The Psalms make for some fascinating reading. Depending on which one you read they can be either comforting or disturbing. They also have a mystery that’s pretty much inherent to them and that makes them mysterious. The Psalms are basically prayers or possibly hymns and in some cases they seem to have been written to function liturgically as a part of worship in the temple or the synagogue (or, for us, in church – I sometimes use a selection from the Psalms as the Call to Worship.) So, at least when they were written, they were human words that were addressed to God. Somehow, over the course of centuries, they came to be accepted as sacred Scripture, meaning that human words addressed to God came to be sign as God’s word addressed to us – which, when you think about it, is a kind of a strange transformation. It’s not my purpose today to try to explain how that occurred, but I think it’s just worth noting as part of the mystery contained within the Psalms. The Psalms deal run the whole gamut of human experiences (both good and bad.) They’re written for different purposes. As I said, some are meant to be used liturgically; some are psalms of lament; some are psalms of celebration. They describe God’s work in the world, and they describe our work on behalf of God. And they reveal a huge range of human emotions: love, fear, guilt, and even anger. So the 150 Psalms that we have in our Bible are a hugely diverse collection of writings. Some are very simple and short – Psalm 117 has only two verses – and some are long and complicated – Psalm 139 has 176 verses. Probably the best known passage in the entire Bible comes from the Book of Psalms – “The Lord is my shepherd …” it begins, and we know that we’re going to hear the 23rd Psalm. So the Psalms are this wonderfully rich library of prayers and hymns and poetry and liturgy that can speak to us in almost any situation we find ourselves in. And mixed within the 150 Psalms that we have in our Bible are some that are considered “messianic” – they speak of the role and purpose and nature of the Messiah to come. We don’t usually think of Psalms as prophetic writings (although the authors of the New Testament certainly cited Psalms often enough as they made their case for Jesus as the Messiah – one source I came across suggested that there were about 25 specific references to the Psalms in the New Testament, many found in the Book of Hebrews) but it’s actually not surprising that they are both prophetic and messianic in some cases. The Psalms were written over a huge period of time. Some of them were before the exile to Babylon, but many were written as Israel was falling to Babylon and then during and after the exile to Babylon, in the time when messianic expectation really started to rise among the Jewish people, so it would be expected that in a collection that deals with the very real issues the people were facing, there would be some messianic content.
One thing I want to make clear, though, is that just because a particular Psalm (including these three) is considered messianic doesn’t mean that the entire Psalm is about the expectation of a Messiah. Often it’s just a portion of a Psalm that’s explicitly messianic; sometimes the rest of the content of the Psalm is only loosely related to the expectation of a Messiah. My suggestion for this week was that you should read three Psalms – Psalm 18, Psalm 22 and Psalm 132. These seem to be the best examples of messianic Psalms in the Bible. So I want to look briefly at each of these three Psalms in turn, drawing out the messianic connection in each and how the Psalm relates to Jesus.
Psalm 18 is a fairly long Psalm – consisting of 50 verses. The actual explicitly messianic part of the Psalm appears in two places – the very beginning of the Psalm (where the second part of v.2 is referenced in Luke 1:69, and the very end of the Psalm, where v.49 is referenced in Romans 15:9. I’ll talk about those beginning and end of the Psalm and its connection to Messiah in a moment, but I wanted just to put the rest of the Psalm into some context as well because I think that the rest of the content of the Psalm has something to say about Messiah and helps to explain what it is that the people were expecting of the Messiah they believed would come. The bulk of the Psalm is obviously being written in a time of great distress. So you hear words like this from vv. 4-6: “The cords of death encompassed me; the torrents of perdition assailed me; the cords of Sheol entangled me; the snares of death confronted me. In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I cried for help.” As often happens in the Psalms, you have references to God’s control over nature as a way of illustrating the divine power and the divine anger at how God’s people were being treated, so “…the earth reeled and rocked; the foundations also of the mountains tree led and quaked, because he was angry.” God is anthropomorphized, although is a frightening use of images, so that “Smoke went up from his nostrils, and devouring fire from his mouth; glowing coals flamed forth from him.” Intriguingly, God is both immanent (with us) in v.9 (“He bowed the heavens, and came down …”) but also transcendant, so that in v.13 “The Lord also thundered in the heavens …” God also becomes the deliverer of the author (and, presumably and more broadly, of all the people: “He reached down from on high, he took me; he drew me out of mighty waters. He delivered me from my strong enemy, and from those who hated me; for they were too mighty for me. They confronted me in the day of my calamity; but the Lord was my support. He brought me out into a broad place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me.” None of this is specifically messianic – it’s speaking specifically of God, not of a Messiah, although the idea that God “came down” could be thought of as a hint of the possibility of divine incarnation. There’s a celebration of God’s law, and the author justifies himself as being righteous. And, ultimately, the Psalm makes the point that while God is with his own people; God will also deal harshly with their enemies. There is a hint of messianic work there – God will save us from our enemies or oppressors. Something is going to happen. That in itself, I suppose, is enough to give the Psalm a messianic feel – somehow God will need to intervene on behalf of the people. But there are two parts of the Psalm that are referenced in the New Testament that I’d consider explicitly connected to Jesus, so I want to talk about them.
The Psalm begins this way: “I love you, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, so I shall be saved from my enemies.” It’s Luke near the beginning of his Gospel who uses the reference to the “horn of salvation” in the context of Zechariah prophesying after the birth of his son, John the Baptist: “He has raised up a horn of salvation for us.” I think the point is that Luke saw the idea of the “horn of salvation” as a messenger or a harbinger of God’s salvation to come, so this part of Psalm 18 seems to be related to the coming not of Christ but of John the Baptist, who is seen to be God’s servant; God’s messenger; whose purpose is to make known the coming of Messiah – to “prepare the way.” The context of Psalm 18:1-3 is the salvation of God (“… so I shall be saved from my enemies …”); a purpose that would be fulfilled with the appearance of Messiah; of Christ. This identifies the work of both God and Messiah, and it gets followed up with the next 45 verses speaking specifically about God’s defence of the people and the people’s response, and then we come to the last two verses of the Psalm that say, “For this I will extol you, O Lord, among the nations, and sing praises to your name. Great triumphs he gives to his king, and shows steadfast love to his anointed, to David and his descendants forever.” This, we know, is explicitly messianic because of the reference to “his anointed.” So it isn’t a reference to God; it’s God who does the anointing. Is it specifically a reference to David? That’s often suggested in the messianic Psalms – that the anointed is David. But the author carefully extends the timeline beyond David by referring to “his descendants forever.” So the Psalm is future-oriented. Someone is coming, through David, who will share in the “great triumphs” the Psalm speaks of. It’s to be an eternal mission – “forever.” In that sense it transcends earth and earthly kingdoms. So Psalm 18 blends together a number of different themes while both beginning and ending with references that are seen as messianic – a promise to Israel that challenges and troubles will be overcome by a coming descendant of David and all will be restored as God desires it to be. The idea expressed in the Psalm of extolling God “among the nations” (meaning, the Gentile nations) and singing “praises to [God’s] name” is cited by Paul in Roman 15:9: “I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, 'Therefore I will confess you among the Gentiles, and sing praises to your name ...'” So, Paul sees in this Psalm an endorsement of the Christian mission to the Gentile world; Christ will be the reason that the Gentiles would “glorify God.”
Psalm 22 is an interesting example of a
messianic Psalm. It doesn’t make any reference to “the anointed” so it isn’t
explicitly messianic in the normal sense of the word. But every Christian
probably recognizes the opening words of the Psalm: “My God, my God, why have
you forsaken me?” These, of course, are reported by Matthew and Mark to be the
words Jesus cries out on the cross after his crucifixion. As I suggested a
moment ago there are often attempts to suggest that Psalms that seem to point
to Messiah (to Jesus) are really referring to David. That’s been suggested by
some about Psalm 22: that everything that happens in this Psalm is in reference
to the life and experiences of David. But what’s described in the Psalm really
doesn’t fit the overall story of David’s life as far as we know it. It’s not
that David never knew hardship, but there’s nothing in the accounts of his life
that would account for the extreme anguish being described. But, certainly at
least from a Christian perspective, you can’t read this Psalm without being
vividly confronted by the crucifixion. That isn’t just the opening words. It’s
the entire nature of the Psalm. The one suffering in the verses of this Psalm
is a humble suffering servant, if I can put it that way – praises to God are
mixed with cries of anguish. This is what we expect of Jesus. There’s also the
vision of a world-wide acceptance of this figure: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn
to the Lord; and
all the families of the nations shall worship before him.” Divisions will cease; peace
will be established; God will be revealed to all the earth. The figure being
portrayed in the Psalm also isn’t restricted by time. If you go to the very end
of Psalm 22 you find these words: ” To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the
earth bow down; before
him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him. Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told
about the Lord, and proclaim
his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.” So the promise of the
Psalm (of unity and peace) is for the dead, the living and those not yet born. It’s
an eternal message. It goes beyond the temporal actions and accomplishments of
David. So Psalm 22 comes to be seen as messianic because it fits the events of
the crucifixion of Jesus far more clearly than it does anything in the life of
David and because the nature and scope of what this figure will ultimately
accomplish (its worldwide impact) is far beyond anything that David ever
accomplished. David did become Israel’s greatest king – but the truth is that
Israel was never a nation that was a major world power, so his impact beyond
the relatively narrow confines of the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea
was almost nil. So while there’s no reference to “the anointed” in this Psalm,
this is an example of seeing messianic prophecy in the light of the life of
Jesus. In fact, Hebrews 2:12 takes the words of v.22 (“I will tell of your name
to my brothers and sisters; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you
…”) and attributes them to Jesus, so that Hebrews 2:12 says “For this
reason Jesus is not ashamed to call [the sanctified] brothers and
sisters, saying, “I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters, in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.”
Finally, I asked you to look at Psalm 132. As it starts,
Psalm 132 is clearly speaking of David: “O Lord,
remember in David’s favor all the hardships he endured …” This
seems to be a liturgical Psalm because it uses those hardships of David to then
highlight David’s faithfulness to God and his determination to build the
Temple, which would only be accomplished during the reign of David’s son,
Solomon. “I will not enter my house or get into
my bed; I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids,
until I find a place for the Lord, a dwelling place for the Mighty
One of Jacob.” We heard of it in Ephrathah; we found it in
the fields of Jaar. “Let us go to his dwelling place;
let us worship at his footstool. Rise up, O Lord, and go
to your resting place, you and the ark of your might. Let your priests
be clothed with righteousness, and let your faithful shout for joy.” One bit of speculation is that it
was possibly written to celebrate the dedication of the Temple. About halfway
through the Psalm shifts from a liturgical note to a prophetic note. There’s a
reference to an “anointed one” (a Messiah) who clearly isn’t David, and then
comes these words: “The Lord swore to David
a sure oath from
which he will not turn back: ‘One of the sons of your body I will set on your throne.
If your sons keep my covenant and my decrees that I shall teach
them, their sons
also, forevermore, shall
sit on your throne.’” So David’s throne is declared to be an eternal throne
upon which David’s descendants will sit forever. Psalm 132 then ends with these
two verses: “… I will cause a horn to sprout up for David; I have prepared a lamp for my
anointed one. His
enemies I will clothe with disgrace, but on him, his crown will gleam.” A horn, a lamp and
a crown are three images commonly associated with Israel’s Messiah-figure: the
horn represents strength; the lamp represents wisdom and the crown represents
power. Some see it as important that the crown will be seen to “gleam” – so
that it isn’t just earthly power; the “gleaming” is believed by some to
represent holiness; it could be an association of the anointed one with God. So
Psalm 132 begins with hardship, progresses through David’s faithful response to
hardship and then moves to the coming anointed one: a King of strength, wisdom
and power imbued with the divine; a coming king or Messiah who will establish a
Kingdom to be ruled by these qualities. The two references to “the anointed
one” make this Psalm messianic. There are no specific citations in the New
Testament to Psalm 132, but there seem to be allusions to it in both Acts and
Luke’s Gospel.
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