Christian Photographers Community

Psalm 69

This is a psalm of David, but the sufferings of our Savior are fully in view (see Is. 53).  After all, the sufferings of God's king over Israel in David's day just reflect the sufferings of our Savior and the King of God's people in every age, Jesus Christ.   Even the words of verse 5, though they might not seem applicable to our Lord, since He had no "foolishness" or "sins," yet nevertheless do apply to Him because He bears our foolishness and our sins.  It is in this way, in fact, that all of David's sorrows are the sorrows of his greater Son jesus, for, as Isaiah says, "Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows."

Observing the psalm in that light, we can then see here the anguish of our Savior, particularly in its most concentrated form on the Cross.  When we read such words as verse 3 - "I am weary with my crying; My throat is dry; My eyes fail while I wait for My God" - we cannot but be made aware of the deepest meaning of the Cross - God's abandonment of His Son on our behalf.  In that extreme physical and spiritual anguish, in that hour of the very deepest possible human trial, yet it was made infinitely deeper by that abandonment.  He was left to experience the fullest desolation, He was subjected to the utmost sense of bereavement, He was abandoned to the fullest measure of grief - because He took upon Himself our heinous rebellion, our utterly abhorrent sin as if it were completely His own!

My words of description here are incapable of capturing the fullness of such anguish, but the words of this psalm can certainly be seen as our Savior's own summation of them on the Cross at that moment when He cried out, "My God, My God, Why have You forsaken Me?"  Oh let this psalm move us to contemplation of what He has done for us!

When we read, "My eyes fail while I wait for my God," we need to be reminded that His "waiting" was in vain, since He was utterly forsaken on our account.  When we read, "Oh God, You know My foolishness; and My sins are not hidden from You," let's remember our own foolishness of rebellion in the face of the goodness of God.  When we read, "shame has covered My face," let's remember that it was our awful shame.  When we read that "zeal for Your house has eaten me up," let's remember that it was truly zeal for our salvation that consumed Him! He says, "Reproach has broken My heart, and I am full of heaviness."  But His heart was broken because of the shame of our sins! 

But let's also remember that when He prays, "Let Your salvation, O God, set Me up on high," He is envisioning a resurrection that actually happened, a resurrection that resulted in our own exaltation as well as His own!

Thank you for this wonderful reminder of Christ's sufferings and He did it all for me.  Oh, what a wonderful Saviour!

THAT is obviously GRACE!