Logical Truths
How Jesus fulfilled prophecy within the Psalms is a case examine within the resurrection.
“For David says regarding him”—that’s, regarding Jesus Christ—the phrases of Psalm 16:8–11, which prophecy Christ’s bodily resurrection (Acts 2:25–28). However what does it imply—what can it presumably imply—for David, a millennium earlier than Jesus, to talk phrases about Jesus Christ?
Or, to ask the query extra typically, what can we imply once we say that Jesus Christ fulfilled prophecies given a few years earlier than his incarnate life on earth? Within the Psalms, there are fairly a couple of examples the place the New Testomony writers declare that occasions in Jesus’s life fulfill prophecies given many centuries earlier than. Examples embrace (a) what occurs to Jesus’s clothes on the crucifixion (see Ps. 22:18, explicitly stated to be fulfilled by John 10:24); (b) that he could be betrayed by a detailed buddy (see Ps. 41:9 quoted in John 13:18) and that this buddy’s place could be taken by one other (see Ps. 109:8 quoted in Acts 1:20); (c) that he would ascend (see Ps. 68:18 quoted in Eph. 4:8); (d) that he could be given bitter wine to drink at his demise (see Ps. 69:21 quoted in John 19:28–29); (e) that he could be just like the stone rejected by the builders which seems to be the important thing to the entire constructing (see Ps. 118:22–23 quoted or echoed in Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts, and 1 Peter).
On this complete, 4-volume commentary, Christopher Ash gives an intensive remedy of all 150 Psalms, analyzing every chapter’s significance to David and the opposite psalmists, to Jesus throughout his earthly ministry, and to the church of Christ in all ages.
However I wish to concentrate on maybe probably the most important of all such prophecies within the Psalms: his bodily resurrection. In Psalm 16, David prays to be preserved (Ps. 16:1) after which expresses his wholehearted devotion to the Lord. He has no good factor in life other than the Lord; he delights solely in God’s holy folks; he won’t ever worship different gods; the Lord is his solely chosen portion in life; he units the Lord all the time earlier than him (Ps. 16:2–8). In Psalm 16:2–8, David voices a pledge of single-hearted loyalty (Ps. 16:2–4), adopted by a powerful career of unbridled delight (Ps. 16:5–8). It’s a outstanding and provoking career of affection for God. Augustine writes of Jesus right here that, “Confronted by the issues which go away, I didn’t take my eye off him who abides all the time, for I seemed ahead to rushing again to him when my passage by temporal issues must be over.”1
After which, in Psalm 16:8, David pivots: “as a result of he’s at my proper hand”—as a result of, and solely as a result of, I really like the Lord alone with a wholehearted and passionate devotion, due to this fact I will be assured that “I shall not be shaken.” This pivot is the important thing to the psalm: a person who loves God alone, with a pure and passionate love, is aware of he won’t ever be shaken.
Psalm 16:9–11 observe from this. As a result of I really like God alone, says David, I will be so very glad and know that my flesh dwells safe (Ps. 16:9); that’s, my physique is totally protected. As a result of I really like God alone, I do know that God won’t abandon my soul (my life) to Sheol, the place the place lifeless folks rot. He won’t ever let me, his holy devoted one, see corruption. That’s to say, even when I die, my physique won’t rot.
What are we to make of this superb confidence on the lips of David? Peter spells it out on the day of Pentecost: “Brothers, I’ll say to you with confidence in regards to the patriarch David that he each died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to at the present time.” (Acts 2:29). That’s to say, David’s physique rotted. So these phrases can not, in the long run, apply to David. They have to be spoken, by the Holy Spirit, of a successor of David who will really love God with a complete coronary heart. We all know that David, for all his shining religion, didn’t. We’ve got solely to consider what he did to Bathsheba and her husband Uriah to know this (1 Sam. 11). So, Peter goes on, “Being due to this fact a prophet . . . [David] foresaw and spoke in regards to the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not deserted to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption” (Acts 2:30–31). The apostle Paul says one thing very comparable, albeit a bit extra briefly, when talking within the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch. Like Peter, he additionally quotes Psalm 16:10 and says this speaks of the bodily resurrection of Jesus (Acts 13:34–35).
How then does Psalm 16 prophecy the resurrection of Christ? It does so like this: It says, with an excellent shining assurance, that when a person walks this earth who really loves God alone with a pure and undivided devotion all the times of his life, that man won’t—can not!—die and his physique rot. It merely can’t be. God would by no means let this occur. David pens these phrases by the Spirit of Christ (see 1 Peter 1:10–12). He speaks them a few man who will observe him many centuries later, of whom each phrase will probably be true.
There’s a false impression about prophecy that sees it by way of Scripture talking of random and disconnected occasions which—shock, shock!—occur years later. It might really feel slightly like a magican pulling a rabbit out of his hat. It’s illogical and someway disconnected from the large story of the Bible. However prophecy is just not like that. Psalm 16 celebrates a logical and deeply theological fact, that God will protect the physique of the person who loves him with a complete and sinless coronary heart. The logic is much like what Jesus says in Luke 11:38, when arguing with the Sadducees about resurrection: “Now he’s not the God of the lifeless, however of the residing.” So, when Jesus is raised in his physique from the lifeless, he fulfills the prophecy of Psalm 16:9–11 within the sense that he demonstrates that he—eventually!—is the wholehearted worshiper of whom Psalm 16 spoke.
How do we all know that “David says this” (Psalm 16:9–11) regarding Christ? We all know it as a result of Jesus Christ is the person who completely fulfills the primary a part of the psalm. He “is the one one who has ever wholeheartedly desired the residing God with each fiber of his being in each second of his life on earth.”2
Working laborious to know the deep logic of prophecies resembling this may assist us to know that prophecy is just not a matter of random, even trivial, predictions and equally random fulfilments, however slightly of profoundly logical truths that not solely have however have to be fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
Notes:
- Christopher Ash, The Psalms: A Christ-Centered Commentary, Quantity 2, p. 172.
- Christopher Ash, The Psalms, Quantity 2, p. 167.
Christopher Ash is the creator of The Psalms: A Christ-Centered Commentary.
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