THE "ROCK" OF OUR SALVATION

"From the end of the earth will I cry unto Thee, when my heart is overwhelmed; lead me to the rock that is higher than I." -Psalm 61:2 [KJV]

There is something in this expression in our text, "rock," which seems, to my mind, to throw a sweet and blessed light upon what Jesus is to the poor and needy. The rock must go down to the bottom of the deep waters, as well as rise out of them, to be a sufficient place of refuge for the shipwrecked mariner! If the rock did not go to the bottom of the deep, it would not be firm; it would be but a quicksand. Is not this agreeable to the Spirit's testimony concerning the humanity of Christ? How deep that went into all our sorrows, into all our sufferings, into all our sins, into all our shame! However deep the waters may be, the rock is deeper than all; however deep the sufferings, sins, and sorrows of the Church may be, the sufferings and sorrows of "Immanuel, God with us," were infinitely deeper. But the waves and billows beat in vain against the rock; they cannot move it from its place. So it is with THE ROCK, Jesus. All the sins, temptations, sufferings, and sorrows of the elect, with the wrath of God, and the fury of hell, beat against that rock, but they never moved it from its place.  

But this rock is spoken of in our text as "higher than I." There we have the Godhead. For if Jesus were not God as well as man, the God-man, what support could He be to the sinking soul? what efficacy could there be in His atoning blood? what power and glory in His justifying righteousness? what suitability in Him as a Saviour to the utterly lost? But being God as well as man, yea, the God-man, the great and glorious Immanuel, He could descend in His human nature into the very depths of the fall, and rise up in His divine nature to the throne of the most High; and thus, like Jacob's ladder, the bottom of it was upon the earth, but the top exalted to the clouds. Then will not, must not, this be ever, as the Lord is pleased to raise it up, the cry of our soul, "Lead me to the rock that is higher than I?" No salvation anywhere else; no peace anywhere else; no consolation anywhere else. Buffeted by the waves, and well-nigh drowned by the billows, away from that rock; but if led there, brought there, kept there by the blessed Spirit, finding it a safe and sure standing for eternity. And what else but such A ROCK can save our souls, or what else but such a Saviour and such a salvation, without money and without price, can suit such ruined wretches? 

-J.C. Philpot (1802-1869 A.D.) 

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