Thoughts on Psalm 139

These are very much my preliminary thoughts as I attempt to prepare for a sermon on this passage for this coming Sunday. Comments would be very much appreciated.

This is a psalm that is beloved by many Christians over the years, and has been the source of much reassurance. The traditional interpretation see the Psalmist making a discourse on the character and nature of God as it relates to the life of the Psalmist. In this sense, it is both a very personal and a very practical piece of literature. We are encouraged to rejoice in the omniscience of God because it means God cares for us, we are led to awe and amazement at the futility of attempting escape from Him and confronted with the need to be concerned with holiness, as once we understand the extent of God’s power, love and concern for the people of the earth, then slander and defamation of Him and His name becomes intolerable.

There is much merit in this approach, but I fear that it neglects one issue – how does this Psalm point us to Christ? We are aware that the Old Covenant in fulfilled in entirety by Christ, so surely when approaching a passage of the Old Testament, seeking Christ should be our primary aim, and yet this seems to be absent from the above approach.

The second approach I propose is to seek what the passage attributes to God, and then use this knowledge to identify Christ as God from the narrative of the Gospels. So, in verses 1-6 of the Psalm, the Psalmist praises God for his knowledge of him – “O LORD, you have searched me and know me!” (v. 1), “You discern my thoughts from afar” (v. 2). In the New Testament, we see that Jesus also shows these characteristics. He is able to know what people are thinking (e.g. Matthew 9:4), and shows knowledge of individuals and their true desires that would be impossible for a normal human being (e.g. the rich young ruler in Mark 10:17-22). In addition, John attributes Creation to the Word, who is then revealed to be Jesus Christ, in John 1:1-14, and this fits in with the description of God’s creative power in verses 13-16 of the Psalm. Finally, and most compellingly, the final section of the Psalm cries out for God to come in judgement of the wicked, which finds it’s fulfilment in the coming of Christ, in particular the second coming, but also in his first coming when the judgement against wicked men falls on Christ himself, so that the wicked who trust in him can go free.

This method does reinforce our view that Jesus is the same God as is described in the Old Testament, and so also provides a useful perspective on the teaching of the Psalm, but it still proves to be an unsatisfactory reading. Whereas the first view seems to neglect Christ and jump straight to the personal, the second view sees Christ (not in itself a bad thing!) but doesn’t do justice to the personal way that the Psalm is written.

The interpretation that I’m considering at the moment uses the significance of Psalm being a Psalm of David. David, of course, was God’s anointed King of Israel, and he is also presented as the Saviour of the people of Israel (e.g. in the battle with Goliath in 1 Samuel 17). Both of these roles are fulfilled ultimately in Jesus Christ, and so it is fair to read the passages concerning David as a foreshadow of the Christ. This has significance when reading of David’s experience, as our temptation is to place ourselves in David’s situation, where as if David is pointing forward to Christ, then we should see his experiences pointing us to the experiences of Christ. This applies to the Psalms attributed to David as well as the narrative passages concerning him in 1 and 2 Samuel. So how does this affect our reading of Psalm 139? My thoughts at the moment suggest that the discourse of God’s character in verses 1-18 would relate to the specific mission that God has through the incarnation of His Son, Jesus Christ. They show that what happened over the course of Jesus’ life was no accident, but were ordained at every point (v. 16). This then leads to the call for God’s judgement in verses 19-23 pointing not to the judgement at the end of the days, but more pointing to the judgement of God’s people taken in Jesus on the cross. This view also makes more sense of verses 22-24, which otherwise seems to be suggesting that David can call for a searching of himself confident that God will find nothing wrong with him.

I’m still quite unsure about this, and I apologise for any incoherence. As I mentioned, comment would be appreciated, as would the pointing out of any grievous error in my thought. In the meantime, I’ll be continuing my study. The sermon will probably be recorded, and I’ll try to get a copy up here as I get it.

A non-conformist ponders liturgy

I seem to come across a number of Anglican Churches which pride themselves as being “traditional”. From what I can glean, this means that to the untrained eye, their practices seem to be high. This is the first thing I’d like to refute, as to the more trained eye, the practices turn out to be, in fact, positively Romish, but this is all beside the point.

I have long since realised that I occasionally use the description of Anglican wrongly. I was at one point about to say that my mentor during my time away was one of the least Anglican Anglican ministers that I’d met, until I stopped myself and thought again, and realised that he is a liturgically aware and biblical centred person, placing him surely at or near the top of the most Anglican people I know. The combination of these two experiences has led me to reconsider what I think about Anglicanism as a whole, and particularly has led to a consideration of the liturgical nature of the church, to which I would like to sketch my thoughts.

When I read through the Book of Common Prayer, I see in Cranmer many aspects that I would admire in a non-Conformist. His work on the order of Holy Communion is an attempt to remove any magic that is present at that service and move away from the making of a ritual. The placement of the word at the centre of service and the clear implications that all else is either a preparation to hear God speak through the scriptures or a response to hearing that word is a model that all church congregations should pay careful attention to. So, as I read, one question comes to mind, why have the liturgy at all? Why risk the misinterpretation of the liturgy as being a ritual in itself in the process of abolishing ritual from the act of Christian worship?

The answer, I believe comes from looking at the state of the church at the time of the early reformation, the church for which Cranmer is writing his prayer book for. Many of the ministers serving different assemblies in England have a level of ignorance of the basics of the gospel that would be considered an embarrassment for even the most immature in faith among bible believing Christians today. There was definitely a need to ensure that the spiritual feeding of a congregation was not dependant on the competency of the minister, otherwise large portions of the Christian church would effectively be starved. For this reason, providing a step by step guide to how to lead a reformed and biblical service ensured that even the least able minister (or even a literate lay person) could effectively minister a flock. There were even sermons provided, in the form of the Book of Homilies, to ensure that all church congregations could benefit from solid teaching based on God’s word.

Today, the majority of evangelical churches have at their lead biblical hearted men, who understand the importance not only of preaching God’s word but structuring all meetings of the saints in such a way as to place hearing God’s voice through His scriptures in the proper place as the centre of Christian corporate worship, and so there is less need for strict following of liturgical order, and those that do so are still living very much in the tradition of Cranmer and the great evangelical reformers of England. But even the non-Conformists among us (of which I’d like to make clear, I number myself among) must be careful not to make small the importance of set liturgical order. Experiencing life in a community where a large number of minister do indeed not have the basic understanding of the gospel, the need for sound, reformed liturgy is incredibly important. To finish, I’ll mention one of the ministers that I’ve come across. He really shouldn’t be a minister at all, there is a definite absence of any of the gifts that are generally necessary for ministry, but because of his job, he is expected to preach every so often. Every time his turn on the rota comes up, he would panic, and start to desperately ask around for something to preach on. Eventually, someone bought him the set of J.C. Ryle’s “Expository Thoughts on the Gospels”, and each time he preaches, he reads a section from that. When I found out about that, it served a joyful reminder of Cranmer’s original intent (this practice certainly sounds similar to Cranmer’s intention in writing the Book of Homilies), because I attended one of the meetings he was presiding over, and saw an incompetent minister still feed the flock. For this reason, we are to rejoice that there is such a thing as liturgical order.

Rooms and Mansions

I’m presently preparing a small talk to give at a housewarming tomorrow evening, and I think I’ve settled on talking on John 14:1-3, vaguely on the thought of although there is much enjoyment to be had in homes here on earth, it is not our permanent home, and Jesus is preparing for us a place in heaven where we shall be eternally. In my preparation, I was trying to ascertain whether my theory that the Greek word monai (translated “rooms” in NIV and ESV, or “mansions” in KJV) had any implication of permanence, which would help my point (I’m freely admitting this is not a model for faithful preparation of talks), so I’ve been flicking through commentaries. This led me to Don Carson’s excellent book on the Upper Room discourse in John, “Jesus and his Friends”, in which I found a quote that although it was not directly helpful to my question, made me laugh…

“The Authorized Version promises 'many mansions' rather than 'many rooms'; and no doubt the prospect of an eternal mansion is much more appealing to many than an eternal room. The word mansion has called forth quite a number of songs which picture eternal bliss in largely materialistic category: 'I've got a mansion just over the hilltop,' we sing, scarcely able to restrain our imaginations from counting the valets at our beck and call. 'A tent or a cottage, why should I care?/They're building a palace for me over there.' Here we even manage to upgrade 'mansion' to 'palace'.”

Well, it amused me anyway. For anyone interested, it seems that the word does suggest permanence, so it’s good, and provided me with some amusement for the afternoon.