UNBLOCKING THE WELL OF THE LIVING WORD

READ PSALM 36-40

SUGGESTED PATTERN Read Psalm 36-40 with your spouse or household then re-read Psalm 40 again with spouse or household, then spend 2 mins in silence focussing on  Psalm 40:6-8 asking the Lord, the question “What does this text mean?” then 2 mins in silence asking the Lord what He is saying to you personally through Psalm 40: 6-8 and then share together with your spouse or household what the Lord has been saying. Finally one person reads out loud the devotional below and then pray for one another.  

PSALM 40: 6-8  “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire but my ears you have pierced, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require. Then I said, “Here I am, I have come- it is written about me in the scroll. I desire to do your will, O| my God; your law is within my heart”

Yesterday I was looking at Augustine’s perspective on the Psalms and how he saw Christ speaking through them. Augustine had no trouble seeing how Scripture could be interpreted figurally or allegorically as he was a Platonist . He was a Platonist because he thought actual things are copies of the transcendent. (1) But what was missing in Augustine’s thinking was how this happens in history…he needed to see that we can read the bible figurally only because at a certain point in time, salvation was accomplished on the cross. The cross is a sign of salvation but not merely a sign.. It is a non-negotiable nonfigurative description of the very mechanism of salvation.” Christ redeems us on the cross; this is what Augustine learned from Paul’s epistle to the Galatians. Salvation is not something abstract and eternal that is figurally pictured in the cross but something that actually occurred on the cross. When Augustine read the psalms in the light of these insights of Paul about Christ’s crucified human humility, Scripture opened up to him. One way this happened was that he now saw Christ using the Psalms to explain himself.

(2) “The earliest Christians were convinced that “a few special humans in the past had in fact obtained an otherworldly glimpse into divine affairs- the ancient Hebrew prophets.”

These prophets such as David and Isaiah were enabled to overhear conversations between God the Father and God the Son. The prophets took on the prosopa of the members of the Trinity and spoke in character in the writings. Bates begins his book on the importance of prosopological exegesis for the development of the doctrine of the Trinity(3), by pointing to the way the author of Hebrews identifies the speaker in Psalm 40:6-8 as Christ himself.”

(4) “Consequently when Christ came into the world he said:  ‘Sacrifices and offerings, you have not desired but a body you have prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, “Behold, I have come to do your will, O God as it is written of me in the scroll of the book” (Hebrews 10: 5-7) The author of Hebrews explains the meaning of the text quoted from Psalm 40: when he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law) then he added, Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” (Hebrews 10: 8-10). “

(5) “David neither abolished the sacrificial system nor sanctified us through the offering of his body. The Messiah did these things. The words of Psalm 40 make perfect sense when we read them as the words of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, which is exactly what the author of Hebrews does. But how can Jesus Christ be speaking in Psalm 40, a millennium prior to the incarnation of God in the birth of Jesus? This is the question answered by prosopological exegesis,”

This prosopological exegesis is  the kind of  interpretation that we described Augustine doing with Psalm 31 yesterday. Hebrews 10 verse 5,  says “a body you have prepared for me.” Psalm 40:6  says “my ears you have pierced”, but otherwise the passages, are virtually identical. What is happening here?  In the contemporary culture a slave after he had worked as a slave for six years, could be released… but he would have been unable to take his wife and children with him, if he had left. So, alternatively that slave could choose to be a love slave and serve as a slave for the rest of his life. If he chose to be a love slave, his ear would be pierced by an awl, when standing against a door post. So Jesus was saying when he died on the cross that he was choosing to be a love slave, his ears were pierced, his body had been prepared. That is what was happening as he died on the cross as a love slave, redeeming us all. So here is another example of Jesus Christ speaking prophetically through a psalm, before his incarnation, death and resurrection. Salvation is not an abstract doctrine, but an actual event that was revealed prophetically 1000 years beforehand.

Prayer

Thank you Lord, that you chose to be a love slave, your ears were pierced, your body was prepared, you died for me.

References

(1) Paragraph is summary of Carter, C.A. Interpreting Scripture and the Great Tradition, 173.

(2) Carter, C.A. Interpreting Scripture and the Great Tradition, 192.

(3) Bates, M. Birth of the Trinity, quoted in  Carter, C.A. Interpreting Scripture and the Great Tradition, 193.

(4) Carter, C.A. Interpreting Scripture and the Great Tradition, 193.

(5) Carter, C.A. Interpreting Scripture and the Great Tradition, 194