about to be realized in our own times, the tumult of the nations
against the Lord and His Anointed, will be silenced by the coming of
the King. "I have set my King upon my holy hill of Zion;" this is
what God declares. The God-man Christ Jesus, the Man, who is with
Him now is, His King. His destiny is the government of the nations,
with a rod of iron.
The entire _Twenty-first_ Psalm tells out the Glory of the King.
Christian expositors have rarely discovered this. But Jewish
exponents always knew it. Saith a leading Jewish authority of the
middle ages: "Our old teachers have always applied this Psalm as
meaning the King Messiah." Read its stanzas:
"The King shall joy in Thy strength, Jehovah;
And in Thy salvation, how greatly shall He rejoice.
Thou hast given Him His heart's desire,
And hast not withholden the requests of His lips.
For Thou hast met Him with the blessings of goodness;
Thou hast set a crown of pure gold on His head.
He asked Life of Thee;
Thou gavest Him length of days forever and ever.
His Glory is great through Thy salvation;
Majesty and splendor hast Thou laid upon Him.
For Thou hast made Him to be blessings forever;
Thou hast filled Him with joy by Thy countenance.
For the King confideth in Jehovah.
Through the loving kindness of the Highest
He shall not be moved."
Then comes His future action, when He whom faith sees now crowned
with Majesty and Splendor, who rejoices in the Presence of God,
appears to execute the judgments of God.
"Thy hand shall find out all thine enemies;
Thy right hand shall find out those that hate Thee.
Thou shalt make them as a fiery furnace
In the time of Thy presence.
Jehovah shall swallow them up in his anger,
And the fire shall devour them.
Their fruit shall Thou destroy from the earth,
And their seed from among the children of men.
For they intended evil against Thee,
They imagined a mischievous device,
Which they could not execute.
For Thou wilt make them turn their back,
Thou wilt make ready Thy bowstring against their faces.
Be Thou exalted Jehovah in Thine own strength;
We will sing and celebrate Thy power."
And in the _Twenty-fourth_ Psalm we have prophetically that
triumphant shout, which will be heard when the King comes
back to enter His City, Jerusalem, again.
"Lift up your heads, ye gates
And be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors;
And the King of Glory shall come in.
Who is this King of Glory?
Jehovah strong and mighty,
Jehovah mighty in battle."
The _Forty-fifth_ Psalm is a song of the Beloved, touching the King.
He is described as coming in His Majesty and Splendor, how He deals
with His enemies and that He will be surrounded by His own redeemed
ones.
The Glory and dominion of His Kingdom He will receive is described
in the _Seventy-second_ Psalm. "He shall have dominion from sea to
sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth." And other
Psalms enlarge upon these glorious visions, which will all be true
when the King comes. Then Jerusalem will be a praise in the earth.
"Also I will make Him, my Firstborn, higher than the kings of the
earth" (Ps. lxxxix:27).
And how rich are the prophets in telling us of the Glory of the King
and the glories of His kingdom. "Behold a King shall rule in
righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment" (Isaiah xxxii:1).
"Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty; they shall behold the
land that is afar off" (Isaiah xxxiii:17). "A King shall reign and
prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth"
(Jerem. xxiii:5). "And there was given Him dominion and glory, and a
kingdom, that all people, nations and languages, should serve Him;
His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away,
and His Kingdom, that which shall not be destroyed" (Dan. vii:14).
"The King of Israel, the Lord, is in the midst of thee (the earthly
Jerusalem); thou shalt not see evil any more" (Zeph. iii:15). "And
the Lord shall be King over all the earth" (Zech. xiv:6).
These and many, many more utterances of God's blessed prophets give
us a vision of the King, of the Glory of Him, who was crowned with a
crown of thorns, the thorns of man's curse, and over whose cross it
was written, "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews."
And the New Testament fully brings out the same Glory of Him as
King. He is "King of Peace" (Heb. vii:2); "King of saints" (Rev.
xv:3); "The Lord of lords and King of kings" (Rev. xvii:14).
At last the unfulfilled message of Gabriel will be gloriously
fulfilled. "The Lord God shall give unto Him the Throne of His
father David; and He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever;
and of His kingdom there shall be no end" (Luke i:32).
But nowhere is He called "King of the church," nor are we authorized
as believers to address Him "Our King." He will be King, but then He
will not be our King, but we shall _be Kings with Him_. He is not
King of the church, but the Head of the Body, the church; Head and
Body together, Christ and His church, will rule and reign over the
earth. Glory to His Name! In loving tenderness He looks upon us, who
possess His life, He is not ashamed to call us "brethren," for He is
Man, the second Man, and He beholds in us those, who will ere long
share His Kingly Glory, His Kingly rule.
Oh, Beloved readers! does it not warm our hearts! Does it not make
us feel like falling down on our faces and confess to Him our
indifference and our nothingness, and humble ourselves in the dust.
How little, oh how little we enter into all this. The Lord help us
to have through His Word and in the power of His Spirit a greater
vision of the King and our blessed, eternal lot with Him.
They crown Him King on high;
Shall we not crown Him here,
The blessed Christ of Calvary,
To ransomed sinners dear?
They worship Him above,
Shall we not worship too,
The Son of God, the Lord of love,
To whom all praise is due?
Up there they see His Face,
The Lamb who once was slain,
And in a new song praise His Grace;
Shall we not join the strain?
Yonder His servants still
Serve as their Lord commands;
Oh may we also do His will
With loving hearts and hands.--M. F.
The Fellowship of His Son.
"GOD is faithful, by whom ye were called into the fellowship of His
Son Jesus Christ our Lord" (1 Cor. i:9). A blessed word this is. By
nature the Corinthians were in another fellowship. The same Epistle
(vi:9-11) tells us what some of them were. Like ourselves by nature
they were in the fellowship of sin and death and in fellowship with
him, who is the author of sin and the enemy of God, Satan. But a
faithful God called them and has called us by the Gospel into the
fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. If we have obeyed the
Gospel and accepted the gift of God we are brought through the Grace
of God into the fellowship of the Son of God. All believers are in
the same fellowship, one with the Lord.
But that is a truth and a blessed revelation far deeper than our
mind can fathom or our pen could describe. No saint has ever sounded
the depths of this wonderful call of God nor can God's saints fully
know what that fellowship all means, until the blessed day comes
when we shall see Him as He is and when joined to Him we shall be
like Him.
And yet we can remind ourselves of the little we know and through it
encourage our hearts. Faith loves to dwell upon the blessed Person,
whom faith alone through the Spirit's power can make a living
reality. And God, the faithful God, loves to hear His children speak
much of Him, whom He loves, the Son of His Love, the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Fellowship means to have things in common. And that is what God has
done. He has taken us through His Grace out of the fellowship in
which we are by nature, the things we have in common as enemies and
children of wrath and has called us into the fellowship of His Son.
And now called of God into this fellowship we have things in common
with His Son the Lord Jesus Christ. This brings before us once more
the old story, which never grows old, but is eternally new and
becomes more blessed the more we hear it. The Son of God, He who is
the true God and the eternal Life, came to this earth and appeared
in the form of Man. "The Life was manifested; and we have seen, and
bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with
the Father, and was manifested unto us" (1 John i:2). And He who is
the true God and the eternal life, by whom the worlds were made,
gave Himself for our sins. He came to give His life as a ransom for
many, to make propitiation for the whole world. He who knew no sin
was made sin for us and on the Cross peace was made. There in His
own body on the tree He bore our sins. All who believe on Him, who
have accepted Jesus as their Saviour, are taken out of that in which
they are by nature and are brought into Christ. And here we can with
praising hearts and full assurance sing of our blessed position in
Him.
Lord Jesus, are we one with Thee?
Oh height, oh depth, of love!
And crucified and dead with Thee,
Now one in heaven above.
Such was Thy grace, that for our sake
Thou didst from heaven come down;
With us of flesh and blood partake,
And make our guilt Thine own.
Our sins, our guilt, in love divine,
Confessed and borne by Thee;
The gall, the curse, the wrath, were Thine,
To set Thy ransomed free.
Ascended now, in glory bright,
Life-giving Head Thou art;
Nor life, nor death, nor depth, nor height
Thy saints and Thee can part.
But the fellowship of His Son into which the Grace of God has
brought us means more than this blessed new relation and the
positional truth that as believers we have been crucified with
Christ and that we are risen with Him. The life we possess as born
again is His own life. We possess the life of Him, who died in our
stead. Christ is our life. This means fellowship of His Son, we are
one with Him. We also possess His Spirit. The Spirit of Christ
dwelleth in us and we are "one Spirit with the Lord."
This oneness with Christ, the fellowship of His Son, that we belong
to Him and He to us, that we have an inheritance in Him and He has
an inheritance in us, is a great truth. Like every other revealed
truth it must be a reality in our lives. We are called by God to
walk in this fellowship. We know we are in Him, and through Grace we
abide in Him. But it is also written, "He that saith he abideth in
Him ought himself also so to walk even as He walked." His own life
must be manifest. In this fellowship of His Son we have the strength
to walk as He walked, because we have His life and His Spirit. There
is no need to walk after the flesh, but we can always walk in the
Spirit and walking thus we walk as He walked. And this spiritual
walk becomes possible as our hearts dwell in faith on the fact that
we are called into the fellowship of His Son. We must have this
wonderful fact constantly before our hearts as a real thing. Then
all we do will be governed by it.
If this is real how can we be conformed to this world? The world in
all its aspects is the enemy of God. In that fellowship we walked
once "according to the course of this world." Should we then turn
back to it and enjoy its pleasures and ambitions? If we do, we walk
in the flesh and then we do not know the joy and peace of the
fellowship of His Son, but are joyless and miserable. But if the
fact of the fellowship of God's Son is a reality in power, it will
keep us from being conformed to this world.
We believe the Spirit of God presses this home to the consciences of
His people and calls us to a separated walk.
And this must lead to another phase of the fellowship of His Son
Jesus Christ. It is written "always bearing about in the body the
dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made
manifest in our body" (2 Cor. iv:10). This stands in connection with
persecution and suffering. Walking in the fellowship of His Son
Jesus Christ the Apostle had one great desire, "That I may know Him,
and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His
sufferings, being made conformable to His death" (Phil. iii:10). To
the Colossians he wrote "who now rejoice in my sufferings for you,
and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my
flesh for His body's sake, which is the church" (Col. i:24). He
suffered and bore His reproach. His heart in the enjoyment of the
fellowship desired the fellowship of His sufferings. We know little
of these because we are conformed to this world and not loyal to our
Lord and God's calling. But if we walk in conscious fellowship with
Him and are loyal to Him we too will know a little of the fellowship
of His sufferings. Then our hearts long that we may "bear His
reproach." The blessed One of God is rejected, can our hearts be
satisfied with anything less than being rejected too? Perhaps if we
were to lift up our voices now against the Christ dishonoring
things, both in doctrine and practice, which are the leading
features of the present-day religious world, we would know a little
more of this fellowship.
Called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord means
also to share His work. We are called to serve. He was here as One
that serveth, and we are "to serve one another in love." "Whosoever
will be great among you let him be your minister; and whosoever will
be chief among you, let him be your servant" (Matt. xx:26-27). We
can be servants with Him. He is intercessor and burden-bearer and we
have a share in this likewise.
And there is the fellowship of His Son in its eternal aspect. God's
calling is to be like His Son. "For whom He did foreknow, He also
predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son that He might
be the firstborn among many brethren" (Romans viii:29). We shall be
with Him forever and like Him.
And is it so--I shall be like Thy Son?
Is this the grace which He for me has won?
Father of glory, (thought beyond all thought!)--
In glory, to His own blest likeness brought!
Oh, Jesus, Lord, who loved me like to Thee?
Fruit of Thy work, with Thee, too, there to see
Thy glory, Lord, while endless ages roll,
Myself the prize and travail of Thy soul.
Yet it must be: Thy love had not its rest
Were Thy redeemed not with Thee fully blest.
That love that gives not as the world, but shares
All it possesses with its loved co-heirs.
May the Holy Spirit hold these great truths before our hearts and in
His power may we be consciously and constantly enjoying the
fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, till we are called by
Himself to be with Him.
Out of His Fulness.
John i:16.
"AND of His fulness have all we received, and grace upon grace"
(John i:16). This precious word was not spoken by John the Baptist.
It must be looked upon as an outburst of praise, similar to the one
which stands in the beginning of Revelation (Rev. i:5-6). It is the
adoring utterance of all believers acknowledging the reception of
that unfathomable and never failing grace, which flows from the
eternal fountain, the Son of God. Out of the fulness of Himself
believing sinners receive grace upon grace. His own fulness is the
source, which supplies all the need of those, who by Him believe on
God, that raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory (1 Pet. i:2).
That exhaustless fulness is always ready to sustain, to help, to
comfort, to strengthen and to fill those, who are in Christ, one
with Him.
But what is this fulness of which we receive and receive so
abundantly? The blessed Son of God possessed in all eternity
fulness. The Holy Spirit in this chapter bears a testimony to this
fact by a great revelation. "In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the
beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was
not anything made 'that was made.' In Him was life; and the life was
the light of men" (John i:1-4). What a wonderful revelation this is!
The Word which was in the beginning, which ever _was_ God, by whom
all was made, without whom nothing came into existence, is the Son
of God. The fulness of the Godhead was His before the world was
made, for He is God. Then we read in this chapter, "and the Word was
made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, the glory as
of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." He
came to this earth, He took on the form of man, the eternal Word was
made flesh, God manifested in the flesh. And as He walked on the
earth the fulness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell in Him (Col.
i:19). But before we could ever receive out of His fulness grace
upon grace, the Son of God had to die. If He had not died and
accomplished the great work for which He came into the world, His
fulness would have been forever inaccessible to sinners. But He went
to the cross and finished there the great work. Christ died for us;
He who knew no sin was made sin for us. And now it is written of
Him, the glorified One, the Man in Glory. "For in Him dwelleth all
the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in Him, which
is the head of all principality and power" (Col. ii:9-10). He, who
possessed eternally all fulness, who came to this earth and in whom
the fulness of the Godhead dwelt, who died on the cross the just for
the unjust, who His own self bore our sins in His own body on the
tree, is now as Man in glory and there dwelleth in Him bodily the
fulness of the Godhead. It is all for us; we can now receive grace
upon grace, because of Him who is the Second Man, the Head of the
new creation and with whom God has made us, who believe, one. This
is the deep and yet simple Gospel. God gave His blessed Son, who was
forever one with Him, that through Him we might receive of the
fulness of the Godhead, grace upon grace. Brought to God in such a
way, washed, sanctified and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus,
and by the Spirit of our God, we are receiving all we need. We
receive it not on our merit, because we labor or agonize for it, but
we _receive of His fulness_. But who can begin to tell out what that
is, grace upon grace? Pages upon pages might be written and filled
with the good things, the spiritual blessings, the joy, the peace,
the comfort, the power and the wisdom and many other things, which
are included in "grace upon grace." And after we mentioned all these
precious things, we would have to put the pen down and confess our
insufficiency to tell out the riches, the fulness and vastness of
"grace upon grace."
This expression brings a great cataract like Niagara to our mind.
Here we stand and behold the mighty waters rushing down. Oh! the
mighty rushing waters, who can measure them! What a vast,
inexhaustible supply! Water upon water dashing down. For ages this
has gone on. Hundreds of years, more than that, thousands of years
have witnessed the same mighty waters. Every day, every hour, every
minute, every second, every fraction of a second--incessantly
mighty rushing waters upon waters!
In the same way there is pouring forth out of His fulness, the
fulness of the Lord in Glory--grace upon grace. There is an
unlimited, inexhaustible supply of the water of life from Him who is
the life. For ages the saints of God, saved by grace, have received
grace upon grace. A never ceasing stream of grace has been flowing
forth and it has not impoverished the marvellous eternal supply.
Still it flows undiminished--still there is grace upon grace. Yea
it is grace upon grace by which God's people live. Every hour, every
minute, every second, every moment it is His grace, grace upon grace
which keeps us, surrounds us, flows upon us and overshadows us. And
the more we take and enjoy the more we learn to sing.
More and more, more and more,
_Always_ more to follow!
Oh, His matchless, boundless _Grace_,
Still there's more to follow!
Will it ever stop? No, never! We shall keep on singing in all
eternity "still there's more to follow!--still there's more to
follow." Hallelujah! "That in the ages to come He might show the
_exceeding_ riches of His Grace in His kindness toward us through
Christ Jesus" (Eph. ii:7). _Always more to follow!_ Still there's
MORE to follow. All Praise to Him who died to have it so for us poor
lost sinners, whose lot should have been, as it is the lot of all
who reject this marvellous grace--always more to follow--in
eternal darkness and despair.
And how simple it is to receive "of His fulness grace upon grace."
Look at this never ceasing spring of pure water, it never fails. You
approach it a weary, thirsty, dustladen traveler. You need to be
refreshed. You need the cooling drink. You need washing. What then
is necessary? Oh! to fill your cup. Just to take for it is for you.
And so this wonderful grace which flows out of His fulness. It is
for you, just come and take. Fill your cup, fill it again! Drink oh
drink! "Of His fulness have all we received, grace upon grace."
The Twenty-second Psalm.
The Cross of Christ.
THE Twenty-second Psalm contains a most remarkable prophecy. The
human instrument through whom this prophecy was given is King David.
The Psalm does not contain the experience of the King, though he
passed through great sufferings, yet the sufferings he speaks of in
this Psalm are not his own. They are the sufferings of Christ. It is
written in the New Testament that the prophets searched and enquired
diligently about the coming salvation. The Spirit of Christ, which
was in them testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ (1 Peter
i:10-11). David was a prophet, and in this great prophecy the Spirit
of Christ testified of the sufferings of Him, who is both David's
Lord and David's son.
The book of Psalms, so rich and full of Himself, so inexhaustible in
description of our ever blessed Lord, is divided into five books,
which correspond to the five books with which the Bible begins, the
Pentateuch. The first book (Psalm i-xli) contains some of the great
prophecies about the Christ of God; these prophecies are in the
so-called messianic Psalms. Perfect and divine is the order in which
they are revealed. _Son of God_--The Second Psalm. _Son of Man_
--The Eighth Psalm. _Obedient One_--The Sixteenth Psalm. _Obedient
unto Death_, the Death of the Cross--The Twenty-second Psalm.
_Highly exalted by God_--Revealed in each of these Psalms. This is
the order in which the Holy Spirit describes the path of the Lord in
Phil. ii:6-11. How perfect the Word of God is!
The Twenty-second Psalm, the center of the first part of the book of
Psalms, the Genesis portion, corresponds to the twenty-second
chapter in the book of Genesis. There we see Isaac bound upon the
altar having been led there and put upon the altar by his Father
while he opened not his mouth. Here we behold the true Isaac on the
cross. Everything in this Psalm speaks of our blessed Lord; in the
first part of His sufferings, in the second part of His Glory and
exaltation.
And we must not overlook the two Hebrew words the Holy Spirit has
put over this Psalm: _Aijeleth Shahar_. The margin tells us they
mean "the hind of the morning." This has a beautiful, though hidden
meaning. Some have thought of the innocent suffering of a wounded
hind and the dawn of the morning brings relief. They have applied
this to the death and resurrection (in the morning dawn) of the
Lord. But the meaning is better still. The oldest Jewish traditions
give us the key. They take the expression "Aijeleth Shahar" to mean
the Shechina, the glory cloud, which was visible among His people
and they speak of "the hind of the morning" as being the dawning of
redemption. The dawning of the morning is compared by them with the
horns of the hind, on account of the rays of light appearing like
horns. According to their tradition the lamb was offered as the
sacrifice in the morning as soon as the watcher on the pinnacle of
the temple cried out "Behold the first rays of morning shine forth."
But what pen can describe the predictions and the fulfilment of His
sufferings, the sufferings of the Holy One! Here we behold what it
cost Him to redeem us. Here we have the full description of what His
atoning work meant. Here we see the full meaning of the sin-offering.