Seeing Jesus in the Psalms

  Psalm 88 “ He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.  We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care.” Isaiah 53:3 The verse above from Isaiah is universally accepted as a messianic verse referring to Jesus the Christ and can be linked to a few gospel passages such as: “He told them, “ My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death . Stay here and keep watch with me.”” Mark 14:34 Two songs came to mind as I read Psalm 88 today. One is a hymn I have know since I was a child and I feel emotional when ever I sing or say the words even today. It deeply expresses the wrongness and yet rightness of the way Jesus suffered: Man of sorrows what a name for the Son of God, who came ruined sinners to reclaim: Hallelujah, what a Savior! If you don’t know this hymn and the story of the writer then I encourage you to enrich your heart and mind with both the music and story of P. P. Bliss. The other song mi...

Psalm 87 Citizenship is sometimes a confusing part of our identity. I have many foreign-born friends and acquaintances. And interestingly, some of my friends of foreign identity were born in Belgium but adamantly identify as Italian. Lyssa and I are Belgian. Don’t you believe me? My identity card says I am. But my passports from England and America both say I am a citizen of those countries respectively.  “When the LORD registers the nations, he will say, ‘ They have all become citizens of Jerusalem. ’” Interlude Psalms 87:6 It looks like I will (or already) have at least one more citizenship. Another close friend, when asked her country of origin, prefers to reply, “I am a European.”  Paul says that you can even be broader and more inclusive if you have faith in Christ. “In the new life there is no difference between Greeks and Jews, those who are circumcised and those who are not circumcised, or people who are foreigners, or Scythians. There is no difference between slaves...

  Psalm 86 Each morning I sit here and I have a pretty good idea what I will write about Jesus. Not yet today. It is not that I have not seen things that make me think of Jesus. But I’m distracted and the clarity of the Psalm has not yet struck me. Maybe you can help? I’m of two minds.  Firstly I see Jesus, in David. That is the man seeking God. And we see the conversation between Jesus and His Father several times in the gospels as well as teaching about the relationship between Father and Son in the rest of the New Testament. Yesterday I was looking at and thinking about Jesus' prayer in John 17 and I could probably see links between that prayer and this prayer of David in Psalm 86.  Then there is the way of seeing the Psalm as Jesus being the God David seeks. Jesus reveals to us that He has all the character qualities that David in this Psalm attributes to God. And then as I was rereading the Psalm maybe for the 5th or more time, verse 15 hit me and I started to look a...