INSTRUCTION
A John E Temple
Psalm 32: 1, 2; 42: 7; 45: 6, 7; 88: 1 (to “… salvation”); 89: 52
You may have noticed one word that is in all that we have read: in the heading of each of the five psalms is the word “instruction”. I am not thinking in this preaching to speak of instruction as such. I desire to speak of something regarding the gospel, God’s glad tidings, from such psalms. It was probably the second scripture read that set my mind in this direction, coupled with the first one. There are other psalms of instruction as we may well know. If you want a list of them all, note d to Daniel 11: 35 in Mr Darby’s translation gives them. There is no doubt a purpose in that they are called this; but I will take a few minutes to speak of things that are in them.
We will begin with Psalm 32. This is the first of these thirteen psalms of instruction. The first two verses that we have read are therefore the first verses you get as you are reading through these psalms. I find it very attractive and appealing that they come into this psalm of instruction. In these psalms particularly marked out for instruction, the very first thing we are told is -
Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered!
Blessed is the man unto whom
Jehovah reckoneth not iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no guile!
Dear friends, dear brethren, in one sense, there is no need to read another scripture in the preaching of the gospel. But how is it that there are persons who are blessed in these ways? Psalm 32: 1 and 2 give us the place, give us the position, blessed position, of someone who has had their transgressions forgiven; someone whose sin has been covered; someone to whom God is not reckoning iniquity; and someone whose spirit has been so claimed that there is no guile in it. Man naturally is never entirely free from guile.
It is through the gospel that there are persons such as you and me whose transgression is forgiven. What a great word forgiveness is in the gospel! I can think of an enquiring soul, a person who is seeking, reading these verses and they would say, ‘That is just what I want’. May many persons come to that today! May they want to know that God has forgiven them the wrong that they have done. The attraction of the gospel is that through it a person’s sin, their transgression, the things they have done that are contrary to God’s will, have been forgiven. This is put so simply here; these two verses bring out blessings that are available to persons in the gospel. Persons may be particularly affected in different ways. They see they have transgressed. They see their sins are standing out against them, that they have done this wrong and that wrong and this is a transgression, and that is a transgression. They can put the whole matter together as transgression. There is nothing they can do to rub those sins out, to remove any of those sins from their list, not one thing. In the gospel, they can be told that it can all be forgiven. Then we have those whose sin is covered. What is before them is that all their sin is covered, not as an ordinary man might try to cover things, cover them up, retrace his steps, make things look good. The answer is that divine covering is there in the gospel. Sins are never to be brought up again. Right at the beginning of these psalms of instruction, we are taught about a man against whom God is not going to bring matters up, to whom God reckons not iniquity. All his past has been met and God has assured him; and, too, we read “in whose spirit there is no guile”. That man, so changed from what he was, has come into the blessing of the gospel. Can I find it, what is the way?
As I said, Psalm 42 was the psalm that probably led me into this, but I must say over the years I have always found Psalm 32 is so attractive as the beginning of the psalms of instruction. We move on to the second book of Psalms. We have the words here -
Deep calleth unto deep
at the noise of thy cataracts;
all thy breakers and thy billows
are gone over me.
I just want to take up this beautiful expression to show an appreciation of what the Lord Jesus had to go through. The Lord Jesus had to face all things. We have just been speaking in Psalm 32 of persons whose position has entirely been cleared. It is not half their sins forgiven or anything like that: it has all been met. Here we get in Psalm 42 -
all thy breakers and thy billows
are gone over me.
I take it that the “all” is covering billows as well as breakers. It is as if it read that all God’s breakers and all His billows have gone over the Lord Jesus. All was needed for man to come into blessing, for us to be numbered among those of whom we read in Psalm 32; and all has been met by the Lord Jesus, by the one Man, the only Man who could meet all sin, the only One who could bear all things, bear all God’s judgment upon sin: yea, you and I could bear none of God’s judgment upon sin. He bore it all.
The bearing of God’s judgment upon sin all fell upon the Lord Jesus. Many sinners have been forgiven, forgiven their sins, forgiven their transgressions, forgiven their iniquities.
Deep calleth unto deep
at the noise of thy cataracts.
The picture used is one that we can depict: “Deep calleth unto deep”, but “at the noise of thy cataracts”, what tumbling, what flooding, what a scene where a man finds it difficult to escape. “Deep calleth unto deep”: that gives me a picture of the breakers and billows that are referred to, beyond the noise of “thy cataracts”, the tumbling of waters. Deep unto deep is like the waves and the billows meeting together. The whole point is to give a picture of that which is intense. This was written in the psalms long before the Lord Jesus came here. He was to have the reality of God’s judgment upon sin in those three hours of darkness.
There was what He had borne from men in the hours before that. We were reading locally a few weeks ago of the Lord’s sufferings at the hands of men at the time of His trial and the time on the cross when men heaped all they could upon Him. In Matthew’s gospel one thing that affects me is the way that men were so joined together in their railing against the Lord Jesus, in the reproaches there were. We get in Matthew 27: 41, 42, “in like manner the chief priests also, mocking, with the scribes and elders, said, He saved others, himself he cannot save”. Verse 44 says, “And the robbers also who had been crucified with him cast the same reproaches on him”. It struck me years ago that all kinds of men were absolutely against the Lord Jesus: those of great position, the chief priests, scribes, and elders, and these robbers, who had been crucified, all casting the same reproaches on the Lord Jesus. Only the day before those chief priests would not even have deigned to speak to these two robbers. The robbers were probably already in prison and it would have been beneath the priests’ dignity to be found in conversation with them saying the same thing. You come to the cross and the hatred of man was energised by Satan: they say the same things. This is such a demonstration of what is in the heart of man naturally. None can elect themselves out.
Thanks be to God for what He has done in bringing believers in as those in Psalm 32 of whom it could be said that they are blessed. The work of the Lord Jesus took place on the cross. In the three hours of darkness, it was God’s judgment. It was no longer man’s judgment, no longer man’s feeling against Him, or mockery of ‘Why is He not saving Himself?’. All is God’s judgment; He bore it all. He bore all that was needed. He bore it completely; there is no more judgment left to the sinner who repents and God can come out in blessing. He comes out in forgiveness now to sinners who repent. I am not overlooking what lay beyond the three hours. The Lord Jesus still had to go into death. After His death there was the shedding of His blood. If the blessing were to come to me, two things were needed in regard of the blood. No one could speak more poignantly of it than these two scriptures: the one is, “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin”, 1 John 1: 7. The other one is, “knowing that ye have been redeemed, not by corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation handed down from your fathers, but by precious blood”, 1 Pet 1: 18, 19. The apostle Peter could speak of the blood that redeems, and the preciousness of the way we have been redeemed. There was the ignominy and the shame upon the Lord Jesus, but then we see the preciousness of all that God has brought about. All this is in the way that man comes into blessing by repentance and receiving God’s forgiveness. Christ went into death and was buried. Thus the order of man that had stood out against God has been dealt with. The witness is that sin had been met by the blessed Lord Jesus Himself who vicariously went into death, was buried, and remained in the tomb for three days and three nights.
What a gospel has since been preached, and with what power it was preached so soon after the Lord Jesus had gone on high - how worthy He is of His place on high! And the Holy Spirit has come. On that day of Pentecost what power there was in Peter’s preaching and thousands were saved. We do not hear of this happening today, but it may well be that in total today over the face of this globe there will similarly be thousands who will be saved. It is the same gospel today as Peter preached. It is the same Jesus who is proclaimed as Saviour.
After speaking of the One through whom men can be blessed with the forgiveness of their iniquities, and can be cleansed altogether, we come to Psalm 45, and I call our attention in these verses, which are also quoted at the beginning of Hebrews -
Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever;
a sceptre of uprightness
is the sceptre of thy kingdom.
What announcement follows? It is about the blessed One of whom we have been speaking -
Thou hast loved righteousness,
and hated wickedness.
Think of the wonder that a Man could walk through this scene so blessed, so blessedly perfect and glorious. This was He who in a scripture we well know said, “thou hast prepared me a body”, Heb 10: 5. Think of the One who came into that body, took up that body. The One who altogether loved righteousness, the One who altogether hated wickedness, the One who indeed at one point says,
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
(Ps 22: 1)
is now the Object of proclamation here -
therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee
with the oil of gladness above thy companions.
God has marked Him out; He is raised from among the dead, ascended on high, this One is so wondrously marked out as “anointed thee with the oil of gladness”. There is a triumph in that. It is indeed a triumph, not so much a victory march, but what God has delighted to do in regard of Christ, anointing Him with the oil of gladness. With what gladness, speaking reverently, God has anointed Christ: “the oil of gladness above thy companions”. The setting in that way is wondrous, “above thy companions”. He is not alone. There are many persons like those in Psalm 32: 1, 2, now amongst His companions. Do I appreciate His present place? Am I thankful He has led me in to be counted amongst those in Psalm 32? Am I in His praise?
God loves to give the Holy Spirit, and does give Him to those who obey Him (Acts 5: 32), thus giving power, giving hope to enjoy, to appreciate the present place of our Lord Jesus Christ. What a way has been opened up to us through the gospel.
I turn to Psalm 88. I just read these five words below the heading of the Psalm:-
Jehovah, God of my salvation.
I do not want to negate what I have just said as to divine triumph in Psalm 45; however, the setting of this psalm and the wording of it is essentially negative. For example,
I have cried by day and
in the night before thee.
Let my prayer come before thee;
incline thine ear unto my cry.
For my soul is full of troubles, and my life
draweth nigh to Sheol, v 1-3.
As if restrained, he says, “Thou has laid me in the lowest pit”, v 6. All is negative: it goes on for eighteen verses to the ending - “my familiar friends are darkness”. I trust that we get help from that beginning, the first five words. The psalmist, whatever else he was pleading about, however difficult things were, and though he does not know the way forward, nevertheless he has begun with “Jehovah, God of my salvation”. I think there is instruction in that. He had not lost sight of the fact that God was the God of his salvation, the salvation that had been bestowed upon him. God remains that to him. There may be times in our lives when we feel down or going down, as we speak; despair may come upon us. If we go through such things, may we never forget that we are attached to Him, that Jehovah is the “God of my salvation”. Let me not forget Him in that way. We can be brought through. God will open up something more. I do not want to undo what I have just been saying as to Psalm 45 for the Holy Spirit would bring us into what we spoke of there. As we make way for the Holy Spirit, He is willing to bring help in, “the Spirit joins also its help to our weakness”, Rom 8: 26. He joins His help. In that way the Holy Spirit’s power is there available to preserve us from these things of nature’s course that can make us down or very down. Let us not fail to resort to “Jehovah, God of my salvation”. This would cause our eyes to be uplifted above the sorrows and the exercises that are along the way.
I close with the last verse of Psalm 89. I have often wondered whether the three asterisks before the verse mean it is not part of the original Psalm. Maybe the compiler of the books of Psalms put that in at the end of the Third Book as if his conclusion was-
Blessed be Jehovah for evermore!
Amen, and Amen.
Today, I take it as being part of this psalm of instruction. May we desire that our lives be marked by this, whether individually or householdly or together with fellow believers, that our pathway goes on in this way until the Lord comes,
Blessed be Jehovah for evermore!
Amen, and Amen.
May the Lord bless the word for His Name’s sake.
Buckhurst Hill
6th February 2022