UNBLOCKING THE WELL OF THE LIVING WORD

READ PSALM 66-70

SUGGESTED PATTERN Read Psalm 66-70 with your spouse or household then re-read Psalm 69 again with spouse or household, then spend 2 mins in silence focussing on  Psalm 69:9,13 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 69:9,13 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 69:9,13 “ For zeal for your house consumes me, and the insults of those who insult you fall on me…. But I pray to you, O Lord in the time of your favour; in your great love, O God, answer me with your salvation.”

There is something simultaneously awesomely attractive and terrifyingly scary about an active volcano spilling out burning lava and violently ejecting dark plumes of smoke into the atmosphere. The love that Jesus has for his Father’s house is a jealous volcanic desire that will spurn everything that gets in its way. How do we make sense of this jealous love? The idea of God being jealous comes up in the Old Testament..but does Jesus Christ have a jealous love in the New Testament too?  

David Sliker says, (1) “There is an old heresy, the idea that the Old Testament is a God of wrath and the New Testament God is a God of mercy. This is heresy. In Exodus 34; 5, 6, (2) Moses says ‘Show me your glory’, and God declares ‘I am gracious and compassionate, I am slow to anger and I am faithful ..  abounding in loyal faithfulness’. Somehow we have shifted that verse to say. God is gracious and compassionate We have re-written ‘Slow to anger’.. to mean  that he  has ‘no anger’. ..but ‘No’ …The blood of Jesus does not remove his anger. He is slow to anger but this does not mean there is no anger. In emphasizing the Father Heart of God, (in the contemporary charismatic Western church) we have ignored really important aspects of his character. His relationship to us and his passion and jealousy relate to our future and destiny and depths of his commitment and how far he is willing to go to get us to our destiny. He won’t stop until all darkness is out of us ..and he won’t stop until all sin , all accusation, the venom of accusation that still resides within us the  mystery of lawlessness that hidden rage, that hidden accusation that hidden sense that I know better than God that I am wiser than God that I have a better way.. is dealt with. He is love and included in that love is his anger and jealousy. When you yoke your life and when you fasten your life covenantly to a bridegroom God ..you get him….The whole of who he is , is fastened to you and you get all of him … the free gift of righteousness made a way for him to fasten himself to you. You get him .. the God of the OT and NT has fastened himself to you.”

We get a picture of that jealous volcanic love when Jesus drives out the money changers from the temple and Jesus quotes Psalm 69:9a. in Matthew 21:12-13. This is the first of multiple times that Jesus Christ is speaking in Psalm 69. The Message version of Matthew 21:12-13 says (3)“When the Passover Feast, celebrated each spring by the Jews, was about to take place, Jesus travelled up to Jerusalem. He found the Temple teeming with people selling cattle and sheep and doves. The loan sharks were also there in full strength. Jesus put together a whip out of strips of leather and chased them out of the Temple, stampeding the sheep and cattle, upending the tables of the loan sharks, spilling coins left and right. He told the dove merchants, “Get your things out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a shopping mall!” That’s when his disciples remembered the Scripture, “Zeal for your house consumes me.” Here in Psalm 69, we find David speaking this verse, 1000 years before Jesus was born.

Secondly, Paul says in Romans 15:3 that Jesus Christ himself is speaking in the second part of verse 9. Paul says “For Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.”  (4) Here in Psalm  69b Christ, the divine logos is speaking through the mouth of David, and Paul is recognizing this, and Matthew Bates calls it prosopological exegesis. Thirdly,Psalm 69:21 says  “they put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst.” This is also  Christ speaking, according to Origen (5) .

For Irenaeus (6) the unity of the Old and New Testament, demands that we see the presence of Christ in the Old Testament. If we don’t have that approach, we are in danger of being gnostics. As we read this passage in Psalm 69, and meet the person of Jesus speaking through David 1000 years before Jesus was born, the unity of both Testaments Old and New makes sense. The risen and ascended Jesus Christ of Revelation chapter 1 with hair white as wool and eyes blazing with fire, is the same Jesus Christ of Matthew 21:12-13 and Psalm 69:9a.

Prayer

Thank you Lord for the burning passionate love for your bride. Open my eyes to see you Lord Jesus and open my heart to burn with passionate love for you too. I pray to you, O Lord in the time of your favour; in your great love, O God, answer me with your salvation.

References

(1) Sliker, D. Psalm 2 The nations rage and the wrath of God. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB20S4rAYKQ

(2) Exodus 34:5,6.

(3) Matthew 21:12-13, Message version

(4) Bates, M.  The hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation, 200.

(5) Comm Jo 10.222-23 in Bates, M.  The hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation, 246.

(6 ) Williams, D.H. Retreiving tradition and renewing evangelicalism (subtitled, A Primer for Suspicious Protestants.)