The River of Your Delights

Halfway through this Psalm the voice of David lifts off the ground and starts to fly. "Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. Your righteousness is like the mountains of God; your judgments are like the great deep." Four images stacked on top of one another, each bigger than the last. The sky is too small to contain His love. The mountains are too small to weigh His righteousness. The great deep is too shallow to measure His judgments. And then, when the Psalm has reached the heights, it returns to the lowest place imaginable — under His wings: "How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights." From the heavens to His shadow in five verses. The God who fills the sky is the same God who covers His children with His own wings.

There is one Lord in whom every line of this stanza has been gathered up. The Lord Jesus Christ is the visible faithfulness of God in our streets. He is the steadfast love that has come down out of the heavens to walk among us. He is the fountain of life of which the Psalm sings, and the light in whose light we see light, because He has said it of Himself: "I am the light of the world." Whoever takes refuge in His shadow is given more than safety; he is given the river of God's own delights to drink. The Psalm is not promising a thimble of pleasure; it is promising the river that comes out of the throne. And in the gospel that river has reached us. We drink, and the light of God's face is on us, because the face of God has turned toward us in Christ.