This Psalm is perhaps the deepest of all the Psalms. It gives just a little idea of what the Lord Jesus passed through at the hands of God, when He was made sin for us, and when an angry God poured out all His righteous fury against sin. It also gives us to know a little of what the Lord Jesus received from the hands of men, and how He felt about it all. It reveals to us also how He felt about being deserted by His disciples whom He loved so dearly, and finishes up with His deep sorrow that one, who was His familiar friend, should sell his Master for thirty pieces of silver, and sell his soul to the Devil for even less. As the result Judas became like the darkness into which he went to sell his Master.

Again I must say that even in eternity, we will never understand what the Lord Jesus passed through for us. Blessed be His Holy Name! The sight of the Lamb "freshly slain," will never lose its power to move the hearts of those that love Him to worship.

This Psalm was dedicated to be sung by the Sons of Korah. These, were men of a remarkable history. They were the descendants of a Rebel, who rose against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. He had the audacity to accuse these men of self-seeking, when God had sovereignly chosen them to lead His people. However it seems that these men (the sons of Korah), had the spiritual discernment to see through their father’s fleshly ambitions, and they stood apart from and his pretensions. As a result they did not die along with their father and those that he misled. (Numbers 26:11) Because of this, they would carry with them a very deep sense of mercy, and as time went on they were chosen to be amongst those that sang the praise of God. When speaking about them I am often reminded of the words of the hymn-writer;

Praise my soul the King of heaven;

To His feet thy tribute bring;

Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven;

Who like thee His praise shall sing?

Praise Him, Praise Him Praise Him, Praise Him;

Praise the Everlasting King!

Then it was dedicated to the skilful hands of the Chief Musician, (to us the Holy Spirit), It is a song of deep depression, (the meaning of Leannoth). It was one of the Maschil Psalms, and Maschil means instruction. It is hoped that as we look at the details given to us in this Psalm, we may receive instruction also, as to the terrible nature of sin, and the perfect Divine nature of the Sin Bearer who was made sin for us. May we also receive instruction as to the vile ingratitude of the sinful nature of fallen man.

But it was not written by David, but by Heman the Ezrahite. We learn from (1Kings 4:31), that he was a man of great intelligence, and probably brother to the person that wrote Psalm 89. Such intelligence is not meant to make much of man, but instead is intended to make much of Christ. A knowledge of the Scriptures is a wonderful thing to possess, but is not intended to make much of the one that has it. But rather it is intended to enrich their contributions of adoration and praise to both the Father and the Son. It is not a pedestal on which any are to stand, and to proclaim themselves above the average of God’s people, but is rather meant to be a means of exalting the Persons of the Trinity. May the Lord grant to us that with depth, feeling and spiritual tone we may be able to worship Him!

The Life of the Lord Jesus was a life of prayer. So often we are told that He spent the night in prayer to God. For three and a half years He went about doing good. From the very beginning He obviously was given to constant prayer. His disciples noticed this, and they were impressed with the beauty of His intercessions and this fostered in them a desire to be able to pray like He did, hence their request, "Lord teach us to pray". As the result of this request, we have that beautiful sample prayer recorded for us in the Gospels. It is rather sad that many nominal "Christians", use this beautiful prayer in a formal and a ritualistic way. A lady once told me that she had religiously gone to Church all her life, but when questioned about the repetition of the "Lord’s Prayer", as it is called, she said "I suppose we said it like a lot of parrots, we did not even think of what we were saying".

As the end of that three and a half year period drew near, the awfulness of what was to happen to Him, and the work, which he had come to do on the cross, came before His holy soul, the burden of it all grew heavier. We are given a peep into the Garden of Gethsemane, and a brief look at what took place there, but His soul trouble is mentioned earlier than that. We are told in (John 12:27), of that soul trouble, and then in (Matthew 26:28). That His soul was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. Truly His holy life was drawing near to the grave, and was "full of troubles". He knew every detail of what was to happen to Him, at that place called Golgotha. So unlike ourselves! Because we do not know the details of what is going to happen to us, but He knew it all.

Though it pleased God to use wicked men in the accomplishment of His Divine purpose, yet the Lord Jesus did not accept such abuse from the hands of men, but He received all from the hands of a righteous God. I am counted with them that go down to the pit. Isaiah says that He was numbered with the transgressors. Thus the sinless One, the Originator of life. He who said "I am come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly", took the place of the guilty. He was denied the right to live, He was denied the very life of which He was the Originator. "I am as a Man that has no strength". Thus the Mighty One was reduced to absolute weakness. He before whom the demons quailed and trembled, was nailed to the cross. A cross of wood, hewn from a tree that He had made. How could it be? O Blessed Saviour, who can measure the depths of Thy suffering, all that You passed through for me? In another Psalm we read, "Thou hast laid help on Him that was mighty. The hymn-writer put it this way:

Through weakness and defeat

He won the mead and crown;

Trod all our foes beneath His feet,

In being trodden down.

He Satan’s power laid low;

Made sin, sin’s reign o’erthrew;

Bowed to the grave, destroyed it so;

And death by dying slew.

Bless, bless the Conqueror slain,

Slain in His victory.

Who lived, who died, now lives again

In glorious majesty.

"Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave" .The article of death must have been a great relief to our blessed Saviour. It would seem from the passage in Psalm 16, that He even looked forward to that experience, because He entered into death in the full and the blessed assurance of the resurrection. While His lifeless body laid in the cold of Joseph’s new tomb, He was free. His work had been done. The responsibilities that He had undertaken had all been fulfilled. However He was only "like the slain" who had been cut off by Jehovah’s righteous hand, and whom He remembered no more. How the eye of the Eternal Jehovah rested on that spot, where the body of Him who had glorified Him on the earth lay? It awaited the moment when He would demonstrate His total satisfaction with the work that the Lord Jesus, had done, by raising Him from the dead.

"Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness in the deeps", Thus the Psalmist was moved by the Holy Spirit to give expression to the very feelings that passed through the lovely heart, and mind of the Lord Jesus. O the darkness that he entered into and endured for you and for me! What deeps He fathomed, when He became our sin-bearer. In Psalm 36 we read, "Thy judgements are a great deep", (Psalm 36:6) Jehovah’s holy wrath in all its fullness was upon Him, Wave after wave of God’s holy judgement passed over Him. Compare (Jonah 2:3), but He sustained it all

. O the loneliness that He experienced there for you and me, men failed Him when He needed them most. God had caused everything on which He could normally rely, to fail Him completely. He had accepted the will of God, knowing what that will entailed, and He could not "Come forth", now. He must, He would go the whole way, He would finish the work that He came to do. But how He felt the failure of His very own disciples to stand with Him, in spite of their boasting. "Though all forsake Thee yet will not I". It was not only Peter who said this, but also "So said they all". But how deeply He felt it. How His lovely heart was broken, how His eyes mourned. Did you realise my dear brother or sister, that when in cowardice we forsook Him also, He felt it just the same. The poet wrote:

During His holy life of absolute dependence upon His loving heavenly Father, the Lord Jesus had often called upon Him, and never once had He been denied the help that He asked. He stretched out His holy hands continually to God, but there was no answer now. Those hands so pure and holy were nailed to the cross now, and He must die, and die for us. Blessed be His holy name!

"Wilt Thou show wonders to the dead? Shall the dead praise Thee?" Yes indeed, we who were dead in trespasses and sins, have seen the wonders of the operations of His grace. We who were once dead now having received His life, delight to praise Him. Here the word ‘Selah’ appears, it was thought to have some musical significance, but for us it means, (Pause and consider), let us do that just now. O the wonder of it all! Who can measure the Divine love that gave the Son of God’s love to die for us? Who could understand the way that God has taken, both to uphold His righteousness, yet to extend his mercy to such as you and I?

Surely God’s ways are past finding out! ( Romans 11 : 33-36) because God’s loving kindness has been has been declared in the grave. Remember how the angel said. "Come see the place where the LORD lay". Can we find a greater expression of the God’s loving kindness than that? Both His righteousness and His loving kindness have been expressed there in the death, the burial, the resurrection and the ascension of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. His wonders have been made known in that darkness. It is because of what the Lord Jesus did, that now God can say, "Their sins, and their iniquities I will never remember any more ". (Hebrews 8:12)

The verses that follow (13 & 14) reveal to us once again the deep feelings of the Lord Jesus as man. What a terrible thing it was for Him, whose life had been one of answered prayer, to suddenly be cut off from the source of His comfort and strength? So He asks, "Why, O Jehovah casteth Thou off my soul"? You and I have the answer to that question. It was because of us that He was forsaken there!

These verses bring to an end this Psalm that is so full of sorrow. In verse fifteen we have revealed to us the deep feelings of the Lord Jesus, that His life that was so holy, so pleasing to God, should be cut so short. He who was immortal, he who was the "Originator of life", only lived to be thirty-three and a half years. How He felt the fact that His life was so short.

But all that He had suffered during His short life was not to be compared with the horror, the terror of being forsaken by God. Twice He says "Thy terrors", as if there was nothing to be compared with those. These were associated with His fierce anger; this is what the Lord Jesus experienced during those three terrible hours of darkness. He says, "They have surrounded me all day like water"". This shows us how that those three terrible hours must have dragged for Him. He was eternal, timeless in His own nature, those dreadful hours must have seemed an eternity to Him.

He concludes with the repetition of His lament, "Lover and friend hast Thou put far from Me, and My acquaintance into darkness". He knew that the arm of flesh would fail Him. He told His disciples that they would all forsake Him, and leave Him alone. Yet in this verse He does not blame them for failing Him when He needed them most, but in it all He sees the hand of a Holy God. Hell is eternal loneliness, and it was our "Eternal Hell Thou drankest up". Thus the Hymn-writer wrote. The acquaintance that the Psalmist refers to, was Judas. John tells us that "he went out, and it was night". So the Psalm closes on the most sombre note.

Let us bow our heads and our hearts in thanksgiving and in worship!