Seeing Jesus in the Psalms

  Psalm 97 “You who love the Lord, hate evil!” Psalm 97:10 Main Point: When Jesus is your king you have welcomed His expansive kingdom into every area of your life and you have hated evil. All the translations agree on this text. I’ve checked the English, Dutch, and French translations and they all say “hate evil” or a close equivalent. I think it means to treat it like an enemy, to remove it from your life, not to permit it to reside in your presence--and it is a command. We can see the chapter starts with the God King (who we know to be Jesus Christ) and that it is a response to His kingship. The actions that flow from the excitement and fact that the Lord God is king are what we are looking at here. Another way of looking at Psalm 97 is to say we recognise the rule of God, and the things that we see in the Psalm are the natural and right responses from a person who is happy to be ruled by God as King.  I want God to rule me. I want God to be my King. I know that Jesus is th...

  Psalm 85 MAIN POINT: Jesus has come as saviour and will return as saviour, and we are invited to listen to His words of peace and experience and expect His salvation. Sometimes it isn’t easy to get your bearings in the Bible. One reason is that the Bible speaks about time as things that have happened, are happening and will happen more fluidly than we might be used to. But since God is 100% sure what has happened, what will happen, and what is happening, He can reveal things with confidence. We on the other hand usually can only apply such confidence and interchangeability of time to the immediate or possibly the past. Another aspect of the Bible that you might find challenging in our individualistic society is the principle of representation. We do get this idea sometimes but we don’t always get it. We often think that all the uses of representation are suspect to a negative prejudice. What I mean is that an individual is painted with the same brush as the whole. All Americans ...

Don’t let me suffer the fate of sinners. Don’t condemn me along with murderers. Psalm 26:9 NLT   Psalm 26 v.9 Don’t let me suffer the fate of sinners. Don’t condemn me along with murderers. Mark 15:7 , The man named Barabbas had been imprisoned with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the insurrection. Mark 15:28 [And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “And He was numbered with transgressors.”] Luke 23:19 , (He was one who had been thrown into prison for an insurrection made in the city, and for murder.) Matthew 27:38 , At that time two robbers *were crucified with Him, one on the right and one on the left. Luke 23:39 One of the criminals who were hanged there was hurling abuse at Him, saying, “Are You not the Christ? Save Yourself and us!”  Isaiah Chapter 53:12 cf. Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, And He will divide the booty with the strong; Because He poured out Himself to death, And was numbered with the transgressors; Yet He Hims...

Lead me by your truth and teach me, for you are the God who saves me. Psalm 25:5 NLT   Psalm 25 As I copied the Psalm today I had three impressions.  The first is grace. I was taken aback by how loving, gracious, forgiving and helpful God was in the eyes of David.  The second was that David was concerned about his sin. He talks about it a lot, and all of his sin: past youthful sin and present sin too.  Lastly I noticed a preoccupation with problems, enemies and depression (a negative perspective).  I am going to explore all three and see if I come out with a unified central theme. My first question is possibly obvious for you. If God is so gracious, so loving and so kind, why does David have such a concern for his sin? Further, if the rescuing presence of God is with him, why does David have all these problems all the time? This is a common cry of David and it persists throughout the Psalms. Isn’t David chosen? Isn’t he anointed? Hasn’t he been rescued and does...

The Lord is my shepherd; I have all that I need. Psalm 23:1 NLT   Psalm 23 Much has been written about Psalm 23 . It is preached regularly at funerals; it is often offered as comfort to those who are suffering. I want to explore an aspect of Psalm 23 that I myself don’t remember preachers or authors explaining. We can easily listen to David saying these words and explain why it fits him in the context of various areas or time periods of his life. And we can naturally discuss Jesus/God being the Shepherd and how God functions in these roles for David or us. But this morning I want to think about Jesus saying these words in His life about His Father. Remember that I spoke in an earlier psalm about the complex nature of the believer being in Christ and Christ being in you as a child of God? Jesus the man, who can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing ( John 5:19 ) Compare to verse one “The Lord is my shepherd v.1” Jesus the man, who was led by the Spirit...