EXPERIENCE WITH GOD

Psalm 51: 1-6, 15-19; 139: 1-10, 14-18, 23, 24

There is evidently a connection between these two psalms, both in their nature and in the fact that they are both psalms of David, inspired, of course, one need not say, by the Holy Spirit. It is very touching that the Spirit Himself will identify Himself with our inward exercises, so that right expression, expression according to God, might be given to those exercises—a very affecting thing indeed as we think of it. But there is, I think, this difference between the two psalms. Psalm 51 has reference to David’s exercises resulting from a serious breakdown on his part, and it has in view, in the final result of those exercises, the promotion of the service of God and the securing of conditions necessary for the preservation of what is for God. Psalm 139, on the other hand, as far as I see, does not refer to any specific breakdown, but is rather the experience of one who is going on constantly with God, and it seems to lead to the psalmist being able to identify himself more than ever with the work of God.

I am sure both these things are of great importance to us. There is with all of us, at some time or other, breakdown that has to be faced with God. It may be serious and grave and public as in David’s case; it may not be quite of that character, but each of us knows what it is in his own experience to have to face breakdown with God. David’s exercises led to what he comes to in verse 6, that God will have truth in the inward parts, a most important thing for every one of us to face. It is not a question of outward rightness of behaviour; it is a question of the spring, truth in the inward parts. We all know what a serious breakdown it was in David’s case. It started with the fact that, when kings go forth, David remained in Jerusalem. He sent Joab with the host, but he himself remained in Jerusalem. That is to say, it started with the neglect to take his right part in exercises and conflicts that were current. Self-indulgence in seeking to have an easy time when others were facing conflict and exercise was the beginning of David’s downfall. Then he was tempted and fell. Then, alas, he sought to cover it—we all know the detail—how serious it was and how merciful God was to him! In the course of seeking to cover it, David sent for Urijah and Urijah was faithful and devoted. Urijah knew nothing of the history; he did not know why he was sent for, but he was faithful and devoted to God’s interests and therefore was not available for the very purpose that David evidently intended he should be used for. What a voice to David! It was God’s mercy to David presenting him with one before his very eyes who was not bent on self-indulgence, whose whole heart and interest were bound up with the testimony and its conflicts and the Ark. There was a voice to David in all this, but alas, he hardened himself in the presence of it, and, not being able to gain his way with Urijah, he commits a further sin, working and plotting to bring about Urijah’s death: His plot succeeded and Urijah was murdered. What a solemn history it is! How far we may get if we do not maintain truth in the inward parts! Truth is having everything in its proper moral relation. God is said to be the One who is true, not simply the true God in contrast to false gods, but that He is characteristically true, that is, He has everything in its right moral relation. God would have us continually exercised that there should be truth in the inward parts.

David comes to that. He does not so much enlarge on the particular sin or sins of which he was guilty. He was guilty of adultery, he was guilty in God’s estimation of murder. He says, “Deliver me from blood-guiltiness”. He was guilty of these things, but the crux of the whole matter is that God will have truth in the inward parts. That is to say, everything that we propose to do is to be examined in the light of God as to whether it is right in His sight. If he had been concerned as to truth in the inward parts he would never have remained in Jerusalem when kings go forth, when there was a call to take up conflict in connection with God’s interests. He would have known at once that the spring of his decision to remain in Jerusalem was self-indulgence, not the will of God. We have the Holy Spirit indwelling us, and thus we are far more responsible than David if we fail. But I believe the crux of the whole matter is truth in the inward parts. Then, after David had got his own way and Urijah was dead, David finding, alas, in Joab one prepared to collaborate in his terrible designs, he went on even then for some months keeping up appearances, until at last the child was born and Nathan comes to him and the sin is brought home to his conscience by the prophetic word, and this psalm is the result. He says, “I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is continually before me. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done what is evil in thy sight; that thou mayest be justified when thou speakest, be clear when thou judgest”. There is no thought at all of justifying himself. “Behold”, he says, “in iniquity was I brought forth, and in sin did my mother conceive me”. He has arrived at a sense of the sinfulness that marks him by nature. He is not bringing it forward as an excuse, a palliation for what he did, far from it, but he is arriving at the truth that he is sinful, which we can arrive at in even greater measure. Indeed, God would have us arrive at it, because as arriving at it we realise our only safety lies in abiding in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. But the crux of the matter and what he really arrives at is, “Thou wilt have truth in the inward parts”.

But now he says lower down—there is much in the psalm which could well be dwelt on profitably—“open my lips, and my mouth shall declare thy praise”. He had known what it was to have part in the praise of God, to have his lips open, but now for the moment his lips are sealed, and as one who has God before him he desires that God will open his lips. When one is truly repentant and self-judged, what one is as a result of God’s work can begin to assert itself. So he asks that his lips should be opened. He comes to it that nothing that is merely formal in the way of burnt-offerings will have any value in the sight of God. He says, “a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise”. And now having come to that, Zion and Jerusalem come into his mind. “Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion”. How solemn it is to think that every sin we commit, every breakdown we have, has its bearing on the assembly, not only on oneself individually, but it affects the whole assembly. If I am deprived of my liberty through breakdown on my part, God is robbed, the saints are robbed, the assembly is weakened. If I allow sin unjudged, the assembly is in danger of being corrupted. That is a solemn thing. We are all bound together, and any evil allowed is really an attack on the walls of Jerusalem. So he says, “Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion; build the walls of Jerusalem”. Zion in Scripture refers, in its application to us, to God’s thoughts concerning the assembly, and Jerusalem presents to us the actual answer to those thoughts, the measure in which they are answered to.

So he first takes account of Zion as God takes account of it, and then he says, “build the walls of Jerusalem”. It is the acknowledgment on his part, I suppose, that his serious sin had resulted in the walls of Jerusalem being weakened, an element of corruption had come in and could only be remedied by self- judgment on his part and on the part of any others who were similarly affected. The truth must be re-established in their souls, and only thus would the walls be rebuilt. Then he says, “Then shalt thou have sacrifices of righteousness, burnt-offering, and whole burnt-offering”. Now he can come to the reality of that which, when only formal, he had rejected in verse 16. Now sacrifices of burnt-offering can be mentioned and whole bullocks offered on God’s altar, but I repeat that the crux of the whole matter is, “thou wilt have truth in the inward parts”. If we are exercised as to that, realising that God looks at the heart and the motives, we shall be preserved from public breakdown.

Now in Psalm 139 it is not, as I see it, one who is exercised as to breakdown on his part and having to face things with God in that light, but rather one who is going on with God continually, and so again the psalm is searching in its character. He says, “Jehovah, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off”. How intimate is the knowledge that he has acquired of God! He has such a sense of having to do with God that it affects every detail of his life. He says, “Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine uprising”. If he sat down, God knew why he sat down; if he rose up, God knew why he rose up. “Thou understandest my thought afar off; Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways; for there is not yet a word on my tongue, but lo, O Jehovah, thou knowest it altogether”. Then he uses remarkable language in verse 7. “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? and whither flee from thy presence?” We can understand perhaps even better than David the answer to such words as that, because the Spirit of God has taken His abode in us, and we cannot get away from Him. David was made to feel he could not, but we much more so, because we have the Holy Spirit abiding in us. It is a solemn matter, an exercising matter, but a matter for which we can be more and more thankful, because our salvation lies in appreciating that the Spirit of God has abidingly taken His abode in us.

David realises that he could not get away from God, but now, almost suddenly, he turns to the thought of God’s work. “I will praise thee, for I am fearfully, wonderfully made. Marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well”. It is comforting to realise that in all our exercises day by day, not now exercises brought on us by our own failure, but exercises that arise in the ordinary course of our lives, going on with God day by day, while there may be much to be searched out, much brought to our notice that has to be judged, at the same time in it all God is carrying on a wonderful work. It is really the very thing David himself was taken up to express, that is, that one man, in Saul, had to be displaced and another man according to God’s pleasure brought in in his place. He had to face the reality of it, just as Jacob in the womb took hold of his brother’s heel, his spiritual instinct indicating that the first man must be displaced to make way for the second, but subsequently had to learn it in his own exercises. At the end of his course Jacob showed that he was in the gain of it, crossing his hands wittingly, committing himself to the second and passing over the first. He had come to it himself. All the exercises we go through, as a result of finding ourselves more and more searched by the Spirit of God, have in view that Christ should become more and more the object, the ideal of our hearts, as the Man in whom God alone can find pleasure, and along with that the displacement of the first man in ourselves. I know it is easy to state it and that we accept the truth, but I believe it is the line on which God is working.

There is a connection with Ephesians 4 in verse 15 of this Psalm. David says, “curiously wrought in the lower parts of the earth”, which reminds us of Ephesians 4 where it says, “But that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same who has also ascended up above all the heavens, that he might fill all things”. And that is something for us to keep our minds on, that there is not going to be room for anything that is not of Christ, and, in order to pave the way for that to be worked out now in our lives, He has been down to the lower parts of the earth, not only to death but to the grave, for the putting out of sight of the first man, of the man himself, which is the root of things. How good it is to come under the influence of the love of Christ that took Him that way that we might thus learn the necessity for the complete ending in death, and removal in burial, of the first man, and by the Spirit’s work come into practical accord with it!

So here the work of God comes before the psalmist’s soul, and it is good that we should have before our minds and souls the work God is carrying on now. It will be seen in full expression in the assembly. “Until we all arrive”, it is said, “at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, at the full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fulness of the Christ”. Are these just terms with us, or do we really consider that that is what God has before Him? Christ as Son of God is His great ideal in manhood, and His work in us is to bring us entirely into accord with that. I believe that is what this Psalm reaches.

So at the end the psalmist says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; prove me, and know my thoughts; And see if there be any grievous way in me”. He is conscious of the deceitfulness of his own heart, that he cannot trust himself, but he can trust God and rely on the work of God. And so he appeals to the Spirit of God to see if there be any grievous way in him and he says, “lead me in the way everlasting”.

I believe, if we can be encouraged to take up the exercises of David in these two psalms, it will help us greatly, and promote more and more the conditions needed for power and substance in the service of God, and also help us to apprehend the work of God and to identify ourselves with it, and put no obstacle in the way of what the Spirit of God will do with us!

May God help us in it for His Name’s sake.

LONDON

1956

From Words of Grace and Comfort, 1957

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