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Scripture Reading: Psa. 40; Psa. 41
In this message we have come to Psalms 40 and 41, the final two psalms in Book One of the Psalms. In these psalms we can again see the mixed expressions of the psalmist's sentiment in his enjoyment of God in God's house.
Psalms 40 and 41 show us the mixed expressions of the psalmist's sentiment in his suffering of his enemies and the recompense which he expected for them. No doubt, when David wrote these two psalms he was under the persecution and mistreatment of his enemies. Because of his suffering, he wanted to see his enemies recompensed. In the New Testament, however, the Lord Jesus told us that we should love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matt. 5:44). This shows that David's prayer to recompense his enemies is not according to the divine concept.
David waited on Jehovah for His deliverance (Psa. 40:1-5, 11, 13, 16-17; 41:1-2, 10-12). In 41:10 David said, "But You, O Jehovah, be gracious to me and raise me up/That I may recompense them." David was praising God for God's deliverance and looking to God for His salvation. This is not wrong, but it was wrong to ask Jehovah to raise him up that he might recompense his enemies. I hope that all of us can see this. Do you believe God is happy to see His children ask Him to raise them up that they might recompense their enemies? This is absolutely wrong. This is why we say that what is written in many of the psalms is a mixture.
In verses 11-12 David said, "By this I know that You delight in me,/That my enemy has not shouted in triumph over me./And as for me, You uphold me in my integrity,/And You set me before Your face forever." David indicated that he would know that Jehovah delighted in him if Jehovah raised him up so that he could recompense his enemies. He also asked God not to let his enemies shout over him triumphantly. In the light of the New Testament revelation, we can see that this is absolutely according to the flesh. David also said that God upheld him in his integrity. He should have said that he was upheld in God's mercy, in God's compassions. Actually, we do not have any integrity before God.
David also appreciated God's care for him — sustaining him on his sickbed and making all his bed in his illness (41:3). Of course, this is poetic writing. But do you believe that when David was sick, God came to take care of him just like a nurse, making all his bed? Surely God takes care of us, but the apostle Paul did not write anything in his Epistles to tell us that God took care of him like a nurse to sustain him on his sickbed and to make his bed in every way. For David to speak in this way indicates that he was too much in the self.
David referred to his righteousness and integrity again in 40:9-10 and 41:12.
David realized and confessed his iniquities and sins. Psalm 40:12 says, "For evils encompass me until they cannot be counted;/My iniquities have so overtaken me/That I cannot see;/They are more numerous than the hairs of my head;/Thus my heart fails me." Psalm 41:4 says, "I said, O Jehovah, be gracious to me;/Heal my soul, for I have sinned against You." To make confession of our sins is very good.
When David was writing Psalms 40 and 41, he was surrounded by his enemies. He indicated that all his enemies encompassing him were evils which had become so numerous that they could not be counted. Furthermore, his iniquities were so numerous that he could not see. He was overtaken and bent over by the weight of his iniquities, and the number of his iniquities surpassed the number of the hairs on his head. This shows us that he was altogether in a very desperate situation. Enemies were surrounding him, and iniquities were suppressing him.
David referred to God the mistreatment of his enemies. Psalm 41:5-9 says, "My enemies speak evil against me:/When will he die and his name perish?/And if he comes to see me, he speaks falsehood./His heart gathers iniquity to itself;/When he goes out, he speaks it./All who hate me whisper together against me;/Against me they devise my misfortune./Some evil illness, they say, is cast upon him;/And when he lies down, he will not rise again./Even my familiar friend, in whom I trusted,/Who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me." David told God in detail concerning how his enemies had mistreated him.
David's enemies pretended that they were his friends. This is why they could come to see him and speak falsehood. Today many people are like this. They are so nice to a person in a way of pretense when they are with him, but when they leave his presence, they speak what they really feel about him. This is falsehood. David's enemies even said that some evil illness was cast upon him.
In the midst of these mixed expressions of David's sentiment, David spoke a word which became a prophecy concerning Judas Iscariot, who betrayed the Lord Jesus. Verse 9 says, "Even my familiar friend, in whom I trusted,/Who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me." This word was quoted by the Lord in John 13:18 in reference to Judas.
David expected his enemies to be desolate and put to shame (Psa. 40:14-15; 41:10-11).
In such mixed expressions of his sentiment, David prophesied concerning Christ. The prophecy in Psalm 40:6-8 is a great prophecy concerning Christ, and the prophecy in Psalm 41:9 is a small prophecy concerning Judas betraying Christ.
Seemingly Psalm 40:6-8 was the word of David, but actually it is the word of Christ. Christ said to God, "You do not delight in sacrifice and offering;/You have bored My ears;/You do not require burnt offering and sin offering./Then I said,/Behold, I have come;/In the scroll of the book/It is written concerning Me./I delight in doing Your will, O My God;/Indeed Your law is within My inward parts" (lit.).
This prophecy was fully quoted and defined by the apostle Paul in Hebrews 10. Christ delighted in doing God's will, which was the will of God to replace the Old Testament sacrifices and offerings (vv. 5-10). Many Christians apply the doing of God's will in Hebrews 10 to their daily affairs. Actually, however, the doing of God's will in Hebrews 10 refers to Christ coming to replace the Old Testament sacrifices and offerings. In the old dispensation, God commanded His people to offer to Him sacrifices and offerings. But when Jesus came and lived on this earth, God no longer delighted in those Old Testament offerings. Instead, it was God's will to replace them with Christ Himself. Christ came to be the real sacrifice, the real offering, the living sacrifice, the living offering, who offered Himself on the cross as the reality of all the offerings. He is the reality of the sin offering, the trespass offering, the burnt offering, the meal offering, and the peace offering.
Actually, Christ came to replace all the Old Testament types. In other words, by Christ's first coming, the entire Old Testament has been terminated and replaced. Now our offering and sacrifice are Christ. Day and night we offer Christ to God as all kinds of offerings. Whenever we sin, we ask God to forgive us, taking Christ, God's Son, as our sin offering and trespass offering. He is the real offering for our sin and transgressions. When we need peace toward God, we can take Christ as our peace offering. We can also take Him as our burnt offering and meal offering. Christ is everything to us because He fulfilled all the Old Testament types and has taken them away. Today He is the reality of all the types in the Old Testament.
The revelation in Psalm 40:6-8 is one of the greatest revelations concerning Christ in His commission of His incarnation. Verse 6 says, "You do not delight in sacrifice and offering," and again, "You do not require burnt offering and sin offering." This indicates that God was intending to give up His Old Testament economy. Just by reading Psalm 40:6-8 alone, we cannot understand this much. But this portion was quoted and expounded by the apostle Paul in Hebrews 10. He indicated that to stop the sacrifices and offerings of the Old Testament is to replace the Old Testament for the establishment of the New Testament.
Sacrifice (for sin and sins before God) and offering (for fellowship with God) were the elements based upon which the old testament (covenant) was established, and the old testament (covenant) was the centrality and universality of God's economy in the Old Testament. God not delighting in and not requiring the sacrifice and offering means to terminate His economy in the Old Testament. This is the importance and the greatness of this prophecy in Psalm 40.
Verse 6 also says, "You have bored My ears." This was quoted by the apostle Paul in Hebrews 10:5 as "a body You have prepared for Me," from the Septuagint, a Greek version of the Old Testament translated about three hundred years before Christ. To bore the ears of a slave's body indicates the master's requirement of the slave's obedience (Exo. 21:6). This signifies that God required obedience of Christ as His Slave in Christ's humanity. This obedience was spoken of by Paul in Philippians 2:8, which says that Christ became "obedient even unto death, and that the death of a cross." This obedience was for Him to do the will of God by being the sacrifice and offering in His crucifixion in the flesh, the body (Col. 1:22). Based upon this the Septuagint interprets the boring of the ears into the preparing of a body, in which Christ offered Himself to God as the sacrifice and the offering to replace the sacrifice and the offering of the animals in the Old Testament.
I believe that the translators of the Septuagint realized that to bore the ears was to require the obedience of Christ, and Christ's obedience was mainly for Him to die on the cross. For Him to die on the cross, He needed a human body. Hebrews 2:14 says that because Christ was going to destroy Satan, He needed to partake of blood and flesh, that is, He needed a body. I believe that the Septuagint translators may have realized that "You have bored My ears" in Psalm 40:6 would not be understood by most readers so they translated it as "a body You have prepared for Me." To bore the ears was for Christ's obedience to die on the cross, and to prepare a body was also for His dying on the cross. Thus, both translations are with the same purpose. God prepared a body for Christ to come to do God's will to be God's unique sacrifice on the cross.
Psalm 40:7 says, "Behold, I have come," indicating Christ's first coming through His incarnation for the establishment of the new testament by Himself as the enacting sacrifice and offering.
Verse 7 also says, "In the scroll of the book/It is written concerning Me." This indicates that Christ was prophesied in the Scriptures of the Old Testament and that Christ will do God's will for the accomplishment of God's New Testament economy according to the Old Testament prophecies concerning Him.
When the Lord appeared to His disciples in resurrection, He told them all the things that were written concerning Him in the Scriptures (Luke 24:27). In Luke 24:44-45 He told the disciples, "These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all the things written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and Psalms concerning Me must be fulfilled. Then He opened their mind to understand the Scriptures." The Lord's word here unveils that the entire Old Testament is a revelation of Him and that He is its center and content. Our life-study of the Old Testament is full of interpretations and definitions of the types concerning Christ.
Psalm 40:8 says, "I delight in doing Your will." This indicates that Christ was willing to do God's will in His commission of His incarnation to fulfill and replace all the sacrifices and offerings of the Old Testament for the termination of God's Old Testament economy, so that He could initiate and establish God's New Testament economy (Matt. 26:26-28) for the producing and building of the church to be His organic Body, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem. When the Lord established His table, He indicated that His blood shed through His death was the enacting factor of the new covenant.
In Hebrews 10:5-9, after quoting this prophecy concerning Christ in Psalm 40:6-8, Paul commented that Christ coming to do God's will is to take away the first that He may establish the second (Heb. 10:9). "The first" in Paul's comment refers to the sacrifices and offerings of the first covenant, the old covenant; and "the second" refers to the sacrifice of the second covenant, the new covenant, which sacrifice is Christ. The commission which God committed to Christ in His first coming through incarnation was to put away the animal sacrifices of the old covenant and to establish Himself, in His body, as the sacrifice of the new covenant. This is to terminate God's Old Testament economy and to initiate God's New Testament economy, thus making the prophecy in Psalm 40:6-8 one of the greatest prophecies concerning the all-inclusive Christ.
The prophecy in Psalm 40 concerning Christ should be considered the fifth station of all the prophecies concerning Christ in Book One of the Psalms. Psalms 2, 8, 16, and 22—24 are the first four stations. In the fifth station, Christ came through His incarnation to terminate God's old economy and initiate God's new economy, His New Testament economy, by replacing the animal sacrifices and establishing Himself as the unique sacrifice of the new covenant. As the unique sacrifice of the new covenant, Christ was the enacting factor of the New Testament economy to be the centrality and universality of God's New Testament economy. Hence, Christ is great in the prophecy in Psalm 40:6-8. He has changed the age for the consummation of God's new creation out of God's old creation. His changing of the age is greater than the creation of the universe mentioned in Genesis 1.
The prophecy concerning Christ in Psalm 40:6-8 is the goal and the destination of the revelation of Christ in Psalm 2, Psalm 8, Psalm 16, and Psalms 22—24. All Christians know that Christ came in His incarnation, but if we want to know what kind of Christ came, we have to know Psalm 2, Psalm 8, Psalm 16, and Psalms 22—24. These psalms are descriptions of the very Christ who came in His incarnation to carry out God's will as God's commission to turn the age, to terminate everything old and to replace the old things with Himself as everything new. We all were included in the old creation, but the old creation was terminated and replaced by Christ. Today in Christ we are no longer old; we are new (2 Cor. 5:17).
The prophecy concerning Christ in Psalm 40:6-8 was spoken in the context of the mixed expressions of David's sentiment. David's speaking in the Psalms reminds me to a certain extent of Peter's speaking in the Gospels. Peter frequently said the wrong thing, but one day he told the Lord that He was the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt. 16:16). Then the Lord Jesus told Peter that he was blessed because flesh and blood did not reveal this to him, but the Father in the heavens (v. 17). The Lord went further to tell the disciples that He was going to the cross (v. 21), but Peter began to rebuke Him, telling Him, "God be merciful to You, Lord! This shall by no means happen to You!" (v. 22). When Peter said this, the Lord said to him, "Get behind Me, Satan!" (v. 23). At one moment Peter was blessed to receive a heavenly revelation of Christ from the Father, but in the next moment he was one with Satan. At one moment he was Peter; in the next moment he was Satan.
Peter's situation may be compared to David's situation in the Psalms. In the Psalms, David's speaking is according to two concepts — the human concept and the divine concept. At one time David is speaking, but suddenly his mouth becomes the mouth which reveals the divine revelation concerning Christ. Peter's case in the Gospels was similar to this.
Matthew 17 says that the Lord Jesus brought Peter, James, and John with Him to the mount of His transfiguration. When Peter saw the Lord transfigured and speaking with Moses and Elijah, he became very excited. He spoke foolishly by saying, "Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You are willing, I will make three tents here, one for You and one for Moses and one for Elijah" (v. 4). In his absurd proposal, Peter put Moses and Elijah on the same level as Christ. He was on the mount of Christ's transfiguration, but he spoke nonsense. David's speaking in the Psalms was in the same principle. In his speaking we can see both the divine concept and the human concept. In the Old Testament, there is a talkative David. In the New Testament, there is a talkative Peter.
David wrote many psalms, and in these psalms we can see both his natural concept and the divine concept of God according to the divine revelation. In Psalms 40 and 41, the only portions which are according to the divine concept are 40:6-8 and 41:9. These portions speak concerning Christ. However, we need all the verses in the psalms so that we can have a comparison to show us the divine revelation and the human expressions of the human sentiment.
As we have pointed out, Psalm 41:9 is a prophecy concerning Judas Iscariot betraying Christ. This verse says, "Even my familiar friend, in whom I trusted,/Who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me." The familiar friend in this verse is Judas Iscariot (John 6:70-71). Judas Iscariot was one who ate with the Lord (John 13:18, 23-27; Luke 22:21-22) and lifted up his heel against Christ, betraying Christ. However, Judas did not partake of the Lord's table (Mark 14:17-25; John 13:26-30).
In Psalm 41:13 David blessed God for eternity — "Blessed be Jehovah, the God of Israel,/From eternity to eternity!/Amen and Amen!"
Psalms 25—41 are a section of psalms showing us the mixed expressions of the psalmist's sentiment in his enjoyment of God in God's house. In this long section, we have seen that there is one of the greatest prophecies concerning Christ in His coming to replace the Old Testament sacrifices and offerings. In this section there are another three points of the prophecies concerning Christ.
Psalm 31:13b says, "When they take counsel together against me,/They scheme to take my life." This prophecy was fulfilled in the New Testament with the Lord Jesus. Matthew 26:4 says that the chief priests and the elders took counsel together to seize Jesus by craftiness and kill Him.
Psalm 31:5a says, "Into Your [God's] hand I [Christ] commit my spirit." This was quoted by Christ when He was crucified on the cross. At the end of His crucifixion, He said, "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit" (Luke 23:46; cf. John 19:30).
Psalm 34:20 says, "He [God] keeps all his [Christ's] bones; /Not one of them is broken." This verse was fulfilled at the time of the Lord's death. When the Roman soldiers who crucified Him saw that He had already died, they did not break His legs. John 19:36 says, "For these things happened that the Scripture might be fulfilled: 'No bone of His shall be broken.'" Christ was also typified in Exodus by the Passover lamb, whose bones were not to be broken (12:46).
These are the minor prophecies concerning Christ unveiled in Psalms 25—41.
The first book of the Psalms comprises Psalms 1—41. We should not forget that in this first book there are seven psalms which speak concerning Christ: Psalm 2, Psalm 8, Psalm 16, Psalms 22—24, and Psalm 40.
In the mixed expressions of the sentiment of God's lovers and seekers, Christ is revealed as the centrality and universality of God's economy. David was surely a lover of God and a seeker of God just as Peter was in the New Testament. Peter made mistakes, but he loved the Lord and sought after the Lord. This is why the Lord came to him and asked him, "Simon..do you love Me?" (John 21:17). Christ would not ask someone this question if he did not love Him. For Christ to ask Peter if he loved Him is precious. David was also a lover and a seeker of God. In the mixed expressions of his sentiment, Christ is revealed as the centrality and universality of God's economy.
Psalm 2 reveals that Christ has been anointed to be God's Messiah, resurrected to be the firstborn Son of God, and installed to be God's King; He has also been given the nations as His inheritance and the earth as His possession for His kingdom.
Psalm 8 reveals that as the embodiment of God, Christ has brought God into man in His incarnation and man into God in His resurrection, thus bringing heaven to the earth and joining the earth to heaven to be the excellent One in all the earth.
Psalm 16 reveals that as the God-man, mingled with divinity and humanity, Christ took God as His portion, being obedient to God unto death, resurrecting into glory, ascending to His heavenly attainments and obtainments, and sitting at the right hand of God for the accomplishment of God's eternal economy concerning the church, the Body of Christ.
Psalms 22—24 reveal that Christ died an all-inclusive vicarious death and entered into the church-producing resurrection. In resurrection He became the Shepherd of God's flock, leading the sheep of God to participate in the church as the house of God in this age, consummating in the New Jerusalem in the coming age and in the eternal age; and He will be God's triumphant King of glory to reign in God's eternal kingdom.
Psalm 40:6-8 reveals that Christ came to do the will of God to fulfill and replace all the Old Testament sacrifices and offerings according to what is written in the Old Testament concerning Him.
Such a Christ brings God's chosen people into the enjoyment of God firstly in the church in this age and ultimately in the New Jerusalem in the millennium and in eternity (Psa. 27, 36).
