteousness have place in my affections, the world to come is in me, though I am not yet in the world to come.
Psalm 45 answers in a way to the epistle to the Hebrews. That which will irradiate the world to come is the glory of Christ, and though it is not public now, we have not to wait; we can now see Jesus crowned with glory and honour. We can see Him in His glory and kingdom, and stand in the most intimate and personal relation to Him. It is a wonderful thing to have the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord; it would emancipate us from everything that is not Christ. The question is, What sort of matter is my heart engaged with? The psalmist speaks of a good matter and the things touching the King. What an immense thing to compose in our affections something in regard to Christ and to have our hearts filled with this good matter! God has expressed all that Christ is and all His grace in a Vessel of incomparable beauty and preciousness and attractiveness. There is One fairer than the children of men, One who transcends them all, not simply the children of fallen men but those who have had divine beauty, even an Abraham, a Moses, a David; He transcends them all. “Grace is poured into thy lips”; God has put all His favourableness to men as a testimony in the lips of that blessed Man. It has come to us in the midst of all our distance and unbelief. God has brought in everything suitable to Himself, and everything attractive to the heart, in Christ; He is without a rival, without a peer, He stands alone! That is the One in whom God has brought His grace near to us and God has blessed Him for ever, God has glorified Him because He is so excellent.
God is bringing in truth, meekness and righteousness. God will make everything give way to Christ, and, if it does not [p. 499] give way to the attractiveness of His Person and His lips, it will give way by sword, and arrows, and the strength of His right hand. God has taken us each up according to His eternal purpose to make everything in us give way to Christ and to develop in our souls those features of Christ that are suitable to Him. Truth, meekness and righteousness are the features of Christ, so these are things to obtain. The power of the kingdom lies in these things, as brought out in verses 6 and 7, “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; a sceptre of uprightness is the sceptre of thy kingdom: thou hast loved righteousness, and hated wickedness; therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy companions”. It is wonderful to see what the kingdom does as vested in the Son of the Father’s love. It brings us to love what Christ loves and to hate what Christ hates. The kingdom is vested in that Person, so we cannot come under the influence of Christ without loving what He loves and hating what He hates; and the measure in which that is true is the measure in which we have come into the kingdom of the Son of the Father’s love. In this kingdom it is never arbitrary rule. What a wonderful kingdom where the subjects love what the King loves and hate what the King hates! They would be fit companions for Him. It is just what we get here; the kingdom exists that the King may have companions. He wants companions who are morally all of one with Himself. We could not entertain the thought of the assembly if we had not a generation like that; we have the kingdom thought first, before the thought of the queen. The influence of the kingdom is the great thing; authority might be arbitrary but influence is not, it is moral or spiritual. In no aspect of the kingdom is the authority arbitrary, it works morally by God bringing adequate influences to bear upon us. It is a system of liberty and love, not bondage. It is a wonderful thing to get the consciousness of being suitable to be companions of Christ.
Ques Who says in verse 7, “God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness”?
CAC I suppose the saint who is in the spiritual vision of it. The woman who anointed Him at the end of the gospels had the sense that He was the anointed One, and if He was God’s anointed One then He was her anointed One too, and she poured out everything on Him. The thought of anointing introduces the thought of fragrance; it is that aspect of anointing here.
[p. 500] We are accustomed to look at it too much on the official side. It is official when the priest is anointed and when the king is anointed, but in this psalm it is not His official anointing; it is the oil of gladness — one does not think of that as being official. He has companions in joy, those who are invested with some of the fragrance that belongs to Him. I do not think we could anoint Him without becoming invested with some of His fragrance. The woman in the gospels put some on Him, but she carried some away with her.
The point in this psalm is what is known privately before all that Christ is is known publicly. We are inside, within the royal apartments in this psalm — “All glorious is the king’s daughter within”. She is not said to be glorious without; it is in the seclusion of the spot where Christ is known and enjoyed, where divine thoughts are known. “Myrrh and aloes, cassia, are all thy garments” — it is the fragrance of the Person. There is a peculiar delight in apprehending the fragrance of Christ; it is something different from His moral perfections. We are all prepared to say that He is fairer than the sons of men; there is every moral perfection in Him as loving righteousness and hating lawlessness; He is suitable to be the expression in Himself of the kingdom of God. But in fragrance there is something subtle; all His garments are imbued with the anointing that is put upon Him. If the priest is anointed and the oil runs down to the hem of his garment he becomes fragrant. We have the same spices here that were put in the holy anointing oil. It seems to me that the fragrance of Christ came out peculiarly in His death.
It should affect our spirits, and one longs increasingly that one’s spirit should be affected. We are converted, and we give up things outwardly wrong, and we come among the people of God, and fall in with a certain conduct and manners, and perhaps there is something for the pleasure of God in that; but how far are our spirits affected? How much is there of the fragrance of Christ about us? God is the Father of spirits; He is not so much concerned about our conduct as about our spirits, because if our spirits are right, our conduct will be. My spirit is what I am, it is the true I.
It is blessed to think of the fragrance of the Person brought out in death. In the New Testament the myrrh and aloes are identified with Him as lying in death; they were brought by Nicodemus, and are not mentioned in Matthew, Mark or Luke;
[p. 501] they are reserved for John. In Matthew, Mark and Luke the linen is emphasised, its purity in Matthew, and its fineness in Mark and Luke, but these spices are not spoken of. That suggests to me that the spices are connected with His Person, so we might expect to find them in John, and a hundred pounds weight of the spices is brought there. They are identified with Him as lying in death. We have the fragrance of such a Person as John presents lying in death. Matthew presents Him as the trespass-offering; Mark as the sin-offering; in Luke He goes into death in the grace of God; but in John it is the Person. What a fragrance of suffering love connects itself with the Person! There is a rare and peculiar fragrance, and we cannot help feeling how little we know of it. We understand and know a little as to the value of His work, but God would affect us greatly by the fragrance there was in His beloved Son lying in death; the Lord would lead us to appreciate the whole fragrance of His Person as brought out under the eye of God in His death.
Ques Is it the same thought as a sacrifice for a sweet-smelling savour in Ephesians?
CAC Yes. “Even as the Christ loved us, and delivered himself up for us, an offering and sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour” (Ephesians 5: 2) — it is the fragrance brought out. The assembly — the queen — is formed in the appreciation of that.
Ques Would Esther help as to that?
CAC Yes, she was purified with precious spices. The Lord wants a bride whose inmost sensibilities and emotions and feelings are in correspondence with His own, not only morally but in this indescribable fragrance.
The great thought in this psalm is that we are for His delight; it is not what we do. It is the relationship of each company to the King; whether it is the companions, or the queen, or the virgins, they are all in direct personal relationship to Him. We need to cultivate an intensely individual sense of our relationship to Christ, that we love Him and He loves us; it is an intimate personal thing. We think a great deal about our being affected by His love and company, and we may be, but there is another consideration. How is He affected by our love? He is touched by it. He has told us He is greatly affected by our love; He is so affected by it that He will come to us. He says, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.
[p. 502] And I will beg the Father, and he will give you another Comforter” (John 14: 16); and then further down He says, “I am coming to you” (verse 18). It is as if He said, ‘If ye love Me I will come to you’. Do you think the Lord would keep away from His people as gathered together affectionately to Him? He could not keep away, He would be so affected that He would come to them. I should like to know something of His delight in the love of His own. In the Song of Songs the beloved is arrested by the love of the bride. Do we give the Lord credit for really loving us?
I have thought in connection with this fragrance that, while Scripture identifies the myrrh and aloes with Christ in death, there is very little to identify the cassia, and I wondered if it might refer to all the fragrance of Christ in manhood which was carried through to resurrection. There was that in the Lord which could pass unchanged into the resurrection sphere. While the Lord has laid down His life and passed out of the condition of blood and flesh there is an immense blessedness disclosed in Him as man on earth that is unchanged in resurrection. Take His joy, His delight in God, His love to His people, all His affections, everything that ruled the soul of the Lord. Scripture speaks of His soul, “Thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol” — all His inwardness was carried without a change into resurrection. This is of great importance to us, because all that is of a spiritual order with us can go without a change into resurrection. There can be a fragrance about us now that would not suffer the slightest change if we passed into resurrection, it would be something that cannot be changed. The Lord would exercise us about so partaking of the fragrance that attaches to Christ that we should be acquiring qualities and features that would go right through to resurrection. What we cannot carry through would not be of much importance. In the christian circle we are occupied with things that can pass unchanged into the resurrection sphere. For example, suppose I can praise God, will not that go through to resurrection? If I love God and Christ and the brethren, will not all those spiritual affections and emotions go through to resurrection? That is why the Lord is so concerned that we should enjoy eternal life, because none of that will be left behind. We can acquire something that is altogether different from that which attached to us when we came into the world. The queen is in gold of Ophir, she has a new vesture that she [p. 503] never had before. Have we taken into account the fact that we are set up in an entirely new way to be suitable to Christ, and that the greatest things of all are freely given to us of God? The prodigal is the best illustration of it; all that belonged to him by nature was self-will and self-indulgence, poverty and rags, but that is all gone and there is an entirely new beginning, everything for the father’s delight; the best robe, the ring, and the shoes. Everything is perfect and is of God, so he goes into the house as an ornament of the place, an object of delight of the father’s house. The queen stands in gold of Ophir, nothing is there that belongs to what is natural, it is all spiritual. It is interesting to see in this psalm the intimate relationship that is established. You do not find the queen in the Song of Songs; there the marriage is not consummated, the feminine speaker’s affections vacillate, answering to many of our experiences. But in Psalm 45 you have reached the stability of affection.
We were looking last week at Psalm 45, it is Christ as He will be known in the world to come. It is our privilege to have the blessed knowledge of Him beforehand, both of what He is personally, and of the precious grace poured into His lips and expressed in Him as a Man on earth; and of His place in glory. God is teaching us that everything is to give place to Christ. If place is not given to Him under the power of grace and love, it will be with swords and arrows; His enemies will be made a footstool for His feet.
We must not look for outward distinction amidst general departure, but we ought to look for increased knowledge of Christ, to have that favour. Outwardly we are in the weakest possible position, but inwardly we can have this blessed knowledge of Christ that marks the wise.
We were speaking last week of the myrrh and aloes being in reference to the sufferings of Christ; all that pertains to His Person has come out in the greatest fragrance in His death, so every office He fills, every service He does, every glory that attaches to Him as Man is affected by His having lain in death. This fragrance attaches to Him as having been in death. In the ways of God all that belongs to Christ has acquired fragrance through His death. The King has had to be the Sufferer, and the fragrance that attaches to His Person has come out in death; all His perfections have come out in sweet odour before God. Now all those who love Him perceive it; “all [p. 504] thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia”. They carry the fragrance of the love that took Him through such amazing suffering and sorrow — the King has become the Sufferer. The King has companions, too; He has not only subjects but companions who love what He loves and hate what He hates, and who are mightily influenced by the way He has gone. We have learned how He loves righteousness. He would die to establish it; and He hates lawlessness, He would die to put it away. Everything that is reached on our side for the comfort and pleasure of Christ is secured at the cost of death. He has reached everything through death, and everything in us for the pleasure of God is reached in the same way; and that is why we get ivory palaces.
“Out of ivory palaces stringed instruments have made thee glad”. There is the thought of ivory palaces being secured for Christ, and every bit of the material of such palaces has been secured through death. The elephant is a fine animal, but its ivory is only secured through death. My impression is that every palace for Christ is secured through death. On what principle can we secure ivory palaces for Christ? It must be by putting to death our members which are on the earth; we must use death as a weapon. It is our mortal members as in Colossians 3. Each of us might live on the same principle as people of the world, we might use everything for self-gratification, move on the lines natural to us, indigenous to our nature, but there is nothing for Christ in that. The lover of Christ has learnt to bring death on all this, to secure something for Christ, an ivory palace for Him. Every bit of ivory speaks of death. Which would we prefer, to move on lines of self-gratification, or to provide an ivory palace for Christ? Suppose there is something that I might do as a man living in this world that would gratify me, but instead of that I apply death to it because I would like to secure a palace for Christ. It is just as the affections work that something is secured for Him, just in proportion as our affections work is a palace secured, and out of them “stringed instruments have made thee glad”, they can minister to His joy. Should we not like to secure something for the joy of Christ? It is most appealing for the youngest. Naturally we could not think of an ivory palace, but we have to think of it spiritually as a place of reception for Christ, every part of which has been secured by bringing in death on what is natural to us, bringing it in in [p. 505] the power of affection. People often try to do it without the power of affection, but this psalm is the language of a lover; he has found sufficient in Christ to make Him a commanding interest. That Person is a commanding object, and in that affection we can prepare an ivory palace; it is open to the youngest to do it. In that ivory palace there are stringed instruments, in the power of affection there is response to Christ. Think of the possibility of having something in our affections to make the glorified Christ glad! We can minister to the gladness of Christ. We have to be very jealous about it, for a stringed instrument is very delicate and easily goes out of tune; it has to be carefully adjusted. No musician would use a violin as it was left from the last time it was used; he must have it carefully tuned. If we have an ivory palace and stringed instruments we have to watch very carefully that our affections do not go out of tune, that the music is not flat, for we are called to minister to the joy of Christ.
We have looked at what Christ is before our eyes, but now what are we for Him? We have seen His personal glory, His official glory, His kingly glory, now what is for His pleasure? That brings in the subjective side. We have the great privilege of providing stringed instruments, but we must come under the hand of the Chief Musician again and again to get tuned to the right standard of quality. This is one of the psalms for the Chief Musician; it is a question of how the music sounds in His ear. Think of music to sound in Christ’s ear!
There is nothing that would tune our spirits like the Lord’s supper, like the fresh presentation of Himself. The great advantage of being a lover is to get manifestations of Himself, it is by them the Lord tunes the instruments. I do not think we should think of manifestations happening once in a hundred years! Many think it was only J.N.D. and J.B.S. who had them, but it is the normal movement of Christ toward every obedient lover; it is the normal course of supreme and blessed love. He could not withhold Himself from a lover. If I do not get manifestations I am not much of a lover. I do not know how it comes about, but the Lord is able to bring Himself in a very real and spiritual manner before us so that our affections get a fresh start, a fresh impulse; the instrument is tuned. But if there is no ivory palace, there are no stringed instruments. You must learn to apply death to what belongs to you naturally as a child of Adam, and you do it in the power [p. 506] of affection because you want a place for Christ. Every bit of ivory has to be secured at the price of death. How much have we secured for Christ at that cost?
We can see how all this gives us a moral basis for the truth of the queen. Christ has companions morally who love righteousness and hate lawlessness; they are marked by such affection that they build ivory palaces and have stringed instruments in them. Put these thoughts together and you will have some idea of what stands connected with the subjective side. In the last part of the psalm we have kings’ daughters, the queen, the daughter of Tyre, and then pre-eminently the king’s daughter. It is all the feminine side, the subjective side, what there is in the saints for the heart of Christ. It is wonderful instruction if we want to be for Christ in these last days just before the kingdom comes in publicly. One might say that this psalm speaks of Christ and the assembly; the assembly now comes into the place of the queen and the king’s daughter. No doubt, strictly speaking, it applies to Jerusalem; she is to be queen, her name is to be Beulah — married, and God will rejoice over Jerusalem as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride.
Rem At the present time the bride is a city.
CAC Yes, and the queen is a city, the Messiah’s queen will be a city, the King must have a city. The assembly has that place now. When John was called to see the bride he was shown a city, teaching us the thought that the bride and the city are put together by the Spirit of God.
Ques Does the city suggest government?
CAC There is no doubt an administrative side to the city, but the thought here is that the queen is for the delight of the King. The assembly comes to be for the satisfaction of Christ in carrying all the features which belong to the city; they are set forth figuratively in the city, but they are what gives the city attractiveness to Christ.
We get first the thought of kings’ daughters, suggesting the saints as of royal lineage; we are suitable to Christ because of the exalted character of our lineage. Have we learned to think of ourselves as kings’ daughters? Think of the exalted character of the saints as born of God! We have a spiritual lineage which fits us to be in this wonderful relationship to Christ. John says, “Ye are of God”; that is our origin. “Ye are of God, children, and have overcome them” — the [p. 507] saints are of such lineage that they have power to overcome antichrists. It is interesting to put the different thoughts together. The queen stands in gold of Ophir; lower down her raiment is of wrought gold, and then she is in raiment of embroidery. There are three different thoughts, but all made good in the saints.
Ques What is gold of Ophir?
CAC I thought it suggested glory as conferred by divine grace. In the coming day when Israel will be recognised as the delight of Jehovah she will be brought into the enjoyment of God’s favour in Christ; this will result in public glory answering to the gold which will be recognised by the nations around. In christianity the ministry of righteousness and of the Spirit involves that believers are invested with glory which is to shine out in testimony. It is said in 2 Corinthians 3: 11, of this ministry that it subsists in glory. There is thus a subsisting glory about the saints as having received the Spirit as a ministration from God.
The wrought gold is more what is formed in the saints. We receive righteousness and the Spirit absolutely, as the two great blessings which God is serving out to all those who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. But wrought gold suggests formation, the work of God which begins when we have received righteousness and the Spirit. If you would like a scripture for wrought gold I would suggest Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3; I do not know a better. There is a strengthening by the Father’s Spirit in all the affections of the inner man so that the Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith, and it is all to apprehend with every believer “what is the breadth and length and depth and height; and to know the love of the Christ which surpasses knowledge; that ye may be filled even to all the fulness of God. But to him that is able to do far exceedingly above all which we ask or think, according to the power which works in us ..”. Now you have the wrought gold; it is brought into shape by prayer. I believe what is wrought of the Spirit is wrought under deep exercise, and every exercise turns to prayer. Our prayers are the measure of our spiritual exercises, and what is wrought of God is wrought in an atmosphere of prayer. That is where God works. We cannot be divinely wrought by listening to ministry. “He that has wrought us for this very thing is God”, 2 Corinthians 5: 5. One asks oneself, How big am I in view of being placed in the heavenly [p. 508] city? That is the measure of how I am divinely wrought. A great many have righteousness and the Spirit, but there is very little exercise and prayer, very little seeking from God, so there is little spiritual formation, only a little bit of pure gold to go into the city; there is nothing in the city but pure gold. How big am I for that city? Just so big as I have been divinely wrought, and nothing goes in but what has been divinely wrought. God is working in saints so that they may be fit material to go into the city.
These two thoughts are helpful, showing how we are invested with divine glory, but also how we become subjects of divine workmanship. Then the third thing is the raiment of embroidery; that brings us to our side. It is wrought stitch by stitch. Revelation 19 tells us it is granted to the bride to be clothed in fine linen, the righteousnesses of the saints. The raiment of embroidery is made by the practical working out in detail of the life of Christ in the saints. Nothing has the character of righteousness but what flows out from the life of Christ in the saints. It is a matter of daily exercise, and this garment is worked out day by day; all that is the product of the life of Christ goes into it, all that has the character of righteousness before God goes into it. It is connected with, “the Spirit life on account of righteousness”, Romans 8: 10. The Spirit has come in to be the power of life so that what is righteous has place with us and that is morally the life of Christ.
There is a divine working in the saints, and that is like wrought gold, but there is a working out in practical result, and that is our side of it.
Ques Is it what the virtuous woman does in Proverbs 31?
CAC She is diligent in the detail of life, stitch by stitch. God would suggest all this to us by way of instruction for the last days, and we have to take it up if we are to realise the portion of the wise in the last days. Psalm 45, is in one sense, the most important of the Maschil Psalms because it deals with the Person of Christ, and with what is for Christ’s pleasure.