Psalms 91

Psalms 91:1-16

The Second Man. Thus the ruin of man has been seen; and it is utter. As a being made for a dependent life of immortal blessing, he has failed to maintain this; and death is the seal of condemnation; his taking from the earth in which he was placed. What follows death does not come into view, for it is not in question. It is death itself that is so complete an assurance that God has judged and set aside the creature H has made. Thus he has lost God as his habitation; and, though he take to heart the lesson of his judgment, and look back with desire of heart to the place whence he has fallen; the way is not yet found by which he shall be reinstated in it. It is this that the ninety-first psalm begins to open up to us. The whole is not by any means told in it; but a commencement is made, and with what is first and central in its relation to it. We learn here of a Second Man -not called so, indeed, but most evidently in opposition to the universal condition of men as shown us in the preceding psalm, and designedly set before us in this character. It is One who has “made Jehovah, even the Most High, His habitation,” and who can claim rightly all the consequences of this. No plague can come near Him; no power of the enemy prevail against him; heaven provides Him with a watchful and powerful escort; all nature is in agreement with Him: thus there is a Man who is entitled indeed to be called a “Second Man,” though but a part of the truth about Him has yet been told.

1. The principle of perpetuity in life and blessing is first of all stated, and in terms which directly refer to the previous psalm. “He that abideth in the secret of the Most High shall lodge under the shadow of the Almighty.” That is, the protection of One all-competent to protect is assured to the man who abides in the secret -or “dwells in the secret place” -of the Most High: the God who is going to take His place as that, in those millennial times which are to come for the earth, -King of kings and Lord of lords. Manifestly, this is the “Lord” of the previous psalm, who has been a “habitation for us in all generations”; and, as plainly, this “habitation” is that very “secret,” “or secret place” -of the Most High which it has shown us to have become such: man having dropped out of the knowledge of it, and lost the resulting blessing. When God appeared to the man who was to bring Israel out of Egypt, and gave him his commission to do so, Moses desires to know by what name he is to declare God to them. And the Name of God today is hidden from multitudes by a worse confusion than that which began at Babel. The day is yet to come when in all the earth “there shall be One Jehovah and His Name One” (Zechariah 14:9). But these many names only reveal the practical estrangement of men from Him whose character His Name reveals. Little hope can there be naturally as to a creature who permits even the name of his God to slip away from him! But who abides in the secret place of the Most High? We have already had the answer. Yet in the next verse a response is heard, which at first indeed may not seem to be as distinctly indicative of the Speaker as it afterwards is found to be: “I will say of Jehovah,” he replies, “He is my Refuge and Fortress: my God: I trust in Him.” Faith in all times would have answered in similar terms, it might be said: and this is true. The Spirit of Christ in all His people has indeed used the language of Christ, and of course, truly; yet how different after all is the One Voice from the others! That the voice of absolute Truth has spoken here is made known by the echoes it awakens around, and presently by that of God Himself which attests it. That this psalm was written of the Messiah, Satan surely knew when he quoted to Him the eleventh and twelfth verses with the comment, “If Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down.” And the whole structure of the book, as we have considered it, and shall do more at large, proves the same thing.
2. The words used are those of absolute dependence; and now another voice, which is that surely of the Spirit of prophesy, answers again with the assurance of how completely this faith is justified and made good. He has made God His refuge, and shall find it a perfect and absolute one: from the snare of the trapper and the pestilence alike He will deliver; and in the tender love of endeared relationship, covering with His feathers and the broad shelter of His outstretched wings, -love pledged to Him who has cast Himself entirely upon it, so that His truth becomes a shield and buckler. The inward realization answers to this perfect care: no terror of the night, no arrow flying openly by day, alarms. Nature is at peace with Him with whom its God is: pestilence nor destruction touches Him; and the fall of thousands round Him only demonstrates the more the complete protection which the divine government throws round the Man whose sole reliance is in God. Only shall He see with His own eyes the end of the wicked.
3. A new division of the psalm begins here: which seems, at first sight, very much a repetition of what has been said before, but goes beyond it, and opens the heavenly side of blessing. He has made Jehovah, the refuge of His saints, the Supreme, His habitation; and heaven opens towards Him in consequence. Notice the words here for the first time, “my refuge.” It is but a hint indeed, for as yet there can be no more, but a real hint nevertheless, of such refuge opening now to others, through Him who has in fact never known nor sought any but in God. And He has made Him His habitation; not professed to do so, nor labored to do so. but done so -abode in God as a new and perfect Man; for whom no excuse is to be made, and no reduction from the full demand for absolute perfection. Hence evil has no hold on Him; nor opportunity against Him: there shall no evil befall Thee, nor plague come near Thy tent." “Tent,” mark: so that, with all the perfection of Manhood which is His, He is yet a Sojourner and Pilgrim upon the earth.

He is not another man of the earth merely, a mere Adam that has never fallen: and who by virtue of that very unfallen state, could never have been a pilgrim. But here is One whose glory shines out in His very humiliation. He is a Wayfarer, not because a steward turned out of his stewardship; outside paradise, indeed, but not banished from it; One with His home in God, yet in an alien world, and whither should His steps be directed, but towards God His home, and in the place where His home is? Thus even here heaven opens to Him. He is in a hostile world, and must have an escort; and angels are charged concerning Him, to keep Him in all His ways. Those blessed feet, so traveling through a place which is all in disorder, and might seem even haphazard, must be preserved from casualty. But there is the power of the enemy also, “the lion and the adder” -force and craft. Both must give way to Him. He turns not aside, but tramples them under His feet. Good is ordained to victory, necessarily, or it would not be God that ruled: and that is, I suppose, why the number here is that of divine government. We do not see things work in this simple manner doubtless, and there is plenty of room left for exercise, and for faith. But the rule itself is absolute, and must be. And now the voice of God Himself is heard; and He too owns and testifies to the Man in whom He delights. Heart has met heart: “because He has set His love upon Me, I will deliver Him.” And here we find where His path necessarily ends: “I will set Him on high, because He has known My Name.” But this does not begin a new section, apparently, and therefore must come under the number which speaks of victory; at first sight difficult to understand or recognize as appropriate. Yet in fact this is the time of which it is said: “He has gone up on high; He has led captivity captive; He has received gifts for men.” And this connects readily with the previous verse, -the power of the enemy trampled in the dust. Thus the structure reveals its significance; and again we have a hint, and yet more than a hint of a work accomplished for others: not the cross (for that is not in the line of this psalm; and involves the giving up in grace of what is seen to be proper to Him here) but that which in fact triumphed in the cross itself. For the priest’s white linen robe was that in which he went in to God; and when He cried “with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him out of death, He was heard for His piety” (Hebrews 5:7). By the power of His absolute perfection He rose necessarily from all that He endured, into His own sphere: and this was truly the greatest of victories, and is perfectly in the line of the psalm before us. Accordingly the next verse reminds us of the cross itself, although the peculiar features of the cross are not in it. There is the call that was heard, but no forsaking: “He shall call on Me, and I will answer Him: I will be with Him in strait; I will deliver Him and honor Him:” -a perfect response to personal perfection; while the last verse, with its significant number, overlaps time and stretches through eternity. “With length of days will I satisfy Him; and show Him My salvation.” Compare Psalms 21:4 for the interpretation: “He asked life of Thee, -Thou hast given it Him: length of days for ever and aye.” It is the same Person before us in both psalms.