Psalms 40

Section 3. (Psalms 40:1-17; Psalms 41:1-13.)The manifestation of the heart of Christ, and the hearts of men. The first book closes with two psalms which are in emphatic contrast with one another; the second containing in itself also a contrast of very significant character, a most fitting close to those counsels of God as to Christ which the first book has so largely for its theme. Such contrasts, when really, as in the present case, complementary to one another, are contained in all competent witness, and necessary to it; and the two psalms here become thus an inspired nota bene, -a moral to which our attention is called, and worthy of the deepest possible consideration. As a third section of the third subdivision of the book, these psalms lead us into the holy of holies, -the sanctuary of the divine thought. And in the fortieth psalm it surely is so. We have here the heart of Christ laid bare to us, the ark of the covenant opened, and the foundations of the throne of God among men, as a veritable “mercy-seat,” discovered. “Thy law,” says the One coming forward to take up His predestined path of suffering to maintain it, -“Thy law is within my heart.” Thus the meaning of sacrifice becomes apparent also, just where Israel’s shadows fade away; that which God could have no delight in being replaced by that which is now His complete satisfaction, -which has in it therefore the savor of eternal rest and the assurance of perfect blessing. As the twenty-second psalm is that of the sin-offering, as we have seen, and the sixty-ninth, as we shall see, if the Lord will, hereafter, is that of the trespass-offering, so here we have plainly the burnt-offering, -that which, tried fully by the fire of divine holiness, has nothing in it but sweet savor, and all goes up to God therefore as such. The number of the psalm, as that of perfect trial, may have to do with this, even though it is but seldom that in the whole series of the Psalms, the separate numbers shine out as this does. They may yet do so, if the Lord give competency to interpret the higher arithmetic involved. We shall not, however, prophesy as to this, but simply call attention to its suitability in this case. The forty-first psalm, as already said, is in entire contrast with the preceding one. Here the heart of man is opened to us indeed, but it is not that of the perfect Man, but of men, either conscious of their need, and turning to Him whose grace alone can meet it, or else hardened and ignorant, and misinterpreting what grace has done. The perfect Man is, however, in this psalm also, but in a guise which to unbelief is sure to be a stumbling-block, -a guise which faith alone can penetrate. And it is not an arbitrary decree which has made it so: it is a necessary result of man’s false judgment of himself. Repentance and faith go necessarily together: only the lost soul needs and finds the Saviour of the lost.

Psalms 40:1-17

The one obedience by which many are made righteous. To the chief musician: a psalm of David. The fortieth psalm has plainly for its theme that one perfect obedience of the Man, Christ Jesus, which sets aside and replaces all the sacrifices of the law, -is therefore that in which the believer finds acceptance before God, the obedience whereby many are made righteous. And this, though essentially what all offerings speak, is what the burnt-offering explicitly brings before us. The sin-offering shows the place of distance and wrath from God necessitated by the holiness of God, if atonement is to be wrought by it. The trespass-offering presents the thought of restitution, the amends made by it to the government of God. The peace-offering dwells upon the effect, the breach repaired, peace made, communion with God enjoyed. But the burnt-offering alone exhibits the voluntariness of the offering, the perfection of the sacrifice in its inner reality, the full trial according to divine holiness, the Offerer being in view as well as the offering, and the sweet savor resulting. It is thus the offering which fulfills the purpose of the altar, and gives it its character as the “altar of burnt-offering,” being indeed that which goes up to God continually upon it.

1. The psalm divides into two parts, the first of which gives us the blessed obedience itself; the second, the contrasted consequences for friends and enemies: the world being thus indeed divided necessarily by the reception or rejection of that which in its own intent is peace to all. This is seen also in the psalm that follows, as already noted, but in a different manner, as will be realized on taking them up. (a) The first section gives us, according to what we have seen to be so commonly the manner in the Psalms, the deliverance out of the sorrows which the rest of the psalm then takes up and describes. Jehovah’s faithfulness and sufficiency are here the theme: manifested in answer to the patient endurance of One who has been in the very “pit of destruction,” but to be delivered out of it necessarily by this very faithfulness. He leaves his case wholly in Jehovah’s hands. All is to be determined by Him, and thus effectually and forever. Self-deliverance is indeed impossible for any beside Himself, in this place into which He has come. The “miry clay” would prevent any effort of this kind being effectual. But this patient Sufferer meditates no escape. The deliverance being of God, will be for the bringing of many to the blessedness of confidence in Jehovah, and to delight in His wondrous ways. “We believe,” says the apostle, “on Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead: who was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification” (Romans 4:24-25). This resurrection of Christ identifies God with this suffering Saviour, and bears witness to the salvation as complete and accepted. Where those blessed feet have found the “rock,” the feet of every poor sinner may find it now.

His resurrection is the clearing from guilt of all those whose sins He bore, and has borne away. He is in heaven, all the shadow passed from His blessed face, and the glory of God shining there instead. What a “gospel” is this “glory of Christ”* for one who apprehends its meaning!
And thus the song of the Risen One is truly a “new song” begun: the song of accomplished redemption, -of God able to tell out all His heart, and having told it out, awaking the eternal echoes with His praise, “many shall see it and fear, and put their trust in Jehovah.” Now, how blessed is the man that does so! And how blessed will be his portion in those dark days of prophecy which the Psalms continually look on to, when “the proud and those who turn aside to lies” will be found on every side! the days of Antichrist, “the liar” (1 John 2:22), and of the “strong delusion” to be sent on those who “believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2:11-12). This section ends with the joyful ascription to God of wondrous works, and gracious “thoughts to usward,” quite beyond utterance. It reminds us of John’s similar declaration as to the works of Christ, which, “were they all written every one, even the world would not contain the books that should be written.” Suitable, indeed, to awaken such thoughts, that interposition in behalf of men which both the psalmist and the evangelist have before them. It is the theme of eternity, and time is all too narrow for it. (b) We now go back to see the path that led into these depths, and the principle which carried Him on and sustained Him in it to the end. We find it is a path of service and testimony to God, which reminds us of the characteristic bullock of the burnt-offering. The ox we know to be the type of the patient laborer (1 Corinthians 9:9-10). And here first we have that reference to the sacrificial offerings, the true meaning of which is so perfectly in contrast with that given it by so many of the blind critics of the day, who see in it the disclaiming of the divine institution of sacrifice in Israel. Leave out Christ indeed out of the passage, -make it simply David, or some nameless Maccabean writer, or any one else you please, -then the consequences of this unbelief will naturally follow, and darkness result from leaving out the light. But we may well take the apostle’s application, with the consistent unity which the whole psalm gains by it, as a sufficient justification for the omission of all the reasoning on that side.

It is true that the One personated by the psalmist here does represent Jehovah as having no delight in “sacrifice and offering”; but it is because He has in view, not the fragmentary and spotted obedience of any ordinary man, but the glorious Antitype of these sacrifices, who could say in a sense no other could, “ears hast Thou digged for Me,” and anticipate thus the time when “burnt-offering and sin-offering” would be no more required. To put the past for the future is the common style of Old Testament prophecy; and the preceding “ears hast Thou digged for Me” is of course as much a past of this kind as is that which follows it. The apostle accepts the reading (or interpretation) of the Septuagint, “A body hast Thou prepared Me,” as at least the fair equivalent of the Hebrew here. The “ears digged” are to hear the divine Word; the “body prepared” is to do service with. In either case it is the perfect humanity that is before us of One in whom was no taint of evil, and no consequence of sin inherent. The reference in the Hebrew seems not to be to the bored ear of perpetual service, as in Exodus 21:1-36 although it is Christ that is typified there, surely, and the line of truth is here so remarkably akin. But the expression is not the same in this case, and we have the plural and not the singular, while “a body hast Thou prepared Me” could not be derived from, or given as the rendering of, such an expression as this. It is generally agreed therefore that “ears hast Thou digged for Me” speaks in fact of creative gift.

And yet it is surely true that this perfect humanity, this body prepared, is in fact the sign of a service which is not taken to be given up again. Man the Lord is still; and Man He will ever be. And this truth conveys to our hearts the precious assurance of His desire to be near us, with us, and to serve us still. Thus this difference seems after all to be scarcely in result a difference. The ears are digged, the body is prepared: He then presents Himself for the accomplishment of the divine purpose, according to all that Scripture had foreshown of Him. The point of time -“then said I” -can only be, as the context shows, after manhood has been assumed. The words spoken also show this: not, as in the common version, “Lo, I come,” but, as in the revised, “Lo, I am come.”* He is already in the world, in the scene in which the purpose of God is to be fulfilled by Him, and signifies thus that He takes up His mission. The words that follow do not, I believe, refer to the book of divine counsels for eternity, (counsels which, however, are sufficiently declared by them,) but to the volume of inspiration which He opens for us: “in the volume of the book,” He says, “it is written of ME.” That is, “This very institution of sacrifice, in which, in the mere ceremonial fulfillment of it, Thou couldst have no delight, -this is written of Me: I am the One to whom it looked forward; my work is its true fulfillment.”
This surely completes the thought as to the insufficiency, and now the abrogation, of these legal sacrifices, while it puts honor upon them by showing their divine end. A most important statement it is, and from lips so manifestly inspired of God, that this law of sacrifice was written with regard to Christ! And this links with the next verse as plainly: “I delight to do Thy pleasure, My God: yea, Thy law is within My heart.” No doubt, this cannot be confined to the law of sacrifice, and yet it shows, as connected with what has gone before, what in fact the will of God which He came to do has specially in contemplation here: as the apostle applies it, “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10). How this declares the way in which the Lord yielded Himself to the will of God as witnessed in Scripture! showing us at once the Author of those ritual observances held by many now in such dishonor, while at the same time giving them their true significance and power. It is the same glorious Person of whom we read in the gospels, saying to His disciples, “With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer.” and then, “after they had sung a hymn,” going forth to that suffering by which the passover was to be fulfilled. His public testimony corresponded with this inmost desire of His heart. Spite of the pressure of evil, righteousness in Him uttered itself aloud, and the world hated Him because He bare testimony of it that its deeds were evil. “I have preached righteousness,” He says, “in the great congregation: lo, I have not withheld my lips, Jehovah, Thou knowest.” But most of all, it was to God He bare witness. “I have not hid Thy righteousness within my heart I have declared Thy faithfulness and Thy salvation: I have not hid Thy righteousness and Thy truth from the great congregation.” Such was He then for whom man decreed as His reward the cross; and for whom God’s good pleasure meant also the cross! God and man strangely at one in this, with yet most opposite thoughts and purposes; while He, with perfect consciousness of it all, moved onward toward the place which Satan alone -and he, with the knowledge which men had not, of His personal glory -would have forbidden Him! (c) Behold Him then in the “pit of destruction”! there where innumerable evils press upon Him, and that as the righteous wrath of God upon iniquities as innumerable! He is suffering for that which, as He apprehends it, lying with its hideous shadow over Him, its awful weight pressing Him down, makes His heart fail, and His eyes unable to look up. These iniquities He confesses as His own, while yet He can appeal, not only to God’s “loving-kindness,” but to His “truth,” to deliver Him. We can understand this of the Sin-bearer alone. The two verses that come together in this section of the psalm are both needful in order to explain the character of what is here. It is One of whom indeed the Levitical law of sacrifice was written; whose perfect obedience in the sinner’s place sets it aside by complete and glorious fulfillment once for all.

The salvation of which He had testified is here wrought out; God glorified, sin utterly condemned, in that which in the place of utter abandonment brings in the testimony to His righteousness and love. Righteousness and love can therefore come in in answer, and in behalf of those for whom this sacrifice is offered. 2. The second part of the psalm presents the contrasted consequences of this glorious work, according as men accept or are found in hostility towards it. The repetition of this part, with very slight changes, as an independent psalm (Psalms 70:1-5), will be better considered when we shall have reached it; but it was to be expected that the fact of this repetition should awaken conjecture, as it has done. But all is so perfectly in place, that there is not the least need to concern ourselves about it. There it follows the trespass-offering psalm, as here it forms the last part of the psalm of burnt-offering, -occupying thus an analogous place in regard to the corresponding view of the Lord’s work, and answering to the last ten verses of the sin-offering psalm (the twenty-second). We have here first the cry to Jehovah, the Unchangeable, the appeal being to His faithfulness as such, as we have seen before. Thereupon the Speaker realizes the confusion of His enemies, and sees the utter shame of those that mock at Him. On the contrary, those that seek God shall be joyful in Him, and those that love His salvation glorify His Name. He is poor and needy, yet the Lord hath regard to Him; and He concludes with a confident appeal for speedy deliverance.