Jesus In Every Psalm
We all know that the Psalms contain many prophecies about Christ. But I’m here to propose a new idea. That the Psalms are ALL prophecies of Christ.
Let that sink in. The thesis is, that every single Psalm is a prophecy written by Jesus, about Jesus, and FOR Jesus. Now as you read the psalms, you’re going to find verses that appear to blatantly contradict what I just said; and whether or not they do remains to be seen.
The fact is, we don’t know much about Christ, as a person. We know a lot about what He said in the gospels; but not much about Him, personally. A few things He did, a few things He felt, but very little about what He THOUGHT. How many times do you recall Jesus sharing His thoughts with the disciples?
So we have a lot to learn about who Jesus really is. And that means we need to be open-minded about what we don’t know. I have said that every single verse in every single Psalm is about Christ. Now let me tell you how I came to that conclusion.
Acts 13:22 And when he had removed him, he raised up unto them David to be their king; to whom also he gave testimony, and said, I have found David the son of Jesse, A MAN AFTER MINE OWN HEART, which shall fulfil all my will.
Bear in mind that Jesus is the “God” of the Old Testament. So when God said “I have found David, a man after my own heart”, it means JESUS found in David a man after His own heart. God never uses that phrase with anyone else in the Bible. Abraham was His friend; but David’s heart was like Jesus’.
In my article “Saul, Satan, and Samuel”, I show that David was a type of Christ; that things David did on a physical level as a man pictured things that Jesus did on a spiritual level as God. I’ve also said in “Father Forgive Them (The Angry Jesus)” that all of Psalms 69 and Psalm 109 were prayers Christ prayed before His death on the stake.
Those two psalms show a picture of Jesus you’ve never heard of before; it can’t be denied that they are about Jesus, for they are interspersed with a half-dozen references that tie directly to Christ that last day; and yet they say things we would never expect Christ to say; asking God to pronounce curses on those killing Him and their families, having all they possess stolen, cursing their children, blotting not only their names, but the names of their parents out of the book of life, some really vicious “unloving” things. And yet Jesus thought them hanging there on the stake.
This shows a dimension to Jesus’ nature that is not understood by anyone to my knowledge. He was wrongfully accused, being murdered for no crime but teaching the truth, dying for people who killed Him. And He wanted to see JUSTICE done! But, then He realized that these people “knew not what they did”, and so concluded by saying “Father, forgive them”. In other words, canceling His prayer.
Well, the Psalms reveal a lot of new things like that about Jesus’ nature; Things that make Him more real, more practical, more… Human. As you read through the Psalms, there is at least one scripture in every Psalm that MUST be about Christ; and if that many are about Christ, why not all of them?
David was a man who was like Jesus; He was a man inspired by Jesus. A man who spoke as if he WERE Jesus, unwittingly prophesying of the exact way Jesus would feel a millennium later when He walked this Earth. Now I don’t pretend to have extracted all of that information out of the Psalms, but I have learned enough to be certain it’s all there.
I can’t possibly talk about every reference to Jesus in the psalms; but read through them looking for references about Christ; I’ll go through the first few myself real quick just to give you an idea, then work on the interesting stuff I’ve learned already.
JESUS IN PSALMS
Psalms 1:3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
Jesus represents the tree of life (See my article on the “Tree of Life”). Compare this verse to Revelation 22:2, Ezekiel 47:12.
Psalms 2:7 I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.
Note that this Psalm is FIRST PERSON; the Lord (the Father) said to ME (Jesus) you are my SON. So although David writes it, he is writing it as the person of Jesus in this prophecy.
Psalms 3:1-2 LORD, how are they increased that trouble me! many are they that rise up against me. Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God. Selah.
Doesn’t look like a prophecy at first; but compare to this verse:
Matthew 27:43 He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God.
Psalms 4:2-3 O ye sons of men, how long will ye turn my glory into shame? how long will ye love vanity, and seek after leasing? Selah. But know that the LORD hath set apart him that is godly for himself: the LORD will hear when I call unto him.
Verse 1 is David talking TO God, and David then addresses the “sons of Men” demanding “how long will you turn MY GLORY into shame”. Which fits Jesus much better than David. Jesus, who was “Godly” and whom God “set apart”.
Psalms 5:9 For there is no faithfulness in their mouth; their inward part is very wickedness; their throat is an open sepulchre; they flatter with their tongue.
This one is more vague than most; in such short Psalms, it’s bound to be hard to find a direct quote to a NT concept; but still, if you compare this to Matthew 23:27 you see a distinct similarity. All the Psalms, and most verses, can be fit into the New Testament in some way – many of them are much clearer, some we all know, some we don’t.
Everyone knows about Psalms 2, 22 and 110; but known references to Christ are scattered throughout the Psalms; a few quick examples which need no explanation:
Psalms 118:22 The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.
Psalms 55:12 –14 For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it: … But it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of God in company.
Psalms 41:9 Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.
My thesis is, there are so many certain references to Jesus, what if ALL are references to Jesus? If absolute evidence of Jesus can be found in every Psalm – or, considering the extreme brevity of some Psalms, in at least 90% of them – then proof of concept would be established, which is all that can be expected for now as the whole point of the thesis is that Psalms is an almost unknown field of study to find vast new dimensions of the nature of Jesus – things we otherwise couldn’t know. Having read through the Psalms with this in mind, I am convinced that distinct references are found in over 90% of them. And that, with the evidence already presented, leads me strongly to believe that EVERY verse is about Jesus.
There are some obvious objections to that, however. But rather than assume they can’t be explained, let’s try to see if they can fit with a hitherto unknown dimension of the nature of Jesus. It will be helpful if you have read “The Two Sacrifices of Jesus” at this point, because it will lay the groundwork for the next chapter, without it you may not understand what I mean when I say…
THE SINS OF GOD
This is a doctrine that is so unorthodox that just saying it means you’ve probably already stopped reading or ran off into the woods crossing yourself and screaming “Heretic!” – But on the off chance you didn’t, this is a very simple concept that is quite easy to prove – but impossible to prove to someone who refuses to believe it. Let me approach it this way:
If I build a pit and someone falls in it, it’s my fault – whether I push them or not, the pit wouldn’t have been there if I hadn’t dug it, and so I am at fault (Exodus 21:33-34). If I don’t fence a roof and someone falls off, God holds me responsible (Deuteronomy 22:8). If my ox gores a man, I am told that he does it and I don’t kill the ox or make it impossible for him to harm others, and he does it again, then I bear the death penalty. (Exodus 21:28-29). GOD SAYS I SHOULD DIE FOR THE SINS OF MY OX THAT I DON’T MANAGE!
Think about that! I am in charge of my ox; and I can’t necessarily keep the ox from deciding one day to be evil and charge at someone and killing them. If it does, the oxen simply dies and I’m not at fault. But if I KNOW that the oxen is evil and attacks people all the time, and I don’t stop it and it kills someone, MY LIFE PAYS FOR THE SINS OF MY OX!
This is absolutely basic Biblical law.
Now the Being who became Jesus created Lucifer (John 1:3). Lucifer sinned. He hurt others. Murdered them (John 8:44). Jesus knew about it. But He did not stop Lucifer. God created this “pit” that Adam fell into – Lucifer – and no, He didn’t push Adam into it – but neither did He fence that pit.
God knew that this “ox” was evil, knew it charged at people and killed them, but didn’t lift a finger to stop him. No, He didn’t even build a fence to keep Satan out of the Garden, and He surely could have. And so yes, it’s Lucifer that sinned – but by not immediately punishing and controlling Lucifer to prevent future harm, Jesus bore the blame.
I understand how shocking this is, believe me. But find a flaw in the logic. God is not above the law! The buck may be passed through person after person as Adam passed it to Eve and Eve passed it to the Serpent, but eventually where does the buck always stop? With the person who has the most authority; with the person who was ABLE to stop it, and yet did not stop it. In short, it stops with God.
Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and CREATE EVIL: I the LORD do all these things.
God says “I create evil”. He doesn’t quibble about it or shirk the responsibility; God is in absolute control of the universe; His will is DONE in heaven (Matthew 6:10). And Job 1 clearly reveals that Satan is only allowed to do what God permits him to do. And God CLEARLY could have stopped him the very first time he sinned – before he whispered the first lie to the first angel – and yet God did not. And so the buck stops there.
Just as the man who rules his house is responsible for the sins of his children and bears the blame for their actions, so God bears the responsibility for his children – including Lucifer – and the blame for their continued sins. That is incontrovertible logic.
Let me be blunt; this does NOT mean that we’re not responsible, or that Satan is not responsible! We SINNED. Satan SINNED. It is OUR FAULT. But when God – specifically, Jesus – allowed us to sin AGAIN, HE became a partaker of our sins.
Leviticus 19:17 (Douay) Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart, but reprove him openly, lest THOU incur SIN THROUGH HIM
God says that if we see someone sinning, and don’t rebuke Him, we bear His sin! We can actually be blamed for THEIR sins because we didn’t judge them! And so when God permitted us to live in sin without delivering the penalty we had earned – death – and thereby preventing us from hurting others with MORE sins, then He became tainted with that sin Himself. Even though He had never sinned, the blame for the sins of others “rubbed off” on Him.
And Jesus bore the blame for this sin. The Bible says in several places that it was Jesus who made ALL things. Not the Father. John 1:1 says that the Word – Jesus – was with God, and was God. From that I infer that Jesus was equal with the Father in the beginning; and that then Jesus chose to be the one who was tainted by responsibility for sin and the Father became the one who would remain untouched by the responsibility. And that is why Jesus MUST rule the kingdom until all enemies are destroyed!
1 Corinthians 15:25, 28 For he MUST reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. … And when all things shall be subdued unto him, THEN SHALL THE SON ALSO HIMSELF BE SUBJECT UNTO HIM that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.
How many times have you read this scripture? Have you EVER noticed the obvious meaning? I’ve read it hundreds of times, and just recently realized it says, very plainly, that Jesus is NOT now subject to the Father! Read it and see! It says THEN shall the Son be subject to the Father! Not now! But THEN!
Whether it’s what you’ve believed or not, this scripture says that it is not until ALL THINGS are subdued – death itself being put away – it is only THEN that the Son shall be subject to the Father! Read that scripture carefully, for much new understanding hinges on it! Jesus must REIGN until then, for if Jesus stops reigning and turns over the kingdom to His Father NOW, then the Father would either have to kill us all and judge us for our sins, or be tainted by the same sins Jesus is!
And so Jesus MUST reign until all enemies are put under His feet; until all are reconciled to God who can be; and THEN He will subject Himself to the Father once and for all. With that said, I can go back to the Psalms and illustrate this another way.
David asked God to forgive his iniquities; cleanse his sins. And I have said that this is a prophecy of Christ; of Jesus talking to the Father. And now read this verse and see the sense it makes:
Psalms 51:3-4 For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.
There is a lot there to talk about, so we’ll be here for awhile. What sins and transgressions would Jesus be talking about? If what I’ve said is correct, the toleration of the sins of Lucifer, Adam, and you is the context. And now see the next verse; “against you, you only have I sinned”. Jesus, as a God or man, NEVER harmed anyone!
Jesus never broke the law Himself. He never stole, lied, cheated, or did ANYTHING that hurt ANYONE. His ONLY sin was in permitting men and angels to continue to sin without judging us for it. This was the ONLY wrong Jesus had ever done. But that was enough to make Him bear the blame for sins of others, and that was “evil in God’s sight”!
Yes, it was part of the plan, but God is not above His law! Just because God wants something, doesn’t mean He can break or bend the law to make it happen! Sin was tolerated, and someone must pay!
As I said above, Jesus made the universe so Jesus bears the blame; God the Father will not possess the universe until the universe is completely purified from sin, and therefore will not ever bear the blame for sin! And so now the next part of the verse comes into focus:
Psalms 51:4 Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.
Jesus said that He sinned ONLY against the Father; and that He did it – bore the blame for Man’s sin – so that the FATHER might be justified when HE speaks, and CLEAR when HE judges! He bore the blame for Man so that the Father wouldn’t have to! And it is on that grounds that He begs for the Father’s forgiveness!
This is speaking of Jesus before He became a man. The next verses speak of His being formed in the womb of Mary, where He was “shaped in iniquity” as all men are, with a carnal nature (verse 5) and then continues in verse 9 picking up at the time of His resurrection:
Verses 9-12 Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and RENEW a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. RESTORE unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.
And here we find proof that this really was about Jesus, and that I’m not making all this up; God is asked to “renew a right spirit within me”, and “restore unto me the joy of your salvation”; But David HAD NEVER HAD A RIGHT SPIRIT! He may have had a good spirit, but in the ideal sense David’s spirit was NEVER right – but Jesus’ had been!
David had never known “the joy of God’s salvation” – but Jesus had! Jesus asked God, as a man, something very similar:
John 17:5 And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.
Jesus is asking for the GLORY He had once had, just as He had asked, through David, to be restored to the joy of God’s salvation! And to RENEW a right spirit within Him – something only Jesus had ever had!
Psalms 51:13-15 Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee. Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.
And this was Jesus’ job all along; not David’s. I don’t recall any examples of David converting sinners; but Jesus did convert a few! Jesus had never sinned. Ever. But He allowed others to sin who were under His control, and so He bore the blame for their sin. He was perfect in every detail, except in this ONE thing; and that was a sin only against God, not against men.
David, likewise, had only one flaw in His long life.
1 Kings 15:5 Because David did that which was right in the eyes of the LORD, and turned not aside from any thing that he commanded him all the days of his life, save ONLY in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.
And it was about the “matter of Uriah” that Psalms 51 was written. This is the hardest Psalm to apply to Christ, because it is so foreign to everything we’ve ever heard about Christ; but I ask you again, how could God not be ultimately responsible for what God permits in his dominion? And if responsible, how could He be not tainted by the results of the sins He permits?
There is another, unrelated way to prove this point. In my articles “Geography of Salvation” and “Styx And Stones And Resurrected Bones” I show that the Jordan river represents the division between the promised land and the wilderness – between the kingdom of God and the rest of the world. Between life, and death. And when Joshua, the Savior – the Hebrew spelling of Jesus – led the children of Israel into the promised land, it was certain that it was a type of Jesus leading the first resurrection people into eternal life. The REAL promised land.
And as Joshua entered the promised land, the very first day, all the Israelites were circumcised. After that, fresh into the promised land that same day, God told him something…
Joshua 5:9 And the LORD said unto Joshua, This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you. Wherefore the name of the place is called Gilgal unto this day.
What reproach? They left Egypt 40 years ago. Joshua hadn’t done anything wrong since then that is recorded. They had been baptized in the red sea and in the cloud (1 Corinthians 10:2), accepted the covenant at Sinai, Pharoah was dead with all his henchman and Egypt left in ruins. All the Israelites who tempted God in the wilderness had died. So WHAT POSSIBLE REPROACH could Joshua still have left over from Egypt??
That Joshua pictures a type of Jesus is beyond serious dispute. And so what reproach might JESUS be under, when He leads the children of Israel into the heavenly promised land? Egypt pictures sin. Pharoah, the King of Sin. And as I’ve said, all of Lucifer’s sin and all of the sins of mankind ever since – in short, all of the sins of Egypt – fall ultimately and squarely on the shoulders of Jesus. So Jesus is under a REPROACH from the Father – the reproach Jesus repents of in Psalms 51 – and that reproach will not be removed until He leads the children of God into the promised land!
On that day, God will roll away the reproach of Egypt because He will have finally judged those who were unworthy and dealt with them, and saved those who were worthy, and now the job is done! And so the reproach for those people is REMOVED from Him!
Doesn’t that fit seamlessly with the Psalms, and with what we KNOW the Law must require of the Creator of Life and the Person who has permitted us to sin with only limited punishments?
Surely, to speak of the sins of God is the rankest blasphemy, but who can deny that the buck stops there? And the proof this concept allows us to explain the occasional mention of “sins” in the Psalms in light of this reproach the Father still holds over Jesus’ head.
So this has been part 1; part 2 will build on the various new things we can learn from this concept. For there is MUCH that is now revealed about the true thoughts and nature of Jesus, for we now have access to one of the most personal documents He could have left for us; because the truth of the matter is …
The Psalms are the Diary of Jesus.