PSALM cxxxii. 15 (2nd clause).
THE inspired writer of this Psalm commemorates in its opening verses the intense interest which King David, “the man after God’s own heart,” had in the ark, the symbol of Jehovah’s presence among His chosen people. The ark was at the beginning of David’s reign at Kirjath-jearim, after a time of captivity in the land of the Philistines, but David did not rest until it was carried with great joy to Jerusalem and set in the Tabernacle upon Mount Zion. His earnest prayer was that the Lord would accompany the ark of His strength to its resting place—that His priests would be clothed with righteousness and His saints made to shout for joy. Then, at the eleventh verse, the Psalmist begins to describe the evidences of the Lord’s interest in His servant David and in Mount Zion where was the ark of His gracious habitation. He makes mention of a number of precious promises of blessing which the Lord gave to His royal servant concerning his seed and the prosperity of Zion. These promises are to be regarded as having full reference to Christ and His Church, of whom David and Zion were the divinely-ordered types, and it is from this point of view, in New Testament times, we ought chiefly to study them for our instruction and encouragement. With respect to Zion or the Church, He says: “I will abundantly bless her provision; I will satisfy her poor with bread. I will also clothe her priests with salvation; and her saints shall shout aloud for joy. There will I make the horn of David to bud; I have ordained a lamp for mine anointed” (verses 15-17).
It is our present purpose to call attention to one of these promises: “I will satisfy her poor with bread.” It is the desire of all those who have “tasted that the Lord is gracious,” that their souls should be sustained with “the bread of life,” in the future as in the past, and in view of this desire they are exhorted to consider the great and precious promises of the Gospel, the burden of whose message is that He will not allow any who truly trust in Him to famish or perish. Let us notice three things in the words before us: first, the poor—”her poor”; secondly, the provision—”bread”; and thirdly, the promise—”I will satisfy.”
I.—The poor.—Who are the poor spoken of?
They are “her,” that is, Zion’s, poor—God’s true children. And yet not one section of them only—such as those who are temporally poor—for we do not understand from the context that it is temporal poverty that is referred to. It is poverty of a spiritual kind which the Lord here mentions—such a poverty as is common to all His children. They are all, in a spiritual sense, poor, as may be learnt from the Sermon on the Mount and other passages. True it is that they are also, in a spiritual respect, rich—rich in the possession of a right and title to all the blessings of the new and everlasting covenant. The Lord Jesus Christ became poor that they through His poverty might be rich (2 Cor. viii. 9). But as the word “poor” describes their side of the covenant—as distinguished from Christ’s—a thing they are frequently and deeply sensible of—they are often addressed in Scripture as such, with promises divinely adapted to meet and relieve their case. Let us observe, then, some of the respects in which they are “poor.”
1. They are “poor in spirit.”
“Blessed,” saith Christ, “are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” This poverty of spirit is not the disposition of sinners, without God in the world, but of those to whom belong the kingdom of grace here and the kingdom of glory hereafter. By nature as fallen, we are not “poor in spirit,” though dreadfully poor in fact, but rich and increased in goods, having need of nothing, and ignorant of our poverty, blindness, and nakedness. But those who are poor in spirit are (1) poor by conviction. They have been convinced by the Spirit of truth, in the light of law and Gospel, that the Fall has brought them naturally into a state of dire destitution of any thing spiritually good. It has reduced them to the extremest poverty, and made them complete bankrupts to the law and justice of God. They owe all and can pay nothing, but still at this stage they are disposed to make the attempt to pay. They are not entirely willing to be debtors to another—even Christ—to meet their debts. And so they are not thoroughly and savingly poor in spirit until (2) they are poor unto self-emptiness. This is effected in the day when they are made willing, by divine power, to be debtors to the free grace of God in Jesus Christ for a complete salvation. At that moment they heartily renounce their own righteousness, strength, and self-sufficiency. Sin and self are dethroned, and they are content to be nothing, that Christ may be all in all. “I live,” saith Paul, “yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” Thus (3) the “poor in spirit” are living dependents upon the gracious bounty of God in Christ. They realise that all their well-springs are in Him, and that if they possess or enjoy any spiritual blessing, such comes from Him in whom it pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell. They live, as needy sinners, upon the riches of His liberality. Poverty of spirit is, therefore, a fundamental and necessary disposition in the hearts of all who are heirs of salvation. Apart from it we have no evidence that we are new creatures in Christ Jesus.
2. God’s people are called “poor” also because they are frequently poor in experience.
Though their Lord and Saviour possesses “unsearchable riches” for their benefit, yet they do not always enjoy these in conscious experience. He exercises sovereignty and wisdom in the bestowal of them, both as to time and measure. Sometimes as a chastisement for their sins He keeps them upon a scanty allowance of spiritual comfort. He hides His face and they are troubled; they walk in darkness, and have no light. On other occasions He withdraws from them the consolations of His Spirit, and many temporal enjoyments, with a view to try their faith and patience under His sovereign will. They become “poor and sorrowful” in their experience. They may be brought so low at times that they conclude that they are cast out of God’s sight, and that they have never had any right standing before Him. “Woe is me! for I am undone.” Looking to the past and the present they see no ground for encouragement, and contemplating the future they are filled with foreboding and alarm. But, although thus greatly “cast down,” they are “not destroyed.” Their Redeemer liveth, and at the fourth watch of the night He appears upon the waters, and they are enabled to look again to the Captain of Salvation, and to rejoice in His delivering mercy. “As chastened and not killed; as having nothing and yet possessing all things.”
3. They are described as “poor” in a comparative sense.
They may be compared to children in the world who are heirs to a great inheritance. As long as such are in their “minority” they only receive a small earnest of the inheritance that is in store for them; they may have less in their pockets than people who have no such rights and titles as they. They thus continue comparatively poor until they attain their “majority,” the age of manhood and womanhood. But when they reach this period of life they enter upon the enjoyment of the whole estate. Thus it is with the children of God. They are His “poor ones” now, but they are heirs to a glorious inheritance that is incorruptible and undefiled, and fadeth not away. Their present comparative poverty is, therefore, not inconsistent with their high position as sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty. Rich they are in the possession of a sure title by Jesus Christ, the elder brother, to all the blessings of the better covenant in perfect fulness, but not always rich in the experimental enjoyment of those blessings. It is theirs, therefore, to live by faith in the promises of God which are yea and amen in Jesus Christ. Here they have for most part but crumbs from the Master’s table, drops out of the river of life, glimpses of the light of His countenance, moments of heavenly fellowship and joy unspeakable, but hereafter they shall be rich to overflowing in the perfect and uninterrupted enjoyment of God and all covenant good throughout the ages of eternity.
II.—The provision that is made for Zion’s poor: “bread.”
There seems to be special emphasis laid upon the character of the Lord’s provision in the text. It is “bread”—not anything else. The word “bread” suggests that which is substantial and beneficial—perfectly adapted to satisfy and sustain. “I will satisfy her poor with bread.” There are other “lords” besides Jehovah who rule over the fallen sons of men, such as the world, the flesh, and the devil, and they also make promises of good to their subjects and servants. But whatever good things they promise, the things they actually bestow are not good, in any proper sense, for the soul of man. Many of them are dreadfully injurious; at the very best, they are not “bread.” What, then, are they? Well, to use various figures employed in Scripture, they are husks, ashes, stones, and scorpions. What wretched food is this! And yet deluded sinners will deliberately serve the world, the flesh, and the devil for this miserable and soul-destroying reward. Let such be warned in time that if they continue to obey Satan to the end, they shall have to feast upon the scorpions of a guilty conscience and tormenting lust throughout an endless eternity. But, on the other hand, let us be fully assured that the Lord promises His children “bread,” and that He will be faithful to His word.
2. What is this bread, then, that is provided for Zion’s poor?
It is, in one word, Christ. The children of God, under the old economy, fed upon Him as set before them in promise, type and figure, and through these channels the Lord gave them to experience His grace and power. Christ has now come in the flesh, and He declares with His own lips that He is the sustenance of His believing followers:—”I am the bread of life; he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth in me shall never thirst” (John vi. 35). “This is that bread which came down from heaven . . . he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever” (vi. 58).
(1) Let us observe that, just as the natural bread passes through a process of preparation before it becomes the suitable kind of food that it now is, so in a more wonderful sense did Christ pass through a process of experience before He became suitable for all the needs of guilty fallen sinners.
In regard to the ordinary bread, it is, at first, seed sown in the field. The seed grows up to maturity as corn, and then passes through a bruising and firing process, in order to be suitable bread for man’s table. The Lord Jesus was like a corn of wheat cast into the earth in His incarnation as “the child born and son given.” He then grew up to the full maturity of holy manhood. Suffering from many storms all His life, He was finally bruised between the millstones of law and justice on Calvary’s Cross. The fire of the Father’s infinite wrath there fell upon Him as the sinners’ surety and substitute, a fire which He endured and exhausted. As the Captain of salvation and Redeemer of God’s elect, He was thus made perfect through sufferings, and “being made perfect, He became the author of eternal salvation to all them that obey Him.” Now, although the incarnation of the Son of God was a glorious step in the process by which He became the Saviour of sinners and the bread of eternal life, yet it was not enough in itself for this end. Divine justice must be satisfied for His children’s sins, otherwise they cannot be saved, and so it is “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” that is the wisdom and power of God unto salvation, and the source of life to all believing souls. “Except ye eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man, there is no life in you.” Some men seem to think that faith in the Incarnation is sufficient for salvation, but this is a mistake. We are hell-deserving sinners, and nothing less than the incarnate Son of God, suffering, dying and rising again as the atoning Redeemer of His people will meet our case. How valuable should this heavenly bread appear in our eyes as it is set before us on the table of the Gospel, when we think of the marvellous and costly process through which it has passed that it may be fitted to meet our souls’ great necessities!
(2) Let us notice its wonderful adaptation to the requirements of all the soul’s faculties.
When these are quickened by the Holy Ghost in the day of His power, they cry out for satisfaction. The Understanding becomes sensible of its darkness, and cries for light and wisdom. In Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and when the poor sinner is brought to sit at the feet of Jesus to learn of Him, he gets his understanding abundantly satisfied. Some of those, to whom God gave the profoundest natural intellects, such as Augustine, Calvin, Luther, Jonathan Edwards, John Owen, and Thomas Halyburton, found perfect rest to their understandings in the revelation of God’s unsearchable wisdom as displayed in “Christ and Him crucified.” The Conscience, under a sense of sin’s guilt, makes a loud cry for satisfaction at a throne of grace. It re-echoes the righteous demands of a holy law, and will not be at peace until it sees these demands fully met and satisfied. And where does it get this painful hunger abundantly relieved but in the appropriation by faith of a crucified Saviour? Here in Christ the requirements of the holy law, both as to precept and penalty, were perfectly and eternally met to the full. “He suffered for sins, the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God.” And so the conscience finds perfect peace in the precious blood of atonement, where God in His infinite justice has rested with boundless delight. The Will of the renewed soul cries out for holiness. Just as Christ has righteousness to meet the craving of the conscience, so He has sanctification to meet the demands of the will. He enables the new will to fight against the old will, and though often ready to succumb, to gain the victory at the end of the day. “The will” will be perfectly satisfied at last when corruption is cast out for ever. Meantime, it must live upon Christ as its sanctification and the spring of all its strength for holiness. The Affections, also, earnestly call for bread—for nothing less than the fellowship and love of God in Christ. Though man is a finite creature, yet he was made at the beginning for the infinite God—for His glory and enjoyment. He is now fallen, wretched and unsatisfied, and when he is quickened anew from above, his soul cries out for God, even the living God, and satisfied he shall not be, until he embraces in the arms of faith and love that glorious being, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as revealed in the Gospel. Here is angels’ food indeed—food that possesses infinite sweetness and relish to the living soul. To realise, even for a few moments, in the soul’s experience, the infinite and unmerited love of God in Christ to poor sinners is to get a foretaste of the marriage supper of the Lamb! The Lord Jesus as “the bread of life” is able to meet the needs of every faculty of the soul.
III.—The promise: “I will satisfy.”
A brief word on this point, as we have already exceeded the space we intended to occupy. The Lord promises to “satisfy” Zion’s poor with bread. He has already provided it in Christ, but He brings it near to us in the Scriptures of truth and in the preaching of the Gospel. In addition to these privileges He sends forth His Spirit with power, and makes the bread of life precious in the eyes of poor sinners. He takes the yokes of spiritual death and unbelief from off their jaws, and lays meat unto them. (Hosea xi. 4.) Thus they are enabled to open wide the mouth of faith, and to know for themselves that God is good. “I will satisfy her poor with bread.”
Lastly, He promises not only to give Zion’s poor this bread, but to bestow upon them a satisfactory supply of it. They shall have comparative satisfaction in time and complete and uninterrupted satisfaction in eternity. Their satisfaction in this present life, though sometimes very wonderful to their souls, is but a precious earnest of the delight and blessedness and glory that they shall yet enjoy in the presence of God and the Lamb for ever and ever.
“Looking unto Jesus.”—God calls us to look only unto Christ. The brazen serpent was lifted up on a pole that those who were smitten with the fiery serpents might look to it. If the soul can turn but an eye of faith unto Jesus Christ as lifted up, it will receive healing, though the sight of one be not so clear as the sight of another. All had not a like sharpness of sight that looked to the brazen serpent, nor have all the like vigour of faith to look to Christ, but one sincere look is pleasing to Him (Song iv. 9). A soul sensible of guilt and sin that cast but one look of faith to Christ, even raises the heart of Christ Himself, and such a soul shall not go away unrefreshed, unrelieved.—Owen.