Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Psalm 69 | Date: February 4, 2024 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Please turn to Psalm 69. In our evening series, we’ve been looking at various studies in the Psalms and how to interpret, how to understand the Psalms. The last section of that has been what we’ve been in now for a little while, the Messianic Psalms. Before I got to the Messianic Psalms, I took a bit of a break, as you’ll remember. We backed up and we looked at some Messianic prophecy in earlier periods of the Old Testament.

Just sort of a program note, for those who are interested, my plan is this week and next to finish up with the Messianic Psalms. A little bit of a caveat: I might examine a couple more Messianic Psalms in the following weeks, but I think I’m going to reserve those for the Sunday morning expositions. In any case, we’ll finish up with the Messianic Psalms soon, and then I’ve been planning for months after that, then, to look at Messianic prophecy after the period of the Psalms. So we’ll look through the prophets in that. There will be some overlap with what Pastor Boyd has looked at in Isaiah. I talked to him a couple weeks ago, got his permission, and it would be all right to have the overlap. But that’s the idea. We’ll look at Messianic Psalms this week and at least next, and then we’ll move on to other Messianic prophecies, at least the more prominent ones in the Old Testament. I think it’s just a fascinating subject. I love to see it, and I love to see how it develops. That actually could go for a long time. I don’t expect it to, but just a wonderful, wonderful study in itself.

David as a Type of Messiah

Tonight we look at the subject of the Messianic Psalms. This is part three, and here we look at David as a type of Messiah. That’s the word T-Y-P-E, type. It’s a technical term that’s used. The Bible actually uses that term in Romans chapter 5, into the study of typology. We’ll see that in a few minutes.

Just to back up, I’ve been emphasizing that the Psalms anticipate the Messiah, but the Psalms anticipate him in various ways. It’s not always a direct prophecy. In fact, very seldom is it in the Psalms a direct prophecy. Now, it’s still prophetic in the sense that it anticipates him and foreshadows him in some ways, but you’ll have like a Psalm 110 that is a direct prophecy: “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool,” and so on. Psalm 2, I think, is probably another direct prophecy where David is led in on a conversation between God and the Messiah. Speaking of his reign, there may be some more, but there are very few where there are direct, predictive prophecies of Messiah in the Psalms.

Rather, what we find is the Messiah foreshadowed and anticipated in other ways, and what we’ve seen so far is, first of all, the king in the Psalms is presented in his ideal, and for that we looked at Psalm 72. There are plenty of other Psalms that do that, but it presents this Davidic king reigning in Israel, but it describes him in just such outlandish terms that it goes beyond any of the historical kings. So in Psalm 72, he’s reigning over the whole earth. He reigns from shore to shore. He reigns unendingly. The kings of the earth come and bow before him every morning. Everybody all over the earth wakes up and gives him praise and prays for him. This is beyond any historical king, and it clearly anticipates the Messiah himself. And so Isaac Watts was entirely right to write his hymn, “Jesus Shall Reign,” based on Psalm 72. It anticipates him in that way; he picked that up, and we sing that still today.

So the Psalms prophesy of the Messiah, but they do it in various ways. One of those ways is he presents the king in his ideal. When you read through the Psalms, you see the king, who is pervasively the subject of the Psalter; when you see him described in extravagant terms, you need to think beyond just David. Another way we looked at that is really like that, but it goes a step further. Speaking of extravagant language used in the Psalms to describe the king, we looked at Psalm 45. And there it’s this king—it’s the psalm sung on his wedding day, you remember. And he’s great and he’s strong and he beats all the enemies and he’s the most handsome of all of them. And it just goes on and it just—okay, it’s poetic excess, that’s okay. But suddenly at verse five, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.” And at that point, you’ve exceeded too much, and you have to see we’ve gone beyond any of the historical kings, and we’re looking to the ideal king, and that is the Lord Jesus. The book of Hebrews picks that up in Hebrews chapter 1 and cites Psalm 45 as a proof text from the Old Testament of the deity of the Messiah, and so the deity of Jesus.

So you have these various ways in which the Psalms anticipate, or we can say prophesy, of the coming Messiah. What we’ll look at tonight is something a little bit more subtle than that, and that is that David or the Davidic king—both David and any of his sons, Solomon or whoever—in their position as king, are a type of the Messiah. That word “type” means like a pattern, so they establish a pattern of the coming Messiah. Typology is a big study, and it’s gotten to be a really big study in recent years. Some books have been written about it. It’s a fascinating study to see exactly how typology works in the Bible. But you’ve seen it, and you’re familiar with it, whether you know the language or not.

Adam was a type of Christ. Adam was a representative head. Jesus is a representative head of his people. In that sense, Adam foreshadowed Jesus. The priests in the Old Testament foreshadow or are a type of Jesus. The prophets were a type or a foreshadowing of Jesus, the prophet par excellence. Not just the priests, but the sacrifice was a type of Jesus. So here we have in Messiah, not only a priest who offers the sacrifice, but he is himself the sacrifice that is offered. Jonah was a type of Christ because he was three days, three nights in the belly of the whale or the great fish, and so also Jesus, three days, three nights in the heart of the earth. These kinds of patterns are picked up in the New Testament and they point us back to see how the Messiah was anticipated. This all feeds in to show how Jesus actually is the subject line of the Bible. It’s a marvelous study and it’s complex, it’s multi-layered, and it’s fascinating, I think.

But here we look at now David himself—not just the king, but particularly the Davidic king, or David himself, is prospective of the Messiah. In his actions, in his experiences, in the words that he speaks, we find him anticipating the Messiah, and we find in the New Testament, then, Jesus and the New Testament writers following him pick up language from the Psalms that David spoke, or describing David’s experience and say, “See, this is Jesus.” And so there’s a subtle foreshadowing; a pattern is set in David that is picked up in Jesus. And so the New Testament teaches us that that was in fact a prophecy in David’s experiences, David’s words, the events of his life; they were acted out prophecies that were fulfilled finally in Jesus. So prophecy is a broad topic. It is predictive. Prophecy is also type and foreshadowing, and we’ll see some of that as we go along this evening.

For example, before we get to Psalm 69, recently we looked in the Sunday morning expositions at Psalm 16, and there David is expressing his trust in God concerning his safety in both life and death. And it’s all a wonderful expression of David’s confidence in God’s safekeeping forever—this life through death and the next. But then we saw that at the end of Psalm 16, verses nine and 10, suddenly we have David using excessive language that just can’t apply to him. “You will not abandon him to the grave. Well, his body won’t see corruption. My body won’t see corruption.” Well, David’s body did see corruption. His body’s still in a tomb, if there’s anything left of it after all these centuries. What do you do with that? You saw Peter picked that up at the Pentecost sermon in Acts chapter 2 and said David wasn’t talking about himself. David’s a prophet. He can’t be wrong. And obviously he wasn’t talking about himself. He was talking about his greater son, Messiah. Again, David sets a pattern. He’s a type of what is fulfilled or an anticipation of what is fulfilled finally in Jesus.

Another would be Psalm 22. The famous words that Jesus used on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Those are David’s expression. That’s his lament psalm. He feels abandoned and he’s crying to God for help. Jesus picks up those words deliberately that the scriptures might be fulfilled. “I thirst” was another one, and three sayings from Jesus on the cross are words from David in the Psalms. And what we find then is that there’s this pattern that is set in David’s experience, the events of his life, the words that he speaks; they’re prospective of what is finally reached in Jesus.

A few of us at lunch yesterday were talking about some of this and I mentioned, and I’ll mention this for the rest of you. Up until—well, it’s still happening now—but until recent years it was more common that theological professors, biblical scholars, would look at the New Testament and how it picked up statements from David or whatever and said, “That’s Jesus,” and they look at it and they can’t figure out how the New Testament writer got from there to Jesus. That’s David, that’s not Jesus. But the New Testament writer says it’s Jesus, and so because they have a difficult time figuring out how he got there, many of them—and even some conservative scholars, I’m thinking of one in particular who’s a brilliant scholar and been very helpful in many ways, but he made the statement to his class, infamous remark now—he said that if Paul, for example, were his student in hermeneutics class, he would give him a C. And I think, you know, a humbler approach would be Paul might understand something that I don’t. Instead, he stands over the inspired writer: “I’d give him a C.”

Two years ago, a book on the Psalms came out, and I went to look at it. I was fresh on the study of the Psalms myself. In their introductory material in the book, he did some of the same thing. It’s a fairly good commentary in many respects, not all. But in the introductory material, he mentioned that the New Testament writers often would take David’s words from the Psalms—let’s say his expression—out of context to use it for their own purposes to convince the Jews of a particular argument about Jesus. So now I’m supposed to believe that the apostles misused a passage from the Old Testament in order to convince Jews of something that’s true, but the argument itself was fallacious. I wrote a review of it, and I was kind, but I had to argue otherwise, put it that way.

That has been common, and the reason for it is, looking back, it does not lie on the surface of the text that this is Jesus. And so you might look at the New Testament use of it and think, “How did he get there? I don’t see how he got there. They’re taking it out of context.” Again, I think a humbler approach would be to say, “I think the apostles knew something that maybe I haven’t learned yet.” And so I’m going to give you a little hint of that, just a taste of that this evening.

This typology, particularly with reference to David being a type of the Messiah, his greater son, is informed in several ways, but I’ll give you two that are very important. And let me back up a little bit. One of the concerns of these scholars is that we’ve probably all seen it somewhere or other where a preacher or interpreter somewhere has seemed to have a little bit overactive imagination, and he’ll see something in the Old Testament because it has some vague parallel, and he’ll say, “This means that.” And I think I gave you an illustration of that once where one interpreter said that the center board on the back wall of the tabernacle represents eternal security. And you think, “How in the world do you know that?” And a lot of popular typology has been done that seems irresponsible. There’s no checks, no balance. It’s just your own imagination. And that’s what some of these scholars are rebelling against.

But in order to see how the New Testament writers take the Old Testament and see Jesus in it, particularly with regard to David, there are two factors that you need to keep in mind. This is not just their imagination. Number one, there’s 2 Samuel 7, the promise, the covenant that was given to David concerning his greater son. Every Davidic king was, in a sense, prospective of the great king to come. In their flawed ways, they may be prospective of the Messiah to come because of their flawed ways, and the greater king will come, and he won’t be like that. It might be that kind of a level. But the Davidic promise was, “David, your son will reign on the throne forever.” And so this promise to David was inherited by each of his sons, and they reign on the throne, and each of them in that sense owned that promise, and each of them was in that sense a prospective of the greater son who would come still.

That hope dominates the Psalter. Particularly when we get to book five, remember we saw that there are five books of the Psalms. You’ll see it in your text yourself. The fifth book of the Psalter evidently was compiled, not written, but compiled after the exile. Now think about that. Psalms—think about Psalms of the king. After the exile, there is no king. There’s no Davidic king. Jesse’s tree has been cut down to a stump, to use Isaiah’s language, and yet these Psalms compiled in Book 5 are prospective of a king. Well, obviously then it’s an expression of faith of David’s son who will come. Hope of a king to come dominates the Psalter, and there are kingly references in the Psalms just throughout.

And that’s the other factor. Not only is there 2 Samuel 7 and the Davidic Covenant, but there’s also the royal orientation of the Psalter. I mentioned that at the very beginning of our studies. It’s extremely important to see that the Psalms are particularly about the king. It’s not about Joe Israelite. It’s not about a pious Israelite, particularly expressing his devotion to God. First and foremost, pervasively—not exhaustively, but pervasively—the Psalms are about the king. And given the Davidic promise, the king is prospective of the king. And if you keep in mind those trajectories, we don’t have to just use our imagination. We can follow the lead of how the New Testament writers see Jesus in the Psalms with that kind of a framework involved, and we can see Jesus then in the Psalms.

A Concrete Example: Psalm 69

All right, let me give you a concrete example of that: Psalm 69. Here we have a lament Psalm. David is lamenting his suffering, and it’s suffering that he has incurred because of his zeal for God. David’s being righteous, he’s serving God, and because of that he’s received opposition. So let’s begin with verse one. It’s the Psalm of David. “Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire where there is no foothold. I have come into deep waters and the flood sweeps over me. I’m weary with my crying out. My throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God. More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause. Mighty are those who would destroy me, those who attack me with lies. What I did not steal, must I now restore?” So he’s lamenting that his persecution is unjust. “I don’t deserve this, and they’re coming at me.” Verse four, “They hate me without a cause.”

Now, keep your hand here; we’ll be back. We’ll be back and forth a lot. John chapter 15. John chapter 15. Beginning with verse 18, Jesus is warning his disciples about a coming opposition that they would receive. And the bottom line of this warning is, they will hate you, the world will hate you because, after all, they hated me. Now follow Jesus beginning with verse 18: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. But because you’re not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen and hated both me and my father. But the word that is written in their law must be fulfilled.” And here’s Psalm 69, verse four: “They hated me without a cause.”

Now notice here, Jesus uses the fulfillment language. The words of your law—notice by the way the word “law” there, it isn’t a reference to Moses, it isn’t reference to the Pentateuch. It’s not a reference to Exodus, nor the book of the law in the Exodus. It’s a broad term, speaking of the Old Testament scriptures. “It’s written in their law, and what’s written there must be fulfilled.” Now, when he uses that word “fulfilled,” he’s telling us that Psalm 69:4 was prophetic, anticipatory of him, and now they’ve hated me without a cause, and what happened to David anticipated what is happening now, and now that has been fulfilled. And you see this trajectory: it’s David, he’s been given a promise, he’ll have a greater son, and now David sets the pattern, and the experiences of David prophesy what will be fulfilled in the experience of Jesus. So Jesus uses here—and he doesn’t always do this, but here he uses explicitly the fulfillment language. That Psalm is fulfilled in Jesus’ experience. So he understood Psalm 69 as prophetic, as foreshadowing him. So it’s prophetic typology. David’s suffering for the cause of God was prospective of the righteous suffering of Jesus. And then Jesus extends it to his people as well. But in David’s experience, this type was set, and then it was fulfilled in Jesus.

All right, back to Psalm 69. Let’s pick it up with verse five. “Oh God, you know my folly. The wrongs I have done are not hidden from you. Let not those who hope in you be put to shame through me, O Lord God of hosts. Let not those who seek you be brought to dishonor through me, O God of Israel. For it is for your sake that I have borne reproach, that dishonor has covered my face. I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother’s sons. For zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.” So here David is lamenting that his persecution is not only unjust, but his persecution is precisely because he has been faithful. It was his zeal for the house of God that had got him consumed. And it was the reproaches of those who reproach God that have now reproached him.

All right, with that in mind, go back to John, John’s gospel, chapter two. In John 2, we have the wedding at Cana. Jesus turns the water into wine. Then in verse 13 and following, we have the incident of the cleansing of the temple. Jesus goes in, he finds out what’s going on. The house of God was not being used as it should be. It was used for economic advantage of those involved. He’s not just angry; he takes a whip and he drives them out. This is not the typical soft Jesus that you hear generally in discussion today. Verse 16, he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my father’s house a house of trade.” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” Now that was Psalm 69, verse 9. David, and now it’s prospective of Jesus. And the disciples are saying, “Oh, I see what’s happening. The pattern set by David is being fulfilled in Jesus. It was anticipatory of him, and now it happens.”

Now look over at Romans chapter 15. Paul’s approaching the end of the epistle. He’s giving, has been giving some exhortations. Let’s look at verses two and three then: “Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up, for Christ did not please himself; but as it is written,” and here’s Psalm 69:9, “The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.” So he cites the experience of David as evidence that Jesus did not please himself. He worked for God, zeal was for God, and because of that persecution came, and he cites David as setting the pattern for that, and that now is fulfilled in Jesus, although that fulfillment language is not explicitly used.

Let’s look at one more. Well, let’s go back to Psalm 69. Psalm 69. Let’s pick up our reading now with verse 18. “Draw near to my soul, redeem me; ransom me because of my enemies. You know my reproach and my shame and my dishonor. My foes are all known to you. Reproaches have broken my heart so that I am in despair. I looked for pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none. They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst, they gave me sour wine to drink.” Now I know that’s ringing a bell already with you, but look at John chapter 19. This is the cross scene, the scene of Christ’s crucifixion, and we pick it up with verse 28. In John 19:28, “After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said, to fulfill the scripture,” there’s the fulfillment language, “I thirst.” And he said that in order to fulfill the scriptures. And then John writes, “A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch, held it to his mouth. When Jesus received the sour wine, he said, ‘It is finished.’ And he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” We have the same in Matthew chapter 27 as well. Again here, the fulfillment language is used. Jesus and John here read Psalm 69 as prospective of the experience of Jesus, and now it’s fulfilled. What happened there, that experience of David, anticipated an event in his greater son that in Jesus now is finally fulfilled. The king in the Psalms is prospective of the king, the greater king.

All right, well that’s enough for Psalm 69. I was going to look at Psalm 34 to illustrate more of the same, but we have the Lord’s Table. I don’t want to run too late. We will get to that, I think, maybe in a Sunday morning exposition then. In these, it’s important to say that the New Testament writers are not looking back simply to draw parallels, analogies, making some kind of allegory. They understand the Psalms as intentionally prospective, prophetic in that sense, in ways that are fulfilled in Jesus. And there are lots of examples that could be multiplied. John 13, we read, “The scriptures will be fulfilled: ‘He who ate my bread has lifted up his heel against me.'” Of course, that’s of Judas. That’s a quotation from Psalm 41, the experience of David when he was betrayed as well. We have Psalm 118 is another. Pastor Boyd mentioned that this morning. The king rejected by his leadership and then he’s exalted and this rejected stone becomes the cornerstone. That’s quoted in Matthew chapter 21 as we saw this morning.

Often in the New Testament we find the Psalms on the lips of Jesus himself. So Psalm 6, David suffering under God’s displeasure says, “Now is my soul troubled.” Jesus picks up that language, as you remember, in John chapter 12 as he anticipates the cross. Three of the last seven words of Jesus from the cross are from the Psalms: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, “I thirst,” and “Into your hands, I commit my spirit.” All of that is from the Psalms. In fact, Matthew structures the passion narrative in the scenes of the cross from Psalm 22. We’ll see that, Lord willing, in March when we get to Psalm 22.

In fact, in Psalm 22, verses 11 and 12, David says, “I will tell of your name to my brothers. In the midst of the congregation, I will praise you.” So David is saying, after deliverance from this persecution and this affliction that I have, pursuing him to death, he says, in the wake of all of that, “I will tell of your name to my brothers. In the midst of the congregation, I will praise you.” If you’ve read your New Testament well, if you’re familiar with Hebrews 2, the writer there of Hebrews places those words on the lips of Jesus. It was Jesus saying that; it is Jesus saying that, “I’ll tell of your name to my brothers. In the midst of the congregation, I will praise you.” It’s a wonderful passage in Hebrews 2 to see that from Psalm 22, to see that it’s fulfilled in Jesus. Now picture Jesus standing in the congregation of his people here at RBC, proclaiming his name to his brothers, and in the midst of the brothers, singing his praise. The real preacher, when you come to church, is not the preacher up here in the pulpit; it’s Jesus proclaiming his name through the preacher as the word is expounded. Hebrews gets that from Psalm 22, which was prospective of Jesus.

Psalm 40, we have David speaking of, “Sacrifice and offerings you have not delighted, but your body you’ve prepared for me. It’s a volume of the book, it is written, I come to do your will, O God.” When we come to the book of Hebrews, that’s put on the lips of Jesus, that the body was given him to fulfill God’s will for him.

The point in all of that is to show that the Psalms speak of the Messiah, but they do it in different ways. And the way that we’re looking tonight is that they do it by this typology where David sets a pattern that is anticipatory of Jesus. It’s not something they’ve dredged up out of their imagination, but taking, for example, the framework that we get from 2 Samuel 7, the promise to David of his greater son who will come; taking the fact that the Psalms are pervasively about the king who is prospective of the great king to come, the New Testament writers, following Jesus’ lead, pick up on that and they say it’s speaking of him.

Some of the Psalms, as I say, are directly predictive—we see that in Psalm 110—but others are more indirect. There’s the ideal language of the king, there’s the excessive language about the king, David’s experience prospective of that of Jesus—all these categories are prophetic, anticipatory of Jesus. Derek Kidner, who years ago has written a wonderful little commentary on the Psalms, I think he sums it up really well. He says, “Wherever David, wherever the Davidic king appears in the Psalter, he foreshadows Christ in some way.” And I think we have the warrant from the New Testament writers to read the Psalms that way—to look back and to see that this king is prospective of the great king in his suffering, in his abandonment, in his faithfulness, in his confidence to God, in his laments, all of it prospective of the greater son to come.

Some question has come up then: what about David confessing his sin? Is that prospective of Jesus? Well, of course not in his confession of sin, but it is prospective of Jesus in that Jesus came to identify with sinners, to take their place. So 2 Samuel 7 sets us up with an anticipation of David’s greater son. Psalm 2 right at the outset of the Psalter informs us of the subject in view of the Psalter, and that’s the Lord’s anointed who will rule forever. There’s the royal orientation of the Psalms that we saw. They’re about the king pervasively. The king through the Psalms is presented in his ideal. There’s specific language used about the king that is just excessive. Jesus then comes along and instructed us to read the Psalms about him. “They speak of me,” he says, and he himself picks up some of them, puts them on his own lips to set the pattern. The New Testament apostles, New Testament writers, follow suit from Jesus and do the same—that this book is about Jesus, and we then should learn to look through it for those kinds of anticipations of Jesus. Now, yes, you want to be careful not to let your imagination get overactive, but I suspect our general approach has been too much the other way, that we’ve forgotten to see Jesus in a book that was written about him.

All right, well, we’ll see one more of that at least next time. Pastor Greg, would you pray for us, please?

Father in heaven, we thank you for this wonderful insight into the theme and tenor of the Psalms and, in fact, the whole Old Testament, preparing us mentally and theologically to receive the great work of the Son of God from heaven, the Lord of Glory. We thank you for his death, and we will now commemorate at the table. We pray that our hearts will be humbled as we receive the elements and we reflect that our sin was in fact the rationale, the cause of our Lord’s suffering on Calvary. But we thank you for that great love in Jesus’ name.