Psalm 22:27 All the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before you. In this Psalm the utterance of the believing heart in trial and in deliverance becomes, at various points, a prophetic anticipation of the experience of Christ. In one verse after another we seem to hear out of His own mouth the sorrow and the triumph of Christ. Regarding the text in this light, as an expectation which a believer might naturally express in the hour of his own enlargement, it brings before us an interesting connection of thought. A believer who has been brought into great temptation and trouble, and whose faith has been drawn out into lively and lowly exercise, when the deliverance comes will be aware of something more than the worth and the gladness of that particular deliverance. He has been holding converse with the mercy of God under pressure. There comes afresh into his heart the impression of the love of God, of which his own relief is only an instance and expression. So God teaches him — forces him to learn afresh — what a blessedness this is to have this God for his God forever and ever. Then how naturally he may go on to such an anticipation as that in the text. he has a fresh sense of that in God which saves and blesses. How natural it becomes to cherish even so great an expectation as that the ends of the world may turn to the Lord! If all believers had the fresh sense they might have of Divine compassion there would be less uncertainty about the prosperity of the Gospel, less of feeble and dubious effort. And we may also hear the utterance of a Saviour's joy and exultation when it is said, "The ends of the world shall remember, and shall turn to the Lord." I. THE PROSPECT FROM THE CROSS. So taken, the text suggests to us our Lord's consciousness of the virtue that lay in His atoning sacrifice. The life of perfect holiness and perfect love was crowned by the death in which He put away sin. Exceeding glory to God and good to man were to be unfolded from it. This lay fully before our Lord's eye from the first. What He saw it becomes us to believe — the ends of the world shall remember, and turn to the Lord. II. THE SOUL'S AWAKENING. "They shall remember." It is as though something long forgotten had come to mind, had melted their hearts within them. In what sense is the truth in Christ new? It is not so new but that it has also something old in it. Just this lay behind many a transient conviction, many a vague and dim impression. Whatever of new has come has put unspeakable meaning into all the old. III. MAN'S PLACE WITH GOD. This is not so only with those for whom conversion comes after years of acquaintance with the Christian creed, and with the form of Godliness. It holds for men as men. The God who in Christ becomes ours is the very God for whom man was made. This is the meaning of man. And the blessedness which redemption brings is for the heart of man, as man was planned and made. IV. THE INEVITABLE RETURN. The text points to a time when turning to God shall be the main thing, the prevailing thing, as if a mighty tide setting that way, carried all before it. For the present we do not see this. (Robert Rainy, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. |
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