The Heart-Throbs of Our Human Lord
The quotation is from the second verse of Psalm eighteen: “The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust.” These originally are “the words of David, the servant of the Lord, who spake unto the Lord the words of this song in the day that the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul.” But, as a noted Bible teacher has pointed out, the Holy Spirit put into the mouth of David words that went infinitely beyond his own experience, words that could only be fulfilled in their true meaning when the greater Son of David came and met the forces of evil that were faintly foreshadowed by the enemies David met.
Read through the eighteenth Psalm as the words of the Lord Jesus. It is an inspired description of the awful conflict of the powers of darkness against the Son of man, when he tasted death for every man. Have you ever wondered why there were not given to us in the four Gospels more intimate glimpses of the human heart-throbs of Jesus? Have you wished that you might enter somewhat into the meaning of Gethsemane, rather than to have him go into the garden alone? Read in the eighteenth and other Messianic Psalms the human heart-throbs of the Son of man.
“I love thee, O Jehovah, my strength.
Jehovah is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer;
My God, my rock, in whom I will take refuge;
My shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower.
I will call upon Jehovah, who is worthy to be praised;
So shall I be saved from mine enemies.
The cords of death compassed me,
And the floods of ungodliness made me afraid.
The cords of Sheol were round about me;
The snares of death came upon me.”