Singing the Psalms in Christ - Humiliation
By Ben Petersen, 25 Apr 2023
In these two posts we’ll be thinking about reading (and singing!) the Psalms as Christians. Previously we’ve said that the Psalms are about Jesus. They’re God’s prophetic word about the Messiah to come. And we’ve said that the Psalms are for Jesus, too. They’re the songs God’s given to his people, and the person who leads us singing them is the Prophet, Priest and King who is the head of the people. For more on why we’re convinced of both these things, see this blog post.
But I know lots of us still find it quite hard to pick up exactly how they’re about Jesus. And that’s fine because we’re all learning together. So, these two posts, I pray, will help us tune into some of the ways the Psalms are about, and for, the Lord Jesus.
Humiliation and Exaltation
The church has typically talked about the ‘two states’ of Jesus: his humiliation, and his exaltation. It’s a movement or journey that goes down and then up. Because this is a faithful summary of Christ’s life and mission, it’s a helpful thing to keep watch for as we read the Psalms. For the rest of this post we’ll see how the Psalms sing about, and for the Lord Jesus as he makes this journey of humiliation.
Four steps of Humiliation[1]
These are points we can plot on the Lord Jesus’ downward journey.
Incarnation
The incarnation is the moment that God the Son became human, the moment that the Holy Spirit created that embryo in Mary’s womb.[2] And the Psalms assume this from minute one. Maybe it’s too obvious to point out, but the King over all the earth of Psalm 2 is the righteous man of Psalm 1. He’s a human King!
In Psalm 8 we see this explicitly:
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings Psalm 8:5
Hebrews 2:7 quotes this and tells us it’s about the incarnation. It assumes that there was a time before he was lower than the angels. He was higher than the angels because he created them.
His becoming human is the start of this downward journey. It’s not where it ends, but it is where it starts. As God himself crosses the uncrossable line to become human. It’s a far more significant moment than we often think. David Shaw puts it like this:
In the beginning God made man. And now in the incarnation we see God made man. In that marvelous moment everything becomes possible; inevitable even. … The empty tomb is already contained in Mary’s womb.[3]
So let’s treasure the glimpses of it we get in the Psalms.[4]
Life
We can also hear Jesus’ voice in words about his whole earthly life. From conception right till the point where he was arrested, put on trial, and nailed to the cross, Jesus’ whole life was one of humiliation. He was laid in a manger, and grew up in a workshop not a palace. He started his ministry by fasting for 40 days and being tempted. While ministering he was opposed by all sorts of people, rejected by his friends and family, had nowhere to lay his head, and betrayed by one of his closest followers.[5]
So, when we read the Psalms and David is just going through the mill, we hear the words prepared for Jesus; as he lives in a fallen world, suffering under the curse every day of his life. Here are just a few examples from the Psalms we’ve preached recently:
Answer me when I call to you, O my righteous God.
Give me relief from my distress; be merciful to me and hear my prayer. Psalm 4:1
David’s crying out in distress. These are words prepared in advance for Jesus to cry out in distress.
Give ear to my words, O LORD, consider my sighing.
Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God, for to you I pray. Psalm 5:1-2
I am worn out from groaning; all night long I flood my couch with tears.
My eyes grow weak with sorrow; they fail because of all my foes. Psalm 6:6
The Lord Jesus lived a life of suffering for you and for me. And that’s especially precious for us as his people because we suffer. Sometimes we suffer for being Christians, sometimes because other people sin against us, and sometimes we just suffer! Whatever reason we suffer, we suffer as people united to Jesus by faith. We’re joined to our suffering king so that his words for his suffering life are for us too, in our suffering lives.
Death
Whenever we hear the King talking about his suffering in the Psalms it’s pointing us towards the cross. But at the same time, there are points where we see Jesus’ death especially clearly.
Here are 3 ways we see it.
- The King’s life is threatened
Often the Psalmist is fearing for his life, and praying that God would keep him, preserve him. It’s so common that I’m sure we just gloss over it. E.g.,
O LORD, how many are my foes! How many rise up against me
Many are saying of me, “God will not deliver him.” Psalm 3:1-2
Turn, O LORD, and deliver me; save me because of your unfailing love.
No-one remembers you when he is dead.
Who praises you from the grave? Psalm 6:4-5
There are all sorts of times when David, the king, faces mortal danger with all sorts of different emotional reactions. These are reactions prepared for the Lord Jesus as he faced death for us! He prayed that God would save him out of the grave, prayed that even this suffering would mean victory over his enemies, wept at the feeling that God has abandoned him. These Psalms give the Lord Jesus words to pray as he faces his own death.
- The King suffering for sin
Mostly when David prays about his own sufferings, it’s because he’s suffering unjustly. But sometimes he’s suffering for his own sin. Now we know that the Lord Jesus didn’t have his own sin to suffer for, so what do we do with that? Well, the very reason he humbled himself in the first place is for our salvation. And that means dying in his people’s place. The head bears the body’s judgment.
In Psalm 38 we hear the king suffering for his sin. He’s overwhelmed by God’s wrath (v1), his back is filled with searing pain (v7). We must understand it in the light of 2 Corinthians 5:21, which says, ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’ Psalm 38 are the words of David suffering for his own sin. But they’re written for Jesus as he’s suffering for David’s sin, and mine, and yours. Psalm 38 is just one example of this.[6]
- New Testament uses
Sometimes the New Testament refers to a Psalm. Sometimes by quoting it directly, sometimes just by hinting towards it. Probably the most famous example is from Psalm 22:1:[7]
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
In Mark’s gospel, while Jesus is hanging on the cross, Mark says this:
And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” - which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Mark 15:34
And then Peter says in Acts 2 that David is talking about Jesus when he says,
I saw the Lord always before me.
Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
My body also will live in hope,
Because you will not abandon me to the grave,
nor will you let your Holy One see decay. Acts 2:25-28
He’s quoting at length from Psalm 16 there!
The New Testament can help us see things we wouldn’t otherwise. And starting with how the New Testament writers, and Jesus himself, understand the Psalms is a great way to see how they speak about Jesus.
Burial
Psalm 16 actually takes us to the last stop on the downward journey, too: the grave. That’s shere Jesus’ humiliation ends. The Psalms ask God not to abandon the singer to the grave.
There’s lots we could say here. But let’s just spot this. Jesus went all the way to the grave. And God heard his prayer, he didn’t leave him there. So, we can pray the same Psalms confident that one day God will raise us too. For some of us, the grave feels eerily near. Don’t just wash over those little references to the grave in the Psalms. They mattered for Jesus. God heard his prayers. And he gave them to us to sing in Christ, too.
Conclusion
Here we’ve seen how having a grasp of the first movement of Jesus’ life and ministry gives us a way in to reading and singing the Psalms as people who are in Christ. In the next post we will see how his exaltation helps us in a similar way.
Click here for part 2 of this series.
[1] The steps I’m highlighting are taken from Jonty Rhodes, Man of Sorrows, King of Glory: What the Humiliation and Exaltation of Jesus Mean for Us (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021), 47–57. This is a great little introduction to the person and work of Jesus.
[2] CS Lewis says this about the incarnation, ‘The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this.’ Quoted in, Primer, 12:3.
[3] Primer, 12:3.
[4] Another astounding verse from Psalm 8 says this: ‘From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise. Because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.’ (Psalm 8:2). Here God is using his own Son’s baby praises to silence Satan.
[5] The Puritan, John Owen, says this, ‘Being rich in eternal glory with his Father, he became poor for believers. The same person that was rich was also poor.’ John Owen, Works, 1:134
[6] Psalms 32 and 51 spring to mind off the top of my head. There are probably loads more!
[7] But far from the only one. Think of how John shows Jesus quoting Psalm 31:5, saying ‘into your hands I commit your Spirit.’