READING THE PSALMS FROM CHRIST'S SIDE OR FROM MAN'S SIDE

READING THE PSALMS FROM CHRIST’S SIDE OR FROM MAN’S SIDE

As christians we first have life ever so faintly, baby-like; and we grow out of babyhood and on to manhood, as we accept death here. This world is our moral grave; the only place of possession that we have in it is a grave, as with Abraham (Genesis 23: 4). Life is first communicated, and this properly marks but the first stage in our history. There may be sorrow and darkness before there is a full clear sense of life as a known possession by the Holy Spirit. Until this is known, I judge that dwelling on the Psalms damages and ^[p. 25] hinders the soul. When I can read them as one who is really in the life of Jesus, and travelling in company with Him in His experience of the evil and sorrow here, it is quite another thing. There is a great difference morally as to the side from which you enter a trying path or trying circumstances. Christ enters the path of the true Israel from the side where there never was any evil. Israel comes from the side where all the evil and sorrow are, and seeks to reach the side from which Christ comes. Thus, in that sense, it is two meeting at a given point, but coming from opposite directions, and certainly there must be a great moral difference between the feelings of each at the junction. The one, from a scene of unperturbed holiness enters into the order and state of things in which the godly ones suffer here; the others, like drowning men, are making great efforts to reach firm footing. The one comes into the dark waters in a life preserver, not as being there and trying to escape from them, but going there to succour those who are there, and to lead them on and out of their trials. Christ fully enters into these trials, even as He did when He walked with Mary to the grave of Lazarus.

Now when you can read the Psalms and find yourself in them from Christ’s side, you are not on the side of the remnant, seeking to reach Christ’s side. The greatness of Christ’s service to us in our trials here, is learned experimentally; and though we may learn resurrection, in the way Mary did, yet surely we should know that we had learned Christ as the resurrection before the trial because death comes on us. I mean that we should know Him as “the resurrection and the life” before a bereavement is sent to teach us what He can be to us in it. And this was just what Martha did not know. If I am living Christ in my trials here, I know how Christ raises me out of them. I have gone down to the sea in ships, and have done business in great waters (see Psalm 107). I am like a bird which has ^[p. 26] come from the firmament and dives into the depths of the sea, and I only return more vigorous, through experience, to the scene above. I feel my trials here as a living one feels them - as Christ feels them; and my fear is not whether I shall escape and enjoy life outside and above them; I am threading my way through a forest, unknown indeed, but where there is a sure way; so that it is not a question with me whether I shall get out of it, but whether I shall follow the only true and divine way in the difficulty; and this way - this path - Christ points out to the saints in the Psalms. I learn there His tender solicitude lest my eye should be turned from God; and thus I find what Jesus in His own life is to me, in scenes and circumstances natural to that life as man. I am not trying to reach life; but in the power of His Spirit, and in the light of day, I am acquiring a full and fitting idea of how I need what He is to me, in the varieties of sorrow which man’s distance from God and perverseness have entailed on him. Christ felt one way about the death of Lazarus; Martha felt quite another way. The true and only divine way is to feel as Christ felt, and Mary is led into this. Christ takes up every trial and sorrow of the remnant as it is viewed in the eye of God. Man takes up his trial and sorrow as it affects himself. My place is to be in each trial and sorrow, even those which befall me on account of my own perverseness, or governmentally, as Christ would, regarding them with the eye or judgment of God, not merely seeking to get out of them, but exercising myself as to His way, and thus passing through them with God.

The “dying of Jesus” embraces a large experience. Flesh in every place and condition is found wanting, and I am in company with Him. I have the sense of the depravity of the flesh in the presence of God. I feel that in its will it is deservedly crucified, and gone in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. As I accept this for myself, I can suffer for Him. “We which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4: 11). The more I bear about the dying of Jesus, the more I am conscious of the power and resources of His life, and in His life I can suffer here for Him. Then I can serve Him truly; and it is only as this is reached that there is true service.