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T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
October, 1937
The M e ss ian ic Psalms* ■— ' ¿ f x By W ILL IAM L. PETTINGILL Wilmington, Delaware
we read: “My strength faileth because of mine iniquity, and my bones are consumed.” How could He thus speak to God when He had no iniquity of His own? Some readers of the Psalm will turn from it and say this confession of sin shows that the Psalm is not Messianic. But there are other Psalms, whose Messianic character cannot be con troverted, in which the same difficulty pre sents itself. In the Messianic Psalms we find our Lord frequently confessing sin. This fact presents a problem. But the solution of the problem is in the fact that He identified Himself throughout His life, as well as in His death, with us sinners, and that He confessed our sins as His own. It is true that atonement for our sins was wrought out on the cross of Calvary alone. But it is also true that the suffering He endured on the way to the cross would never have been His had He not been traveling in that way. He had become incarnate in order that He might die for our sins, and this incarnation brought Him into such fellowship with man and man’s sin that it can well be said, not only that He bore our sins in His own body on the
PART V T reading the W ay of S orrows from B ethlehem to C alvary P salm 31 N EXT in the series of Messianic Psalms—Psalms quoted in the New Testament and there applied to Jesus Christ—is Psalm 31. The New Testament identification of this Psalm as Messianic is shown by the quotation of a part of verse S in Luke 23:46. In the King James Version, the words as found in Psalm 31:5 are: “ Into thine hand I commit my spirit” ; but the Revised Version has changed the verb, and it yeads: “ Into thy hand I commend my spirit,” the verb used by our Lord on the cross, recorded in Luke 23:46. Sorrow In Nazareth The Psalm brings before us our Lord’s exercise of soul in connection with the grief and shame characterizing His earthly life. We have thought too little of this as we have considered the pathway from Bethle hem to Calvary, which was in .all its length “ a way of sorrows.” There was not only a cross at the end of the way, but there was shame all the way (Heb. 12 : 2 ).
We read in the Word of God that even Jesus’ own brethren believed not on Him (John 7:5). Even they refused to credit the testimony of their father and mother concerning the virgin birth of the first-born in the family. It is easy to see then what they did be lieve. They believed what the neighbors believed, and what everybody in Nazareth believed, apart from Joseph and Mary and Jesus Himself. They believed that Jesus was the illegitimate son of a man and woman who denied the fact. Loneliness Among Men, and Communion with God This was the atmosphere surrounding the young man named Jesus of Nazareth. The language of our Psalm gives us a vivid picture of the circumstances in which He grew up. He was thrust upon God by these circumstances and had sweet communion continuously with Him (vs. 1-8). But His was a sensitive spirit, and His life was spent with grief, and His years with sigh ing (vs. 9, 10). A difficulty confronts us in verse 10, as
tree, but also that He bore them in His own body unto the tree. Let it be said again that atonement for sin was fully accomplished while He hung on the tree; but there was much suffering before the atonement, and this suffering came because He had come into the world to save sinners. May our hearts go out to Him in a new way as we read the lan guage of verses 11 to 13: “ I was a reproach among all mine enemies, but especially among my neighbors, and a fear to mine acquaintance: they that did see me without fled from me. I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind: I am like a broken vessel. For I have heard the slander of many: fear was on every side: while they took counsel together against me, they devised to take away my life.” In verses 14 to 18, He again rolls Himself upon God in perfect trust; and in verses 19 to 24, He rejoices in His Father’s goodness and exhorts the saints -to love Jeho vah who “preserveth the faithful, and plentifully rewardeth the proud doer. Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord” (vs. 23, 24). It is true that in Luke 2:52 it is written that “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” His favor with God, of course, continued, but [Continued on page 385]
NAZARETH 'S WELL Christians who approach the "Virgin's Well" at Nazareth have a consciousness of drawing very close to the earthly steps of the Lord Jesus, for careful archeologists consider the village well to be the very one in use in the days of our Lord's boyhood in Nazareth.
Have you ever tried to visualize the life of Jesus of Nazareth be fore the days of His public ministry? Nazareth was a town whose neighbors said that nothing good could come out of it (John 1:46). In this despised Nazareth there was a carpenter named Joseph with his wife Mary and a family of sons and daughters. The eldest of these children, named Jesus, was also a carpenter (Mk. 6:3). But this Jesus the carpenter had been born out of wedlock. His mother Mary acknowledged this, and declared that her Son had been born while she was a virgin, and that He had no human father what soever. Joseph, Mary’s husbandj confirmed this testimony, declaring that he himself was not the boy’s father, and that by divine revela tion he had been assured that the boy had no human father (Matt. 1:18-25). Both Joseph and Mary had been given assurance leading them to believe that Jesus was the Messiah of Israel, of whom it had been predicted in Isaiah 7:14 that He should be born of a virgin. This was the testimony of both Joseph and Mary concerning the manner of Jesus’ birth, but no 6ne believed it.
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