Now we'll look along at the syllabus that you were given, looking at the covenant theology of the Psalter and how this points to Christ. Let's have just a word of prayer as we begin again. Our Father, we praise you that the Scriptures do present Jesus Christ, and we thank you for him who is our Lord and Savior. We ask, Lord, that you will help us to understand your revelation in the Psalms, that we may grasp the meaning, and more than that, the significance of the Psalms for our daily living, and also for our preaching and teaching, and for the way in which we seek to communicate your word. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. I don't need to remind you of the importance that the Psalms have had in the history of the Christian Church. There's an interesting book that was written in France a few years ago by a man named Chanson, C-H-A-N-S-O-N. He is a literary figure in France. He's descended from Huguenot ancestry. I forget whether it was his great-great grandfather, I think that's right, was actually arrested because he had gathered for public worship, Protestant public worship, in the open fields at the time after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The edict had tolerated Protestant worship, but it was revoked by the king. And at that time, all Protestant pastors were driven out of France and all Protestant assemblies for worship were illegal. And so the men who were caught in such assemblies were taken and made galley slaves. They were chained to the bench, the rowing bench of the big galley. And, you know, they they just actually chained them there and just left them there. That's all. They never could get up from the bench day or night, any time. They were just chained to those galleys for months until they died. Or if they survived, as Chanson's ancestor did, they could they'd be taken to some prison situation and put on other work during the winter season when the galleys weren't out. And then when the galleys were launched again, they'd be taken back and chained again. And that's what they did till they died. And Sean Stone has written a historical novel about the experiences of his great, great grandfather. A fascinating book telling of his imprisonment. Well, very depressing book in many ways to realize what he had to suffer. But the point is, he had with him a book of the Psalms. And he would read that book of the Psalms. He had it under his rowing bench, somehow he managed to get it there. He had it with him and he would read it and he would tell others about it and read it to others when they weren't rowing, you know. And that was characteristic of that period. Many of the martyrs died with the words of the Psalms on their lips, you know, and sometimes singing them as they were put to death. The Psalms have had an amazing heritage. It's not accidental, you know, that even when New Testaments are printed separately, very often the Book of Psalms are put in the back because people realize their need of using at least that portion of the Old Testament Scriptures. I've indicated in that little introduction that you have in your sheet that Pius Drivers, in his book on the Psalms, lists about 150 direct quotations in the New Testament from the Psalms. And the Nestle Greek text, which lists allusions to the Psalms, has 290 allusions, and 102 of the Psalms are alluded to in the New Testament. 102 out of 150 are directly alluded to. And of course some of the allusions are in language that could be replicated from the other Psalms too for that matter. So obviously the New Testament is just saturated with a background in the Psalms. And Jesus on the road to Emmaus was rebuking the disciples because they didn't understand that all the scriptures testified to him, to his sufferings and to the glory that would follow. And when Luke summarizes the teaching of Jesus in the days between his resurrection and his ascension, Luke tells us that Jesus taught from Moses and from the prophets and from the Psalms, the three great divisions of the Old Testament. But the book of Psalms is also mentioned. So Christ presents himself as the Christ of the Psalms, and even confuted his enemies, you remember, by quoting from Psalm 110, where David wrote, the Lord said unto my Lord, I will sit down on my right hand until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet. Well, how Jesus asked How is it that David could call his son, the Messiah, as his son? How could he call him his Lord? And they had no answer to that, because they had no understanding of the greatness that Jesus had, not only as the son of David, but as the son of God. And so you have here the use of the Psalms by Jesus himself, the use of the Psalms by the apostles. Peter on Pentecost at Pentecost preaches the resurrection from the end of Psalm 16. And also he uses that favorite passage from Psalm 110. Of course, not only do you have direct quotations and allusions, but you have many similarities. Think of the hymns in the opening chapters of the Gospel of Luke, which are largely composed of quotations from the Psalms, in which the language and atmosphere of the Psalms is reproduced in the New Testament in connection with the birth of Christ. And if you go to the end of the New Testament, the book of Revelation, you again find songs of praise to God that have a structure very similar to the Psalms. So all through the Scriptures we see the echoes of the Psalms. Now, the first main point I want to make is that the covenant theology of the Psalter points to Christ. The Psalms are a response to the covenant mercy of the Lord. The Psalms are memorial utterances. And I would direct your attention to the book of Deuteronomy and the 31st chapter, where you see the function that the Psalms have in the covenant as God himself defines that function. Deuteronomy 31 verse 19 God says to Moses now therefore Write you this song for you and teach it to the children of Israel Put it in their mouths that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel and there you have the song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 which is given as a witness from God. Thank you very much. Who does not have one of these? Everyone have one now? We're looking now at Roman numeral one, the covenant theology of the Psalter points to Christ. And then, A, response to the covenant mercy of the Lord, and at first, the Psalms as memorial utterance. Praise as God's witness to his covenant. In that passage that I just read from Deuteronomy 31, write this song, teach it to the children of Israel, put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel. Now, you know, the law is called God's witness, isn't it? arc of the covenant is called the arc of the witness, the arc of the testimony. It's the witness that God makes to his own covenant in the tablets of stone. So the tablets of stone are a witness, but here the Lord talks about another form of witness, written not on tablets of stone, but written on their hearts. They're to memorize this song, and they're to sing it. And as they use it, as they speak it, their own lips will be the witness of God. Now notice, he doesn't say that it will be their witness to me, he says it will be my witness against them. See, now it's interesting, because one might suppose in the abstract that the law would be God's words spoken to Israel, and then the Psalms would be Israel's words spoken to God. But, well, in a sense that's true, there is the response of the Psalms, yes, but it's an inspired response, don't you see? God gives it. And this song of Moses is a God-given song. He gives it so it will be a witness against Israel. And when you read it, you see how true that is. The whole thing is reproving Israel. Verse three, I will proclaim the name of the Lord, ascribe greatness to our God, the Rock, his work is perfect, all his ways are justice, a God of faithfulness without iniquity, just and right is he. But how about Israel? They have dealt corruptly with him, they are not his children, it's their blemish, a perverse and crooked generation. a language of condemnation against Israel. You may recall how the Apostle Paul uses those words in relation to the church, but gives them an interesting reverse twist. In Philippians chapter 2 verse 14, he says, do all things without murmurings and questioning. Now, Israel did everything in the wilderness with murmurings and questioning. That's what they were always doing. And then he says that you may become blameless and harmless children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. So, what Moses said of Israel, that you are blemished, you are a crooked and perverse generation. Paul says, through the grace of God and Jesus Christ, we may become blameless and harmless children of God in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. So, obviously, in this song, in Deuteronomy 32, we have condemnation of Israel and justification of God. So it's a song that has its origin in God's revelation, and while people sing it, they sing it as part of the divine witness, the witness of God's revealed truth. And what is true of this psalm in the book of Moses continues to be true of the other psalms. They are God-given psalms. They are psalms that expose not only the lamentations of the people of God, but they are psalms that expose the sins of the people of God and show the faithfulness of God as the God of the covenant. So I wanted to make that point, lest we begin to think of the Psalms in a completely subjectivistic way, lest we begin to think of the Psalms just as expressing the agonies of our own hearts and souls, and forget that they're revealed truths, that they tell us about the faithfulness of the God of the covenant. And that praise is the remembrance of God's covenant mercy. On page 32 of Longman's book, he talks about how the psalms are psalms of remembrance, how they bring to mind the faithfulness of God over the years. and how God's acts are celebrated in the Psalms by way of remembrance. The Exodus is often referred to, I've given you that reference in Psalm 77. The acts of God through David, the history of David is recapitulated in some of the Psalms, bearing witness to God's faithfulness to David. And the exiles who are brought back, their celebration of God's faithfulness to them in Psalm 147. So you have many memorial utterances and then covenant service in worship. That is to say, the Psalms not only memorialize God's saving acts and celebrate His faithfulness, they also offer to God the worship and praise of His people. God claims His people for Himself, and they are called to worship Him, to adore Him. In the book of Exodus, the demand that God made of Pharaoh was let my people go that they may serve me. And there the Hebrew word avadh is used, and avadh may mean liturgical service. It may mean the worship of God, praising his name. But avadh also has a very broad meaning. God is the Lord and his people are his servants. So, this is the basic structure of the covenant. God, I will be your God, you will be my people, let my people go that they may serve me." And that service then represents primarily the time of worship at Mount Sinai. Let them go to celebrate this Feast of Yahweh. Let them go in order to serve the Lord in the wilderness. But of course it means more than that. It means ultimately that the people had been Pharaoh's servants. He was their Lord and they had been his servants. But God says, now, you let my people go, they're going to serve me. I'm their Lord, and they are my servants. So the Psalms reflect the service of the people of God in worship. Now, we'll have a little more opportunity to discuss this. There's a book on public worship that's being prepared for publication now from a conference that was held in Cambridge, England last fall, and theologians from different parts of the world participated in it. And one New Testament scholar who got his doctorate in Cambridge, a man named Peterson, he teaches at a seminary in Australia. Anglican Seminary in Australia, he defended the thesis quite vigorously that worship in the New Testament does not refer to cultus, does not refer to the actual action of gathering together to worship God, that worship always has the broad meaning He came close to saying it exclusively had the broad meaning, but he did back away from that finally. But his concern was to make the point of how broad the concept of worship in the New Testament is. And he's certainly right about that. The focus in the New Testament is not on what we would call public worship as the great emphasis of New Testament teaching. I think it's taken for granted that that's going on, but the great emphasis in the New Testament is on the totality of our worship, that all of our lives are to be rendered to God in worship, and that we're to encourage one another really in a life of worship. And Peterson's essay, which I hope you can get to read one of these days when it gets published, it's published under the auspices of the World Evangelical Fellowship that sponsored the conference, so it'll probably come out in this country from Baker. But I hope that you'll read that because it's significant and I appreciated very much the the weight of his arguments and the thoroughness of his examination of New Testament evidence. I thought at first he was trying to prove too much, but I think he did finally make it clear that he was not denying that there is such a thing as public worship as part of the requirement of the New Testament. But the broader sense of worship is certainly something we need to think about. Let my people go that they may serve me. You see, that does mean serve him at Sinai. I stand before his presence at Sinai. The elders go up in the mountain to sit down and eat bread before God. It does involve the public cultus of worship in the Old Testament structure of that cultus. Now, however, it also involves the broad relationship of the covenant and what the Psalms reflect are the broad range of our worship of the Lord, living our life before God. Yet, the Psalms do also focus on the public action of worship. Just think of how the psalmist longs for the courts of the Lord and wants to be in the presence of God. Now, of course, there's a big difference in the Old Testament and the New, because in the New there is no longer a sacred place as there is in the Old. But, so there's no longer our desire to be in an actual building in order to worship God. Yet, there is, I think, an analogy, a desire to be in the midst of the people of God. A desire to praise God together with His saints. A desire not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, but to gather before the Lord. So, what we do then, in public worship, is to praise God's name, but it would be a great mistake to think that the Psalms have their locale, as it were, only in public worship, that you only sing the Psalms when you're in church. The Psalms should be ringing in our hearts. They should be our song at all times. Now, I come to a delicate subject here, because, see, I can't carry a tune. And I can't even whistle successfully. I can make the noise, but not in the tune. And I have to admit to you, and I regret this admission, I have never through my whole life been able to sing to God's praise in private worship. As soon as I start, I realize I've missed the tune again, that I've wandered off into a never-never land in between the notes And I just can't shake that feeling that this isn't working. I don't know. Maybe it's not too late for me to do something because I miss it. I wish I could. You know, I would I would enjoy that. Once in a while, some terrible ditty-type tune gets embalmed, I started to say, and I can't shake it off. I remember driving for 45 miles one time, singing in my own fashion, Heaven is a Wonderful Place, Full of Glory and Grace. I mean, that was not very edifying. I thought I could follow the tune for a while. But now, I'm speaking to people who don't have this disability. And I recommend to you what I can do. If you can sing, please do it. Sing aloud to the glory of God. Sing in your private meditations. Praise His name. Some of you, I guess most of you have heard of Dr. Vint Hill at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. And he and his wife were very close. he was devastated at the time of his wife's illness and death and I went to visit his wife one time in the hospital when she was there with her last illness and I came to the hospital room door and it was closed and you know you don't want to barge in too quickly if the hospital door is closed but I just waited for a moment outside and Then I heard these groanings and I thought, oh my, the dear lady is in a bad way, but I better look in on her anyway. So I opened the door and then I discovered that it was not groaning, that she and Dr. Vintil were singing together. They were singing the Psalms. And for that matter, they were singing the Psalms in Dutch, I believe, because at that moment she wanted her mother tongue, you know. But it was beautiful, see, it was beautiful. Even though the music was not exactly of concert variety, but I hope you do that. I don't want to ask for a show of hands or something, but I'm sure many of you do that regularly. You sing as you praise God. Jonathan Edwards said that it was his custom when he was walking in the fields meditating to sing aloud his praises of God. And you Well, as you know, many of the Puritans were very, very hard on people that prayed silently because they saw all the booby traps in silent prayer. You try to pray mentally and you often forget what you're praying about and get distracted. But if you pray aloud, it does help to keep you on track. I don't know what your practice of prayer has been that way. I still find that when I pray aloud, my thoughts go faster than my lips and I end up praying mentally, which Puritans disapprove of. But still, sing aloud. You can't sing mentally, can you? I wish I could. So, sing aloud. Sing the praises of the Lord. Remember that. That we're proclaiming the name of the Lord in worship. We do that in private. We do that together in public. But it's something that ought to be a tune that rings through our lives. You see, we are his people. We are serving him. And the Psalms certainly reflect life experiences, don't they? And not just the superscriptions to the Psalms that often give a historical setting in connection with a particular Psalm, but the whole thrust of the Psalms comes right out of life experience. I guess that's obvious and I don't need to belabor the point, but it's worth thinking about, isn't it? That so often we lead secular lives, And don't practice the presence of God. Don't praise Him as we go about our business. Don't be singing His praises as we should be. And don't be bringing before Him also our problems and our complaints and our grief and the agony of our soul. Don't you see how the Psalms are are living songs. They're lived out expressions of those who walk with God, those who know that the relationship to God counts, and who are aware of their membership among the people of God. Anybody have a comment on that? Anybody want to mention something about that? Yes. Yes. Yes. It's a lot to reflect on there, isn't there? It is the memory device. That's why God gave it to Israel, so that they would remember it and be on their lips. And He gives to us the whole riches of Christian hymnody, so that we might remember these things. And we miss out if we don't sing them. I think maybe I should repent and just go sing in private, no matter how it sounds. It sounds so awful. Okay. Well, all right. But the point is, it's a whole structure of our lives that have to be made a fabric of communion with God in praise. In petition, in thanksgiving. See, what we're looking at in the Psalms isn't just, here's something to help you to prepare a Bible study or to preach a sermon. It's, here's how to be living and walking before the God of the covenant. Alright, covenant history. The Psalms and the history of redemption. The covenant promise is claimed. Oh, how full the Psalms are of petition. that claim God's chesed, that claim God's covenant love. The chesed is a very precious word to the psalmist. Every morning I will sing your chesed, your faithfulness. And the word really means devotion. And the context of chesed is loyalty, devotion to your own kin, you know, to your own people. That's part of it. It's the bond that unites you to others, so that you are true to them. That's what constitutes chesed. Some of you have heard me remark this, that the nearest thing you get to it in American life is sports loyalty. You know, people have chesed for a certain team. They're all for the padres or something. I can't imagine why, but they are. And so you get these sports loyalties. It's ridiculous. But it's, you know, to some men, sports loyalty is the most important loyalty in their lives. They're more loyal to their team than to their wives, to their job. The Hasidic Jews, they're the Jews of devotion, the Jews who are devoted to God, you know. But the amazing thing in the Old Testament is that the word is used primarily not of our devotion to God, but of God's devotion to us. His Hasidic. Which is love, but love that has the bonds of steel in it are far stronger than steel. The bond that unites God to his people, the bond that will not break, the bond of his faithfulness. God says, I can't forget you. The chesed of the Almighty. And that's what the Psalms keep praying about. Oh Lord, remember your chesed, remember your faithfulness. Remember, the bond of your devotion to us, which of course has established all of grace. Now, there have been some studies of Chesed done in Old Testament circles that see the bond, but don't see the grace. They actually look at it as though, you know, God had sort of got tied in with Israel, and so he's accountable to Israel. Well, they're right in seeing the bond. But what they don't see is the almost, I almost want to say, absurdity of it. You know, that he's not bound by anything but his sheer love. It's not that Israel owes it, that God owes it to Israel. He doesn't owe that rebellious people anything. It's that he gives it. But the people have a right to claim it. And the Psalms of Lament all assume the covenant bond. The We Psalms give the cry of God's people for Him to remember Chesed. And the I Psalms give the cry of God's King, of King David, as the representative psalmist, crying out for the Chesed of God. And just a point there, obviously this is one clear point of difference in the psalms. Some psalms are written in the first person singular, some psalms are written in the first person plural, either I or we. And the point of the I psalm is not that they're totally different from the we psalms. It's not that you have the people of God calling upon him in the we songs, and then in the I songs you just have a lonely, isolated, remote individual. No, no, because the one who speaks in the singular is characteristically David, the king. And he speaks as the king, he speaks as God's servant, he speaks as the representative of the people, you know. And what happens to him is happening to the people. And his enemies are the enemies of God's people. So the king identifies with the people. You don't think of the individual in the Psalms as Mr. Israel, not just any man, you know, the man in the street, it's not that. The Psalms, the private Psalms by their very recording for the use among the people of God are made public property, you see. And the people know they can identify with their king, and they know the king identifies with his people. So the Psalms are not like private poetry is today. You know, individual poems today are sometimes so private that you can't even understand what they're about. or they're so private that you're almost embarrassed. But you see, in the Psalms, there's an identification between the king and the people. and both claim God's chesed. And we'll look at some of these passages as we go along. And then the Psalms also contain confessions of trust in which the chesed of God is acknowledged. Acknowledged in a way that gives assurance. The psalmist can not only plead God's chesed in a lament but he can also praise God for that hesed in a psalm of trust. You know, in Psalm 22, which contains all the elements that you find really in all the psalms, you have the lamentation My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" and so on. But then, right, blended in with that, you get expressions of trust, that the psalmist was known and loved of God when he was still a tiny child, that he could trust in the Lord. I'll just take a moment to look at a couple of those verses. You see, the lament at the beginning of Psalm 22, why are you so far from helping me from the words of my groaning? I cry and you answer not, and so on. But then notice verse 3. But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in thee, they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee and were delivered. They trusted in me and were not put to shame. You see, God's faithfulness is a source of assurance. And then again, down in verse 9, But thou art he that took me out of the womb, thou didst make me trust when I was upon my mother's breast. I was cast upon me from the womb, thou art my God since my mother bare me. You see, there's that assurance that God is the God of the psalmist. that he knows that, that from his very conception he's set apart, he belongs to the Lord, the bond exists. so he can trust in God. So there are many such expressions of assurance and of trust. And then you also get the covenant promise made the basis of a vow of a thank offering which will be offered as confessing the terms of the covenant. And I've given you a whole string of references there, where you get examples of the thank offering motif in the psalms. And it goes back to the book of Leviticus, to the form that God gave for the thank offering. You know, when someone made a vow, In a time of distress, someone would make a vow to the Lord. This is not a practice that was exclusive to Israel, of course. It's always been a practice of what you could call foxhole religion. You know, Lord, if you get me out of this, I'm going to show that I'm really grateful. The psalmist in the context of the covenant would say to the Lord, Lord I make my vow to you and when you deliver me then I will bring an offering of thanksgiving to give thanks to you for that deliverance. And what's remarkable in the structure of the psalms is the way in which the deliverance is always anticipated before it actually happens. The psalms are written out of the fire of affliction, but the psalmist is always sure that he's going to be able to come and give his thanks to God. That happens in this 22nd Psalm that's perhaps still open before you. The plea in verse 21, save me from the lion's mouth. Yes, from the horns of the wild oxen you have answered me. The NIV changes that, I think, wrongly. The beginning of 21 is the petition of the psalm. Save me from the lion's mouth. And then you notice what he says in verse 22. I will declare your name unto my brothers in the midst of the assembly will I praise you. See, there's the thank offering. he's going to come into the congregation of God's people and present his offerings of thanksgiving and then verse 25 from you comes my praise in the great assembly I will pay my vows before them that fear him and this is a common motif in the Psalms that out of the furnace of affliction the psalmist promises that when God delivers him then he's going to come and offer his thank offerings and praise God in the midst of the assembly. We'll be seeing how all of these elements are drawn together with Jesus. Psalm 22 verse 22 you know is quoted in the second chapter of Hebrews, in the midst of the congregation, will I sing thy praise. So Jesus is identified not only as the one who says, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me at the beginning of the psalm, but he's also identified as the one who offers his vow of praise at the end, in the midst of the congregation will I sing my praise. So you have these confessions of trust, the vow of thank-offering, and then you have God's justice as covenant vindication. Now, it disturbs us sometimes when we read Psalms where the psalmist is always telling how innocent he is, how righteous he is, how he hasn't been walking as the evil men walk, or he hasn't shared their evil deeds and so on, and he's righteous, and Lord defend me because I'm righteous. Well, one element that enters into that is that this is language you often find in a special class of Psalms called the Psalms of Refuge. and I've given you the numbers of the main refuge psalms there. Now of course that language of refuge is spread throughout the psalms, but the background of that is the ordinance of the cities of refuge that you find in the book of Leviticus. There were certain cities of refuge where somebody who had killed one somebody else by accident could flee to the city of refuge to find a little safety from vengeance on the part of the kin of the murdered man, of the slain man. So, and of course the main place of refuge was the altar of the temple in Jerusalem, and that would be built. Remember how Joab sought that refuge in vain from the of Solomon, but that was the idea. Now, the psalmist, again and again in the psalms, is saying, I'm accused by my enemies of wrongdoing. I'm being accused. People are bringing suit against me. They are finding me to be evil, a betrayer, etc. And Lord, these accusations are false. I'm innocent. I plead innocent. I plead not guilty. Well now, you see, he's not saying he's totally without sin. He's saying that the accusations of my enemies are false. And I am the clearer of this transgression of which they're accusing me. And so the Psalms of refuge say, Lord, I'm not going to a city of refuge, I'm going to you as my refuge. You are my refuge in my tower, in my fortress. I run to you and I'm safe. And Lord, I'm appealing my case to you. I'm taking my case to the highest court. and I'm bringing it to you." Now, of course, that happened also in the city of refuge context, because the fugitive was kept only until a time that there could be a trial, but then ultimately the case would come before God, you see, because the judges would judge in God's name. So the psalmist is saying, You're my judge. I'm taking my case directly to you. And Lord, I'm innocent as charged. Charges are false. And Lord, I plead with you, vindicate your covenant. Show your righteousness. Show your justice. Show that you are the just judge of all the earth. And defend me against my accusers. Now, notice that even in psalms like this, there is the confession of guilt on the part of the accused. He's not saying that, Psalm 69.5 is an instance of that. He's not saying that he's innocent of all transgression, but he's saying he's innocent of the accusations that have been brought against him. And then out of this also comes another kind of element in the psalms, the imprecatory psalms, in which God's justice and judgment is sought against those who are the enemies of God and of his kingdom. If God is going to be just, many must punish sin, and the psalmist does cry out that that evil that the enemies have done should justly be placed upon them. Let that be done to them that they have done to others. Let justice be meted out to them. Now we'll have to discuss more later about the imprecatory psalms. In the little two-volume, I guess there's a one-volume edition of it too, Kidner's book on the Psalms in the Tyndale Old Testament commentary series. This is an excellent commentary. It's very good because Kidner, he certainly keeps abreast of the scholarship of the Psalms, but he writes in a very devotional way, so it's very helpful. He has a good section on the Imprecatory Psalms in the introduction to his book, and we'll talk about that some more. But just now I'm pointing out that in the Imprecatory Psalms, what is being demanded is God's covenantal faithfulness. that he would manifest his righteousness by delivering the psalmist. Now that leads to a very interesting development, and with this I want to close this hour. Very interesting development. Look at Psalm 51 verse 14. 51, 14. I'm using the old American Standard Version of 19.1. Nobody uses that anymore. But I like it. And one of the greatest virtues that it has, some of you have heard me say this, it's got every verse in exactly the right place on every page. And a lot of Bibles don't have that. And if you don't know the reference, but you only know it's halfway down in the left-hand column of the left-hand page, you can find it very quickly, you see. Well, here it is. Verse 14. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness, or justice. Now, come on. Deliver me from blood guilt, David the murderer, the adulterer and the murderer. Deliver me from blood guilt, and I will sing aloud of your righteousness. Now, how could he, how could he praise God's righteousness for delivering him from a justifiable charge of murder. Doesn't it seem to be a flat contradiction? That's a very important verse in the Old Testament, very important, because it shows, it really is preparing you for the doctrine of justification in the New Testament. And how that comes about is well worth reflecting on. The way it comes about is something like this. God, by his chesed, is committed to the salvation and the deliverance of his people. So that means that he will bring judgment against their enemies, and preserve them from their enemies, and give them victory from their enemies, you see. But then it also means that God's righteousness is shown as he's faithful to his covenant promises, delivering them from their enemy. But now you see, David carries that, as it were, one step further. That God, in his covenanted mercy, will deliver his people even from their sins. And will show himself to be the righteous and just God, by the marvelous way in which he will do that. You know, you get the same thing in the prophets. You get God telling the people that he will not only trample underfoot their enemies, but he will also trample underfoot their sins. the end of the prophecy of Micah. Who is the God, verse 18, chapter 7, who is the God like unto thee that pardons iniquity and passes over the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? He retains not his anger forever because he delights in chesed. He will again have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities underfoot, and you will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. You will perform the truth to Jacob and the chesed to Abraham, which you swore to our fathers from the days of old." Now in the immediately preceding chapter there, there's God's victory over their enemies. God will do mighty things. He will deliver them. The nation shall see and be ashamed, they shall lay their hand upon their mouth, their ears shall be deaf, they shall lick the dust like a serpent, like crawling things in the earth, they shall come trembling out of their close places, they shall come with fear unto the Lord our God, and shall be afraid because of thee." So there's a complete triumph over the enemies, but then also a triumph over their sins. And God will show his chesed, show himself to be righteous. by the way in which he triumphs over the very transgressions of his people. You see, that's the Old Testament preparation for the New Testament full exposition of justification. Of course, in the Old Testament you have the symbolism of the sacrifice, but in the New Testament you have the reality that shows how God can be just, and yet the justifier of him that believes in Jesus. Okay, we'll stop at this point.