# Did I miss something?



## CalvinandHodges (Mar 12, 2008)

Greetings:

Having been away in January, and very busy with Seminary here, I have not had the time to view the Puritanboard. So, this question may already have been answered:

I thought there was going to be a debate concerning Exclusive Psalmody here starting in January. Was it called off? Or, rescheduled?

Thanks,

-CH


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## NaphtaliPress (Mar 12, 2008)

CalvinandHodges said:


> Greetings:
> 
> Having been away in January, and very busy with Seminary here, I have not had the time to view the Puritanboard. So, this question may already have been answered:
> 
> ...


Both of the men signed up for this event have been caught up with other more important responsibilities which have necessitated a delay for the debate. We are in "it happens when it happens" mode meantime.


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## Semper Fidelis (Mar 12, 2008)

Man! Chris, you totally missed an opportunity to mess with Robert. We could have done some sort of Twilight Zone thing with it but now that opportunity has passed.


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## DMcFadden (Mar 12, 2008)

SemperFideles said:


> Man! Chris, you totally missed an opportunity to mess with Robert. We could have done some sort of Twilight Zone thing with it but now that opportunity has passed.



Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket. Well . . . we like had the debate . . . yeah, and, well . . . it was settled. Everyone on the PB agrees now. Wow! What an ephiphany for all of us. Man, it is hard to believe that we wasted so much time debating that issue when the answer was soooooo obvious. Yeah, and, like, the moderators felt it was so clear that we didn't even need to keep the thread on the site. Man, am I glad to have participated in what has got to be the most theologically life-changing experience of my life. Sorry you missed it.


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## Bygracealone (Mar 12, 2008)




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## turmeric (Mar 12, 2008)

Yeah, it was totally cool! You would have had to have been there...


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## CalvinandHodges (Mar 12, 2008)

You mean I missed it? 

Why isn't everyone here singing the Psalms?

Or, do I have to switch to hymnn singing?

Thanks,

-CH


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## Semper Fidelis (Mar 13, 2008)

CalvinandHodges said:


> You mean I missed it?
> 
> Why isn't everyone here singing the Psalms?
> 
> ...



Let's just put it this way: J.D. burned his _The Greatest Contemporary Worship Songs of All Time_ CD collection.


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## Iconoclast (Mar 13, 2008)

Hey CH,
The debate did not happen yet, but maybe this article will hold you over.



I detect an increasing interest in the Psalms. Paul. S. Jones, in the essay, 'Hymnody in a post-hymnody world' says that "Singing psalms in worship is a biblical mandate -- not an optional activity' (Give Praise to God, p255). In the same volume Terry Johnson, in 'Restoring Psalm Singing to our Worship', asks: "What are the implications of a psalter in the canon of Scripture?" (p259), and concludes that "Our ancestors were psalm singers! The Psalter gave to their faith the bold, robust quality that we still admire today. A revival of their use has begun in our time... may they become a fixed element in the worship of evangelical Christians once more" (p286).

One question, however, keeps coming up:

'How is the Book of Psalms adequate for the worship of the Christian Church, when the name of Jesus is not mentioned?'

To which I could give two very simple answers: 

- did God give us everything in Scripture except a praise book for the Christian Church? AND

- If Christ is not the God of the Psalms, then I don't know who is. Col 2:10 -- all the fullness of the Godhead is in him. 

I have to read psalms celebrating the creation in the light of the NT assertion that Christ is the Creator (John 1:3 -- 'All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made;' Col 1:15-16 -- 'He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--all things were created through him and for him'

So Richard Belcher, in his newly published work The Messiah and the Psalms (Christian Focus, 2006): 

If one accepts the New Testament witness that Jesus is equal to the Father, and therefore is God, then whenever the Psalms speak of God, or use the covenant name Yahweh, they also speak of the person of Christ (p34).

When we sing of Jehovah's greatness, we are singing of the greatness of Jesus, the 'I AM', the one who says 'I and the Father are One'. 

Having grown up in a psalm-singing church, I have an interest in all aspects of psalm-singing; and I have an interest in the theology of the Psalter. I have been thinking about this a great deal over the past year, particularly since reading Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity (P&R 2005). 

One of Letham's contentions is that Western Christianity is basically modalistic; he discusses the divergence of the Western tradition from the East over the filioque, and argues (developing the discussion by Gerald Bray) that the two divergent theologies lead to divergent soteriologies. That is, the West, beginning with the unity of the godhead, makes the work of Christ central, while Eastern theologians generally began with the plurality of the godhead and saw salvation in cosmic, rather than moral terms. 

So Letham: 'For the West, a holy God delivers his people from sin, while for the East the risen Christ delivers the human race from death' (p216). 

According to Letham, one of the implications of all this is as follows: 

In the West, the danger of modalism is very real, evident in all Western theology down to Barth and Rahner ... if we start with the divine unity, the persons become problematic as real, personal, permanent, irreducible, and eternal ontological distinctions ... Indeed, most Western Christians are practical modalists. Certainly the Trinity is little more than an arithmetical conundrum to Western Christianity (p212).

This has profound implications for worship, to which Letham devotes ch 18 -- 'The Trinity, Worship and Prayer'. Letham's arguments may be summarised as follows:

- starting with the plurality, Trinitarian theology has impacted Eastern worship more than western worship. 

- Letham quotes Gregory Nazianzen copiously throughout the book; while in the West we are willing to say 'My God', Gregory would say 'My Trinity'; and states, 'When I say God, I mean Father, Son, and Holy Ghost' (p409)

- Letham cites Owen, in his statement that 'the proper and peculiar object of divine worship and invocation is the essence of God, in its infinite excellency, dignity, majesty ... now this is common to all three persons, and is proper to each of them; not formally as a person, but as God blessed for ever' (p412). 

Our worship is Trinitarian, because our communion with God (per Owen) is Trinitarian, our prayer is Trinitarian (we come to the Father, by the Son, through the Spirit, who intercedes for us). Worship is not what we do, but what God does through us. By grace, in one act of adoration, we worship the Triune God. 

Letham p419.

So far so good, but on specifics, Letham suggests that if Western Christianity is to recover from its modalistic malaise and embrace a full-orbed trinitarianism, 

There is a need to refocus Western hymnody. We need more Trinitarian hymns ... The Psalms are the Word of God in human words, and so should feature strongly in the worship of the NT church, as they did in the later part of the OT. In this, we share in Christ's use of the Psalter in praise to the Father. However, the Psalms do not explicitly reflect the full range of Trinitarian revelation, and so cannot be the sole diet of the church without truncating its worship (p422).

This is the one paragraph in Letham with which I really do quibble, not least for the following implications:

- he is suggesting that Christ offered imperfect worship by his exclusive use of the Psalms. I don't think he means to say this, but it is the logic of his argument.

- Unless he is going to import Trinitarian hymns from the East, he is only going to perpetuate the problem in the West; if modalism is endemic to Western Christianity, it seems strange to imagine that a call for new hymns will remedy the problem. It is applying an extra biblical solution to a problem that can only be remedied by a return to biblical doctrine and theology.

- Letham himself goes on cite specific psalms which are inherently Trinitarian; for example, his discussion of creation revolves around Psalm 33:6 ('By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.') and Psalm 104:30 ('When you send forth your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground'). Citing Bavinck, Letham argues that the creation occurs because its maker is relational: 'if God were not triune, creation would not be possible' (p429). It is strange that Letham wants to say that psalmody truncates biblical trinitarianism, and then goes on to show that it doesn't.

- Throughout the discussion, and not least in the discussion of worship, Letham insists on the importance of the sensus plenior. On Genesis 1:26 he argues that 'Scripture has a fullness that goes beyond the horizon of the original authors ... God's words here attest a plurality in God, a plurality later expressed in the doctrine of the Trinity' (p20). The principle is stated even more clearly in his chapter on worship, where Letham says 'we need to listen to the whole of Scripture in the light of what happened in Jesus Christ' (p431). 

To me, this is fundamental; and this is the reason why focussing on the psalms does NOT truncate our Trinitarian worship. We sing them in the light of what happened in Jesus Christ. 

My critique of Letham is specifically over the application of his discussion to worship, which is why the 'theology' (proper) of the Psalter is of such importance to me. I think Letham is inconsistent; as with much else in the OT, we read the Psalms in the light of what happened in Christ, and when we do, they come into their own as fitting vehicles for the worship of our Trinitarian God. 

To quote Michael Bushell: 

We must keep in mind that in their OT setting, the psalms abounded in prophetic concepts that to a large extent were beyond the full comprehension of God's people at that time. The psalms could not be fully understood, especially in their eschatological character, until the coming of the Messiah. In a very real sense, then, the Psalms are far more appropriate to New than to the Old dispensation. Are we to believe that at precisely the time when the Psalms could be comprehended in their fullness, they became somehow obsolete? (Songs of Zion, 3rd ed., 1999, p25)

Far from it -- they come into their own in the light of the resurrection. 

GOD THE FATHER IN THE PSALTER

It is interesting that the Psalter contains little on universal fatherhood of God, or even on the fatherhood of God to Israel. The covenantal position of Israel is highlighted, of course, but the emphaises falls on the messianic fatherhood, as in the following examples.

Psalm 2: 

7I will tell of the decree:

The LORD said to me, "You are my Son;

today I have begotten you. 

8Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,

and the ends of the earth your possession. 

9You shall break* them with a rod of iron

and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel."

Psalm 89:

26He shall cry to me, 'You are my Father,

my God, and the Rock of my salvation.' 

27And I will make him the firstborn,

the highest of the kings of the earth.

The messianic king is addressed by God as his Father. The New Testament sees these passages as referring to the relations within the Trinity:

Hebrews 1: 

1Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. 

5For to which of the angels did God ever say,

"You are my Son,

today I have begotten you"?

Or again,

"I will be to him a father,

and he shall be to me a son"?

Taken up again by the apostles in their evangelism on the basis of Psalm 2 in Acts 13:

30But God raised him from the dead, 31and for many days he appeared to those who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people. 32And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, 33this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus, as also it is written in the second Psalm,

"'You are my Son,

today I have begotten you.'

The emphasis here is on the act of the Father in the resurrection. Letham explores the 'triadic patterns' of Ephesians -- resurrection of Jesus mentioned in connection with Eph 1:5b-6a. Letham: 

He has raised us up with Christ. This is sovereign action by the Father .. we are given life in connection and union with Christ, whom the Father raised from the dead. So we too share in his resurrection. If we bear in mind Paul's comments in Romans 8, the Holy Spirit is also actively engaged in the resurrection of Christ and so in our participation of it -- the Father effects it by the Spirit (p77).

So Psalm 2 is explicitly exegeted in terms of the Father's relation to the Son, and in terms of the Father's raising of the Son. 

That same emphasis is found in Psalm 110:

1The LORD says to my Lord:

"Sit at my right hand,

until I make your enemies your footstool."

Quoted more often in the New Testament than any other psalm, the dialogue between the LORD and 'my Lord' is taken up both by Christ and the apostles. 

Matthew 22:

41Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, 42saying, "What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?" They said to him, "The son of David." 43He said to them, "How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, 

44"'The Lord said to my Lord,

Sit at my right hand,

until I put your enemies under your feet'? 

45If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?" 46And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

Parallel passages in Mark 12:36, Luke 20:42,43

Any of these citations could be used to demonstrate the deity of Christ in the Psalms. Without the deity of Christ there is no doctrine of the Trinity. Our interest is in the question concerning the Messiah: 'Whose son is he?'. The Pharisees anticipated that Messiah would be a son of David. But Christ's assertion is that David calls Messiah his Lord. How then is he his son? 

Romans 1 perhaps more than any other passage sheds light on this for us:

1Paul, a servant[a] of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, 2which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, 3concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh 4and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord

He is the Son of the Father; the resurrection declares him to be so with power; even as his descent from David, according to the flesh, is also demonstrable. 

That the verses are to be understood as the voice of the Father to the Son is clear from Acts 2:

32This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. 33Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. 34For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says,

"'The Lord said to my Lord,

Sit at my right hand, 

35until I make your enemies your footstool.'

In the light of the Christ event, therefore, the revelation of the Trinity is complete, and the Psalms bear witness to the work of God the Father, in sending his Son, raising his Son, and glorifying his Son as the Lord of all. 

GOD THE SON IN THE PSALTER

This is the single most important objection to the position of exclusive psalmody: how can the Christian Church confine its praises to a book that does not name the name of Jesus? Quite apart from the fact that there is no explicit command in Scripture to name the name of Jesus in our praise, it is extreme ignorance that would take the view that Christ is not in the Book of Psalms. So Belcher: 

The approach that all the psalms relate to Christ, not just the traditional Messianic psalms, is the way the NT treats the psalms (The Messiah and the Psalms, p35).

Self-evident that there are messianic psalms: 2, 16, 22, 40, 110, 118. One of the merits of Belcher's study is to show how all psalms are messianic in some sense (on the basis of Luke 24: 

44Then he said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." 45Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46and said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, 47and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48You are witnesses of these things. 49And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.")

Some psalms are cited in the NT but would not fit into the traditional 'messianic' genre; eg Psalm 35:19 - Let not those rejoice over me who are wrongfully my foes, and let not those wink the eye who hate me without cause -- in John 15 24If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. 25But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: 'They hated me without a cause.'

Let's just focus on one psalm -- Psalm 45. 

This Psalm is explained by the writer to the Hebrews as applying specifically to Christ. As Hebrews 1:8-9 quotes from Psalm 45:6-7, the writer establishes for us that the Psalm is speaking 'of the Son' (Hebrews 1:8). There is no need for us therefore to distort the text in order to arrive at Jesus from Psalm 45; nor is there any need to argue that Jesus is in the Psalm by some kind of secondary application or implication; the testimony of the New Testament is enough to establish the proposition that Jesus was somewhere on the writer's horizon when he said 'Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever'. 

Indeed, the use of Psalm 45 in Hebrews 1 is one of the principal reasons why I wish to argue for the suitability and legitimacy of the Psalms for use in Christian worship. Often we are accused of insisting on singing that does not explicitly honour Jesus; we are told that the psalms do not mention his name or honour his work. We are asked why we sing about Og and Bashan, but not about Jesus; why we speak about Moab and Babylon but not about Bethlehem and Calvary. 

The answer is very simple: we sing what we have been asked to sing about; and what we have been asked to sing about are the covenantal, redemptive acts of God in history, behind all of which lies the anticipation of the climactic work of Christ; without that work, none of the rest of history makes any sense at all. And far from being absent from the Psalms, the testimony of the Bible is that Jesus is before us in them, in all the majesty of his Person and the glory of his work. 

'A pleasing theme'

It is precisely this fact that makes the theme of this psalm 'a pleasing theme' (v1). Nothing delights the psalmist more than to reflect on the person of the king. He is described for us here in terms of his appearance, both as a man and as a warrior; he is also described in terms of his throne and of his kingdom. In particular, however, it is his marriage that is in view. That fact makes Psalm 45 unique in the Psalter, as the only Psalm anticipating a royal wedding, and similar in theme to the Song of Solomon.

His Unique Person

The Jesus of the Psalms is the Jesus of the Gospels, and he stands out in the glory and uniqueness of his divine person. In this Psalm, for example, we hear the psalmist say, first, that he is 'the most handsome of the sons of man', and, second, that he is God, whose throne is forever. 

As he appears among men he stands out as the chief among ten thousand. None can compare with him. He is the measure of all men, unparalleled and without peer. As Spurgeon puts it, commenting on this Psalm: 'among the children of men many have through grace been lovely in character, yet they have each had a flaw; but in Jesus we behold every feature of a perfect character in harmonious proportion' (Treasury of David, Vol 2, p352. That fact is established early in the New Testament record, when Matthew moves swiftly to the temptation of Jesus, and shows us that this one is without sin, without fault, without any trace of fallenness in his human nature. 

But he is also majestic as a teacher, because 'grace is poured upon your lips' (45:2). No-one lived like him, and no-one spoke like him. Of him Matthew says that 'he opened his mouth and taught them' (Matthew 5:2); following his sermon 'the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority and not as the scribes' (Matthew 7:28-9). He is the one whose mouth distils wisdom greater than that of Solomon (Matthew 12:42). To sit at his feet is to choose a good portion which will never be taken away. (Luke 10:42).

But this unique man is none other than the eternal God. He is 'the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature' (Hebrews 1:3), the Son of God, worshipped by the angels. And, as we have seen, it is explicitly of this Son that the Psalmist says here 'Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever'. 

The New Testament record of the life of Jesus Christ is constantly punctuated by the supernatural. His birth is supernaturally announced and supernaturally executed (Matthew 1:20); his name is 'Immanuel, which means God with us' (Matthew 1:22), as his closing promise is that he will be with his people for ever (Matthew 28:20). The starting-point is not the humanity but the deity, and the unique combination, in one Person, of two natures: one human, in which he would live, suffer and die, and one divine, underived, original and unalterable. 

The Church gave expression to this belief in the Definition of Chalcedon in AD451: 

Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the fathers has handed down to us.

In his versification of the Song of Solomon, Ralph Erskine (1685-1752) gives expression to this in his paraphrase of Song 5:10, 'My beloved is white (ESV 'radiant') and ruddy, chiefest among ten thousand': 

If why I love my Jesus so,

The wond'ring world enquire,

My grounds are such as, did they know,

Their hearts would also fire.

O there is no Belov'd like mine!

He's white and ruddy both;

All human beauties all divine,

His glorious person clothe.

White in his natures both descry'd,

From every blemish free;

And ruddy in his garments dy'd

With blood he shed for me.

Was he not red but only white,

The lily not the rose,

He might suffice the angels' sight;

But I am none of those.

Was he not white, but only red,

A suff'rer for his sin,

His blood would rest upon his head,

Nor could I joy therein.

But here's my joy and confidence,

Both mix'd I see by faith;

The whiteness of his innocence,

The redness of his death.

Since for my sin he bore disgrace,

Who yet from sin was free,

This makes his white and ruddy face

A beauty meet for me.

The chief of chiefs beyond compare,

Immanuel, God-man,

Among ten thousand ensigns fair

Triumphant leads the van.

To him the heav'ns their homage bring,

To him celestial thongs

Ten thousand saints and angels sing,

With rapture on their tongues.

Created wisdom cannot scan

The root of Jesse's rod;

Nor speak the greatness of the man,

The grandeur of the God.

This, then, is the life set before us in this Psalm and in the Gospel records: the beauty of Jesus is the beauty of the God-man, the Mediator, the man Christ Jesus.

His Unique Position

This Jesus, whose life is set before us in the New Testament, not only stands alone in the unique glory of his Person, but is also unique in the unparalleled glory of his position. He is God of very God, from everlasting to everlasting. 

Yet, according to this Psalm, this God has a God: 'God, your God has anointed with the oil of gladness' (45:7). Even as the Psalm addresses Jesus as the God of Heaven's highest throne, he reminds us of the unique relationship which he has to another Person within the mystery of the Trinity. God is his Father, because he is the eternal Son; and his Father is his God, because he is within an eternal covenant of redemption. That's why he cries on the cross, 'My God, My God' (Psalm 22:1; Matthew 27::46), and why he says to Mary 'I am ascending to My Father and your Father, to my God and your God' (John 20:17). It's also why Paul can speak of 'the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory' in Ephesians 1:17. 

All that Jesus does as he enters the stream of fallen human life is done within the covenantal relationship between himself and his Father. He did not come down from Heaven to do his own will, but the will of the Father who sends him (John 6:38). This is his food, his drink, his delight, the end and purpose of his being in the world. God is his Father, his equal; he and the Father are one (John 10:30). But his Father is also his God, his superior; his Father is greater than he is (John 14:28). 

In all of this, he occupies a position as our Mediator, given a work to do, which he will not desist from doing until he can say 'It is finished' (John 19:30). It is on that basis that he can plead as the great High Priest (John 17:4), and it is on that basis that we can approach the Lord also. 

But lest anyone think that the covenant of redemption has no place for the Holy Spirit, let us remember that the Spirit is not only a concurring party to the covenant, but is Himself the means by which the first Person strengthens the Second: 'Behold my Servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him' (Isaiah 42:1). The New Testament sheds its own light on this for us when it says that 'God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power' (Acts 10:38). 

That is reflected in Psalm 45 as the psalmist tells the king that God has anointed him with the oil of gladness (v7). More than his companions, he has received the unction from Heaven that equips, empowers and gladdens the heart of the king. Jesus' birth is declared by the angels to be 'good news of a great joy' (Luke 2:10). Jesus lives in the light of the joy of the Lord. B.B. Warfield says that 

Joy he had; but it was not the shallow joy of mere pagan delight in living, nor the delusive joy of a hope destined to failure; but the deep exultation of a conqueror setting captives free (Person and Work of Christ, p126). 

That is why Jesus could apply the prophecy of Isaiah 61 to himself: 

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,

because the LORD has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor;

he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; 

to proclaim the year of the LORD's favour (quoted Luke 4:18-19). 

This was his joy. Warfield quotes from A.B. Bruce who says of Jesus: 

Though a man of sorrows, he was even on earth anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows ... shall we wonder that there was divine gladness in the heart of him who came into the world, not by constraint, but willingly, not with a burning sense of wrong, but with a grateful sense of high privilege; and that he had a blessed consciousness of fellowship with his Father who sent him, during the whole of his pilgrimage through this vale of tears' (PWC, 126). 

Fortified by the Holy Spirit, who 'Christed' Jesus, enabling him to fulfil his messianic function as King-Deliverer of his People, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah went out conquering and to conquer. He rides out 'for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness' (v4), sending his arrows of truth into the hearts of his enemies. As he advances, men ask 'What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?' (Matthew 8:27). The answer comes to us as John declares to us the reason for the writing of his life of Jesus:

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name (John 20:30-31). 

His Unique Purpose

So why did he come? What is the purpose of this unique life? That question is answered in the end of the Psalm: he came to bring his bride into his chamber, to unite a people to himself, so that his name will be remembered in all generations. To use Paul's language

Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish (Ephesians 5:25-27).

Marriage is a mystery which points us to the great union between Jesus and his Church. The marriage celebrated in the psalm is not a purely secular one, whatever its original occasion may have been. The marriage is messianic. That is why Michael Travers can say that 

The themes of psalm 45 all relate to the wedding pictured in the psalm. The groom is at one and the same time the ancient king of Israel, David's Son, and the Messiah, Jesus Christ, David's greater Son. The bride is simultaneously the ancient king's bride and the church that is united by faith to Jesus Christ, her bridegroom (Meeting God in the Psalms, p202). 

This is why he came, and why his life is so important. His purpose is unique, as are his Person and Position. There is a glory belonging to him as the shepherd who searches for the lost sheep, and who declares that 'All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out' (John 7:37). His is a purpose of grace, of salvation, of love. He is the Lamb (John 1:36), and the Lamb will have a marriage at last (Revelation 19:7). 

In the psalm, the marriage is described in terms of a traditional Jewish wedding, when the bride would be accompanied by her companions, her bridesmaids, to the marriage home. But I think the pictures deliberately run together. The church is one; Jesus only has one bride. Yet the church is all of his people; there is unity and plurality in the church of Jesus Christ. The people of Tyre, the Gentiles, will make up the marriage procession for the royal bridegroom of the line of Judah. I think this is what Spurgeon means when he says that 

Those who love and serve the church for her Lord's sake shall share in her bliss 'in that day'. In one sense they are a part of the church, but for the sake of the imagery they are represented as maids of honour; and the thourhg the figure may seem incongruous, they are represented as brought to the King with the same loving familiarity as the bride, because the true servants of the church are of the church, and partake in all her happiness (TOD, Vol 2, 358).

This is the ultimate goal of the story of Jesus the Christ!

GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE PSALTER

As we come to look at the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Psalter, we must not overlook the obvious: that the Psalms were given by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This is not only declared in the locus classicus of 2 Timothy 3:16, but also in 2 Samuel 23:

1Now these are the last words of David:

The oracle of David, the son of Jesse,

the oracle of the man who was raised on high,

the anointed of the God of Jacob,

the sweet psalmist of Israel:[a] 

2"The Spirit of the LORD speaks by me;

his word is on my tongue. 

3The God of Israel has spoken;

the Rock of Israel has said to me:

When one rules justly over men,

ruling in the fear of God ...

There appear to be four explicit references to the Spirit of God in the Psalter. 

Psalm 51

11Cast me not away from your presence,

and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

In his exegesis of this psalm ('Atonement in Psalm 51' in The Glory of the Atonement), Bruce Waltke speaks of David's petitions: 

The second part of his petition ... addresses his moral impotence. The second verse of each of these verses mentions the spirit. What he needs is a new spirit (51:10), the Holy Spirit (51:11), and a willing spirit (51:12) to offset his congenital spiritual contradiction. This will require a new creation: "Create (bara) for me a pure heart, O God" (51:10). The ritual cleansing is effective only for those to whom the Spirit applies it (p58). 

The Holy Spirit, therefore, is the agent of redemption, who applies the blessings obtained through the atonement of Jesus Christ. 

Psalm 104

24O LORD, how manifold are your works!

In wisdom have you made them all;

the earth is full of your creatures. 

25Here is the sea, great and wide,

which teems with creatures innumerable,

living things both small and great. 

26There go the ships,

and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it. 

27These all look to you,

to give them their food in due season. 

28When you give it to them, they gather it up;

when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. 

29When you hide your face, they are dismayed;

when you take away their breath, they die

and return to their dust. 

30When you send forth your Spirit,[or breath] they are created,

and you renew the face of the ground. 

Here the Spirit is the creating Spirit, mentioned in Genesis 1. This could be the 'Spirit' or 'wind' or 'breath' of God (cf. Psalm 33:6 -- is this a fifth reference?). The Spirit is the agent of creation.

Psalm 139

7Where shall I go from your Spirit?

Or where shall I flee from your presence?

Here is a reference to the omnipresence of God, the Spirit. The God who cannot be contained is everywhere. The presence of God is localised, but the place is everywhere. In the light of Christ's teaching of the Spirit, this is very interesting. It is by the Spirit that Christ is to be with his people (John 16:7, Matthew 28:20, esp 2 Cor 3:17 - Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom). 

Psalm 143

10Teach me to do your will,

for you are my God!

Let your good Spirit lead me

on level ground!

The Spirit is the God who leads his people, who guides them. It was God who led his people through the wilderness, and Christ was the rock who led them (1 Cor 10:4). Those who are led by the spirit of God are the sons of God (Romans 8:14).

Interested to discover in a paper entitled 'The Psalms in the Worship of the Church' submitted to the Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America in 2004, the following statement:

'The Psalms do not transcend their Old Covenant matrix here as fully as they do in terms of Christology. The unique personality of the Holy Spirit is in the Psalter, but does not boldly stand forth' (p4). But is this truly the case? Did Christ not say that the Holy Spirit would not glorify himself? He would take of the things of Christ and reveal them. 

CONCLUSION

Far from truncating the Trinitarian worship of the church, the Psalter enables it, empowers it, and expresses it as few human compositions are able to do.

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## Christusregnat (Mar 13, 2008)

SemperFideles said:


> Man! Chris, you totally missed an opportunity to mess with Robert. We could have done some sort of Twilight Zone thing with it but now that opportunity has passed.



LOL


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## Christusregnat (Mar 13, 2008)

Iconoclast said:


> Hey CH,
> 
> 
> Far from truncating the Trinitarian worship of the church, the Psalter enables it, empowers it, and expresses it as few human compositions are able to do.
> ...



And I thought MY posts were long 

I realize this was an article 

Cheers,


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