Psalms 30

Series 2. (Psalms 30:1-12; Psalms 31:1-24; Psalms 32:1-11; Psalms 33:1-22; Psalms 34:1-22.)The detailed Salvation. The second series is, like the former, of five psalms; which give us in various detail the salvation which is of God. Of course, it is that as realized by Israel; the Psalms never contemplating Christianity, or the blessing of a heavenly people. Their inheritance is in the land long assured them, and to which at last we are given to see their steps returning. The enemies who seek to keep them out of possession are, naturally therefore, human; although Satan’s power works in and through them. The full deliverance is by the Lord from heaven, when His feet stand upon the mount of Olives, and “Jehovah my God shall come, and all the saints with Thee” (Zechariah 14:4-5). They are blessed under Christ, but not with Him; and these blessings, however great, fall short of that of the “Church, which is Christ’s body,” in a way corresponding to this. Still their salvation is, of course, not merely temporal, but spiritual, and thus eternal. They are sinners saved by grace, needing as we the precious blood of Christ to cleanse them from sin and give them a righteous standing in the favor of God; although this in its security and complete blessedness the Psalms cannot free fully from the shadows cast upon it by the legal dispensation. Yet we are made to realize how much, after all, faith could enjoy, and how God could give assistance to faith, which would be realized in proportion to the simplicity of it. We shall find all through how much, even now, we are on common ground with the saints of old, and can enter even into their experiences; our own blessing being not defined by theirs on this account, but wonderfully greater. We must take care not to magnify this difference in such a way as to take from them what grace really made them to enjoy, or limit it to what may be argued from the legal nature of the dispensation simply, as if God had no secrets reserved for the ears of His people, which He had liberty to utter, or power to enable them to receive, even though the time were not come in which they could be openly made known. The blessings of this salvation are, in these five psalms following, detailed as, first (Psalms 30:1-12) in its being a salvation of God, having its roots in His own unchanging nature, and thus secure, whatever the circumstances may be. In the next psalm (Psalms 31:1-24) it is seen as deliverance from the enemy; which for Israel, as already said, is the human foe and not the spiritual, though the spiritual foe be behind this. In the third psalm of this series (Psalms 32:1-11) we have God as the sanctuary, the hiding-place of the soul, involving cleansing from sin and guidance for the way, personal and not merely providential. Fourthly (Psalms 33:1-22), this God of redemption is the God of the whole world also, all circumstances shaping themselves at His bidding therefore: so that finally, in the thirty-fourth psalm, one can bless Jehovah at all times, and His praise be continually in the mouth. This last is a governmental psalm, and fittingly an alphabetic one, though not quite perfect: the perfect praise will be that around the Throne.

Psalms 30:1-12

Whatever else changes, an unchanging God. A psalm (a song of dedication of the house) of David. For the title here we seem to have no explanation in the history of David; nor can we therefore decide from it whether the house" be that of Jehovah or David’s own. The Septuagint and many commentators accept the last of these applications as the true one; but the king himself does not appear in the psalm, and the “glory” spoken of in the closing verse, as well as the general reference to Israel’s last deliverance, speaks strongly for the former. The psalm has twelve verses, and its normal structure would be therefore 4 x 3; but in fact, the second section loses one of its verses to the third, which is thus increased. The reason of this I cannot clearly give.

1. The psalmist begins with a song of praise to Jehovah for His effectual help. He had lifted him up, and had not allowed his foes to rejoice over him. Moreover it was the answer of God to his cry of distress when smitten, and death was before him; nay, when all seemed over with him. He was already numbered with those going down to the pit, and only the God of resurrection could have brought him up. This we can easily understand as applying to the deliverance of the remnant of the Jews: it exactly describes it.

They are saved at the last moment of distress, when their enemies seem to have them in their grasp, and hope is gone. The whole language shows moreover that this condition of theirs is understood and acknowledged to be the effect of sin. The “pit,” though it refers to death, is death in the anger of God; and this is plainly stated in the fifth verse. Thus this deliverance is a true salvation. 2. This thanksgiving to Jehovah is followed by testimony for Him; as it will indeed be in the day which is here anticipated. Delivered Israel will be His great witnesses upon the earth; and their deliverance abundant blessing to the Gentiles. But as Judah’s deliverance precedes that of the ten tribes, who are afterwards joined to them, and is also out of more extreme distress, it is possible that the “godly ones” here addressed are these tribes of Israel. They are exhorted to sing psalms to Jehovah, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness. Holiness had to bring them low in order to raise them up; and they can now rejoice, and bid others rejoice, in that very dealing of God with them, so severe as it might seem, but so effectual, which had wrought in bringing them to repentance, and so to God. He had acted but in consistency with Himself; and this is always a necessity for blessing for any. Now the cloud had passed, the wrath was gone; after all, it was but for a moment indeed, and in His favor following there had come, in the fullest sense, “life.” This is stated here as a principle of widest application to all those who turn, in like manner, to Him. “Weeping may lodge with us at even-tide,” and a night of darkness and distress succeed; but God’s order is, first evening and then the morning; and for the morning is prepared, instead of sorrow, “a song of joy.” God works for eternity; man is the creature of time. Thus it is sure that man will misconceive Him as long as he clings to his own thoughts. Faith alone brings rest and deliverance; and brings it at once in proportion to its simplicity. Alas, how frequently is the soul even of the saint at issue with Him! and this is what of necessity brings darkness over it. When the conflict of will passes, the morning is at hand. Then we realize for what God works, that it is for His eternity; that night is but the womb of nature out of which the day is born, with its multitudinous voices and its golden fruits. 3. And now the heart of the subject is reached. It is perfectly simple, and yet how difficult to learn in full practical application, where it must be learned: “And I in my prosperity had said, I never shall be moved: Jehovah, in Thy favor Thou hadst made my mountain to stand strong.” How hard it is to have a mountain standing strong, and not put our confidence in it! And if the heart refers this to the favor of God, all the more may it be a snare, a false confidence which comes in between it and immediate confidence in the Lord. And how hard it is to resign this (real or supposed) “favor,” thus attached to what makes something of us! Privileges, circumstances, experiences, we cling to, only to find them fail us in the day of trial, -everything allowed to be shaken, that that which cannot be shaken may remain. When the eye is turned away to Christ, then in the joy of Him who bare our sins, brought up out of death, we can in a deeper way than Israel here say, “Thou hast brought my soul out of Sheol: Thou hast quickened me from among those going down to the pit.” As sinners, in a work done for sinners, we find an immovable foundation, and can no more say, “Thou hidest Thy face,” for that to the soul hid in Christ is gone through -He has endured it, -and God can no more hide His face from His Beloved, nor from those who in that Beloved find unchangeable acceptance. In this psalm, no doubt, all this is not made plain, nor could yet be; nor can we attribute such knowledge to the Jewish remnant until, brought through their deep distress, they have looked upon Him whom they have pierced, their rejected and crucified Messiah. But the prophets prophesied with a knowledge far beyond their own, and we can find in them, as Peter assures us. more than they could understand; while yet there could for them also be thus furnished principles and truths upon which faith could stay itself, whatever the dispensation. Here it is to Jehovah, Jehovah the Unchangeable, Himself, that His people are turned, even by the very hiding of His face. What good in a mountain if that Face were hidden? In fact, it is gone: it cannot abide, if He abide not. But must not He abide who is Jehovah the Abiding? and has He not known, all through, the sin, the folly, the vanity, of the creature?

Can it be pleasure to Him, or profit, or glory, to exact the just sentence of death from so frail a being? Will the dust -even though He has said, “Unto dust thou shalt return,” -really declare His truth? Will He be satisfied with the curse upon one who, be he what he may, clings to Him for blessing? Here it is not the death of Christ that is pleaded, as we see, while yet it is the death of Christ which justifies, and how much more than justifies, the plea that the Spirit of God here puts into the heart of the suppliant. Can He desire man’s death, who has given up His Son to death to redeem him? Yet God has found thus a way of making death itself a wonderful display, not of His truth simply, but of the love which is His Nature. He has got thus a ground upon which He can show and justify unchanging grace towards one who finds in his very sins his title to the Saviour of sinners. Thus God manifests how safe the plea is, that rests upon what is in Himself. For Israel the end will fully show this; to us it is already fully shown. Would then that for every Christian, “my mountain” were no more the confidence, but Christ the unclouded confidence of the soul! that “Thou hiddest Thy face” were referred wholly to that one darkness which in its endurance has rent the veil of the sanctuary for us, and set God in the light for evermore! 4. Now comes at last the experience which shows that the plea is good. Faith is not to be made to conform to experience; for we cannot be trusted thus to read experience right, and God in Christ transcends all possible experience: but experience will at last surely approve faith; and so it is in this case. The cry for grace and help to Jehovah is answered at last by that which turns mourning into dancing, takes off the sackcloth garment, and girds the loins for glad activity in praise. The expression, “that glory may psalm to Thee,” is not to be reduced to the commonplace of most expositors: another psalmist has declared that “surely His salvation is nigh them that fear Him, that glory may dwell in our land” (Psalms 85:9). This is the display of God Himself in the midst of Israel, in the very time to which we have now reached. This will bear blessed witness to what He is, waking up all nature in accompaniment of praise. This is what glory psalming to Him may well mean. The whole land -the whole earth in measure -responds in harmony, as an instrument to the skilled fingers of the player. Alas, it has found none hitherto to bring out its dormant capacities. Now it awakes, to be silent no more. We can understand then how this psalm is “for the dedication of the house,” -the sanctuary which the end of Daniel’s seventy weeks will see anointed to Jehovah. The end of salvation is that God and man may be at last together.