Psalms 41

Psalms 41:1-13

The cross as seen by faith and by unbelief. To the chief musician: a psalm of David. The first book closes now with the double view of the Cross; as seen by faith or by unbelief; with the occasion and the true ground of the latter. The work is accepted of God, who raises up the Worker, and sets Him before His face forever, while faith finds in it that which brings help and deliverance in every kind of trial and evil. The book ends with the ascription of praise; as the numerical structure indicates; from all the earth. The psalm has three parts essentially; the fourth being but the praise with which all ends. The first part gives us the blessedness of the knowledge of that Poor Man; whose poverty makes many rich. Only with such an application can we see the true significance of this blessedness. To make it the recompense of mere benevolence; as is the common thought; would be not merely unevangelic, but render the body of the psalm wholly unintelligible. The Lord’s own application of the ninth verse to Judas (John 13:18) would seem almost; at first sight; to necessitate that of the Speaker to Christ Himself. But the fourth verse; on the other hand; seems just as plainly to forbid this.

How could He say, as the psalmist does, “Heal my soul; for I have sinned against Thee”? But the subject of the psalm, as even the first verse shows; implies a mystery. There is something which needs an understanding heart, and that something concerns in some way the “poor man;” to whom we may then naturally expect our attention to be directed. Faith penetrates the mystery, and finds unspeakable blessing. Unbelief reads it in quite another way, and its recompense is in correspondence with this; an opposite one. This word “poor;” although a possible rendering of the Hebrew; is not the only one possible; nor (I believe) its significance in this case. The meaning of the original is “swinging, waving to and fro;” hence “wavering; weak, exhausted,” and thus may be used as synonymous with “poor;” but this weakness may; of course; be produced in a very different way, -as by injury or by sickness; and here the enigma of the psalm begins. “Weakened” the Sufferer is; but from what cause? Look on to the fourth verse, and his own words seem to make it still more equivocal: “I said; Jehovah, be favorable unto me: heal my soul; for I have sinned against Thee.” Indeed, this seems more than equivocal: healing must; no doubt, be as needful in the case of “bruising” as of disease; but how explain of the Sinless One; “I have sinned against Thee”? Strong as the expression is; even this is not decisive; and; if we cannot easily accept it as suitable from the lips of the Substitute for sinners; Bishop Horsley has well reminded us that the same word exactly is used by Judah; in the book of Genesis; where we must unquestionably render it; as the common version does, “bear the blame” or “sin” (Genesis 44:32 : chatathi lo.). The words; then; may be equivocal, and designedly so; and yet all the more suit the application to the Lord here. For here is just the mystery which faith is called to penetrate. Granted that this suffering implies sin, and is owned to do so; yet is it “in;” or only “on,” the One who suffers? Think of the darkness on the Cross; and the awful cry that God had forsaken Him; -the seeming justification of the accusations of His enemies! How natural to the heart; ignorant of its need; to say; “A thing of Belial cleaves to him,” which the common version renders; “an evil disease”: unbelief so interpreting this “heal my soul”; while faith; adoring, sees the atoning sacrifice! Thus; then; the meaning of the psalm emerges; completely in accordance with its connection with the preceding one, and its place at the conclusion of the book. It is the moral conclusion: unbelief the result of hostility in heart to Him who has in the very revelation of God to man; revealed him to himself. Thus “Me the world hateth;” He says; “because I bear witness of it; that its deeds are evil.” Unbelief is the issue of unrepentance; and fatally misinterprets all the divine ways. Grace is an offense to it; the humiliation of Christ a stumbling-stone; the cross an inconceivable requirement on God’s part: the whole mystery of “God manifest in flesh” is utterly rejected.

1. “He weakened my strength in my journey,” says the Sufferer of the 102nd psalm; “He shortened my days.” Yet this is He who of old laid the foundations of the earth; and the heavens are the work of His hands. They, therefore; may pass, but He remaineth (comp. Hebrews 1:10-12). We can realize; therefore; the happiness of the man who understandeth as to the Weakened One. It is the clear sight of faith which discerns the glory of Christ under the veil of His sufferings: therefore “in the evil day Jehovah will deliver him.” Whatever the character of the evil, grace will manifest its sufficiency. Enemies; though there may be many in a hostile world; cannot prevail against him: “Jehovah will preserve him, and keep him alive; and Thou wilt not give him up to the will of his enemies.” Be the attack from within, and upon the forces of life, “Jehovah will sustain him on the bed of languishing: Thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness.”
2. These, then, are blessings attendant upon faith; though in their character as here given; they have the external aspect so marked in the Old Testament. The psalm, then -though the Speaker may be the same -takes voice as the utterance evidently of the Weakened One Himself, -faith’s mysterious object. And here is the text with all its mystery, upon which unbelief now comments after its own manner: “I said, Jehovah, be favorable to me: heal my soul, for I have sinned [or, borne sin] toward Thee.” There is the mystery: “sinned,” “borne sin,” -which is it? And this is that which the heart-stricken cry upon the cross involves. Even now, multitudes of even true believers have never realized its true meaning.

Was that forsaking simply His being given up to death? was that the unequaled sorrow, -unequaled only because of the glory of Him who endured it? Here that very glory which faith discerns in Him, seems as if it had blinded it to the depths into which He must descend. In the darkness over the cross at mid-day, they see not the outward expression of the Light of light withdrawn, but nature’s sympathy with the dying Saviour. They talk of “equivalent penalty”, nay, of “substitute for penalty,” and of His death as but the “close of His life-work.” From this descent has been made through every possible phase of unbelief to the complete denial of atonement, in any true sense of the word. But we will not follow this now: look back only at the sin-offering (Leviticus 4:1-35; Leviticus 5:1-13), and see how great may be the “poverty” of apprehension, to which God has been pleased yet to come down, because in the Christ that faith confesses there is a divine sufficiency, where the apprehension of the work itself is yet all-insufficient. But we turn to look back at the awful enmity of his maddened adversaries. “Mine enemies speak evil of me: When will he die, and his name perish?” True it is, they are strangers to His glorious Name, or they could not ask such a question. As the apostle says, “Whom none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8). Of course: they would not have dared. None the less had they seen in Christ the image of God, and seen it to hate it only. He who hates goodness hates of necessity the God of all goodness, and yet may not know that it is God he hates. Thus Christ in the world tested the world, and “the world knew Him not” (John 1:10); and yet “light had come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19).

Thus, in either way, the story may be truly told, and in either way be the same story: for evil knows not good, -cannot fathom it, or believe in it; “the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not” (John 1:5). Faith in the light is only coincident with a new birth -a new nature. In the next verse the hypocrisy that links itself with this real enmity is manifest: “And if he come to see me, he speaketh deceit: his heart gathereth falsehood to itself; when he goeth without, he speaketh it.” Thus he finds just what he looks for; his heart is a magnet that, by a terrible principle of natural selection, attracts wickedness to itself; -wickedness which it has forged first. Then he goes out and proclaims his acquisition; but indeed to show himself out for what he is. Then come plots and treacherous whisperings, and they persuade themselves that God is against the One they would make their victim. “A thing of Belial,” they say, “cleaveth fast to him; and now that he lieth, he shall rise up no more.” How readily the cry upon the cross would be for such an implication of guilt! God Himself confessedly against the holy Sufferer; and this was but the last, doubtless, in their eyes, of many similar things. The betrayal of Judas closes the story of man’s uttermost wickedness with the spurning heel of a false friend. The sop dipped in the dish was the sign of friendship: he receives it, and goes out; love’s last witness finding no response, -“after the sop, Satan entered into him” (John 13:27). 3. Such, then, is man, and towards Him who in grace has come to be his Deliverer. But if he is thus in his innermost heart revealed, God manifests Himself at length in behalf of the object of his enmity. This is not needful here to be told at length, for it has been again and again the subject of these psalms; but it is clearly enough shown out in the words of the same Speaker who has been heard throughout. He is answered in resurrection, raised up for the recompense of friends and foes alike. The enmity of His adversaries cannot prevail against Him in whom Jehovah delights.

His perfection is owned, and in it He is sustained, and set before the face of God forever. There is but One of whom all this could be said, and the psalm as a whole speaks of Him, as we have seen. It is thus a most suited close to this precious first book of the divine counsels as to Christ. 4. The formal close in the last verse is, I believe, indicated by the number as the voice of man universally at last, giving praise to the God of Israel, the Eternal, from that eternity before time began, and now on to eternity -a praise therefore which contemplates all time from first to last, the period of the creature and his failure, and of the dishonor done to the glorious Creator by his means. It is sealed with the Old Testament “verily, verily,” which the Christ of the New has taken up and made His own.