EXPERIENCE WITH GOD

Psalm 23:1-6; 46:1-5; 90:1,2,12

In writing to the Ephesians, Paul exhorts them, among many other things, to be filled with the Spirit. He says in chapter 5 of that epistle, “speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and chanting with your heart to the Lord” (v.19). We have a book from which we have just sung that contains, as the title page tells us, ‘Hymns and Spiritual Songs’. Hymns, I suppose, are addressed to God; songs are more, perhaps, about Him; but I want to speak about a psalm, because in writing to the Corinthians, Paul says, “each of you has a psalm”, 1 Cor.14:26. It would seem as though things were getting out of hand at Corinth and the apostle was bringing in what was corrective so that there should be order in God’s house, but he anticipated that every one in the Christian company would have a psalm. I wonder, if we went round this room and along all the rows, whether everyone here has a psalm. A psalm speaks of personal experience with God in one who has been born of God, has turned to Him in repentance and has received the forgiveness of their sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. What a wealth is contained in all that, and it should result in a psalm that is peculiarly your own.

These psalms that I have read from were written by different people. We do not all have the same experiences. As we pass through life, some experiences are probably pretty common for most of us, but many are not. Some believers endure much suffering in their lives, others less so – difficulties in health, difficulties in domestic circumstances, difficulties in business relationships, perhaps financial difficulties, wondering how they are going to make ends meet. What piety and godliness has come to light in such circumstances as God has been sought and found in them. The remarkable thing is that the psalms that we have were written to be sung. They do not rhyme in English, but of course they were not written in English. They were written to be sung and they were sung, and I think that they will be sung in a day to come. But you think of the personal experiences of these individuals who wrote them going into the treasury of God. There are psalms that were written out of great sorrow, some written out of great joy, and there are the great penitent psalms, written by persons who had sinned, and all contribute to the treasury of God.

The first one I have read is by David. He sinned grievously, as we know. He stole another man’s wife and had her husband murdered: you could not think of anything graver than that. He thought that nobody had seen it or knew about it, but it says, “the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of Jehovah” (2 Sam.11:27), and it brought the government of God upon him in his life. But what you see in the book of Psalms is what that experience yielded. Those psalms of repentance – how much they yield in the knowledge of God! One psalmist says, “there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared”, Ps.130:4. In David having to do with God in repentance about his sin, and being restored in his relationship with God, it nevertheless put into his soul a moral substance in the fear of God that was not there before. The fear of God, the scripture tells us, “is the beginning of wisdom”, Ps.111:10. Never let us forget it, dear brethren. We appreciate the intimacy of the relationship into which God has brought us, and the circle where divine blessing is known, but let us ever be mindful of who God is, and that it is with God that we have to do (Heb.4:13). As the apostle says, “God is not mocked”, Gal.6:7.

Now this psalm that I have read is well known, and it is very attractive. I suspect most of us have seen it on the wall in believers’ houses, but is it just attractive words, or is what it describes known to us? As the scriptures show, David began life as a shepherd boy. He was the youngest, and it was his job to look after the sheep of the family, the wealth of the family. I wonder if we ever think about these things. Before we get into the depths and the fulness of the Scriptures, think about the literality of them. This was a young boy left out in the dark and the cold with sheep that were vulnerable. He tells us how they were attacked by a lion and a bear. I think that if I had been that shepherd boy, I would have run away, but he looked after the sheep and he delivered them from these attacks. From an early age in his history, David had courage, and I would have to say that I have not always shown courage. But the apostle says to Timothy, who was a timid young man, “God has not given us a spirit of cowardice”, 2 Tim.1:7. So if I am marked by cowardice, it is not something I have had from God. Courage is called for in this scene of testimony. Commitment to the truth calls for courage, and this man whose psalm I have read was destined to be one of the greatest kings of Israel. But you might say that he began his spiritual life with the consciousness that, just as he was shepherding those sheep and protecting them from danger, so God was shepherding him. “Jehovah is my shepherd”, he says.

The significance of that comes home to David; he says, “I shall not want”. If God was his shepherd, he would never ever be at a disadvantage. David speaks of being made to lie down in green pastures and led beside still waters. You see his shepherd’s knowledge coming out in that; the sheep needed to be moved to where there was good pasture and they needed to be near waters that could be appropriated, “still waters”. It would have been no good bringing them near the torrent Kishon, for example, where the prophets of Baal were slaughtered (1 Kings 18:40). The torrent Kishon would be of no benefit to sheep, but David speaks of being brought into this blessed area by God. He was conscious of that.

I wonder if each of us can say that “Jehovah is my shepherd”, whether we know that, whether we have proved it. The apostles speak of Jesus like that. Peter speaks of Him as “the chief shepherd”, 1 Pet.5:4. The Lord Himself spoke of Himself as the “good shepherd”, John 10:11,14. Those references are relative, the “good shepherd” as opposed to those who took the place of shepherding but who were not really concerned about the sheep. The title “chief shepherd” indicates the supremacy of the Lord Jesus over others, but He is also spoken of as “the great shepherd of the sheep”, Heb.13:20. That expression marks Him out in His own personal distinctiveness, not relative to anyone else. He is the great Shepherd of the sheep, the One who cares for every interest of God. He said to His Father, “those thou hast given me I have guarded, and not one of them has perished, save the son of perdition, that the scripture might be fulfilled”, John 17:12. Man was put in the garden of Eden to guard it, and we know that in those attractive circumstances Adam failed; but the Lord Jesus is the shield of His own. He guards them as divine property, and He is “the great shepherd of the sheep”. But it is a wonderful thing to know that He is my shepherd; that is, He takes a personal interest in each one. And David says, “He restoreth my soul”. What skill, what ability the Lord Jesus has to do that, to restore the souls of His own.

Then David moves from the area of privilege to speak about walking “through the valley of the shadow of death”. That is where we are; we are still here, walking through a scene in which everything in it is overshadowed by death. Not just the wicked things, but the things that are attractive, such as links of nature – all are in “the valley of the shadow of death”. This man knew what he was speaking about; for much of his life he never knew when death might strike. David was hunted like a partridge on the mountain (1 Sam.26:20). People betrayed him; Saul, in a jealous rage, suddenly tried to murder him more than once. Death appeared all around him. He knew about “the valley of the shadow of death”, and in the midst of all that he says, “I will fear no evil”. How wonderful to be morally superior to the scene through which we pass. Not aloof, not distant, not remote from our fellow men, but above the whole system of things around us that is passing. John writes, “the world is passing, and its lust” (1 John 2:17); it is all going. It is well to remember that. Employers make greater and greater demands, certainly much greater demands than they did when I was at work, but it is nothing new. Pharaoh demanded that the people of God made bricks without straw, and you will find that the business world will make greater and greater demands upon you; and it will come at the expense of your assembly life, it will come at the expense of your family life, and eventually you will be confronted with that simple word of the Lord that you cannot serve God and mammon (Matt.6:24). Paul spoke of God as the One “whose I am and whom I serve” (Acts 27:23); he knew that God was his Shepherd. Paul knew that if, in order to answer to his responsibilities, he did not take the financial advantage that was open to him, God would nevertheless come in for him, and that he would not want.

Then David speaks of these great blessings; he says, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies”. While we are here in this scene of opposition and in the time of Christ’s absence, what a blessed provision for us the Lord’s supper is, where the decision of the world that Jesus should be crucified is reversed, where there are those who gather to honour Him in the very scene where He was dishonoured and lifted up as an object of shame and ignominy. Then David says, “thou hast anointed my head with oil; my cup runneth over”. Again, the significance of that dawns on him as he looks to the future. He says, “Surely, goodness and loving-kindness shall follow me all the days of my life”. We do not know what the future holds, but David knew the God who holds the future, and in the knowledge of that, he was confident that whatever the circumstances might be, goodness and loving-kindness would follow him all the days of his life. No insurance policy could give you that, no offer of employment could secure it for you, but God had been proved in the circumstances of David’s life and he could face the future with calmness and assurance.

Now we come to Psalm 46, written by the sons of Korah, and they speak of God as a refuge and a strength and a help. I wonder if we know Him like that. Difficulties arise: where do I run for refuge when difficulties arise? Where is my resource? Do I run to people of like mind to myself? Do I seek refuge in man? These sons of Korah say, “God is our refuge and strength”. They knew what trouble was. If you go to Numbers 16, you can read about it, how Korah and his band were swallowed up alive. They went alive into Sheol for their rebellion; and that to me gives very great meaning and significance to verse 2; “Therefore will we not fear though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the heart of the seas”. You may say, that is poetic language; we can give the writer some poetic license. No, this was experience of soul; this is what had happened to Korah and his band. This song was written on Alamoth; if you follow that through, you will find that it is believed to be a reference to the voices of young women. I want to draw attention to that in passing, that this is a song of praise that was probably sung by young women. It must have been a very affecting thing to hear young voices singing this praise of God; “Therefore will we not fear though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the heart of the seas; Though the waters thereof roar and foam”. The writer is speaking about the build-up of trouble; as the hymn writer says,

‘When trouble, like a gloomy cloud,

Has gathered thick and thundered loud’ (Hymn 107)

It does not always bring out the best in us, does it? Sometimes we act under pressure as though we did not have a heavenly Father who cares about us. But these sons of Korah, who had come through the most bitter experience, knew something of these things that they spoke about. But then in speaking about them, their mind goes to something else, to “the city of God, the sanctuary of the habitations of the Most High”. Not waters roaring and foaming and shaking, but “a river the streams whereof make glad the city of God”. Our brother reminded us at the end of the reading of the importance of joy and victory, and this is found, I believe, through this confidence in God.

What do we know about it, dear brethren, amidst the sorrows that are felt? These sons of Korah had lost their family. Nothing is more felt than that; but they remained true. These psalms bring out that they remained true when their family departed. How easily we can be deflected by natural relationships. Is my judgment of things going to be affected? These persons must have felt deeply the loss of their family, but their refuge and strength was in God Himself. I suppose what I am speaking about is simple piety, “the mystery of piety” (1 Tim. 3:16), dependence on God – God sought and proved in circumstances. What it results in is the praise of God. So the sons of Korah speak of these streams that “make glad the city of God, the sanctuary …”. I just draw attention to that word “the sanctuary”. The presence of God requires a sanctuary. Moses anticipated, in that great song on the banks of the Red Sea (Exod.15), that God would not only bring Israel out, as He had done, but He would bring them in, and that He would plant them in the mountain of His inheritance. Moses goes on to say, “The place that thou, Jehovah, hast made thy dwelling, The Sanctuary, Lord, that thy hands have prepared” (v.17). He had not received anything from God at that point as to the tabernacle or the ark that was to be made, but he had a sense that if God was to be there, it would need to be a sanctuary. When God spoke to him about the ark and the tabernacle, the first thing He said was that “they shall make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them”, Exod.25:8.

I wonder if we desire, dear brethren, the presence of God and are prepared to maintain the conditions suitable to His presence in the sanctuary. Many of the difficulties that arise amongst us arise because of the devil’s efforts to intrude on that feature of the sanctuary. See how successful the enemy has been in bringing into what professes the name of Christ things that have no place there at all. When the Lord Jesus was here and He purged the temple, the disciples were reminded by what He did of that scripture, “the zeal of thy house hath devoured me”, Ps.69:9. There were sellers of doves and money changers in the temple, and there would no doubt be a very plausible explanation for these things being brought in there. They might have said, ‘Let us bring the doves in, because that will help the poor people’; it might all have seemed good natured, and then ‘The people might not have the right money, so let us have money changers there’. But despite all these plausible excuses, what was happening was that the character of a sanctuary for the Most High was rapidly disappearing. These persons had become accustomed to it, and when things are brought in that militate against the feature of a sanctuary and nothing is done about it, if there is a lack of zeal for God’s house that was seen in Christ, then eventually these things become accepted, as they were then. Paul says so tellingly in his epistle that “a little leaven leavens the whole lump”, 1 Cor.5:6. Eventually it ceases to be the dwelling-place of God at all; there is no room for the blessed God to dwell because of all the things of man that are cluttering up the place. But zeal for God, the God that I find and prove in my circumstances and in my life, would make me zealous for the sanctuary character of His dwelling-place. These psalmists speak of that. It is a remarkable word coming out of the mouths of the sons of Korah. Their father and relatives had rebelled, but they speak of “the sanctuary … of the Most High”.

I wanted in closing to refer to Moses. He is spoken of as “the man of God”, and his psalm is referred to as a prayer. It is remarkable that it should be a psalm because it is actually addressed in the first verse to God Himself. He says, “thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations”. There is something very exalted about this prayer of Moses, the man of God. This is not God being sought out in times of difficulty for what I can get from Him. We all begin there; we go in to God and we might want Him to look after us through the day, and generally make our life pleasant and supply all our needs. God goes along with that; the history of Jacob shows that. He tried to bargain with God as a young man; he said, ‘If You look after me and it all works out, then You will be my God’. That is not a very exalted level of communication with the blessed God. But God accepted it from him, and He held him to it too, but Jacob went on to greater things. He was able to speak of “the God that shepherded me all my life long to this day, the Angel that redeemed me from all evil”, Gen.48:15,16. What a history lay behind those utterances. What a knowledge of God had been formed in that prince of God, as Jacob became. But here you get what is mature in Moses, the man of God; the man who had led the people out of the land of Egypt, a wayward and rebellious people. He had cared for them; he had nursed them through the desert. You wonder how he sustained it, and in this psalm you find how he sustained it – God was his dwelling-place. In fact, the writer to the Hebrews says of him that Moses chose “to suffer affliction along with people of God”. When he had become great, he chose “rather to suffer affliction along with the people of God than to have the temporary pleasure of sin; esteeming the reproach of the Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, for he had respect to the recompense”, Heb.11:25,26.

I have often wondered what Moses’ recompense was. He was a man who could have been a prince in the house of Pharaoh, who could have lived a life of privilege in the world’s system, with an honoured place in society and every comfort in Pharaoh’s palace. Instead, when he was old enough to make a decision for himself, he chose to suffer affliction along with the people of God. They were slaves: they never looked less like the people of God in Egypt under the lash of the taskmasters, and they railed against Moses as he tried to help them. But something had been instilled in that man as to who these people were. His parents were Levites, both of them of the tribe of Levi, and I believe that they must have imparted to Moses from his youth something of who these people were. But the Spirit of God attributes to him that he accepted “the reproach of the Christ” – an extraordinary expression. This was long, long before Christ had been born, but Moses accepted “the reproach of the Christ”.

I think the Spirit of God identifies for us that feature, even before Christ came into view. It was seen supremely in Him; David could say prophetically, “the reproaches of them that reproach thee have fallen upon me” (Ps.69:9). Even before Christ came onto view, there was what the Spirit of God could identify in Moses, in that he made a choice. You might say, and the world would say, that it was a foolish choice. They would say, what a waste that Moses should give up a prominent position of power and prestige to lead a nomadic people through the wilderness. But light from God had illuminated his soul as to who these people were and what divine thoughts were connected with them. Moses found, amidst the ups and downs of his forty years’ journey through the wilderness, that God was his dwelling-place – not simply his source of supply or his comfort in distress, but he wanted the company of God and God wanted his company. God said to Moses at one stage, most affectingly, “Come up to me into the mountain, and be there”, Exod.24:12. You think of God saying that. How many men on the earth were there at that time with whom God could commune about the secrets of His own heart? “Come up to me into the mountain, and be there”; He wanted Moses’ company, and He showed him the pattern of the tabernacle. I do not want to go beyond what the scripture says, but I have wondered whether what God did was just showing Moses the boards, and the curtains, and the pots and pans that were to be made, or whether something was communicated to that faithful man of the spiritual magnificence of what that system was representing. I cannot take that too far, because the truth that the apostle Paul brought out was hidden in God in divine wisdom, but the intimacy of this man with God was such that instead of seeking God simply for help in his circumstances, he found something of the blessedness of living in intimacy with God Himself.

Moses says, “Before the mountains were brought forth, and thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from eternity to eternity thou art God”. What an expression that is! What a knowledge of God had been wrought in the soul of this man. You will remember that Mr Taylor Snr referred to God’s ‘dip down into time’ ¹. If we speak of eternity, we are speaking of things that are beyond us as mortals because eternity has no beginning or end, and we cannot compass that. But Moses says “from eternity”: he was looking back at the past and God was there, and he was looking ahead to the eternal ages. Paul opens it up for us; he says that there is going to be glory to God in the assembly, in a creature vessel, throughout “all generations of the age of ages”, Eph.3:21. When was that secured? It was secured through that dip down into time, it was secured through a divine Person, the Lord Jesus, coming into manhood, enduring sufferings that we could never fathom in order that the purposes of God might be secured on a basis of immutable righteousness. What things these are! Do they thrill your soul, dear hearer? God intends that they should, and that you might seek out His presence for its own sake, not simply because of what God can give. He can give, and He will give. He can do “far exceedingly above all which we ask or think” (Eph.3:20), and He will supply, as the apostle says, “all your need according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus”, Phil.4:19). God can give not just what we need but “according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus”. He can do all that, but what He desires is that we should seek His presence for its own sake – not for what He can give but for what He is.

May we be encouraged in it, dear brethren, for His name’s sake.

Grangemouth

16 March 2019

R.H. Brown