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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