PSALM 88

TEHILLIM 88

1 O Yahweh Elohim of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee:

To those, however, who study Christ's life attentively, and particularly in the light of what the spirit of Christ has testified in the Psalms as to the sufferings of Christ, it becomes manifest that those sufferings were much more widely spread over his life than is popularly imagined; that they consisted largely of the mental suffering caused by the present evil state of things among men; that in fact he was a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief.

His sorrow and his grief were of a sort that many, and we might add, that nearly all, are unsusceptible of. Christ had a high conception—far higher than ever we can hope to reach—of what men ought to be and of the position that God ought to occupy among men, and therefore he felt a pain, that none could experience who were not of the same state of mind, in mingling with men who were on the whole, as regards God, like the brutes.

We find that we come into fellowship with the sufferings of Christ in proportion as we grow up to him and become like him, drinking to his spirit, sharing his tastes, and laying hold of his hopes. We come to find that it is no empty metaphor which likens the people of God to strangers and pilgrims, having here no continuing city. We come to feel that David did not speak extravagantly when he said

"My flesh longeth as in a dry and a thirsty land, wherein there is no water." "I am as an owl in the desert, I am as a pelican in the wilderness."

The Christadelphian, April 1876

3 For my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave.

The breaking of bread has great value

We are reminded that he was a sufferer: that it pleased the Lord to bruise him. Our own part at present is very much one of suffering, and we are enabled to bear it properly by the exhibition of this body given and this blood shed. We are made to realize that the first stage of our development as sons of God is necessarily one of humiliation, and that in this stage the Lord himself has preceded us, in having been made to "learn obedience by the things that he suffered"

...Why was the Lord called upon to suffer? Why was the Holy One commanded to allow himself to be put to death by sinners? –This commandment" he said, he had –received of the Father," and he prayed unavailingly in the garden of Gethsemane that the cup might pass from him.

It has to do with the greatness of God and the smallness of man. He has said "I will be exalted." He has said "I will be sanctified" - (held in holy reverence and deepest and highest honour) – "in them that approach unto Me." He has invited man to approach. He has said

"Come unto me." "Look unto me." "Draw nigh to me." "Come out from among the unclean, and I will receive you."

But between these two points - the point at which man is invited, and the point at which his compliance is accepted lies this awful ceremony of holiness, - the condemnation of sin in the public crucifixion of one who bore the sin nature, but who was himself obedient in all things.

A condemnation with which we are required to identify ourselves in the ceremony appointed for the purpose - baptism into his death. We do not "show forth the Lord's death" to any effectual purpose if we do not see the terrible majesty of God which was vindicated in it. The principle is illustrated to us in the vision of the seraphim covering head and body in the presence of God, and saying

"Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh Hosts."

If the angels of His presence humble themselves thus before God, what attitude becomes mortal man but the very one provided in this institution: "crucified with Christ," yet saying with Paul,

"Nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Seasons 2.92