Lessons from Psalms #2: The Messiah

The idea of the Messiah is a massive concept in the Psalms. As I've been reading them, I see so many glimpses of Jesus Christ. It could be in the form of prophecies which were fulfilled in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. Or it could be pictures, ideals which were only made reality in Him.

God made a covenant with King David that He would 'raise up (his) offspring to succeed (him)', and that He would 'establish the throne of his kingdom forever.' (2 Samuel 7) The various writers of Psalms, including David and his son Solomon after him, consider this promise of God and depict a king who rules with justice over Israel, but also beyond Israel too. The Psalms delight in God's particular choice of Israel:

'He has founded his city on the holy mountain.
The Lord loves the gates of Zion
more than all the other dwellings of Jacob.
Glorious things are said of you,
city of God' Ps 87.1-3

But the Psalms also look forward to a day when God will place a king to rule with His justice and righteousness over the whole world:

'May the nations be glad and sing for joy,
for you rule the peoples with equity
and guide the nations of the earth.' Ps 67.4

These two aspects of truth find unity in Jesus because He is the messianic descendant of David, king of Israel and His rule is universal:

'He made known to us the mystery of His will... to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfilment — to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.' (Eph 1:9-10)

It's amazing the way the Psalms unite the idea of one perfect king whose rule extends beyond Israel to the other nations too. Look at Psalm 2:

'“I have installed my king
on Zion, my holy mountain.”
I will proclaim the Lord’s decree:

He said to me, “You are my son;
today I have become your father.
Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance,
the ends of the earth your possession.' Ps 2:6-8

And the picture of the Christ, God's chosen King, is a beautiful one which we can clearly see fulfilled in Jesus:

'May he defend the afflicted among the people
and save the children of the needy;
may he crush the oppressor.
May he endure as long as the sun,
as long as the moon, through all generations.
May he be like rain falling on a mown field,
like showers watering the earth.
In his days may the righteous flourish
and prosperity abound till the moon is no more.
May he rule from sea to sea
and from the River to the ends of the earth...
Then all nations will be blessed through him,
and they will call him blessed.' Ps 72.4-8, 17

In verse 17, God's covenant with Abraham ('I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you' (Gen 12:3) is shown to be fulfilled in this Messiah, who is Jesus Christ. How amazing the unity of Scripture is! How wonderful is our King Jesus!

Old and New Covenant: What's the Difference?

It's always a danger that we, as Christians, use complicated terms from the Bible without really understanding what they mean, as well as being totally unintelligible for the world outside. The trap of Christian jargon is sometimes really difficult to escape from. Salvation, atonement, penal substitution... All these words mean wonderful things and yet can also be very confusing.

As I study for my Moore College Christian Worship module, I have been looking at the Old and New Covenants of the Bible. And 'covenant' is one such jargon-word. It basically means 'promise', but it does have more weight than that. In Bible times, an oral culture where the spoken word was much more meaningful and binding than in today's world, a covenant was serious business. It involved conditions. It was not easily broken.

The Old Testament relates to us how God called the people of Israel into covenant with Him (having made a covenant with Abraham, and they were his descendants). On Mount Sinai He gave them the Law, and the essence of the covenant was this:

'Love the LORD your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always.' Deuteronomy 11:1

The conditions were that if Israel followed God's commands and stayed faithful to Him, He would give them a land flowing with milk and honey, and rest from all their enemies. But if they failed, then He would send famine and drought, routers, and eventually send them into exile. And sadly, this is what actually happened. After the exile, a remnant returned, but it was clear that Israel had problems with keeping the covenant because the post-exilic prophets (such as Malachi) spoke of their continued corruption and failure to obey God.

It is into this situation -a crushed people under the Roman empire, a disobedient people who had failed to keep God's law- that Jesus came. And with Him, He brought what is known as the New Covenant: a new way of relating to God.

Jesus changed:
The PLACE of worship
The MEANS of worship

Let's unpack that.

In the Old Testament, there were two important central places of worship. First, there was the Tabernacle (built under Moses in the time of being in the wilderness). This was a sort of tent, a central meeting place, where the Ark of the Covenant (a box containing the 10 Commandments and the Law) was kept. It was where God's presence dwelled- this is why Exodus ends climactically with the cloud of God's presence filling the place (Ex 40).

Once Israel had claimed the Promised Land and achieved rest from their enemies, the Temple was built (under the direction of Solomon, David's son). This was a much more permanent building, lavishly constructed, and provided the central place of worship where sacrifices were offered.

Jesus changed all of this by REPLACING the temple (place of worship), along with the sacrifices (means of worship). By offering Himself, dying an innocent death on the cross, Jesus paid the price for our sins, once for all. His blood justifies the guilty (Rom 5:8-9). There is no need now for any more sacrifices to be made. Jesus' sacrifice was enough to pay for all sins: past, present and future.

'He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him.' (Heb 7:25)

So Jesus IS the sacrifice, but Jesus is also the TEMPLE itself. The Temple represented God's rule, and God's will to bless Israel and other nations through them. In Jesus 'one greater than the temple' arrived (Mt 12:6). He embodied God's presence and authority, because He was the Son of God. In Him we find salvation and through Him all nations can be blessed (this is how God fulfilled His promise to Abraham from Genesis 12). We don't need a temple now to access God, because we have Jesus. This is why the Temple curtain was torn from top to bottom when Christ died on the cross (Mt 27:51).

True Christianity is all about presenting ourselves to God IN JESUS CHRIST. It's about coming to God, knowing you have NOTHING TO OFFER Him except a sinful soul, and asking for His forgiveness which is available to you THROUGH JESUS' SACRIFICE.

But once we have done that, we CAN offer God our lives. Romans 12:1 teaches that we are to become 'living sacrifices'- not trying to win our own salvation or our place in heaven by doing good things, but demonstrating in our LIFESTYLE that our relationship with God has been restored, and we are RIGHTEOUS in His sight (absolutely pure). Every sphere of our lives as Christians gives us the opportunity to glorify and serve God, in grateful response to the work of Jesus.

Therefore we "worship" not only in times of singing songs and reading the Bible and praying, but in obedience, loving others, showing hospitality, being faithful in marriage, witnessing to others (see Hebrews and Romans 12-15). Our worship is much more than what we do in church on a Sunday, or in our daily "quiet time" or personal devotions to God. It is our whole life.

That is not necessarily ABSENT from the Old covenant. God made it clear that He wanted His people to love Him all of the time, not just on a Sabbath day. He made it clear through the prophets that sacrifices were worthless unless they were accompanied by true repentance (1 Sam 15:22). But Jesus brought a whole new experience of worship for us, because He revealed to us in His very person the TRUTH about God, and He sent us His SPIRIT to aid us in crying out to God in our hearts (Rom 8:15). This is what Jesus meant when He said:

"Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." John 4:23-24

In Jesus we see a full revelation of who God is, because Jesus is 'the exact representation of his being' (Heb 1:3). In Jesus we not only receive a new PLACE of worship (ie. in Himself, not in a physical building), and a new MEANS of worship (through His sacrifice), but we also receive a full picture of the GOD we worship. We can worship Jesus because He is God; He is part of the Trinity, the three-person God who is Father, Son and Spirit. And as Christians, our aim is to bring others to worship Christ and make Him their own Lord and Saviour.

Worship #1

The following series of posts are my notes as part of studying the Christian Worship module of the Moore correspondence course.

Why is worship so important in biblical thought?

Fundamentally, as Grudem points out, God is worthy of worship and we are not. He created us to glorify Him and it is right that God should seek His own honour, for He is worthy of it.

'My glory I will not give to another' Isa 48.11

'You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for You created all things, and by Your will they existed and were created' Rev 4:11

In both Testaments worship is repeatedly enjoined on the covenant people of God (Carson).

'Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for He is our God and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under His care' Ps 95:6-7

We become like whatever or whomever we worship (Leithart), therefore to become more godly and to be the people God wants us to be, we need to focus not on ourselves but on God.

What are the most important lessons that the Old Testament teaches us about the worship that is acceptable to God?

1. The Old Testament makes it clear that worship is only acceptable when it is from the heart. 'Stop bringing meaningless offerings!' God tells His people in Isa 1:13. They may have followed the rituals correctly but they were not seeking justice and living God's way. Carson points out that 'it has always been necessary to love God wholly'.

2. Worship is only acceptable as a response to God's grace, not as an attempt to earn it. The only reason the Israelites could approach God with the sacrifices for sin was because He had first of all redeemed them from slavery in Egypt and in that great act of salvation set them apart to be His people. It was by grace that God gave them the sacrifical system, as a temporal measure for them to maintain covenant relationship with Him before Christ came to die for sins once for all.

3. Worship focuses on who God is- the lengthy rituals of Atonement were there to remind the people and the priests of God's perfect holiness and unapproachable nature. Part of their worship was to retell God's great acts to their children (Deut 6, 8).

4. Worship was Word-centred as well as sacrificial- the Law was placed by the ark of the covenant (Deut 32), and Ps 119 emphasises the sufficiency of God's word as covering everything from A-Z (it is an acrostic poem covering all the letters in the Hebrew alphabet).

5. Worship is both a response to a covenant relationship and the means of ensuring its continuance (Davies)- God does not want us to pray a prayer asking for His forgiveness and then to go off and live our own life for the next 40-50 years. God wants us to walk with Him in obedience and therefore Christian worship is about continually submitting to God, continuing in faith. This is established in the Old Testament by the repeated words of God in the Law for His people to walk in love and obedience to Him all the days of their life.
'Love the LORD your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always.' Deut 11:1

Do Christians have to keep the Law?

Recently I've been studying the first five books of the Old Testament (the Pentateuch) for an exam. One of the past questions was concerned with how the 10 Commandments relate to the New Covenant, which Christians are under. I've always found this issue really hard to get my head around, so this post is very much my current musings.

Covenant: Old and New

The concept of covenant is very prominent in the Pentateuch. By creating the world, God committed Himself to it. But after the rebellion of mankind and the Flood, God chose to make a covenant with Noah to never again destroy the world by flooding. (Gen 9:11) After the building of the tower at Babel, and God's subsequent scattering of mankind and confusion of languages, God chose to make a covenant with Abraham:
'I will make you into a great nation... I will make your name great... all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.' (Gen 12:2-3)

This covenant was eventually fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He was a descendant of Abraham (Matt 1:1), and through His death on the cross and resurrection, He offers all people on earth the blessing of being reconciled with God, and an eternity in heaven. Paul explains this in the book of Galatians:
'Consider Abraham: "He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness." Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham. The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: "All nations will be blessed through you." So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.' Gal 3:7-9

430 years after God made His covenant with Abraham, Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt (by this time they had indeed become a 'great nation' as God had promised), and at Mount Sinai God made a covenant with Israel as a nation. He gave them the 10 Commandments and a covenant code to follow (these are detailed in Exodus and Leviticus). In Deuteronomy, just as Israel are poised to enter the promised land after 40 years of rebellion in the wilderness, Moses gives three speeches which outline to Israel the options laid before them:

• Obey God's commands and be blessed and stay in the land (Deut 4:40)
  
• Disobey God's commands and be cursed and exiled from the land (Deut 4:26-27)
  

The problem was, and this is really what the rest of the Old Testament is about, that Israel could not obey God's commands. They repeatedly turned against God, and so they were indeed sent into exile. Even when a remnant returned, the same mistakes were made, and the latter prophets such as Malachi preached about the rebellion of the people and urged them to turn back to God.

This, then, is where the concept of the New Covenant comes in. Jeremiah prophesies that there will come a time when God will put His laws into men's minds and hearts, and remember their sins no more (Jer 31). The writer of Hebrews explains that this time has now come: it was inaugurated through Jesus Christ's ministry.

Jesus fulfilled the law of Moses by sacrificing Himself once, for all. His innocent death was the high price necessary to pay for our sins. His blood was shed to cleanse mankind from past, present and future sins, if men claim it for themselves through faith.

'When Christ came as high priest... He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!

For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.' (Hebrews 8:11-15)

The 'new covenant', then, is the promise of God that all who believe in Jesus can receive forgiveness through His blood. (see Rev 7:15) Christians do not have to offer up animal sacrifices as the Israelites did, because Jesus' sacrifice was enough. The animal sacrifices of the law of Moses were a shadow of the greater reality of Christ that was to come. For believers before Christ came, sacrifices were a God-given means of forgiveness through His covenant with Israel. They were made valid before God on the basis of Christ's future sacrifice (note that the Old Testament itself recognises that the blood of bulls did not take away sin; God graciously forgave the one who offered the sacrifice if their heart was genuinely repentant and seeking Him -see Ps 51:16 and Hosea 6:6).

The essence of the Gospel

The Christian message is this: that everyone has sinned and turned against God in their heart, and consequently is under God's judgement. So God sent His Son Jesus to earth, to live a perfectly obedient life, and to die an innocent death, so that the price for our redemption could be paid. If we want to escape God's punishment, we need to believe in Jesus and trust that He took our punishment for us. We can be credited with His righteousness through faith in Him.

The Gospel in the Old Testament

Now that message wasn't really 'new' with Jesus' coming to earth. In fact, as Paul points out in Romans and Galatians, God's people have always been saved through faith rather than works. Abraham believed and it was credited as righteousness to him. (Gen 15:6) Also, the prophets looked towards Jesus' coming and Isaiah famously predicted that God's Servant would take on Himself the punishment for our sins:

'But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.' (Isaiah 53:5-6)

What, then, was the point of the law?

The law had two purposes:
1. To guide God's people in how they should live, at a time when believers did not have the Holy Spirit dwelling within them
2. To expose the fact that men can never perfectly live up to God's standards

The problem with the law, as James explains, was that if you kept all of it except one point, you were guilty of all of it and condemned (James 2:10). Jesus said that the most important commandments were 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength' and 'Love your neighbor as yourself' (Mark 12:29-31, quoting Deut 6:5-6). No one can ever keep these perfectly- hence why Jesus challenged the rich ruler who claimed he had kept all the commandments to:

'Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.' (Luke 18:22)

It was obvious that the ruler was not loving God and his neighbour with all his heart, because he walked away with sadness, unable to relinquish his great wealth.

The law then, as Paul writes, 'was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.' (Gal 3:24-25)

So do Christians have to keep the Law?

Finally I'm coming round to this crucial question. The answer is that Christians do not have to keep the Law in order to be saved.

'All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law." Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, "The righteous will live by faith." ...Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree." He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.' (Gal 3:10-14)

We are justified through Jesus Christ, not the things that we do. Jesus Christ was the only man to ever keep the law perfectly. He kept it perfectly FOR us. When we have faith in Him, His perfect righteousness becomes ours (see 1 Cor 1:30). God chooses not to see our filthy sins, but Christ's perfection, and that is how we can be accepted into heaven.

The Law has no power to save us, because it cannot give us the strength we need to obey it. It is not life-giving, but brings death and condemnation because we cannot keep it.
'the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life' (2 Cor 3:6)

But, as Christians who are saved by grace and given God's Holy Spirit, the Law and the Old Testament are helpful to us in revealing God's character and how He wants us to live.

'Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law.' (Gal 3:21)

It is important to stress that the law is in no way morally deficient. It is not primitive as some may suggest, but it perfectly reveals God's standards and holiness. The ceremonial laws (concerning food to eat and clothes to wear and sacrifices to be made etc) clearly do not apply to Christians, because the New Testament explains that these were fulfilled in Christ and Christians are not like Israel, a physical nation in one physical place separate from other peoples. (see Acts 10) Israel was chosen to be 'a kingdom of priests and a holy nation' (Ex 19:6) in the physical region of Palestine, whereas Christians are 'a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God' (1 Pet 2:9) who are sent out into all the world to make disciples of all nations (Matt 28).

The 10 Commandments, as TD Alexander suggests, are fundamental principles of life in covenant with God, universal and timeless. Whilst our salvation does not depend on how well we can obey God, Christians should desire to please God by living to glorify Him. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus expounded what keeping the 10 Commandments really means: not looking at someone lustfully, not feeling angry with your brother in your heart... It's much more than simply not sleeping with another man's wife, or stabbing someone in the chest. The Pharisees tended to do the bare minimum when it came to the law and think they were right with God, but actually Jesus said that the Tax Collector who declares his sinfulness and repents is more in the right with God than a self-righteous religious man. (see Luke 18:13)

If we strive to bring all areas of our life under God's rule, and stay humble to realise that we will never be acceptable to God through the things that we do, then we shall respond rightly to God's grace to us in Jesus.