Sermon: Psalms: Book One (Part Five)

Prophecies of Messiah
#1271
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 06-Jun-15; 74 minutes

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We are going to be going back into Psalms, Book One. In previous sermons, I have explained that the Hebrews have divided their religious year into five seasons rather than the four that we do. And these seasons are not necessarily based on equinoxes and solstices like ours are; it is not just the way the earth goes around the sun. But they separated them on periods of time with common themes and specifically on sacred themes.

Their seasons, then, began with the Passover, as it says there at the beginning of Exodus 12. This is your first month, the month of Abib. And so that began, essentially, the time of Passover. Then there was Pentecost (which we just went through), and actually, we are still in the Pentecost season. Summer was after that and then Tabernacles and winter. Those are the five seasons: Passover, Pentecost, summer, Tabernacles, and winter. And as we have seen, this five-part division of the year became a consistent pattern throughout the Bible as they picked out five parts of this and that.

So the Old Testament contains a handful of sections or of books organized in groups of five. We have all gone over this before, but I thought I would do it again because there might be somebody who has not heard all of this yet. So I am bringing everybody up to speed.

Anyway, we have these groups of five and I used "handful" purposely because that is the best way to remember something. If you could put them on the five digits of your fingers, then you have a very easy way to remember these things. So, there were the five books of the Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. And then on top of that, there were the five books of the Megilloth, or the Festival scrolls: the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther. And then of course, we have come to understand that there are five books of Psalms, one through five.

Now, the Jews found that when they lined all these up and began to study into them as each one kind of overlapped the other or overlaid the other, they could see that they had common themes. Not everything was the same, obviously, but the ideas, the prominent ideas were very similar. And so we have seen in these other sermons that I have given on the other books of Psalms, Book Two lines up with Pentecost, Exodus, and Ruth; Book Three (which I hope to go into this summer), is set in summer and lines up with Leviticus and Lamentations; Book Four, centered on the fall feasts, shares themes with Numbers and Ecclesiastes; and Book Five is for the winter and it parallels Deuteronomy and the book of Esther.

Book One, which we have been going through (this is Part Five by the way and the last, you can all breathe a sigh of relief), is for springtime. Book Five is for springtime—Passover time—and it parallels Genesis and the Song of Songs (or the Song of Solomon). Book One is Psalms 1 through 41 and it is summarized by Psalm 146 which is also the first of five summary psalms, 146 through 150. And each one of those summary psalms goes with the other groups of five as well.

Now, because of these parallel sets of five, each book of Psalms has its own individual themes. Book One's themes, as we have seen, revolve around the themes of the spring feasts, particularly Passover and Unleavened Bread. If you remember the themes of those two festivals, then you know, essentially, the themes of Book One.

We have already looked into the themes as in Psalm 1 of the righteous versus the wicked. We looked at Psalm 2, which was the Messiah and the Son. There was also, between the two of them, the theme of Torah or God's instruction, not just necessarily the first five books which the Jews call the Torah, but the entire instruction of God, wherever it is found, wherever it has been revealed. And of course, in the last sermon, we went through Psalm 37 in particular, where we went into the theme of trust—trust in God, faith, relying on God throughout our lives. So that was four themes: righteous versus the wicked, Torah, Messiah, or the Son, the Anointed One, and trust in God.

Now, I want to do a final sermon here on the theme of Messiah. But I want to approach it from a different angle because it is very important. We, in the second sermon when we went over to Psalm 2, we essentially skipped over a major part of Messiah's history and that is His ministry and of course, His crucifixion, His sacrifice for us.

Psalm 2 does not go into all that. Psalm 2 is about the Son coming to tell the bad guys that They have had it, and of course, God tells the bad guys, "Kiss the Son," give Him a homage because He is the one you have to worry about here. He is the one that has been given all this power and He is the one you have to please. So there is a whole other idea or a whole other section of things that we need to go over in terms of the fulfillment of the Passover theme, especially, and that is what Jesus Christ did as Messiah in those terms.

That is what we are going to look at today. Actually, the Messianic prophecies of Book One. It brings out a lot of things about Messiah that the Jews should have known. They read the Psalms a lot. They knew these psalms backwards and forwards and they should have been able to see, if they were not so blinded, that Christ was fulfilling these things, but they did not. We know they did not. And of course, things went on to the conclusion that they went to.

So we are going to look at the prophetic view of the life and ministry of the Messiah. And we are going to see it in particular against the life of David. Because most of the psalms in which these things are brought out are written from David's point of view as a man going through other circumstances, but they apply to him there in type and Christ is the anti-type, the reality of them. And so we have to kind of show how they work together.

But before we get into Book One and into these Messianic prophecies, I want to chase out the link between David and Messiah as far back as we could go. So let us go to Genesis 3 and I just want to pick up verse 15 because this is the first place that Messiah is mentioned in the Book. I just want you to pick up a couple of words here and store them in memory. Of course, Genesis is the parallel book to Book One of the Pentateuch. So here we have within the first three chapters the first mention of this theme in the whole Bible.

Genesis 3:15 [this is God's curse on the serpent, God says] "I will put enmity [hatred] between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel."

So we have here a prophecy that the woman's Seed, a specific seed, would defeat Satan, defeat the serpent, and He would crush his head. It was not just a body blow or a wound. This was a crushing of the head, a total defeat is what is meant here. That because of what Satan had done with Adam and Eve in the Garden, there had to be some sort of response from God and this is what the response was: that ultimately, the serpent would be defeated by this Seed.

Let us go to chapter 49 now that we have got that in mind. Another thing I might want to mention here, that Book One of Psalms is the beginning of the Psalms; Genesis is the beginning of the Bible and Genesis is the Book of Beginnings. And so we just saw here the beginning of the prophecies of Christ, the beginning of the idea of Messiah. And in the book of Psalms, in Book One, we see the beginning of God's plan being worked out in its conclusion, the beginnings of the conclusion, if you will, how God is going to work out the whole thing. But Book One seems to focus more on the beginnings of things rather than the endings, although they are mentioned

In Genesis 49 we are going to look at this specific prophecy. Jacob here is giving a prophecy of what would happen with the sons, the tribes, in the end time. I just want to pull verse 10 out. If you look up in verse 8, you will notice that this is to his son Judah or to the tribe of Judah.

Genesis 49:10 "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes; and to Him shall be the obedience of the people."

I did a whole sermon on this particular verse at one point, but I just want to bring out a few salient points here, four of them. The kings of Israel will come from Judah. That is what it means in terms of the "scepter shall not depart from Judah, or a lawgiver from between his feet," meaning that the tribe of Judah will be the one to produce the kings, the lawgivers, the ones who rule. They have been given the rod or the scepter and to them has been given this responsibility.

The second thing is what I have already mentioned: that they will be lawgivers. Now, Moses was a lawgiver, but he was not from Judah. But once God established the monarchy, the kings became the lawgivers. And the ultimate lawgiver, of course, is Christ Himself. He came to make the law honorable.

The third point is this word Shiloh. And I believe that once you get rid of all the clutter and all the different ideas of what this word means, its actual intent or suggestion is peace bringer. It is very much associated with the term shalom and the Shiloh is the one who brings peace. He is going to come and bring it. It is not going to come unless He comes. And so until Shiloh comes, all the kings of Judah are from the Judaic line, will rule, and give their laws and such. But when Shiloh comes, He brings peace and everyone turns to Him. And that is the next point.

Fourth, you could say that all the people here owe Him their obedience and to Him shall be the obedience of the people. This is a prophecy of everyone, specifically Israel, turning to Him. But it has the intimation that all people will turn to Him in obedience. Once He comes, they will not have a choice. It is either fish or cut bait at that point.

One thing I missed in my notes when we went over the word Shiloh here is that it is kind of a code word for Messiah in itself. I just wanted to make that clear. He is the only one who is able to bring peace and so he is the Anointed One sent to do that job. He is the peace bringer. So we can even take from this particular verse that not only is He the King of Israel or the ultimate King of Israel, but He is also the King of kings. He is the King of all peoples. Everyone owes Him their allegiance and their obedience.

So the big thing we need to carry from this is that the Messiah comes out of Judah.

Let us go then a little deeper into the book in II Samuel chapter 7. God here is making a promise to David, a covenant, and here is what He had to say to him through Nathan.

II Samuel 7:8 Now therefore, thus shall you say to My servant David, 'Thus says the Lord of hosts: "I took you from the sheepfold, from following the sheep, to be ruler over My people, over Israel."

Just also put in the back of your mind that David came out of the sheepfold. He was a shepherd of the sheep. That is kind of a neat little thing to remember. Not that we are going to go back to it in any great detail, but it is an interesting thing.

Here, we are already getting echoes of Genesis 49:10 that he is going to be the ruler over Israel, that He had chosen him to have the scepter and to be the lawgiver. Right?

II Samuel 7:9 "And I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off all your enemies from before you, and I have made you a great name, like the name of the great men who are on the earth."

So God had lifted David as high as he could go as a physical man.

II Samuel 7:11 Also the Lord tells you that He will make you a house.

Now, this does not mean a palace. It means a dynasty. There is going to be a House of David, meaning that he will have sons. He had already had sons by this point, but Solomon had not come into play here; mostly through Solomon and through his son Nathan would be this house. Now, He told him here that he was going to make a line of kings from him.

II Samuel 7:12-13 "When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed [remember that from Genesis 3:15, these words are starting to pop] after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. [Here He is specifically talking about Solomon, but the heir of David is being talked about in terms of being his seed.] He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever."

He is saying Solomon would build the Temple and that He would then establish this throne forever. From that point on it was going to continue.

Let us also understand that there are two levels to this, that that Seed also built a temple. I mean, the ultimate Seed. You could say that the church is a temple, that we are the house, the building of God. And so the ultimate Seed, who is the Messiah, also built a temple and once He comes on His throne, it is going to be established forever. You see the parallel levels that are going on here.

Let us go on now.

II Samuel 7:16 "And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever."

I did not count them all up, but there are a lot of "forever" in this covenant. So God is making sure David understands that through him is going to be an eternal dynasty, something that is going to last for always. It would not end at any point because once it hits the Seed who lives forever, it cannot end. And of course, David himself will be resurrected, as we know from other places, and he will rule over the house of Israel forever. So on both levels, it is going to be forever through David and through his heir, his Son.

Let us jump to the book of Psalms and Psalm 89, verses 3 and 4. This kind of summarizes what has been said already.

Psalm 89:3-4 "I have made a covenant with My chosen, I have sworn to My servant David: Your seed I will establish forever, and build up your throne to all generations." Selah. [Think about that, consider that.]

It is an eternal dynasty. It is one that will go forever. It comes out of David, it comes out of Judah, and this seed is a very important part of it all, the most important part. Now, here we have again, the word seed. Like I said, it is an important word in terms of the Messiah.

I want to to go now to the New Testament understanding of this in Galatians 3:16 and see that Paul, here, makes sure we understand who the seed is.

Galatians 3:16 Now to Abraham and his Seed [if you notice, if you have a New King James, the Seed is capitalized here] were the promises made. He does not say, "And to seeds," as of many, but as of one, "And to your Seed," who is Christ.

So it is quite made quite explicit here that Abraham's Seed is the Seed. We can say, we know that it is the same Seed as in Genesis 3:15 and the same Seed that was promised to David as the eternal King who would sit on His eternal throne over all of Israel, and actually over all. So we are linking up words and phrases and ideas that have to do with this particular Person, the Seed who is the heir of David.

Let us go back to the Old Testament to the book of Isaiah. Once we get into the prophetic books, these ideas and these themes about the Seed just proliferate. We are only going to go through a couple. Let us go to Isaiah 9. The connection is made very explicit here.

Isaiah 9:6-7 For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. [there is that word again too] Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

Here we have a confirmation of a lot of these different words and elements having to do with Messiah. And of course, the main one we are talking about here is that He is connected intimately with David as his Seed, as his heir. So this Child, the Son as He is called here (or a Son, capitalized), will rule forever and ever. And we find that He is the Scion of David and He will sit on David's throne and increase His rule endlessly. Pretty important stuff here.

Let us go to Jeremiah 23. We can see a couple more of these.

Jeremiah 23:5-6 [Jeremiah writes here] "Behold, the days are coming," says the Lord, "that I will raise to David a Branch of righteousness; a King shall reign and prosper, and execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell safely; now this is His name by which He is called: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.

We are getting a few more ideas and words associated with this figure in this passage. He is a branch. We talk about family trees. Well, this is a branch that springs out of the line of David. In other places, He is called a rod out of the root of Jesse. Jesse was David's father. But we have a Person here that will be born from the descendants of David. Stick Him on the family tree on this branch. He has His own particular branch and this branch is identified as a Branch of righteousness, which brings out His character. This is not an ordinary man. This is a Branch, a Person, a sign whose very character can be described by the word of righteousness. He does everything right, you might say. And that is what His name is: The Lord Our Righteousness.

Is there anything else here that we need? Well, I do want to notice here that He is shown to be a judge, He will execute judgment. Not only will He reign and prosper, but He will be the one that is the catalyst in saving Judah and Israel. So the idea of Him being a Savior pops into the equation as well. And of course, that was His name, Savior.

Let us just go a few more chapters forward into Jeremiah 33 and kind of wrap this up in terms of the Old Testament.

Jeremiah 33:14-17 "Behold, the days are coming," says the Lord, "that I will perform that good thing which I have promised to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah: In those days and at that time, I will cause to grow up to David [there we have this idea repeated] a Branch of righteousness; He shall execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. [so very much the same as what we just read] In those days, Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will dwell safely. And this is the name by which she will be called: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. [It changed here a little bit.] For thus says the Lord" 'David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel.'

So again, we have confirmation that this Branch of righteousness will come out of David.

Jeremiah 33:20-21 "Thus says the Lord: 'If you can break My covenant with the day and My covenant with the night, so that there not be day and night in their season, then My covenant may also be broken with David My servant, so that he shall not have a son to reign on his throne.

God is saying this is definitely going to happen. It is going to happen and you know it is going to happen, just like you know that the sun is going to rise tomorrow morning and it will set tomorrow evening. That is how sure it is. So these things will come to pass and this figure, this Messiah, this Root of David, this Branch, this Rod, Shiloh, Seed, various other terms, that it is all going to happen just like this. And He is going to bring peace, and He is going to bring judgment, and He is going to save, and He is going to bring prosperity, and so forth. There is a lot that is going to happen when this Messiah shows up and does His work; a lot riding on Him.

Now, what we have been seeing as we have gone through this (maybe you had not picked it up, I do not know, maybe you have), but if you noticed that when the Scriptures talked about David in terms of the Messiah, it was almost always in the context of rulership. It is David as king, that is the type of Messiah. Now, there are certain other ones too: David as a man and his emotions and things which will come out in a few minutes. But particularly the idea of David being the king, of sitting on a throne, of ruling, of executing judgment, and bringing peace. Those are all things that the king does.

And so His connection with David is not only literal in the sense of that He is a descendant of David, but it is also the type of what David was. He was the king of Israel. He united all Israel. He fought off their enemies, he brought judgment to their enemies. And really, he was the one that brought the peace that Solomon was able to enjoy. So David did all of these kinds of things in type.

David also suffered. He did not come to this point of being the one who brought peace and judgment and such to Israel without going through a lot of suffering. So that is also brought out in the life of Messiah. There was suffering that He had to go through before He became the King over all. So there are lots of parallels here.

But the thing we need to understand is that David is the type and Messiah, Jesus Christ, is the reality. And so when we read the Psalms and we see the prophecies that were brought out there, we should actually think of them more of Christ than of David, because Christ is the reality and David is just the type. But we will see that there are always kind of two levels going on here in these prophecies. And we see David shining through even though we are looking for Christ. So just remember that some of these prophecies, some of the psalms, are very human. They are showing David's response to these things, but their ultimate effect is for us to understand Christ and what He was going through and what He did for us. So just remember that David may have been an exceptional ruler, but his office and his experiences are mere types that point to the majesty and perfection of Christ as King.

Let us kind of wrap all this up in Revelation 22 and get the words of the Master Himself. This is kind of a capstone on this. As we are ending the Book, this is one of the final things He says.

Revelation 22:16 "I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things in the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the Bright and Morning Star."

The only thing He says after this is, "Surely I am coming quickly." So just kind of put that in your pipe and smoke it, as it were, that the final things He tells to us is that He is the "Root and Offspring of David, the Bright and Morning Star."

"I am coming quickly." What do you think He is coming to do? He is coming to fulfill, in full, the prophecies of Messiah that were typed in David. That He is going to come as King, He is going to come to rule over all Israel, and He is going to come to bring prosperity. But He is also coming to bring judgment, and after the judgment, peace. So it is kind of a message to us that we should not let this idea of Him being the Root and Offspring of David far from our minds when we are thinking about Him coming soon. Because He is coming as a warrior King and then to rule as righteous God. So just keep that in mind.

Let us go back to the book of Psalms and we are going to look at a few of these Book One psalms that are prophetic about the Messiah. Let us go to Psalm 8. I want to read this whole thing. Verses of this psalm are quoted in Hebrews 2 and applied directly to Christ, but I want you to read them or hear them out of the Old Testament first.

Psalm 8:1-9 O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth, You who have set Your glory above the heavens! Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength, because of Your enemies, that You may silence the enemy and the avenger. When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have ordained, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen—even the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the seas that pass through the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth!

Now, from a physical standpoint in the type we would say it speaks of humanity here, that God, through His creative genius, made man to be in His image. And then He gave him dominion. It says it right there in Genesis 1:26, 27, 28, down there to verse 30 or so. But man has been made the highest of the creatures, the physical creatures, and God then gave him not only the command, but He gave them the ability to be dominant over all of these things, these creatures, other creatures—the sheep and the ox and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and that sort of thing. So we have a responsibility to take care of and manage all these things. We can see that., That is very obvious.

Of course, we are made a little lower than the angels. We are not as powerful as they or as intelligent as they are. We cannot do the things that they do. They come before the presence of God and they serve Him, and they serve us as well. But we are lower than them. We are physical, they are spirit, they have a lot more going for them than we do. And when they make their decision to follow God, that is it. They set their will and they do it. Whereas we may say that we are doing it and we may set our will, but we fail and we fail a lot. In that way, we are lower than the angels.

But underneath all of this comes out in the word, in the phrase, "the son of man that you visit him." This is a key phrase that kind of gives you a clue that there is another level here. And the Son of Man is of course the title of Messiah. And so Messiah not only is like us and had all of these things happen to Him too. He was made a little lower than the angels, but He, of course, successfully navigated life as a little lower than the angels and ultimately will be given dominion over everything.

So He becomes, then, the Messiah. The Son of Man is the greatest and the best of us. You could say He is the "model man" and He fulfills and exemplifies all the vast potential of mankind in Himself.

Let us go to Hebrews 2 and see how Paul applied this. He had just been talking about that the first covenant was mediated through angels.

Hebrews 2:5-9 For He has not put the world to come, of which we speak, in subjection to angels. But one testified in a certain place, saying: "What is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that You take care of him? You have made him a little lower than the angels; You have crowned him with glory and honor, and set him over the works of Your hands. You have put all things in subjection under his feet." For in that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we do not yet see all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone.

This is Paul's commentary on Psalm 8:4-5 essentially. Paul here highlights just how extensive this particular Messianic prophecy is, that it does not apply just to humanity. It applies to the One who is the focus of it, the Son of Man. But not just our dominion over the beasts of the fields, but he expands it out to say that the Son of Man, the model Man, the perfect Man, will rule and have dominion over everything. There is not anything that is not put under His feet. And you know what? I Corinthians 15 says He gives it all up. Gives it back to His Father. That shows you the character of the One. This is just a beautiful picture of this King that we follow.

Now, this particular passage highlights His incarnation, meaning that He was made a man. Galatians 4 talks about He was made from a woman, and shows that He became a real human. He became one of us, a little lower than the angels. Just as we are a little lower than the angels, He became a little lower than the angels. And the reason for it, Paul adds here, is for the suffering of death. And so that God can, by grace, give this all to us and move the plan along to its ultimate conclusion.

What else do we have here? Oh, we should not forget His glorification. That is also in here; that He will take His place at the Father's right hand. And at that point, well, even now He has taken His place at the Father's right hand. He is far, far above the angels and it hints, then, at what we can become. If you want to just jot down Philippians 2:5-11. That is a parallel commentary on this very subject, that He divested Himself of His power and His glory to become a mere servant so that He could suffer death—and He did. And that therefore, God has crowned Him with glory and honor, and given Him all power, and all every knee will bow to Him. So the same idea comes through.

Let us go back to the book of Psalms and go to another one in chapter 16. Now, this psalm can very easily be read as coming from the mouth of David. And it did, obviously it came from his pen. But if we look at it from another angle, we can see very clearly that it is being spoken by Christ and this is particularly true in verses 8 through 11. But I want to read it all and I would particularly like you to think of it in terms of Christ. Because even though we might not think of Him making statements like this, we have to remember we have already set the foundation here: that He was made to be like us, that He was made to be a little lower than the angels and have the weaknesses that we have in our flesh. So think of this in terms of how He might have thought about these things and He thought them through so that He could overcome those weaknesses.

Psalm 16:1 Preserve me, O God, for in You I put my trust.

There is a theme of Book One, is it not? So he is saying, watch over me, keep me, guard me, keep me secure because I trust You. I have given my whole life, my everything over into Your hands. I trust You completely.

Psalm 16:2 O my soul, you have said to the Lord, "You are my Lord, my goodness is nothing apart from You."

Think about that in terms of Jesus. Who did Jesus give all the credit to? He said, "My Father does everything. I'm just doing what My Father tells Me to do. Everything that I have comes from Him." And so Jesus' goodness in His own mind was from the Father. And did He not say exactly like that? "Who are you calling good? There is no one good but the Father." So even though He was good, He did not consider Himself good, not in that sense. He could see all the weaknesses of His flesh. And He said, "It's the Father in Me that makes Me good."

Psalm 16:3 [Now this is very interesting. Think about His love for the church.] And to the saints who are on the earth, "they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight."

Why did He do what He did? Certainly He did it out of the love for the Father. But we know for certain that He did all that He did for love of us. For God so loved the world. He had the same love that the Father had and so He gave Himself for us out of love for us. We are His delight. All the saints of the earth, it says here. He calls us "excellent ones," and He says "all his delight is in us." That should be really encouraging. But these were the sorts of thoughts that He had that kept Him going, that moved Him along, that made Him look at the goal and see what He had to go through to reach it and say, "I'm going to go ahead and do it even though it kills Me."

Just for kicks, let us go back to Ephesians 5. (Keep your finger here because we are going to come right back to it.)

Ephesians 5:25-27 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.

Ephesians 5:29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church.

So He had these ideas, these thoughts of love toward us while He was on earth going through all this. If you look at John 17, it is very clear that He did all these things, not just for His disciples, but for those who would follow Him through them, would hear their word, and He still thinks of the us in this way. And it is His job, a job that He loves to do, to bring us to the point where we can join Him as His bride.

Are you beginning to see how Christ here is at the forefront of these psalms rather than David? At least it is very clear here to me.

Psalm 16:4 Their sorrows shall be multiplied who hasten after another god; their drink offerings of blood I will not offer, nor take up their names on my lips.

This may sound like something that David would have said. That he is looking around at the idolatry around him and he said, "I'm not going to get involved in all of that. Those things are horrible and wicked. I'm not going to do anything like that." But think of them in terms of Jesus Christ. He was the only one righteous and everybody around Him was an idolater. Everybody! Even though the Jews thought they were worshipping God, they had gone so far off that their god was nothing like the real God anymore. And Jesus says here, if we put words into His mouth from this psalm, "I'm not going to allow Myself to get involved in the way that they do religion. I'm not going to follow their practices, not in the least. I'm going to do what's right. I'm not even going to speak their names, as it were, their god's names." He means, "I'm not going to give them any authority. I'm not going to identify with them in any way. I'm going to stay pure."

Psalm 16:5 O Lord, You are my portion of my inheritance and my cup; You maintain my lot.

That shows you where His focus was. It was constantly on God. And He said, "You are the one that I get all my sustenance from. You're the one that supplies Me with everything. And I'm going to trust You to bring Me My reward and My inheritance because of My faith in You." So He says (He sees it in black and white), "Everything everybody else is doing is bad. I'm going to stick by God the Father and do everything He wants Me to do." What we could say here is He put Himself fully into His belief, into His job, into His work, and He was not going to let anything else distract Him. He was fully committed to the Father and there was no ounce of His being that went astray to anything else.

Psalm 16:6 The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; yes, I have a good inheritance.

I bet! The best inheritance of all. But that was a motivation for Him. He saw that everything was lining up for this good inheritance. He could see it. He had foresight enough to see that the road He was on would lead Him to that good inheritance. Everything was on the line. And if He stayed on that path, He would have the best inheritance of all. God would not deny it to Him.

Psalm 16:7 I will bless the Lord who has given me counsel; my heart also instructs me in the night seasons.

This tells you how He could have all of this strength and faith. It was because He and God were talking all the time. How many times does it say in Scripture that Jesus left the disciples, went up on a mountain to pray, or He left them to do something. and He went somewhere else to commune with God. That is what fueled Him. The Father gave Him counsel and He meditated on it. He thought about it. He worked it out and then He went forward.

Psalm 16:8 I have set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved.

What we have here is kind of a conclusion to all of this first part of the psalm here, saying that all of these things come down to this: that He has totally committed Himself to God. He has put God, we would say in modern English, front and center. He had made God His number one and pretty much His only priority. Of course, the church was a priority too, but He could do what He needed to do by keeping God first in His life. So He set the Lord always before Him. And because He knew that God's presence was with Him at all times, He could be firm in His commitment. He would not be moved one way or the other from this line He was taking, the path that He was going, toward His crucifixion. And that is what we get into here.

Psalm 16:9-11 Therefore my heart is glad [Did He not talk about the joy in John 13, 14, 15, 16? He is talking about there is going to be great joy in all of this.], and my glory rejoices; my flesh also will rest in hope. [He is talking about His death. And of course, the joy that is going to come after His death.] For You will not leave my soul in Sheol [in the grave, in the pit, in the tomb], nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. You will show me the path of life [He will raise him to Spirit life]; in Your presence [and He goes beyond just raising Him here. He means that He will ascend to the Father.]; is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

So we see here that everything in His ministry, His life, really, on earth was directed toward the crucifixion, but He had hope and joy in that even. We would just quail at the thought if that was the end for us. But He said, "No, I put the Lord before Me. I'm going to go march toward it in confidence and joy because I rest in hope once I get to that point because He is going to resurrect Me and I'm going to ascend to His right hand and have glory forever—and joy."

It is an amazing psalm, here, that just goes through the life of Christ in (I guess) a little bit of an obscure way, as prophecy is sometimes. But we see here how Jesus faced all this and how He decided to do what He did and how He went through it with such, I do not know, aplomb, such calmness, confidence. He was able to face these horrible things because He trusted God and He was thoroughly committed to it.

You might want to just jot down Acts 2:22-33 because Peter quotes this here to prove that Jesus would not be left in the tomb, but that He would be raised from the dead. And I do not need to give you any more. We have gone over those scriptures quite a bit. That will do it for Psalm 16.

The next one that we will look at and I will look at it just quickly, almost in passing, because I think you know this one pretty well. That is Psalm 22. We often will read this before the Passover because essentially Psalm 22, specifically the first 21 verses or so, are about His crucifixion.

Psalm 22:1 My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, and from the words of My groaning?

Psalm 22:6 But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All those who see Me laugh Me to scorn; they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, "He trusted in the Lord, let Him rescue Him; let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him!"

By the way, verses 9 and 10 talk about His incarnation and how He had the Spirit from birth.

Psalm 22:14-18 I am poured out like water, all My bones are out of joint; My heart is like wax; it is melted within Me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and My tongue clings to my jaws; You have brought Me to the dust of death. For dogs have surrounded Me; the assembly of the wicked has enclosed Me. They pierce My hands and My feet; I can count all My bones. They look and stare at Me. They divide My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots.

Here we have a lot of the scriptures that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John quoted from this particular psalm then and that Jesus fulfilled in His crucifixion. Not just Jesus, but all these other people who were involved, too, in doing these things to Him. By the way, that is one of the proofs of His Messiahship: that there were so many people involved in fulfilling some of these prophecies that no one man could have brought it to pass on his own. But just an amazing description here.

Now, what I find amazing is that David wrote it. When did David ever experience any of these things? Perhaps he did; I do not know. I do not remember anything in I Samuel, II Samuel where David went through anything like this. Not to this. When did they pierce his hands and his feet? When was his strength dried up like this? Just think, was he actually describing his own situation or is this a direct prophecy of Messiah like some of the other prophets gave—Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel—where God revealed something to him and he wrote it in his poetry? And it is a perfect prophecy of what happened at the crucifixion.

So in this particular psalm, I think we have Christ way, way at the forefront and David maybe having experienced something lightly similar to it perhaps. But it seems like this is a direct prophecy of Messiah.

I do want to mention verses 22 through 31 because I think it is important. We often stop right there, but the Messianic prophecy continues. And what is interesting in how it continues is that it focuses on the results of Messiah's sufferings. So Messiah goes through the crucifixion and you could kind of leave it at that, that He suffered, yes. But what happened? So verse 22. This is Messiah speaking.

Psalm 22:22-31 I will declare Your name to My brethren; in the midst of the congregation I will praise You. You who fear the Lord, praise Him! All you descendants of Jacob, glorify Him, and fear Him, all you offspring of Israel! For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; nor has He hidden His face from Him; when He cried to Him, He heard. My praise shall be of You in the great congregation; I will pay My vows before those who fear Him.

The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek Him will praise the Lord. Let your heart live forever! All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, all the families of the nation shall worship before You. For the kingdom is the Lord's, and He rules over the nations. All the prosperous of the earth shall eat and worship; those who will go down to the dust [the dead] shall bow before Him, even he who cannot keep himself alive. A posterity shall serve Him. It will be recounted of the Lord to the next generation, they will come and declare His righteousness to a people who will be born, that He has done this.

Do you understand what is going on here? It is really interesting to me. Even though He was killed to silence Him, because the Jews did not like what He was saying, the things that He was implying, especially about them and their need to repent, the result, though, was actually to magnify and multiply His preaching through His disciples and through the church—in the great congregation, as it were. He told His disciples this in John 14:12. He said, "It's a good thing that I go away because you're going to do greater works than I." He gave them the Spirit in Acts 2 and they went out and did all kinds of preaching and spread the gospel all around the world, to all kinds of people.

And it goes further than that because in verse 27 he essentially says that ultimately the whole world will turn to God because of what has happened here at the first part of the chapter. That Christ, verse 28, will rule over all of the nations in His Kingdom. That was part of the plan. He had to go through that in order to be glorified and be the King, and He fulfilled it perfectly. And even in verse 29, as I mentioned, there is a hint of the second resurrection, "even the ones who go down to the dust," who cannot keep themselves alive, will eventually bow the knee to Him, which was also in Philippians 2.

Then we have verses 30 through 31 a prophecy that those He leaves behind will serve Him, meaning His disciples, and they would tell His story, not just to the next generation, but to all coming generations. They did this through writing the gospels and their other books of the New Testament. It says there all, everyone that will be born after that, everybody who has been born, will ultimately hear this story of what Christ did for them. Like the writer said, "It's the greatest story ever told" and everybody will hear it in time.

There are other prophecies as we go through here. Like chapter 31, verse 5, "Into Your hand I commit My spirit." Chapter 34, verse 20, "He guards all his bones, not one of them is broken." Various other little ones as we as we go through Book One. But I want to go to chapter 40 and just pull out verses 6 through 10. This psalm prophesized the purpose of Christ's ministry.

Psalm 40:6-10 Sacrifice and offering You did not desire; my ears You have opened. Burnt offering and sin offering you did not require. Then I said, "Behold, I come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do Your will, O my God, and Your law is within my heart." I have proclaimed the good news of righteousness in the great congregation; indeed, I do not restrain my lips, O Lord, You Yourself know. I have not hidden Your righteousness within my heart; I have declared Your faithfulness and Your salvation; I have not concealed Your lovingkindness and Your truth from the great congregation.

So, what He did was He came and He was the sacrifice. God did not want meat offerings and such, or cereal offerings. He wanted Christ. As it says in Hebrews, in the Septuagint, He prepared a body for Him and it was His body which He gave as a living sacrifice. And then at the end, He gave it in terms of death to do all these things. And of course, verse 9, "I have proclaimed the good news [the gospel] of righteousness." That is what He came to do. That is the first thing out of His mouth when He started His ministry: that He came preaching the Kingdom of God.

And notice here in verse 8, "I delight to do Your will, O my God, Your law is within My heart." He is the perfect Saint. The law of God was written on His heart. Not on tables of stones; it was in His heart. His character was perfect. And then He says later on that He did not hide that righteousness in His heart. What He did was He proclaimed it. He preached it. He preached God's faithfulness; He preached God's salvation; He preached God's love and kindness; He preached God's truth. That was His ministry.

In Hebrews 10:1-10 (if you want to go through that), Paul uses this series of verses here to show that He came as the sacrifice and that He willingly gave it to be the final sacrifice, the only sacrifice that was needed. And I was going to tell you about the difference between "My ears you have opened" and "a body You have prepared for Me." It is kind of an interesting thing. Maybe I will just go ahead and mention it.

Paul was using the Septuagint version when he wrote Hebrews 10 and that is what he quoted from. But the actual Hebrew behind the Greek Septuagint, the Hebrew which is here in Psalm 40, is "My ears You have opened." But literally, it says, "My ears you have dug for Me." You know, like you dig with a shovel. "My ears you have dug for Me." It is a Hebraism of some sort.

What it seems to mean, when we put it together with the Septuagint's interpretation of "a body you have prepared for Me," is that it seems that the ears that heard the will of God in Psalm 40 stood for the whole body responding and doing the will of God. So what we have here is that God opened up the ears of Christ, as it were, and gave Him all the knowledge of His will And He was such a willing recipient that He gave His body to do that will perfectly. So one stands for the receiving, the other stands for the response.

Ultimately, the result is the same. Jesus heard the will of God in His Word. It says, "in the volume of the book" He had found all these prophecies about Himself and what He should do. And also by revelation of God, they were always in close communication, and once He heard it, He did it. He came to do His will. Everything He did, He did because of the will of God. And He followed His will perfectly and that is why He can be the judge. It says that in the gospel of John; and He did it all the way to the death of the cross. Even that scary crucifixion that stood in front of Him did not impede His following the will of God. He said He did it for the joy that was set before Him. (Hebrews 12:2)

Let us finish out in Psalm 41. We have a couple of minutes. I want verses 9 through 12. This is the final psalm of Book One. And it is a fitting place to end our study of it. The first half of this chapter talks about the righteous versus the wicked theme. And the second half of it switches over to the Messiah theme.

Psalm 41:9-11 Even my own familiar friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me. [Obviously a prophecy of Judas betraying Christ. But then it goes on] But You, O Lord, be merciful to me, and raise me up, that I may repay them. [That raise me up, even though Judas betrayed Him, He knew that God was going to raise Him up, that He may repay them, all the wicked. He was coming back as their Judge.] By this I know that you are well pleased with me, because my enemy does not triumph over me.

God was well pleased with Him, and He kept saying it during His ministry, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." And Jesus knew that He was well pleased with Him because His enemies could never defeat Him. Even in the end, when they killed Him, they did not defeat Him. God raised Him up and He had the last laugh, as it were.

Psalm 41:12 As for me, You uphold me in my integrity, and set me before Your face forever.

And that was ultimately what happened. He was the sinless, perfect Christ. He was raised from the dead and God allowed Him to ascend to heaven. He was accepted and He was set, then, by Him on His throne.

Let us finish in Luke 1 and just kind of get a summary of these prophecies out of the mouth of Zacharias, John's father. This is verses 67 through 75. This is what he said when John the Baptist was circumcised. He was given his voice back and this is the prophecy he made. It fits in very nicely with what we have gone over today.

Luke 1:68-75 "Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, for He has visited and redeemed His people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David, as He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets, who have been since the world began, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us, to perform the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember His holy covenant, the oath which He swore to our father Abraham: To grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life."

So this is basically what we have gone over today to the coming of the Messiah. And because all of these psalms, these prophecies of Messiah, at least up to this point, have been fulfilled to the letter, we now have the responsibility, as Zacharias says here, to serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness all the days of our lives.

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