Psalms Lesson 8

Psalm 22:18-31

The purpose of going through the Psalms is to show you some of the principles that believers in the Old Testament used in their lives and to watch and to kind of let the Biblical mentality rub off as to how they responded to the pressures and situations of life. So the class of Psalms, the individual lament, we’ve gotten to Psalm 22:19-21 in this Psalm, which is an individual lament Psalm, and this is the petition section. Last week we dealt with the lament and we showed how in the lament section from verse 6 down through 18 you have numerous analogs to Christ’s own historical experience. And these analogs are so completely detailed that obviously the experience you’re reading about in verses 6-18 cannot refer to David historically in all of its detail but must look forward to the Messiah Himself and to expose His experience.

So far, and this is something to be reminded of when we come to the petition, this Psalm is unique in the individual lament series because of that trust section. Remember verses 3-5, the trust section; we said the thing about this Psalm is that the psalmist is in the middle of a catastrophe in which God has turned His back but the psalmist has all the time maintained 100% faith technique. In other words, the psalmist has had a perfect 100% faith and so this is why the psalmist is raising the question here as to why he’s being abandoned. Of course, in history the person of Jesus Christ was the only man who has ever been abandoned by God while totally believing. In other words, it looks like something’s wrong morally speaking; here a man, totally depends on the Lord and yet during the time he’s totally depending God turns his back, and of course we know theologically why, because Christ was identified with our sin. Are there any questions that may have arisen on what we’ve covered up to this point, either by way of why we’re saying what we’re saying or in connection with the person of Christ.

Let’s go on to verse 19-21. Do you remember why we broke it at verse 19; why is there a break at verse 19 in the text? [someone says something] Not in the Greek, in the Hebrew, right; there’s a change to “But Thou,” it’s broken up in your King James so you might not see it, but in the Hebrew it’s there. “But thou, be not far from me, O LORD.” That’s the way it literally reads, and there’s a strong shift here, and this marks the beginning of this petition section. “Be Thou not far from me, O LORD. O my strength, haste Thee to help me. [20] Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling [only one] from the power of the dog. [21] Save me from the lion’s mouth; for Thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns [wild oxen.].

Now this petition section, verses 19-21 is short. Can anyone tell us, why do you suppose in the… and one of the things you want to do when you study the Psalms is look at the relative length of the sections. So here you have verses 1-2, a small address; verses 3-5 a small trust section; verses 6-18 a very, very large lament. Verse 19-21, a very small petition. Can anyone suggest some reasons why you would think there’s a small petition section here versus the large lament section. You’ve got a very large lament and very small petition. Does anyone have some ideas of perhaps what this is trying to tell us about the state of mind of the psalmist? Just visualize yourself in the situation, and you’re facing an adversity. Why would you behave this way; big long lament describing your situation, short petition.

[someone says something] Good, it certainly shows you the fact that He’s… there’s not too much doubt in his mind as to what he should petition, he doesn’t spend a lot of time working on his petition; it’s distinct, to the point, it’s over with, and this would tend to go along with what we had up here, the trust section that preceded the lament. So when we get down to this point the very shortness of the petition would tend to argue that the psalmist is quite confident that he’ll be answered, he’s quite confident the situation is under control, although obviously he needs to make a petition.

Now, here’s something that we ought to think about in verses 19 and following. If Christ prayed this prayer and if this is a fore view of how Christ actually thought when He was on the cross, why do you think it was ever necessary for Christ to make the petition? Suppose He didn’t make the petition. Or just try to think of why are verses 19-21 important; why did Christ… did He have to make the petition or would things have come out all right if He hadn’t? There’s no dogmatic answers to this but just stimulate your thinking here; what would be some thoughts about this.

[someone says something] Okay, for those of you who didn’t hear, the point is that when God, the Son, is faced with this adversity He is still a person and God expects the Son to act personally; God is a personal God, God the Father is a person, God the Son is a person, and they have a personal relationship and so therefore He wants the Son to ask. She used the illustration of Psalm 2, “ask of me and I’ll give you the inheritance of the earth,” the point being that yes God will give the Son the inheritance, all the earth, but He wants the Son to first ask Him for it. And the reason is that there must be a personal relationship here. Can you think of an analog in your Christian experience where this principle surely comes out, where you face a sovereign decree of God about you but God expects you to respond to Him personally and individually.

[someone says something] All right, God has designed the Christian life so it seems like when He, through the Holy Spirit in our conscience, brings a personal sin or sins to our mind, He expects us to deal with it, going all the way back to the point where we became a Christian, that is, the cross. Now you say why does He have us go through all this process if… the point is we haven’t lost our salvation there, legally and morally we’re secure in Christ, yet He still insists, and He makes a point about it, if we don’t do it we get it, and He insists that we come to Him personally and individually, in spite of the fact that the salvation is secure.

Now the same thing would apply to trials in your life where Romans 8, think of your position in Christ. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit have done together, collectively, a lot of things for you. God the Father has foreknown you, He has predestinated you, He has called you, He’s justified you, glorified you, and He disciplines. Now all of this is one big package… one big package. But the point remains that though He has predestined you to be conformed to Christ, the mode of getting you there will be by means of your choices and responses. So this is a corrective, verses 19-21 are corrective against the tendency that we have, because we’re emphasizing God’s sovereignty so much, the tendency is always to pass over into a mechanism; the tendency is always to erase the personal element from Christianity, we’ve got to be careful against this and here’s where if we let our minds just sink into the text, or the text sink into our minds, then we’ll be protected against this drift toward mechanism. Always keep the personal element here; it’s always got to be there. The Christian life is never mechanistic. It’s always personal.

Now let’s look at the petition the psalmist makes. “Be Thou not far from me, O LORD. O my strength,” and he obviously acknowledges that his strength is the Lord, and here again notice Christ’s attitude; in His humanity He had to rely on God the Father, :haste Thee to help me.”

And verse 20, “Deliver my soul from the sword;” now the sword, obviously here, it must be metaphorical, but this shouldn’t bother us because of verse 12, he refers to bulls, and by the way, as we go through here, notice something else. You know we fundamentalists are always accused of interpreting the Bible literally as though that’s some bad sin or something. Gee, those fundamentalists, they take Genesis literally. Well how else do you take it? How else do you take any piece of communication except literally. But taking something literally does not mean ignorantly, and when you face things like we did in verses 12-14, we can recognize a literary metaphor or simile when it’s there in the text; this is just part of normal intelligent reading of literature.

And so just because we take the Scripture literally doesn’t mean every time we see a verse like verse 12 we’re compelled to think of Christ in the middle of a roundup or something. The point is that He is using this as an illustration of the people and the demon forces that were surrounding Him at that point in time. And this is normal common sense. I do not, for the life of me, understand why this keeps coming up, the fundamentalists interpret Scripture literally, and they’re queer or something for doing it. Well, frankly I’ve never known any other literature that you would interpret anything but literally. How do you normally interpret anything. If I write you a letter I hope you interpret it literally. This is the whole point, this is how you read things. Don’t you read literally? How else do you read? I don’t understand this.

“Deliver my soul from the sword,” means deliver my life and he is calling for his life. Now notice the soul is nephesh, nephesh is a product of a body and a spirit, and therefore when Christ is praying that His nephesh be restored, He is praying for resurrection or He’s praying for relief from the cross. And historically it was granted to Him in the form of resurrection. But notice that resurrection is an answer to verse 20, “Deliver my nephesh from the sword. Was it delivered from the sword? Yes. “…my darling from the power of the dog,” now this word that’s translated “darling” is a King James rendition of a word in the Hebrew which means “my only one alone,” it’s a strong individual thing. And this obviously refers to… it’s synonymous parallelism with nephesh, with his own life. And “the power of the dog,” again the dog is another metaphor, as verse 12 and verse 13.

Verse 21, “Save me from the lion’s mouth,” now did some of you, particularly those with a King James, if you look at verse 21 something about verse 21 should strike you as irregular. Do any of you catch the problem in verse 21? “Save me from the lion’s mouth; for Thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns [wild oxen].” Remember we have said that whole three verse unit is one petition section. What is happening here? In other words, from our form analysis, there’s something that is not reading too right in verse 21. Can someone who has a King James explain the problem.

[someone says something] Okay, we’ve got a problem with the phrase “Thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.” Can any of you suggest how this verse… the tense is right, is correctly translated, and by the way, just look at the clause, “Thou hast heard me,” what part in our form analysis would this be if you wanted to get nitpicky about it? In other words, of the five categories we again say that these categories spill over so you can’t be nitpicky but if you were nitpicky what would this clause be? Trust, the trust thing in here. Obviously there should be some significance strike you that in verse 19-21, the trust section ends the petition. But still there’s a problem, what do we do with the clause, “from the horns of the unicorns?” Does that clause, “from the horns of the unicorns” apply to the verb “heard,” or does it apply to the verb “save.” Now this is going to require some English grammar. We have to know what a verb is. So in verse 21 we have two of them, “Save me from the lion’s mouth;” okay, there’s one sentence; “save me from….” Now we’ve got this other thing, he “heard me” and then we’ve got “from” again. Judging on the basis of form, what has happened here to this thing?

[someone says something about the original] No it doesn’t, this is the problem, the clause… this is poetry and the clauses can be rearranged. [someone says something] Get that? Prepositional phrases, this boy really knows his stuff. All right, “from the lion’s mouth” and “from the horns of the unicorns,” they’re parallel. Okay, if they’re parallel they come off that first verb, so that still part of the petition. “Save me from the lion’s mouth,” and “Save me” as it were, “from the horns of the unicorn.” And then he says, “Thou hast heard me.” Now it just turns out that “Thou hast heard me” concludes this whole petition section, and this is why it stops here, doesn’t it. In other words, the petition stops because as he got to this third verse he knows God has heard him. It’s past tense; now you might ask how does he know that God has heard him? Conscience, probably; if you haven’t had this experience in prayer you’re missing something, and that is where you know that God has heard your petition, and that’s just all there is to it, and you have peace about it and He doesn’t expect you to ask Him any more about it and that’s it. And there’s the conscience, there’s a definite sensation in your conscience that he has heard. All right, “Thou hast heard me.”

Now beginning in verse 22 down through the end of the Psalm we have the praise section. What kind of praise did we say this was, vow or declarative? Declarative means that he is praising God for the actual answer; a vow is to praise God when that answer comes to pass. He’s confident it will come to pass though it hasn’t yet, and in this interim between the time that he’s confident that it will come to pass, and the time it actually comes to pass, he vows that when it does come to pass he will praise God. So what do you think, is this section from verse 22 on talking about a vow to praise in the future, or is it actually praising in the present.

Okay, a vow; it’s obviously future and for that reason then the psalmist has not yet experienced the answer to the prayer, but he is looking forward to that time when he will. “I will declare thy name unto my brethren; in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.” Let’s read this section through. Verse 23, “Ye who fear the LORD, praise him; all ye, the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye, the seed of Israel. [24] For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither has he hidden his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard. [25] My praise shall be of Thee in the great congregation; I will pay my vows before them that fear him. [26] The meek shall et and be satisfied; they shall praise the LORD that seek him; your heart shall live forever. [27] All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD; and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee. [28] For the kingdom is the LORD’s; and he is the governor among the nations. [29] All they that are fat upon earth shall eat and worship; all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him, and none can keep alive his own soul. [30] A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. [31] They shall come, and shall declare His righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that He has done this.”

Now the first verse, “I will declare Thy name unto my brethren; in the midst of the congregation will I praise Thee,” the word “congregation” is a word which is translated in the Greek ekklesia, or church. Now this doesn’t necessarily mean the body of Christ, it means an assembly, but I want you to notice in the New Testament how the New Testament picks up verse 22 and applies it to Christ. Now before we get to the New Testament and examine it, let’s just think, how do you think the New Testament is going to take verse 22 and in context it’s fulfillment in Christ, without looking. Without looking anywhere in the New Testament how would you expect to see, in what sense does verse 22 fulfill there.

[someone says something] All right, why do you say after the resurrection? [answer given] Okay, and it would have to be “I will” which is after His problem, so it’s after the resurrection. What do you suppose it means when it says “I will declare Thy name unto my brethren,” what is He going to declare, what does that mean, that he’s going to declare God’s name among the brethren after the resurrection? How is what Christ declares to the brethren after the resurrection significantly different from what he declares to the brethren before the resurrection?

[someone says something] Okay, after the resurrection, which is after the cross, then Christ can declare all sorts of things about God’s grace, can’t He. Doesn’t His grace become clearer after the cross than before the cross? Hasn’t there something historically happened in the meantime between the two, so that after the resurrection then He can declare the name of God. Now another thing, Christ was only around a short time after His resurrection. What were the means Christ uses in the New Testament, do you think, to declare His name to the brethren? Does it just refer to the time before His ascension, or might it refer to more than that? “I will declare Thy name among My brethren.”

[someone says something] All right, if this verse, verse 22 as you look at it, “I will declare Thy name among the brethren,” if that verse is to not stop with the ascension, in other words, we take Christ’s death, His resurrection, and then from the time of His resurrection to the time of His ascension, if we are not to limit verse 22 to just this time interval, but we are to extend it after the ascension…. [someone says something] All right, it includes the sending of the Holy Spirit, but Christ is going to reveal Himself, not just until the ascension but after the ascension. Now I am assuming a lot here but actually, do you realize that verse 22 is the authorization for the New Testament? Verse 22 is the authorization for every epistle that we’ve got in the whole New Testament. Those epistles that we have are the means by which verse 22 is fulfilled. Let’s see this; turn to John 16:12, and I also think about this question, what do you think was the most profound content to Christ’s message, the message He gave to us before He died or the message He gave to us after He died? Which was the best message?

John 16:12, “I have yet many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” He is talking to the disciples, and He only has hours left, so verse 12 cannot be interpreted, well boys, we’ll have a Bible class tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow afternoon Christ will be dead, so therefore verse 12 cannot refer to a normal operation; verse 12 must refer to something extraordinary that’s going to happen after He dies. “I have yet many things to say unto you,” in other words, He has not exhausted the content of what He wanted to say to the world. When Christ died He was cut off before He could get all of His message out to man. “I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” In other words, there had to be something added, something had to happen in order that the disciples might understand. Now beware of verse 12 at the end of that, there is another condition to understanding. We want to check verse 12 here in John 16, he’s saying I have “many things,” what is this, “many things,” what does that tell you if you just limit yourself to the four Gospels? It means you missed “many things,” because there are many things that are not in the four Gospels. Those “many things” are in Paul’s epistles, and Peter’s and James. So he says I have “many things,” but those things I am not going to tell you now, I’m going to tell you later, and later you will be able to bear them. Why?

Verse 13 tells us why, “When He, the Spirit of truth, is come,” notice it’s not an “it,” “He will guide you into all truth, for He shall not speak of Himself, but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak, and He will show you things to come.” So we have then the giving of the Holy Spirit in a special way. And the giving of the Holy Spirit in a special way is correlated to that phrase, “pour out My Spirit” which does not refer to some emotional jag, but if you will look at Proverbs 1:23 sometime, [“Turn you at my reproof; behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you.”] it defines that idiom, “pour out My Spirit” is the same thing as reveal the content verbally of your mind. So the Holy Spirit then will be the One who will teach the disciples. But there’s something else still missing here. Why do you suppose this is going to be something that the disciples before the crucifixion could not have understood, didn’t they have the Holy Spirit? They had the teacher there, so there still has to be some thing that we have that the disciples didn’t have, and whatever it is that you have as a believer in Christ that the disciples did not have, all during the time they were with Christ, is a key to the content of what he’s going to teach.

Let’s look further, verse 14, “He shall glorify Me; for He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it unto you. [15] All things that the Father has are Mine, therefore said I, that He shall take of Mine and show it unto you.” So the Holy Spirit is going to do something that is defined as taking something that belongs to Christ, we’ll just say “Christ’s things,” and He is going to give those to the disciples, or t believers. What are “Christ’s things” that the Holy Spirit is going to take and communicate to the people after the resurrection?

Turn to John 17:26 just to show you how this phrase occurs, now that you’ve studied Psalm 22 a little bit, if you read the New Testament and you come across verse 26, does that strike a familiar bell now? In John 17:26 do you think Jesus Christ had Psalm 22 on His mind even before the cross? “I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it, that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” Now that last phrase in verse 26 tells us what the problem is and what it is that we have that the early disciples did not that enables us to understand Christ’s things, and that is, that He will declare it, that means the future, “that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” This is referring to our position in Christ.

[tape turns, Ephesians 3:17, “So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love,] … may with all the saints be able to perceive and understand the height, and the depth, and the breadth, and the depth” and so on. What did we say that was? It refers to the body; in other words, the body itself, the existence of the unity of believers, that real objective existing unity of believers is going to be one of the channels of transmission for this added revelation that could not have come before the crucifixion and resurrection. It had to come after the crucifixion and resurrection. That is, there had to be created a supernatural group of people that were plugged into each other in such a way that their relationships acted as a springboard to reveal certain things about God’s character. Now this is why we make such a thing about the body of Christ and why it’s important that we understand each other’s spiritual gift, etc. because the body functions not as lone rangers, but as people who have gifts. I have the gift of pastor-teacher; you each have gifts that vary, some of you may have the gift of pastor-teacher, some of you may have the gift of exhortation, but all of us are dependent on each other this way.

Now it’s that interdependency that the disciples didn’t have like we have. And so the interdependency of all these relationships coming together in the body of Christ is the vehicle, this love that he speaks of here, “the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me,” what is that? It is the love that exists in the Trinity, that same love that exists in the Trinity “may be in them,” plural, meaning in the body. So this love, the experience of love that previous to this point was experienced somewhat by men, and eternally experienced by God in the God head, now is poured out into history and can be experienced as believers get with it in their personal relationships with one another. So you see, this shows you how important the post-resurrection church is.

Now let’s go further in the New Testament, to Hebrews 2:11, where the same phrase occurs, it’s the same quotation from Psalm 22. Verse 12, let’s look at verse 12 first and then we’ll look at verse 11. “Saying, I will declare Thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the congregation of the church will I sing praise unto Thee.” Notice, by the way, in verse 12 the liberty of the New Testament authors in quoting the Old Testament text. Under the Holy Spirit they could adjust its words, etc. while they kept the meaning. Now there are several things to notice about the author of Hebrews. Who is the subject of the verb “saying” in verse 12? And why? Can anybody tell me the subject of verb “saying” in verse 12? [someone answers] Okay, but who wrote the Psalm?

Who wrote Psalm 22? David. So what do you have here implied in the subject of this verb the way that Psalm 22 is quoted in the New Testament? What does the author of Hebrews believe about Psalm 22? That God is saying it through David. This epistle of Hebrews is the anchor epistle for the doctrine of inspiration in all the New Testament. The author of Hebrews, and even the New Testament liberal scholars today cannot controvert this, they have to admit that this author of Hebrews held to that fundamentalist heresy. That’s very interesting; they have to admit it and they don’t like it, and they say the guy is wrong, but at least we’ve got a friend, mainly we can find one old fundy in the New Testament, and that is the author of Hebrews because he believed that God wrote Psalm 22. Now he wasn’t dumb, he knew that David physically wrote the Psalm, there’s no doubt about that, but when he quotes Psalm 22 he says “God says,” in other words, God works through David so that the end result was as though God had dictated that Scripture.

Now I wonder if you quote Scripture, do you ever preface it with the fact that “God says.” You may quote 1 Corinthians or something, or you may quote Hebrews, or you may quote Isaiah as a promise, you might have memorized it. The next time you quote that to yourself or to someone else, just try mentally putting “God says….” And notice what tense is verse 12, past or present? It’s present, so notice again how this author quotes the Scriptures, “God still says through Psalm 22” this, not God said it, it’s all over, He doesn’t say it any more, but God is still saying it. This has led to the doctrine, which I’ve never mentioned before, the proper name, the animation of Scripture. The animation of Scripture is that God the Holy Spirit continues to speak for us through His Word, and this is why “My word preached shall never return void,” God says. And this is why wherever you have Scripture honored, glorified, and exalted, you will have God’s voice speaking there. Now this is the antidote to a lot of the nonsense that goes on in fundamentalist circles today. If we had a proper conception of the doctrine of the animation of Scripture, that wherever Scripture is, God is there saying, and so you can see this from this quotation.

Now verse 11, “For both He that sanctifies and they who are being sanctified, are all of one; for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren.” Now this phrase in verse 11 refers to the body again. “He that sanctifieth and they” believers “who are being sanctified, are one nature.” And therefore, because they are of one nature—you receive the nature of Christ by regeneration at the point of salvation, at the point of salvation God the Holy Spirit has regenerated you, that means you pick up the nature of Christ, and since you have the nature of Christ you are one in nature with Him. And so therefore it says “He is not ashamed to call” you his brothers. And it’s because of this unity again that He declares the name.

Now let’s go back to Psalm 22. I take you through all these roads in the New Testament so you realize that these apparently meaningless little tiny verses in the Old have a long, long history behind them in prophecy. [someone says something] There is truth in Scripture that does not surface? [something else said] Yes, that’s right, and this is why I believe it’s so necessary as a congregation that we have this operating, see because there’s a limit as to how much you’re going to perceive of the reality of Scripture. Now this shouldn’t strike you as odd because isn’t it true, and every one of you will admit this, that the more experiences you have with the Lord individually the more you come to know the Lord. Now obviously you’re not saying that He’s adding new revelation into history. What’s happening? It’s the fact that you’ve known the Scripture and all of a sudden that Scripture that you’ve always known takes on more force, more clarity, more meaning, when you experience certain situations in life.

Now if that happens individually what is so strange about it happening corporately. And this is why you can have the Word of God taught to a group of believers for year after year after year and they just peak out, they’ll never learn anything more, even though there is a lot more being said, they can’t absorb it, simply because their spiritual life is dull, and because their spiritual life is dull and out of it, there’s only a certain limit to what they can perceive. The truth is always there, it’s just that it’s never perceived.

Let’s look at the rest of Psalm 22, [22, “in the midst of the congregation will I praise Thee. [23] Ye who fear the LORD, praise Him” now notice verse 23, remember what we said about praise? Praise means that you are stimulated and want to share publicly what God has done with somebody else. Remember C. S. Lewis, he is saying that he didn’t want his dog to bark at his books and his point was that when you are personally excited about something you always want to go tell somebody, don’t you. Oh I can’t wait to tell somebody about such and such. Well, this is what praise is in Scripture, and this is the point here in verse 23, the psalmist is excited to share this with somebody. “You that fear the LORD, praise him; all ye, the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye, the seed of Israel.”

Now the last part of verse 23 shows you the limitations of Old Testament revelation in that it was foreseen to refer to Jewish believers only at this point in history, not Gentile believers. “The seed of Jacob” and “the seed of Israel” is obviously Jewish believers. And here are the limitations of the Old Testament vision. And it was opened up later on, in Christ’s day, as the body of Christ came into existence.

Now verse 24, the reasons for the praise, “For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither has he hidden his face from him;” now notice, does anything strike you as odd about the phrase, “he has not hid his face from him,” this kind of thing. Compare it with what we saw in the address of this Psalm. What had been happening in the address, when he first started, remember what he said: “O my God, I cry in the daytime, but you don’t hear; and in the night season, and I am not silent.” So obviously something’s happened between verse 2 and verse 24, and so God has heard, “but when he cried unto him, he heard. [25] My praise shall be of Thee” now I can’t convey this in English, but in the Hebrew they have a construction that emphasizes the word “Thee,” so in the original language that’s strongly emphasized. In other words, he might have many things to share with the other believers, but this thing is going to be the central thing, “I will share things of Thee “in the great congregation; I will pay my vows before them that fear him.” And notice the privacy of the paying of the vow. “Those that fear” are those that habitually fear, this is a participle, “those that habitually fear him,” referring to believers. And it’s within those that “I will pay my vows.”

This also refers to not only just believers but there’s a principle that the more mature you are, the more you are going to mature. In other words, the more mature you are then the more Christ can teach you, and therefore the more mature you’re going to become. And so you might also say, from verse 25 that the vow of praise is paid before the mature believers more than its paid before the less mature believers. Not that there’s anything meritorious in maturity, the point being that those who are mature have obviously been obedient over quite some time span so they habitually fear Him, “I will pay my vows before them [that fear Him.]”

Now verse 26, “The meek shall eat and be satisfied; they shall praise the LORD that seek him;” now “the meek shall eat and be satisfied” refers to a type of offering; now whether the psalmist literally made this offering or not we can’t tell, but the principle of the offering is given in Leviticus 7, these are the kind of offerings, someday we’ll have a series on the offerings of Leviticus because there’s one book in the Scripture that teaches us worship principles and that’s the book of Leviticus. It was written to instruct the priests on how to lead worship. Leviticus 7:16-17, first let’s look at verses 11-15 to get the context.

“And this is the law of the sacrifice of peace offering; which he shall offer unto the LORD; [12] If he offer it for a thanksgiving, then he shall offer with the sacrifice of thanksgiving unleavened cakes mixed with oil, and unleavened wafers anointed with oil, and cakes mixed with oil, of fine flour, fried. [13] Besides the cakes, he shall offer for his offering leavened bread with the sacrifice of thanksgiving of his peace offerings. [14] And of it he shall offer one out of the whole oblation for an heave offering unto the LORD, and it shall be the priest that sprinkles the blood of the peace offerings. [15] And the flesh of the....” this is the important part here, “the flesh of the sacrifice of his peace offerings for thanksgiving shall be eaten the same day that it is offered; he shall not leave any of it until the morning.” All right, that’s one class of offering. Now watch the second class of offering, which is the offering mentioned in Psalm 22.

Verse 16, “But if the sacrifice of his offering be a vow, or a voluntary offering, it shall be eaten the same day that he offers his sacrifice; and on the next day also the remainder of it shall be eaten; [17] But the remainder of the flesh of the sacrifice on the third day shall be burned with fire.” And the point here is we have an adumbration of some sort of the three days that Christ spent in the grave. And what he is saying is that the brethren, going back to Psalm 22 now, “the meek shall eat and be satisfied,” means that the meek shall eat of all of His cross work and whatever follows thereafter. Apparently there were things that followed thereafter in God’s view and the “meek are going to eat and be satisfied” of this.

Does this ring any bell with anything we do in our worship service? Communion…communion is picturing the appropriation by faith of this offering. Now not only does communion show the appropriation by faith of our salvation in Christ, this teaches us something else; it’s not just that we are appropriating the finished work of Christ on the cross. We’re doing that, but we’re also appropriating His praise to the Father, so that when you partake of communion you are not just partaking of Christ’s finished work, you are also, as it were, coming to Christ and saying take and eat and learn of the character of the Father that provided this for you also. Not only eat of the salvation but eat so that you understand what God has provided and in so eating you will understand more about what God is like.

So “the meek shall eat” and notice this, they “shall be satisfied,” it speaks of perfect satisfaction, the only kind of satisfaction that any person can get is found in Christ. And “they shall praise the LORD that seek Him,” and then the last part of this verse is a quotation, this is what they’re going to say, may “your heart shall live forever.” Remember Christ’s words, he that eats of My flesh and drinks of My blood shall life that never stops, but life everlasting. So again you see the fulfillment, let your heart live forever, the word “live” means to live, it means regeneration and later on resurrection.

Verse 27, “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD; and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee.” Now from this point forward we’re going to finish rapidly and then I want to go back and show you the two fulfillments of this prophecy. Verse 28, “For the kingdom is the LORD’s; and he is the governor among the nations.” Notice the worldwide implication to verses 27-28, it’s not just now Israel; up in verse 23 it was Israel, but verses 27-28 the blessings flow out beyond the geographical boundaries of Israel to all the world.

Now verse 29, three categories of people, “All they that are fat upon earth shall eat and worship;” this is an expression of the well-to-do, the wealthy, so the wealthy themselves will eat and worship, the point being those who are fat are not really fat, they are not really wealthy until they have eaten, so therefore even the fat people will eat and be satisfied and worship. “… all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him,” it’s a synonymous clause with the first one except this refers to a second category and it is an idiom that is used in the Old Testament for utter poverty and failure. So you have two extremes, you have the fat and they come and they eat of the finished work of Christ, and those “that go down to the dust” they also come and they also eat and they too “bow down,” the second category. And then the third category, which is translated, “and none can keep alive his own soul,” is not that at all, it is “the one whose soul does not live,” and this would speak of those who have gone on and have died, and the atonement and the finished work of Christ applies to them too; they too shall eat, even in death. So you have three categories of people that feast on this vow or praise.

Verse 30, “A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.” And then in verse 31, “They shall come, and shall declare His righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that He has done this.” Can you remember in John 17, what did Christ say? I pray not only for these for who have heard thee, but for those who will hear through their word, I pray for those too, the generations yet to be born. See how this Psalm totally depicts not only the coming of Christ into death, but His resurrection and then the flowing out of all of His blessings all over the world, to all classes of people, everywhere, even to the dead. And then finally, those who in time are separated in verse 31.

Now there are two fulfillments of this, and that is that we apply the principles to the cross of Christ, to His resurrection, and then we say that out of this comes the body of Christ, the Church. And so Psalm 22 is fulfilled in principle to the Church, but when the original psalmist wrote that, it was as though he was looking… here are two mountains, and he was over here and he looked like this, he saw the second mountain, and he saw this mountain over here but he didn’t see what was in the valley; the valley was the Church. But what was it he was looking at? He was looking at the millennial kingdom and in the millennial kingdom these blessings flow out of all the world, and then He literally will be the “Governor among the nations,” and verse 28, “the kingdom is the LORD’s,” not Satan’s. So the Psalm has a greater fulfillment in the millennium. It has a partial fulfillment in the Church Age on the basis of principle but it has a total fulfillment in the millennial kingdom. This explains, for example, the very Jewishness of verse 23.

So you have to see then that you have this prophetic system of fulfilling Scriptures, a near fulfillment or a partial fulfillment and then the ultimate far fulfillment. This is normal, you see it again and again in prophetic literature. Are there any questions? [someone says something] “A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation” that is just a long way of saying that the Lord owns that generation, it’s possession. “It shall be accounted,” in other words, it shall be credited to his account for a generation. The generation will be His, totally His, His servants that go out. This generation or seed, see, generation and seed are synonyms in verse 30, and “the seed that will serve Him,” this is synonymous parallelism, both parts of verse 30 mean the same thing. “A seed shall serve Him,” we would say historically would probably refer to the disciples, His own seed, the seed that shall serve Him, but then later on in the millennium, the millennium starts out with all believers too, “the seed shall serve Him.” And then after the generation, the first generation of the millennium you’re going to have people born who aren’t believers and all of them are not going to become believers.

For next time, since we’ve finished Psalm 22, if you’ll read ahead din Psalm 26 and again take the five parts of an individual lament Psalm, see if you can find them in Psalm 26, and then do one more thing, as you read it think about the difference between true spirituality and legalism, because you’re going to have to come to a decision about it when you read Psalm 26. Otherwise you’ll take it the wrong way, so we’ve got to handle the problem of legalism and true spirituality as we read Psalm 26. We’ll have about 2 or 3 more lament and then I think you’ll have had enough of these to get a feel for them, then I’m going to throw you into one all by yourself and see what you can do with it, just to see if you’ve picked up anything.