Psalms 69

Psalms 69:1

Psalm 69: Save Me, O God!Our blessed Redeemer’s sufferings and death were, for Him, an immersion in the ocean of God’s wrath. He Himself spoke of His approaching passion as a baptism: I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how distressed I am till it is accomplished! (Luk_12:50). And in Psa_42:7 we hear Him crying: Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls; All Your waves and billows have gone over me. In His death of bitterest woe, He plumbed the depths of God’s judgment against our sin. 69:1-3 Here in Psalms 69 we are privileged to hear the deepest exercises of His holy soul as He sinks into death. The waters have come up to His neck and are about to engulf Him completely. There is nothing to support Himnothing but deep mire under His feet. Now the floods are dashing over His head. The waters are very deepdeeper than any of the ransomed will ever know. In a real sense God has gathered all the waters together in one placeCalvaryand the Son of His love is enduring that mighty ocean of judgment in order to pay the penalty for our sins. Above the trackless waste of water reverberates His continuous urgent appeal, “Save me, O God!” It seems as if He has been pleading for an eternity. His throat is hoarse and parchedworn out with His crying. His eyes are swollen shut, ceaselessly scanning the horizon for some sight of help from God. But no help is near. 69:4 The angry mob is milling before the cross, a seething collage of venom, hatred, bitterness and cruelty. What a scene! The Creator and Sustainer of the universe is hanging on a criminal’s cross. His guilty murderers are gathered before Him. Who are they? They are men and women who owe their very breath to Him, yet they hate Him without a cause. They are out to destroy Him; they attack Him with lies. Why? What hath my Lord done? What makes this rage and spite? He made the lame to run, He gave the blind their sight. Sweet injuries! Yet they at these Themselves displease, And ‘gainst Him rise. Samuel CrossmanNow the poignant sentence crosses the Savior’s lips: “What I did not steal, I still must restore.” Through man’s sin, God was robbed of service, worship, obedience, and glory, and man himself was robbed of life, peace, gladness and fellowship with God. In a very real sense Christ came to restore what He did not steal. Aside He threw His most divine array, And veiled His Godhead in a robe of clay And in that garb didst wondrous love display, Restoring what He never took away. Author unknownIn this respect He reminds us of the trespass offering (Lev. 5). The prominent feature of this offering was that restitution had to be made for any loss that the offerer had caused, and an additional fifth part had to be added. As our trespass offering, the Lord Jesus not only restored what had been stolen through man’s sin, but He added more. For God has received more glory through the finished work of Christ than if sin had never entered. Through sin He lost creatures; through grace He gained sons. And we are better off in Christ than we ever could have been in unfallen Adam. In Him the sons of Adam boast More blessings than their father lost. 69:5 We must understand verse 5 as referring to our sins which Jesus voluntarily took upon Himself. He had no folly or wrongs, but “He took our sins and our sorrows, and made them His very own.” It was wonderful grace that He would identify Himself so closely with us that He could speak of our sins as His sins. 69:6 Then a fear casts a shadow across His holy mind. He fears that some earnest believers might be stumbled by the fact that His prayers to God go unanswered. He prays that it may not happenthat no one who hopes in God might be ashamed because of what was happening to Him, and that no one who seeks the God of Israel might be brought to dishonor through His humiliation and abandonment. 69:7, 8 It was, after all, because of His obedience to the Father’s will that He was bearing reproach. It was His delight in pleasing God that allowed men to cover His face with unmentionable shame and spitting. Part of the cost of obedience was the sorrow of alienation from His own mother’s children: His own half-brothers looked upon Him as being out of His mind. 69:9 The Lord Jesus was consumed with a zeal for His Father’s house. Whenever He heard men speak insultingly about God, He took it as a personal insult. On that day in Jerusalem when He drove the money changers from the temple courts, His disciples remembered that it was written of Him here in Psalms 69, “Zeal for Your house has eaten me up” (Joh_2:17). 69:10-12 Nothing that He ever did as a Perfect Man here on earth seemed to please His critics. If He humbled His soul with fasting, they found fault with Himperhaps suggesting, for instance, that He was only trying to appear pious. When He was plunged in the deepest mourning, He became a byword to them instead of an object of sympathy. In all strata of society, He was spoken againstfrom the rulers who sat at the gate of the city to the drunkards in the local taverns, bawling their coarse songs of derision. This is indeed a strange thingthe Lord of life and glory has come into the world and He is the song of the drunkards!69:13-18 And so once again He retreats into God, His only resource. What fervency, what importunity there is in His prayer!

He storms the bastions of heaven with successive pleas for help. But even then He reserves to God the right to answer at an acceptable time. As He sinks into the mire, He implores God to rescue Him with His faithful help, to deliver Him from His enemies, and to save Him out of the deep waters, . . . the floodwater and the pit. In His deep extremity, He bases His pleas on God’s lovingkindness and His abundant mercies. His petitions are short and specific. Hear me, . . . turn to me, . . . do not hide from me, draw near to me, redeem me, and deliver me. “Deliver me because of my enemies” doubtless means “lest they gloat over my unalleviated distress.” 69:19, 20 That mention of His enemies recalls all that He has suffered at the hands of men. His pathway through life was strewn with reproach, shame and dishonor. From the time of His infancy, He was pursued by adversaries: God knew how numerous they were. His heart was broken by insultsthat heart that desires only good for the sons of men. The grief and heaviness of it all plunged Him into despair. There was no one who took pity on Him in His sorrow and suffering. He looked in vain for comforters. Even His disciples forsook Him and fled. He was all alone.69:21 Then in another of those startling prophecies spoken by David but fulfilled only in Jesus, we read: They also gave me gall for my food, And for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.The fulfillment is found in Mat_27:34, Mat_27:48 : They gave Him sour wine mingled with gall to drink. But when He had tasted it, He would not drink. . . . Immediately one of them ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and gave it to Him to drink. Gall was a bitter and perhaps poisonous substance which in small quantity might have acted as a sedative. The Lord would not take it because He must suffer as our Substitute in full consciousness. The vinegar was a sour wine which might have accentuated His thirst rather than alleviating it. 69:22 The tone of the Psalm changes abruptly at verse 22, and for the next seven verses we hear the dying Savior calling on God to punish the nation which condemned Him to die. At first this seems surprising when we remember that the Lord Jesus also prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do” (Luk_23:34). But actually there is no conflict between the two prayers. Forgiveness was available if they would have repented. But, in the absence of any change of heart, there was nothing left but the judgment described here. It is important to see that these verses apply particularly to the nation of Israel. Paul applies verses 22 and 23 to Israel in Rom_11:9-10. Also the mention of “their tents,” signifying encampment (v. 25), is a distinctly Jewish allusion. The verses predict the judgments which would come upon the race of people who had rejected their Messiah and brought about His execution. Their table would become a snare. The table speaks of the sum total of the privileges which were conferred on Israel as God’s chosen, earthly people. Instead of being a blessing, these privileges would determine the measure of their condemnation. When they experience well-being (peace, Heb. she3lf4m), it would become a trap. Tribulation would spring forth just as the people think that all is well. 69:23 Their eyes would be darkened, so that they would not be able to see. This refers to the judicial blindness which has actually come on Israel nationally (2Co_3:14). Because they rejected the Light, they have been denied the Light. Their loins would shake continually. Dispersed among the nations, they would find no rest for the sole of their feet, but the Lord would give them “a trembling heart, failing eyes, and anguish of soul” (Deu_28:65). 69:24 God’s indignation would be poured out upon them and His wrathful anger would overtake them. We remember with deep, deep sorrow how this has been fulfilled in the awful anti-semitic pogroms, the concentration camps, the gas chambers and the ovens. Though these atrocities were perpetrated by wicked men, there can be no doubt that they were permitted by God to descend upon the people who said, “His blood be on us and on our children” (Mat_27:25). 69:25 Their habitation would become desolate and no one would dwell in their tents. Here we are reminded of the Messiah’s words in Mat_23:38, “See! Your house is left to you desolate.” The words were amply fulfilled in A.D. 70 when Titus and the Roman army sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. 69:26 If the punishment seems severe, think of the crime that provoked it. For they persecute him whom You have struck, And talk of the grief of those You have wounded.In the parable of the vineyard, the tenants are quoted as saying concerning the son of the householder, “This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance” (Mat_21:38). They knew He was the Son, and they killed Him nonetheless. The latter part of verse 26 described those followers of the Messiah who would be martyred. 69:27, 28 In view of this, there is no need to apologize for the severity of the Savior’s words: Add iniquity to their iniquity, And let them not come into Your righteousness. Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, And not be written with the righteous.And yet we should not forget that even after the crucifixion of God’s Son, the Spirit of God still pleaded with the nation of Israel to repent and to turn to Jesus as the Messiah. All through the period of the Acts, you hear the heartbeat of God as He yearns over the nation He loves and tenderly invites to accept His mercy and grace. Even today the gospel goes out to the Jewish people as to the Gentiles. And the only ones who ever have to suffer the judgments described in verses 22-28 are those who deliberately choose that fate by rejecting the Christ of God. 69:29 Now there is a final word from the dying sinner’s Friend. Afflicted and in indescribable pain, He asks that the salvation of God might set Him securely on high. And that is exactly what happened. God raised Him from the dead on the third day and set Him at His own right hand, a Prince and a Savior. His sufferings for sin are over forever. And we are glad! Never more shall God Jehovah Smite the Shepherd with the sword; N’er again shall cruel sinners Set at nought our glorious Lord. Robert C. ChapmanAnd now we sing: The storm that bowed Thy blessed Head Is hushed forever now, And rest divine is ours instead, Whilst glory crowns Thy brow. H. Rossier69:30-33 The speaker in the final seven verses is the risen Redeemer. First He vows to extol God for delivering Him from death and the grave. He will praise the name of God with a song and will magnify Him with thanksgiving. This will mean far more to the LORD than the most costly sacrifices. And oppressed people everywhere will take heart when they realize that just as the LORD heard the Savior’s prayers and delivered Him, so He will hear the needy and free the prisoners who call on Him. 69:34-36 And what about the nation of Israel? The last three verses predict a bright tomorrow. Though set aside temporarily, Israel will be restored to the place of blessing. When they look on Him whom they pierced and mourn for Him as one mourns for an only son, when they say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord,” God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah. No longer dispersed among the nations, His servants shall dwell in the land, and their children shall possess it. This looks forward, of course, to the Millennium when the Lord Jesus will reign as Messiah-King, and Israel will dwell securely in the land.