Prophetic Psalms

"'For,' said P'eter, 'it is written in the book of Psalms,

'May his place be
deserted;
let there be no one to
dwell in it,
May another take his
place of leadership.'

Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from John's baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection.'" Acts 1:20-22

A quick glance at the margin of your study Bible will show you that Peter is quoting Psalms 109:8 and applying it as a prophetic word about Judas Iscariot. Psalms is quoted frequently throughout Acts as prophetic with reference to the work of Jesus and the continued work of the church.

However, it can be a little troubling if you go back and read the context of what is quoted from Psalms. Very often you can see ties with the events of Jesus' life, but you can also find some verses that don't really seem to fit. Also, in many cases the Psalm is dealing very directly with an event in David's life, and we wouldn't always realized the verses quoted as prophetic about Jesus. So what is going on?

If you were here for our study of Hebrews you may remember we talked about the concept of typology. Essentially what typology means is that certain historical events, people, and places were types (or shadows) of events, people, and places to come. For instance, God saving his people from the slavery of Egypt and bringing them to the promise land is a type of God bringing us out of slavery to sin and into the promise of heaven and relationship to Him.

David is a very important type of Christ. David is the righteous king whom God used to restore Israel to glory, and is described as "a man after God's own heart." However, David was also a very flawed human, and his imperfections are well chronicled in the pages of the Bible. David then was a "type" of Christ who is the true righteous king and who perfectly follows after God's own heart.

What then do we make of the Psalms? Are they referring to events in David's life? Certainly. However, many of them find their fullest meaning not just in the events of David's life but also in those events being shadows of the life of Jesus. This is slightly different from the more direct prophesy seen in Joel and Isaiah. In the prophesies of Joel and Isaiah the events of Jesus life were the single fulfillment of the prophesy. So we would say that Jesus "fulfilled" that prophesy. With regards to the Psalms I find it helpful to use slightly different language. For instance, with reference to Psalm 109: JUST AS David was betrayed by a friend and called for someone else to take that friends place, SO TOO Christ was betrayed by Judas and someone else was called to take his place.

This is no way undermines that the Psalms are prophetic. God knew exactly what he was doing when he crafted David's life and inspired David to write the Psalms. However, not everything in the Psalms applies to Jesus because David experienced life as a sinful man and chronicled those experiences in the Psalms. Understanding which parts of the Psalms apply just to David and which parts apply to David and Jesus takes wisdom and discernment. Once again we find a need for the power of the Holy Spirit in our study of the word.