The Answer of Jesus to the Psalms

Last week we held another 72-hour Prayer Meeting – something that is now a regular part of our church schedule.  As part of the Prayer Meeting I lead something called ‘The Fourth Watch of the Night’ – praying from 3am to 6am.  This time I felt led to spend the first hour each night simply reading out Scripture.  We started with the Book of Psalms.

The funny thing about the Psalms is that we are normally so selective as to which ones we read out loud.  So many verses from the Psalms are so inspiring, and so familar to us from many modern worship songs, that we tend to skip past the stuff that doesn’t seem quite so uplifting.  But when you are standing in front of a microphone reading one Psalm after another in their entirety then you are confronted face to face with a lot of Scripture that seems so uncomfortable.

Have you ever noticed how much griping and moaning goes on in the Psalms?  Sometimes it leads up to a final ringing declaration of faith.  But sometimes you get an entire Psalm that is a long list of difficulties and problems that the author is facing.

And what about all those cries for revenge (imprecatory Psalms as they were called in my Old Testament classes in College)?  I am old enough to remember the German pop group Boney M reaching number 1 in the charts with ‘By the Rivers of Babylon’.  They sang the first few verses of Psalm 137.  But imagine if their song had gone on to include some of the later verses in the same Psalm.  “O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us-he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. (Psalm 137:8-9)“

Whoa!  If Boney M had included that bit of the Psalm then they would have gone to prison, never mind number 1!  Yet, as Bible believing Christians, we believe that all Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for instruction, correction, reproof and training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16).  If we take that core belief seriously then we must grapple with the complaining, and the cries for revenge, that we find in the Psalms.  Simply glossing over such passages to find the nice stuff is intellectual and spiritual cowardice.

So how do such passages in the Psalms fit in with my Evangelical view of the inspiration and authority of Scripture?  The solution was suggested to me by an old volume that sits in one of my bookcases.  The Answer of Jesus to Job, by Dr G. Campbell Morgan, looks at some of Job’s unanswered questions to God and shows how they are answered in the New Testament.

The Book of Psalms is primarily a song book.  And, as with all good songs, they deal with the whole gamut of human feelings including heartache and heartbreak.  Some of the songs leave us with unanswered questions:

Why do the wicked sometimes prosper and never seem to be punished?  Why doesn’t God do something about the great wickedness we see in the world?  Why do good people often suffer so much?  Why do I sometimes feel so bad about myself?  These are all important questions, and if all we had was the Old Testament then they would remain unanswered.

For example, take the Babylonians in Psalm 137.  They have shown great cruelty to the Israelites.  They have murdered countless Jewish babies.  The Psalmist is crying out that, in a just world, surely they must suffer the same kind of pain that they have inflicted?  If there is no such judgement then Jews are left asking, as they did during the Nazi Holocaust, where is God?

But in Christ’s death on the Cross we have the answer of Jesus to Psalm 137.  In the agony of Calvary Christ bore the punishment, to the very last drop, of the Babylonians, the Assyrians, and the Nazis.  Justice, which had appeared to sleep during times of great tyranny, was fully satisfied in the Person of Jesus Christ.  The problem with asking God to deal with all the wickedness in the world is that I have to begin by facing the wickedness committed by the man who looks out at me from the mirror each morning.  By trusting in Christ I can accept the fact that my wickedness has already been punished in full on the Cross.  And, for those who refuse to accept Christ’s sacrifice on their behalf, the punishment will continue for all Eternity.  Either way, justice is done and the cry of Psalm 137 is answered.

But what about all the complaints that we find in the Psalms?  How do we reconcile them with the Gospel we preach of faith and hope?  For example, last week I was feeling increasingly depressed as I read out Psalm 69:

Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold.  I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me. I am worn out calling for help; my throat is parched.  My eyes fail, looking for my God. Those who hate me without reason outnumber the hairs of my head; many are my enemies without cause, those who seek to destroy me.  I am forced to restore what I did not steal. (Psalm 69:1-4)

Come on, I’m thinking, when is this guy going to stop complaining?  Then, as I read on to verse 21, I am stopped in my tracks by these words: “They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst.”

To those singing from a Jewish songbook, this is just the latest in a long list of complaints and laments.  But not to us.  We follow a Saviour who was thirsty when He was hanging on the Cross – and Scripture tells us that He was given vinegar to drink (John 19:29), or wine mingled with gall (Matthew 27:34).

In fact the Gospels contain many quotations from the Psalms and apply them to Christ’s death upon the Cross – most notably the opening line from Psalm 22:  “My God! My God! Why have You forsaken Me?”   Jesus deliberately allowed Himself to be killed in such a way that it would remind everyone of the complaints and laments of the Psalms.  He not only carried the sins of the world on His shoulders, but He also bore our sufferings on the Cross.  Every hurt, every wound, every sickness, every grief – He experienced them all on our behalf.  Therefore He is not some remote deity who is aloof from our pain.  He is a Saviour and a Comforter who has suffered in all points like us, yet without sin.  He understands.  And in this understanding the complaints and heartache of the Psalms is answered.

Yes, Jesus is truly the answer to the Psalms!