Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention to Psalm 69. And read for our
text, verse 1. Save me, O God, for the waters
are come in unto my soul. And it is specifically the first
words, save me, O God, Christ, in Psalm 69. Psalm 69 verse 1. Yes dear friends this is a messianic
psalm. It is containing prophecies of
Christ and it is his language also in prayer. We would remember that the psalms
are the breath of a soul. Some of them, like Psalm 34,
we are told where David was, how that he feared for his life
when he was recognised by Achish, how he found himself as a madman
and escaped. This poor man cried and the Lord
heard him. saved him out of all his troubles.
And that particular psalm, we know the circumstances David
was in, we know how it related to him, we know also that it
was prophetic and related to our Lord Jesus Christ as well. Now this psalm is one of those
as well. When we know the outward path,
and in this case we do not know David's outward path, but we
do know the path of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. We do know of His time here below,
what He endured at the hands of sinners. We know also that
which He endured when He was before Pilate, that which He
endured before that in the Garden of Gethsemane, and then upon
the cross. those excruciating pains of body
and also travail of soul, the wrath of God upon him in the
place of his people. When we come to a psalm like
this and it's pointing to our Lord made manifest in the flesh,
we are especially to remember that he was a real man, that
the two natures that he had must not be confused, or that one
does make the other not to be the other. So the manhood of
Christ doesn't take away from his divinity, his divinity does
not take away from his manhood. And it is a great mystery, great
is the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh. We see sometimes a real contrast
where a lord was in the boat and the disciple says, carest
thou not that we perish? They wake him, he was asleep.
We see his manhood, his weariness, his needing a rest, a sleep.
And yet he arose and he rebuked the winds and the waves and there's
a great calm. And they feared, they said, what
manner of man is this that even the winds and the waves obey
him? And so with his real manhood,
we read that those things that he spake, those things that he
did, he did by the command of his father and by the power of
his father. Even in the miracles that he
did, he said, they are they which testify of me. They were testifying
of his father and the blessing of his father upon him. his own
testimony that I and my Father are one. So there is a difference,
of course, between the miracles that our Lord did and those which
later on his disciples were to do. They were greatly used, not
only in raising the dead or healing the sick, but also in preaching
the gospel with the effect of thousands that were converted.
We are to not minimise the sufferings of our Lord. We are to realise
that he was a man like us, subject to like passions as we are, as
it was said of Elijah, that he really did feel pain, that he
really did have emotions like we have, that he really did feel
it when the disciples all forsook him and fled. we are not to minimise
what it would have been for him to have the wrath of God upon
him and the hiding of her father's face. And so when we come to
these psalms, we get a little insight into something of the
sufferings of our Lord. We've sung of it in our hymns
this morning, this middle hymn that we sung, 154 Gadsby's Much we talk of Jesus' blood,
but how little is understood of His sufferings so intense,
angels have no perfect sense. And it is through these Psalms
that we do get a little glimpse of what His sufferings were,
only if we read them as uttered by Him, walked through by our
Lord. And of course, David is the penman,
and like we said in Psalm 34, it was also his experience. So when we come to these Psalms,
if we rightly view the Lord's own path and suffering, it gives
us prayer as well. It gives us fellowship with Him
in His sufferings. It is that which draws His people
to Him and brings them to really understand what sin is, how evil
it is, and what the consequences of it are, and how we need that. We have the world all around
us, and all the time we are deadened as to sin, those things that
perhaps years ago we recoiled from, we don't anymore. Our hearts
are hardened, we look upon sin, we hear it, we see it, but it
doesn't grieve us as it should, and we need to come into the
pure, air of the sanctuary and into the purity of the word of
God and then see again what holiness looks like and what sin looks
like when it is visited upon the Lord Jesus Christ and when
we walk through it and know something of what our Lord's sufferings
were. And so this morning, seeking for the Lord's help, I want to
notice first the petitioner in this psalm, which really is in
many parts a prayer, that it is the Lord Jesus Christ. And
I just want to look at a few of the verses that are quoted
in the New Testament that clearly show us what this psalm is. And then secondly, the petitions
of our Lord. Having established that, to then
go back and look at some of the petitions, some of the things
where In one sense, our Lord bared his soul, laid bare what
was going on and what he felt within. And then lastly, a path
that his people taste and have fellowship with their Lord in. But I want to look first then
at the petitioner, Christ. In verse 9 we read, For the zeal of thine house
hath eaten me up, and the reproaches of them that reproach thee are
fallen upon me. There's two parts to this verse. The first part we read in John
chapter 2 and verse Verse 14 to 17. The Lord came
to the temple. He found in the temple those
that sold oxen and sheep and doves and the changes of money
sitting. And when he had made a scourge
of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple and the
sheep and the oxen and poured out the changes, money, and over
through the tables. and said unto them that sold
doves, take these things hence, make not my father's house an
house of merchandise. Then we read this, and his disciples
remembered that it was written, the zeal of thine house hath
eaten me up. A direct quotation from Psalm
69 and verse 9, the first part of him. is an interesting thing
to think of that which we have just read. Oxen, sheep, doves,
they were all used in temple worship. But here, instead of them being
brought willingly by people that owned them from their own homes,
brought into or brought to the temple and the surrounds of it
for offerings, they were selling them in the temple. And instead of the temple being
a place of worship, it then became a place of selling of merchandise. And it's good for us to remember
this. You know, we have our Bibles,
we have hymn books, we have other books. It is easy for us to say,
well, People can come, they can buy their Bibles from the foyer,
from the porch, they can buy their books, they can get the
things that they need for worship here, they don't need to go to
local bookstores or to order them in the week, they can come
and do it when they're coming into the house of God. And that
would be an equivalent to here. It is taking things that we need
in worship and people taking advantage of people's need to
sell them and to make money. And I know sometimes in the churches
perhaps that it's not done with that intention, it's done to
facilitate, easy for people to buy the books and things, but
I feel we're treading on very dangerous ground when we start
to make shops and things like that. in the churches or in the
surrounds of the churches. We come to worship and we come
with that which we already have and we come into Lord's house
and to serve Him, not to be buying and selling, serving others in
a monetary way. But we have then a second part
of the verse 9. And for that we need to go to
Romans, and to Romans chapter 15 and verse 3. This is, the Apostle is speaking
of how we ought to bear the infirmities of the weak. From verse 1, we
then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak
and not to please ourselves Let every one of us please his neighbor
for his good to edification. For even Christ pleased not himself,
but as it is written, and here is the quote from Psalm 69 verse
9, the reproaches of them that reproach thee fell on me. And then there's this beautiful
verse, for whatsoever things were written aforetime were written
for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures
might have hope. Now, it's not just happened to
be that this verse follows a quote from Psalm 69. We could read
it like this. For those things that were written
before in Psalm 69 were written for our learning, that we through
patience and comfort of this scripture, this psalm, might
have hope. And it is with that thought,
that intention, that we want to really clearly see the Lord
in the psalm. Every blessing for the Church
of God is when we see Christ in the scriptures. Remember those
two on the way to Emmaus, their heart burned within them when?
When the Lord showed himself in the scriptures. And so we
can see him here in this psalm. Then if we go down to verse 21,
and we read this, they gave me also gore for my meat, and in
my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. Well, those who are
familiar with the accounts in the Gospels would know, of course,
that this is speaking of what happened upon the cross. Matthew
records it, Mark does, John does as well, but in John chapter
19 and verse 28 to 30, we read how it is pointed to that the
Scriptures be fulfilled. We read, after this, Jesus, knowing
that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled,
saith, I thirst. Now there was set a vessel full
of vinegar, and they filled a sponge with vinegar and put it upon
hyssop and put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had received
the vinegar, he said, it is finished, and he bowed his head and gave
up the ghost. And in various ways, this then
is covered by two of the other Gospels, but what is written
here in this psalm again is pointing directly to the Lord's sufferings
upon Calvary. The first in verse 9 was pointing
to his life and also those reproaches that fell upon him in life and
in death. And this man receiveth sinners,
eateth and drinketh with them, and the reproaches that were
upon him, that by Beelzebub he cast out devils, and many other
things they said against the Lord. This is Jesus, the son
of Joseph, the carpenter's son, and they found so many things
to demean him and to pull down his excellency from his throne. So I wanted to then first to
really see that this psalm, as well as being a psalm of David,
and no doubt reflecting David's experience as well, but it's
pointing to our Lord Jesus Christ. And I felt the best way of doing
that would be to come to those scriptures that irrefutably pointing
to Christ because they are quoted by the evangelists in the New
Testament and their Lord walked this path out. So the petitioner
is Christ. So may we then in looking at
further in our second point, the petitions of our Lord, be
looking at the other verses here and some of them We might think
are strange verses, some of them we'd wonder how is it that Christ
is uttering these things, and we'll try to explain some of
these as we go along. In the first few verses, our
Lord describes that which is going on in his soul. Remember
in Isaiah 53 we have, Thou shalt see the travail of his soul.
Now here is the waters of affliction, the bitter waters of sin. Save me, O God, for the waters
are come in unto my soul. Now remember, this is our Lord
as a man. He was looking for his Father
to save him, to preserve him, to deliver him, and dependent
upon his Father right the way through his life, a voluntary
humbling. He came as a servant. He came
obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. And that
obedience was to his Father. He was heard, we read in another
psalm, in that he feared. He cried unto him that was able
to deliver him from death and deliver him from the power of
the grave. Save me, O God, for the waters
are coming unto my soul. We picture the Lord on the cross.
I sink in deep mire where there is no standing. I am coming to
deep waters where the floods overflow me. I am weary of my
crying, my throat is dried, my eyes fail while I wait for my
God." What a description of what the Lord was going through in
his soul. They that hate me without a cause
are more than the hairs of mine heads. They that would destroy
me, that's what they were thinking to do. Be mine enemies wrongfully,
they were Jews, they came unto his own. His own received him
not, then I restored that which I took not away. The Lord was
to restore the honours of the law that men had taken away. He was to magnify the law and
make it honourable. He was to settle a debt that
was not his debt. He was to do that which others
had incurred. Then we have a strange verse
in verse 5, O God, thou knowest my foolishness, and my sins are
not hid from thee. There's two ways of looking at
this. One is that those round about him, the Jews and the Romans,
they counted that he was a foolish person. That which he was doing
was foolish. There was no benefit. There was
no blessing in it at all. He was just dying for no reason
at all. But the other way is to think
of our Lord who is bearing the sins of his people. They were
hidden from Pilate. He says, I see no cause of death
in him. He couldn't see the sins. He
couldn't see it, but God could. That's why our Lord was silent
on the cross. He held his peace. because He
knew for whom He was standing and what was laid upon Him. And
so the foolishness of His people, their sin, what they had incurred,
what they had done, and my sin, they are not hid from Thee."
So it's a viewing, a picturing of what He is bearing, what He
has made, that has made Him to be sin for us that knew no sin. as if he was actually sin, he
was made sin. And it's hard for us to comprehend
that, but when we have utterances like this, then we see almost
inseparable to our Lord is the sins that were laid upon him.
He took them as if they were his sins. And we look at it the
other side, to a believer, he gives to a believer his righteousness
as if It was their righteousness, not just something that we are
carrying as a believer. A righteousness is not our own.
It's actually made our own. And so when he is on the cross,
he has made sin for us as if he was the sinner and he's punished
in the sinner's place. Then we read in verse six, let
not them that wait on thee, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for
my saying. Let not those that seek Thee
be confounded for my sake. And he goes on in the few verses
that follow here in that vein. And you think of the perplexity
of those two on the way to Emmaus. We trusted it should have been
he that should have redeemed Israel. With Israel, I've often thought
of the children of Israel, they're going through the wilderness
and really the whole history. They're the Lord's people. They're
a spectacle before all of the world. And because of their sin,
God is dealing with them. The whole world sees them go
into captivity. They sees them put to worse before
their enemies. And sometimes it can be thought,
well, if these are the people of God, why is this happening
to them? And so with the Lord Jesus Christ,
He said He was the Son of God. Why can't He deliver Himself?
Why can't He save Himself? Those that were following Him,
trusting Him, leaning on Him, until things were made clear,
things were understood, this is the offense of the cross.
This is where so many were ashamed, and they fled, they went back.
And the Lord is desiring this, what He's going through, that
it be not a cause of stumbling, it be not a cause that others
should be discouraged in this. Let not those that seek Thee
be confounded for my saying, O God of Israel. And this is
a prayer, a petition, Then we have the verse that we've
quoted in verse 9, and if we went back to verse 8, become
a stranger unto my brethren, an alien unto my mother's children,
even his brethren we read that they did not believe on him.
if thou art a prophet, if thou do the miracles that thou hast
done in Capernaum, do in this place, and even those of his
own kindred cast things at him while he was alive in his ministry,
in his life. Then we have in verse 10, when
I wept and chastened my soul with fasting, Our Lord, we are
told, fasted 40 days, 40 nights, tempted of the devil. But how
little do we get a real insight, those nights he spent in prayer
with his father, that private time, closet time, that our Lord
had. Do we read in the gospels of
this? No, but we read it here, how
that he wept, how he chastened his soul with fasting, And yet
even those things were made a reproach. May sackcloth also my garment,
I became a proverb to them. He is humbled himself, low in
that way. I was a song of the drunkards. But as for me, my prayer is unto
thee, O God. And this we do know, those nights
in prayer. In the multitude of thy mercy,
hear me. in the truth of thy salvation. What is bound up in the truth
of God's salvation? Is Jesus in the sinner's place? Is he going through these things
and going through this suffering? He goes back again in verse 14
to a similar to how the psalm was begun, where he's in deep
mire. And deliver me out of the mire,
out of the mire of sin. as a mire of shame, mire of the
fallen depravity of man, that which is laid upon him. Let me
be delivered from them that hate me and out of the deep waters. There could be any deeper waters
and deeper trial than to have the sins of all his people laid
upon him, flood after flood, mire of mud, and then the wrath
of God upon him. for those sins. Hide not thy
face from thy servant for I am in trouble. Verse 17, hear me
speedily, draw an eye unto my soul and redeem it, that is,
let it not go down into the grave, destroyed in the grave. Deliver me because of mine enemies. The Lord in the midst of his
enemies, There he is, working out salvation for his people. Hear his cry and think of the
prayer here, that the Father would not hide his face from
him. My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? That was the language of Psalm
22 in the opening verses, the very words of our Lord. Thou
hast known my reproach and my shame and my dishonour. Mine
adversaries are all before thee. Little insight we have in Hebrews
12. Consider him that endured such
contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and
faint in your mind. Approach hath broken my heart.
I'm full of heaviness. Look for some to take pity, but
there's none. For comforters, but found none.
And that proceeds. when they gave him gall for my
meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. These are
the sufferings, these are what is going on in his heart, full
of heaviness. Just picture the Lord on the
cross, full of heaviness, looking for some to take pity, but there
is none. Comforters, there is none. path of our Lord. They all forsook
Him and fled. It's really emphasised, this
is a work for God alone. May we remember that. Our salvation
comes not part our works and part God's, but God's work alone. The work of our Lord Jesus Christ
upon Calvary alone. Then we have a portion that seems
a difficult portion because we remember our Lord upon the cross.
He said, Father, forgive them, they know not what they do. Yet
the language of the psalm here, let their table become a snare
before them, that which should have been for their welfare,
let it become a trap. And some of these utterances
here, where it points to, is what shall come upon those that
dealt with the Lord in that way, remained impenitent, and even
in a day of grace, look upon and mock the sufferings of our
Lord Jesus Christ as if they were nothing, as if they were
just a vain thing. Whereas the Lord desires that
mercy, and in the Gospel there is mercy to be found. May we
always remember that the other side of it, without mercy, and
those that reject Christ, those that hate Him, that there is
a most solemn, solemn end awaiting them. May we remember that as
much as the Lord here is suffering for His people, For those that
are not His people, for those who do not believe and are not
believers, they will endure those sufferings. That will come upon
them. That will come upon the enemies
of Christ, the wrath of God. At the end of the world, when
the Lord returns, the people of God are to look up for their
redemption, draweth nigh. But for those that are not, they
cry to the hills, the rocks, to fall upon them, hide them
from the face of him that sitteth upon the throne. Most solemnly,
the Jews at Christ's crucifixion, they said, let his blood be on
us and on our children. Now we've seen through history
since the terrible, terrible persecutions upon the people
of the Jews, that which was called down upon their own heads by
their own words. And so I believe these His verses
then that follow right through to 28 is picturing that of what
shall come on the head of those that do not have an interest
in Christ, for whom he did not suffer, and those who really
are his enemies and remain so. Then we have the contrast in
verse 29, but, but I am poor and sorrowful. Let thy salvation,
O God, set me up on high." And we have the picture then of the
sacrifice accepted. A sacrifice that will cause thanksgiving
and praise, that shall please the Lord better than an ox or
bullock that hath horns and hooves. We think of in Hebrews that the
sacrifice of Christ so much better than of bulls and of goats. This was what was pointed to.
This was the true sacrifice. And then the picture, the humble
shall see this and be glad. Your heart shall live that seek
God. And then the picture of the Lord
and the heavens and the earth praising him, the seas and everything
that moveth therein. The psalm finishes as it were
with the triumph of the resurrection and with ascending up on high. So we have petitions throughout
this psalm and we have a little insight into the soul of our
Lord and his sufferings of soul and what he was going through.
Now I want to come back and consider this as the path of his people,
the path that they taste. Remember this always that We,
as the hymn writer says, do but taste the cup, thou alone has
fully drunk it up. Whatever we might feel, when
we feel sin going over our head, when we feel our iniquities as
a deep mire and water floods overflowing us, when we cry unto
the Lord but We seem to get no relief and it seems so much over
us. To think of the Lord, to think
of the path that he went through, and this then is where we can
have that fellowship with the Lord in his sufferings. When we are hated without a cause,
the Lord says in John 17, I've given them thy word and the world
hath hated them. We think of what he said, if
they have done these things in a green tree, what shall be done
in the dry? If they have persecuted me, they
will persecute you. And so those things that our
Lord is speaking of how they dealt with him in measure, it
will be so with us. The Lord spoke about taking up
our cross and following him, how necessary it was, how vital
that it was. We can come in with passages
like verse seven, because for thy sake I have borne reproach,
shame hath covered my face. When God's people, for the name
of the Lord Jesus Christ, are persecuted, and it is for his
sake that they are called foolish, and then there's their own sins
that they feel and that they bear heavy upon them. We see other aspects that can
be a real prayer unto us. They're very pointing to prayer.
In verse 13, but as for me, my prayer is unto thee. What a contrast
to all of those going against us. Song of the drunkards, but
as for me, my prayer is unto thee. And again, he comes back
to the deep mire. These are paths that, when we
know something of our sin, we will walk in, in measure. We'll
understand a little bit of it. And it seems very hard for us.
We think, how can we ever be the Lord's people? When sin is
so strong within us, when it comes over us in waves and waves,
when it has such a hold upon us, when it bows us down, when
we groan under it, when we feel as if we're almost not even converted,
and yet the language of our Lord here bearing sin, that then becomes
suitable language for us when we feel these things. How otherwise
can we ever have fellowship with the Lord? If sin was an easy
thing for us to deal with, if we never had a fight with it,
if we never had it like coming over us as floods, and overwhelming
us. What fellowship will we have
with the Lord in this? I'm not in any way seeking to
make excuse for sin. I mean, not to sin that grace
might abound, but it is the Lord's people that know what it is to
have sin. As like mire and mud, flood after
flood, says the hymn writer, it comes against us, finding
all foul and is evil within us. This psalm is to encourage us
under a sense of our sinnership, under a sense of the evil of
sin and of the power of sin. And our prayer will be the same.
It's verse 17, hide not thy face from my servant. Why? Thou who canst not look upon
iniquity, but with utter abhorrence. We see every reason. why the
Lord should hide his face from us. And the prayer as well, we
can come in surely. Verse 18, draw nigh unto my soul
and redeem it. Set me free, set me free by price. Redeem it, deliver me because
of mine enemies. You think of those in Egypt,
deliver them. You think of us with the world
and how it holds us. At the end of Psalm 25, redeem
Israel, O God, out of all his troubles. It's the only way to
be brought out of troubles is to be redeemed out of those troubles. And how many of us as well have
had hearts that have been full of heaviness, reproach for the
name of Christ. If you be reproached for the
name of Christ, Peter says, happy are ye. On their part he is evil
spoken of, but on your part he is glorified. They are precious
words and they are words where we have that fellowship with
the Lord in that which he went through. And so in this psalm
there is that which points and gives us a little view of the
sufferings of our Lord in his soul. and a little view as well
of what we are to expect as God's people and to have a fellowship
with Him and that our prayers be made and our utterances be
made to be like that of our Lord, that we walk together, that we're
not strangers one of another. The Lord says, take my yoke upon
you, learn of me, meek and lowly in heart, ye shall find rest
unto your souls. The beautiful promises at the
end, for God will save Zion and will build the cities of Judah,
that they may dwell there and have it in possession. The seed
also of his servant shall inherit it, and they that love his name
shall dwell therein. Their beautiful, encouraging
promises concerning those who love the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ, who are numbered amongst the Church of God, the Zion of
God. Well, may this psalm then be
a help to us, may we view it in the line of our Lord Jesus
Christ. It is only the Spirit that can
take these things, the author of this Word, and make them precious
to us, and draw us to Him, and show us in those things that
the sins He bore, the sufferings that He bore, were our sins and
sufferings. And so He gives us to know a
little bit of what He endured for our sakes. Not like the world,
who have no idea, no concern, no feeling in their hearts, no
knowledge in their minds of anything of the sufferings of our Lord.
They see just the outward, but do not know the soul, do not
know the bitterness of soul. But God's people, they will,
and they will know that sin is a bitter thing, and that the
Lord has redeemed them and saved them." Well, the beautiful ordinance,
of course, the Lord's Supper sets forth this. Show forth the
Lord's death till he come, and we can then join this psalm with
that, from what is seen outwardly to what is felt inwardly. May the Lord bless his word. Amen.