Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
Even Jesus’ gospel “oikonomia” (“stewardship” in Luke 16) was downplayed, in favor of Paul's epistolary oikonomia, which to WL seemed to entail a lot of shouting of biblically-themed words... Jesus’ declared food (Jo 4:34) – “to do the will of My Father” – wasn’t stressed too much...
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Now, my practice of singing the Psalms might not guarantee me a seat at the table anymore than the local church way of chanting - sorry, PSRP'ing - conference banners, outlines and verses from HWFMR messages.
But I will say a couple of things for my approach. First, it was recommended enthusiastically and repeatedly by WL's vaunted "apostle of the age", Paul, who likened it to "being filled with the Spirit" (Eph. 5) and "letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly" (Col 3). That looks like a pretty good start on God's New Testament economy right there.
(And I don't see Paul or anyone else suggesting that only a few "revelatory" psalms were worth our time and that the bulk - or any, for that matter - were mixed, natural, or fallen.)
Second, I notice that singing these scriptures connects me to the NT in ways that I might not otherwise have (If you get a good melody it tends to make you linger, and muse).
For example, Psalm 3 "I lay me down and slept/I awaked, for the L
ORD sustained me(KJV)" brings me to
Jesus: "I have the power to lay my life down and take it back up again"
etc
etc
And one of the things found frequently in the Psalms is obedience to and reverence for God's word. WL seemed to agree with the latter, but said the former was humanly impossible; thus he downplayed or dismissed sections on righteousness and obedience. I ask, what kind of reverence is that? He was forgetting about Jesus the Nazarene.
Psalm 119:89 "Your word, O LORD, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens"
arrives as
Gabriel, to Mary: "No word from God will ever fail" (Luke 1:33, NIV),
and becomes incarnated as
Jesus' "I came to do My Father's will" (John 6:38),
and as
Heb 10:9[ref Psa 40:7,8]) "I come to do Thy will"'
and as
Heb 5:5-10 ""So also Christ did not glorify Himself so as to become a high priest, but He said to Him, 'Thou art My Son, today I have begotten Thee'; just as He says in another passage, 'Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.'
In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety. Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation, being designated by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek."
The piety and obedience of Jesus Christ "in the days of his flesh" was prefigured in rich detail in the musical petitions and exultations of the admittedly imperfect psalmists. Their declarations may well have been vain from our NT Christian perspective, except that we believe these words provided a framework for the coming Christ, who later inhabited them. The NT itself, and church fathers also, repeatedly suggested this to us.
WL held that the "loud crying and tears" of the psalmists could not produce salvation, but I say that their cries (Psa 6:6, 42:3, 69:3, etc) presaged those of the coming Christ. And Jesus Christ in the days of his flesh was crying not merely on His behalf, but on our own as well. And now this same Spirit of the Son indwells in us richly, and continues to petition, and to sing praises to the Father in the midst of the assembly. Thus it is truly "no longer I, but Christ living in me", who is being expressed in the local assembly, and now is an earthly analog of the High Priest in heaven, just as once Jesus in the days of his flesh fully inhabited His Father's Word.
As I mentioned, singing the Psalms does not automatically equate to obedience, but "who can obey, except that he has first heard His voice"?
"So faith comes from hearing, that is, hearing the Good News about Christ." Rom 10:17 NLT