Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Psalm Of The King (part 3)


So as Jesus explores these Psalms for the strengthening of His resolve and trust in His God, and as He continually considers what it is possible that He has been called to do and to be for Israel, it is likely that He came to see Himself as being the one that the Creator God will use, and do so in a very specific way, to bring about the blessings that are promised to His God’s covenant people.  Also, as the nature of the covenant, along with the requirements that were put in place to be a part of God’s covenant people (circumcision, reverencing the sanctuary, keeping the Sabbath, and avoiding idolatry) are considered, it must be remembered that Jesus, with His steps informed by His reading of the Scriptures of His people, takes the remarkable step of re-focusing the covenant requirements upon Himself.

Jesus declares, in no uncertain terms (again, with this informed by His reading of Scripture), that it is belief upon and allegiance to Him as the Creator God’s Messiah that will be the basis for being included under that God’s covenant, and therefore the basis for being able to experience the blessings (as spelled out in Leviticus and Deuteronomy) to be had therein. 

Because the Psalmist connects God’s blessings with kingship (a golden crown for the head), Jesus, as part of declaring Himself to be Israel’s Messiah, is able to make the connection between His own Kingship, and the blessings available for the people of the covenant.  Jesus would come to believe that through His actions, along with the response of Israel’s faithful covenant God, that He would be able to bring about the blessings that appear in Deuteronomy.  He would be able to do this because, as He believes Himself as Messiah to be the faithful Israelite as well as the King of Israel, He is the representative of the people as He fulfills the conditions of the covenant that the Creator God made with Israel at Mount Sinai following the Exodus. 

Because Israel’s messiah is more-than-clearly presented in the Scriptures as a king for all peoples, Jesus’ re-positioning of the covenant requirements around Himself and belief in His Gospel (Jesus is Lord), allows Him, because of His belief in the supreme faithfulness of God that He relies upon and ultimately experiences in His Resurrection, to extend God’s covenant blessings to all peoples.  By this, the Abrahamic covenant comes to be fulfilled as well---all peoples of the world are blessed.  At the same time, the connection to the Levitical and Deuteronomic blessings points to the ultimate exodus of the people of the renewed covenant, as the Creator God redeems a people for Himself, through their believing union with Jesus, from the exile into which they had been sent, according to the Scriptural narrative, upon Adam’s rebellion and the fall of man.    

Maintaining the theme of kingship, the Psalmist also writes, “He asked You to sustain his life, and You have granted him long life and an enduring dynasty” (21:4).  The fact that one of the titles of the messiah was “Son of David” demonstrates the continuity of God’s promises.  Jesus, of course, is referred to on more than one occasion as the “Son of David,” thereby reinforcing that “enduring dynasty” that was rooted in a reliance on God’s faithfulness. 

The Apostle Paul makes this connection even more explicit, reminding his readers in Rome (and therefore under the nose of the one who sat in the seat of power as the son of god) that Jesus was “a descendant of David with reference to the flesh” (Romans 1:3b).  As the earliest Jesus-believers came to grips with the breadth of the implications of Jesus life, death, and Resurrection, and as their thinking quickly lined-up with what was clearly that of the one they followed and soon came to worship as the embodiment of the Creator God of Israel, the whole of the New Testament would come to resound with declarations of Jesus’ majesty and the eternal nature of His rule. 

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