Psalms 18-22

Psalms 18-22

            Four of today’s five psalms are of David. (About half the psalms are his.) What’s interesting in a few of them is how they offer a lesson in interpretation. In the first instance, Psalm 18, for example, is a song celebrating David’s deliverance from Saul. He recounts his sense that death was impending; he celebrates the Lord’s intervention in mythic terms; and he rejoices that he was rescued from his enemies. Secondly, though, it’s a psalm we can imagine on Jesus’ lips. On the cross, death reached out for and in the resurrection the Father intervened powerfully. Now Jesus has victory over His foes and ours—sin, death, and the devil. Finally, in some ways, we can read this psalm in exactly as David did: we see the troubles of our lives, rejoice in God’s powerful intervention (which we apprehend by faith in Christ Jesus), and exult that those cosmic foes that Jesus defeated, he defeated for us and for our benefit.

            Similarly with Psalm 22. In the first instance, it’s about David’s personal experience. In the second, Jesus famously quotes the opening verse on the cross, appropriating the psalm as a description of His experience. Finally, we come to it in the ordinary trials of life, as David did, but we also come to it in faith in the One who has gone through everything we go through. Only He came through it to victory, so for us, in Him, we recognize our ultimate victory, too.

            Psalm 19 is of a different sort, but it’s important to consider. It begins by rejoicing in the way that the creation “declares the glory of the Lord.” Call this natural knowledge of God, the evidence of God in creation. The psalmist sees God’s glory in the stars and in the sun. But there’s a hiccup: on the one hand, he says “they pour forth speech;” but on the other hand, “They have no speech.” There is a clear limitation to this natural knowledge. We might learn of a God who is powerful, orderly, glorious. But we don’t learn anything about His grace. The second half of the psalm pivots almost completely to the Lord’s revealed will. (Notice that in verses 1-6, it’s always God, never the Lord. You can’t make too much out of it, but the Lord is the name He revealed to Moses as He brought Israel out of Egypt; the Lord is His saving name.) It’s in the Lord’s revealed words that we have guidance, instruction, comfort—certain knowledge of His will and His grace. Natural knowledge is fine so far as it goes, but if you really want to know the God of grace, you need His revealed knowledge. You need to read the Scriptures, hear the Scriptures read and explained. That’s where salvation is found.