Psalm 102
As we know, this psalm is one of the Messianic Psalms, psalms that speak of the suffering and victory of the Messiah, even our Lord Jesus Christ. The psalm is anonymous, perhaps because the authorship is not important. What matters is the subject of the Psalm – we’re not distracted by thinking about the circumstances of the writer.
We hear the Father and Son speaking in this psalm. We have confirmation of this in the New Testament. If we read Hebrews 1 verses 10-12, we can see that these words are from this psalm (verses 12, 25-27), and Hebrews describes them as being spoken by the Father unto the Son, ‘unto the Son he saith’ (Hebrews 1 verse 8). We find William McDonald’s commentary helpful on this as he suggests in verses 16-21 of our psalm, we hear the Holy Spirit speaking about the future restoration of Israel under the Messiah and therefore we have the trinity at Calvary. Hebrews affirms the involvement of the trinity in the work of the cross: chapter 9 verse 14 ‘Christ, … through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God’.
The inscription of the psalm touches our hearts: the Lord is ‘afflicted’ and ‘overwhelmed’ and He speaks to His Father. These psalms give us access to the thoughts and feelings of the Lord and we really do feel that, like Moses, we are on ‘holy ground’ (Exodus 3 verse 5). This is Divine dialogue and in view of this, we wouldn’t presume to do a verse by verse exposition of this psalm.
Let us think about the loneliness of Christ and the extremity of this at the cross. We can think of the words of Psalm 22 verse 1 ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ and in verse 2 in this psalm, ‘Hide not thy face from me in the day when I am in trouble’. We hear Him again in verse 4, ‘My heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget to eat my bread’.
This was One who was ‘daily his delight’ (Proverbs 8 verse 30); this was One who ‘is in the bosom of the Father’ (John 1 verse 18) and yet we hear Him as He experiences being cut off from His God in those three hours of darkness when He became our sin-bearer.
He uses imagery to describe his loneliness: ‘I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert. I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top’ (verses 6-7)
We hear of His tears in verse 9: ‘I have … mingled my drink with weeping’. We do not read of His tears at the cross in the gospel records although we know He wept at other times about the plight of humanity.
Although many of us know what it feels to be lonely and we know it can be a terrible thing to deal with, yet we have to acknowledge that His loneliness was unique and was a more demanding experience than any man has ever gone through. And it was for us, and hallelujah, it was for me.
Paul