When I wept and humbled myself with fasting,
it became my reproach.
When I made sackcloth my clothing,
I became a byword to them.
I am the talk of those who sit at the gate,
and the drunkards make songs about me.
[...]
Hide not your face from your servant;
for I am in distress;
make haste to answer me.
Psalm 69:10-12,14
You start saying - yeah, that's so true. That's exactly what's been happening. It's like it was written just for me, 3,000yrs beforehand!
But then you come across something like this:
Reproaches have broken my heart,
so that I am in despair.
I looked for pity,
but there was none,
and for comforters,
but I found none.
They gave me poison for food,
and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.
Psalm 69:20-21
And then you remember that all of the scriptures point not to you, but to the Christ, the suffering servant King – to Jesus, who fulfilled this on the cross.
He was despised, abandoned, rejected; to top it all off all 4 gospels testify to him being offered sour wine to drink, fulfiling this Psalm. (c/f Matthew27:48, Mark15:36, Luke23:36, John19:29-30)
For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:21
4 comments:
So true!! Thanks Doug!
Praise God for Jesus!!!
Thanks for the helpful reminder Doug!
But we are in Christ - so mightn't the experience of the psalms also sometimes be our experience? Christ suffered for us, not so that we wouldn't suffer, but so that our sufferings are 'in him'.
So while I think a christological reading of the psalms is (often) crucial, this needn't rule out also reading ourselves in them, though it will condition our understanding of how we see ourselves in them.
yeah, thanks byron.
i just realise that the christological reading is often my last reading, or even a reading i don't consider at all.
but corrective taken.
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