Christ and the Psalms (Part 2)

Last month we began to consider several authors’ fascinating insights into Jesus’ familiarity with, usage of, and fulfillment of the Psalms. Here are some more. WORSHIP NOTES Volume 19, No. 2 (February 2024) The Psalms are the prayers Jesus holds in common with us as He, in His manhood, takes His place within the covenant people of God. And they are Christ’s distinctive prayer book as he takes up His unique identity as the son of God sent to save us. . . . Jesus quotes from and alludes to the psalms frequently. The Old Testament prayers provided lyrics through which Jesus could express to His Father the emotions of His life. Such songs gave Jesus the words not only to reflect in prayer on situations that had already occurred, but also to enable Him to prepare for what lay ahead of Him. Their words could carry the spiritual weight of His life, giving Him strength for the darkness and hope for a dawn. For example, imagine Psalm 71:20 in Jesus’s passion week prayers, “You who have made Me see many troubles and calamities will revive Me again; from the depths of the earth You will bring Me up again.” Or, Psalm 49:15, “But God will ransom My soul from the power of Sheol, for He will receive Me.” Also, Psalm 116 would’ve been sung during the Passover meals in Jesus’s day. Consider what these lines might’ve meant to Jesus just hours before His arrest: The snares of death encompassed me; The pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called in the name of the Lord; O LORD, I pray, deliver my soul! (Psalm 116:3–4) How might these verses have carried Him through Gethsemane? This understanding of the Psalms means they were written in divine sovereignty, not only to express the intent of the human authors, but to create levels of meaning beyond, yet consistent with, their original expression. Even after millennia of use by God’s people, the songs would’ve been waiting for use by Jesus, the incarnate Son, in praying to His Father with and for us during his days on earth. —Gerrit Dawson, Raising Adam, 26–27 It’s a marvelous incentive to sing, that you know that it’s Jesus who is leading your singing. There’s also, I think, something that helps us to be calm in the midst of many of the controversies that presently arise about how we sing or what we sing. Because, it so happens, we know what Jesus enjoyed singing. There are 150 of them that He enjoyed singing—which incidentally is not on my part an argument for exclusive psalmody, although we ought to sing a lot more of them than we do. But doesn’t that teach you something in the midst of the worship wars? For example, by nature I come to some song that has only six lines in it, and I say, that’s not worthy—until I realize that my Lord Jesus Christ was prepared to sing the 117th Psalm [2 verses]. I get irritated when there is repetition. Now I don’t want to sing “Our God Reigns” 1,009 times any more than you do, but I can’t sing the Psalms with Jesus without knowing that there are lines I’m going to repeat again and again and again and again and again. And if you make at least a quick survey of the Psalms—and I confess I’ve only done it quickly, you’ll notice a very remarkable thing which is actually perfectly in keeping with the principle teaching of the New Testament, and that is this: only about a third of the Psalter is addressed to God; another third of the Psalter is addressed to me; and another third of the Psalter is addressed to you. Now isn’t that interesting? Here in the midst often of rather foolish language that has not been tested by Scripture, we are sometimes urged to sing only those things that are directed towards God; and we cannot do that without saying that the Lord Jesus was singing some of the wrong things! So we need to be very careful, for example, about some of us—you know we all belong to different ends and edges of the spectrum on this—some of us who rather despise songs that have a focus on myself. What is the key thing here? The key thing here is not the question of how many times the first person singular is mentioned, but where those many mentions of the first person singular are eventually going to lead. Are they going to lead me from the first person singular to the three Persons divine? Is it not legitimate for me to sing, “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” so long as I am going to sing, “Hope thou in God, send your light forth and your truth, and let them be guides to me”? Now what do we learn in all this? We learn in this that the pattern for song in the pages of Scripture [especially in the Psalms] is perfectly suited and balanced to the reality for our humanity. And so we’re encouraged in this different way to sing that which varies in theme, that which differs in mood, that which is different in style, that which is singular, that which is repetitive, that which is long, that which is short. Because in all of these areas, our Lord Jesus Christ is, as it were—and this is to me a very important thing—the Lord Jesus Christ is not squeezing our emotions into some small bottle of grace; but stretching and pulling our emotions in order to fulfill and transform our fallen and broken humanity. It’s a marvelous incentive to sing, that you know that it’s Jesus who is leading your singing. There’s also, I think, something that helps us to be calm in the midst of many of the controversies that presently arise about how we sing or what we sing. Because, it so happens, we know what Jesus enjoyed singing. There are 150 of them that He enjoyed singing—which incidentally is not on my part an argument for exclusive psalmody, although we ought to sing a lot more of them than we do. But doesn’t that teach you something in the midst of the worship wars? For example, by nature I come to some song that has only six lines in it, and I say, that’s not worthy—until I realize that my Lord Jesus Christ was prepared to sing the 117th Psalm [2 verses]. I get irritated when there is repetition. Now I don’t want to sing “Our God Reigns” 1,009 times any more than you do, but I can’t sing the Psalms with Jesus without knowing that there are lines I’m going to repeat again and again and again and again and again. And if you make at least a quick survey of the Psalms—and I confess I’ve only done it quickly, you’ll notice a very remarkable thing which is actually perfectly in keeping with the principle teaching of the New Testament, and that is this: only about a third of the Psalter is addressed to God; another third of the Psalter is addressed to me; and another third of the Psalter is addressed to you. Now isn’t that interesting? Here in the midst often of rather foolish language that has not been tested by Scripture, we are sometimes urged to sing only those things that are directed towards God; and we cannot do that without saying that the Lord Jesus was singing some of the wrong things! So we need to be very careful, for example, about some of us—you know we all belong to different ends and edges of the spectrum on this—some of us who rather despise songs that have a focus on myself. What is the key thing here? The key thing here is not the question of how many times the first person singular is mentioned, but where those many mentions of the first person singular are eventually going to lead. Are they going to lead me from the first person singular to the three Persons divine? Is it not legitimate for me to sing, “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” so long as I am going to sing, “Hope thou in God, send your light forth and your truth, and let them be guides to me”? Now what do we learn in all this? We learn in this that the pattern for song in the pages of Scripture [especially in the Psalms] is perfectly suited and balanced to the reality for our humanity. And so we’re encouraged in this different way to sing that which varies in theme, that which differs in mood, that which is different in style, that which is singular, that which is repetitive, that which is long, that which is short. Because in all of these areas, our Lord Jesus Christ is, as it were—and this is to me a very important thing—the Lord Jesus Christ is not squeezing our emotions into some small bottle of grace; but stretching and pulling our emotions in order to fulfill and transform our fallen and broken humanity. —Sinclair Ferguson, “True Spirituality, True Worship” (sermon, Covenant College, 9/16/2004)