READ PSALM 61-65
SUGGESTED PATTERN Read Psalm 61-65 with your spouse or household then re-read Psalm 61 again with spouse or household, then spend 2 mins in silence focussing on Psalm 61:2 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 61: 2 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 61:2 “ From the ends of the Earth I call to you. I call as my heart grows faint, lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”
Was Apostle Paul’s interpretation of Scripture scandalous?(1)The Apostle Paul repeatedly interprets Scripture in ways that must have startled his first audience. His interpretation must have looked peculiar and even scandalous to his contemporaries, Are you startled when you read 1 Corinthians 10:2-4? Paul very clearly states that Christ is the spiritual rock. Paul wrote (2) “They were all baptised into Moses, in the clouds and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them and that rock was Christ”. How did Paul interpret the Old Testament and say so definitively that Jesus was the spiritual rock that Israel drank from in the wilderness? How did he make that jump..? (3) Richard Hays, a well known theologian has dismissed the idea that Paul had any systematic hermeneutical principles.. but rather used christocentric figurative interpretation, using his imagination. This is why Richard Hays wrote a book called “The conversion of the imagination,” (4) Is this true .. did Paul have no method of interpreting the Old Testament?
A few days ago I mentioned that when Augustine read the psalms in the light of the insights of Paul about Christ’s crucified human humility, Scripture opened up to him, but that he insistently sought to show that his proclamation of the gospel was grounded in the witness of Israel’s sacred texts. This is not the way that theological departments and bible colleges primarily read the Old Testament today. Similarly pick up any bible commentary today and you will find it is primarily focussed on (5) trying to understand what the original author meant to communicate to the original audience in the original situation. This is very different from the way that Paul read the Old Testament. So how did Paul read the Old Testament?
Another theologian Matthew Bates suggests, a bit differently from Richard Hays, and developing his approach, says that (6) the way Paul read the sacred texts, that we call the Old Testament was through the received “apostolic proclamation”. That was his filter … through which he read the ancient texts. Matthew Bates contends that Paul’s own declarations about the Scriptures suggest that he read everything through the lens of Christ. More specifically, Matthew Bates contends (7) that Paul looks at the Old Testament through, what he calls a protocreed, that is 1 Corinthians 15:3-5, 8, 11. “ For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve….and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born….Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.” Paul looks at the Old Testament through that lens, and clearly he is very open to use his imagination, and to figurative interpretation, that is the use of metaphors or “types”
This brings us back to Psalm 61:2. Let’s look to the rock. Alec Motyer a well respected conservative scholar, wrote a book,(8) with the title “Look to the rock” which focussed on the Old Testament background to the understanding of Christ. We do not need to have any inhibitions reading this Psalm, with Augustine as a Psalm pointing to Christ. If Paul could compare Christ to a Spiritual rock so can we. Let’s drink deeply from Jesus our spiritual rock this Lent, the rock that is higher than I, reminded that the children of Isarel, drank from a rock in the wilderness. Jesus said: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God’ (Matthew 4:4). The original expression meant ‘is continually coming out of the mouth of God’; it is like a stream pouring forth and, like the stream of a fountain, it is never static.”(9) How hungry and thirsty are you for Jesus the Living Word. If you are in a spiritual wilderness this Lent, then feed on Him and drink deeply from Jesus the Living Word. Let’s unblock that well. Let’s drink from Jesus our spiritual rock.
Prayer
Lord Jesus I look to you today, my spiritual rock. I am thirsty for you Lord. Fill me up Lord, I pray.. with a stream of living water today
References
(1) Hays, R, Echoes of Scripture in the letters of Paul, 1.
(2) 1 Corinthians 10: 2 -4, NIV.
(3) Hays, R Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as an interpreter of Israel’s Scripture
(4) Bates, M. The hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation, 25-32
(5) Carter, C.A Interpreting scripture with the Great Tradition, 205.
(6) Bates, M The hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation, 25-32
(7) Bates, M The hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation, 60-61
(8) Motyer, A. Look to the rock: Old Testament background to our understanding of Christ.
(9)Gumbel, N. The bible with Nicky and Pippa Gumbel, Day 41.
UNBLOCKING THE WELL OF THE LIVING WORD 
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