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Because so many psalms are prophetic, we are wise when we come to them to ask the question posed to Philip by the Ethiopian eunuch concerning the prophecy of Isaiah that he was reading at the time. He inquired, “About whom does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?”
It was an excellent question. We must ask it of ourselves (and of the scriptures) today.
The introduction to Psalm 45 calls it a love song and tells us the Sons of Korah wrote it. The psalm portrays a glorious, conquering king. By verse 5, his enemies, in so many words, have become his footstool. Hmm, now where have I heard that before?
I jest. There’s no difficulty identifying the king as our Lord Jesus Christ. The writer to the Hebrews quotes verses 6 and 7 of this very psalm and plainly tells us they speak of “the Son”, distinguishing him above all created beings, no matter how powerful and glorious.
“He came to his own, and his own did not receive him.”
“Having loved his own … he loved them to the end.”
If you really wanted to irritate a well-read Christian audience, you could probably preach a sermon that started by quoting both these verses from the gospel of John. Then you could delve into the Greek, noting that the same word [idios] is used for “his own” by the same author in the same book. Finally, you could finish with a flurry by pontificating about how the Lord Jesus loved “to the uttermost” the people who rejected him.
You could. I’m not saying it’s a good idea. You’d have a lineup of sixty people waiting to tell you that using the same Greek word doesn’t mean they are precisely the same people. The latter group is a subset of the first.
The Lord Jesus had just left the temple, prophesying its complete destruction. He sat down on the Mount of Olives, allowing the disciples to come to him privately and ask, “When will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”
Three questions, and it’s not entirely apparent that the Lord answered them in the order they were asked. Over the ensuing centuries, much debate has resulted as Christians tried on various interpretations of his answer, comparing scripture with scripture.
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Last week we suggested that in his final chapter, Micah is speaking with the voice of Israel’s remnant in a manner that may be understood both historically and prophetically.
Both ways of looking at the chapter were predictive at the time these words were given to Micah to share with his nation, but they were fulfilled with respect to the first timeframe, and still await fulfillment in the second. One is a matter of history, and we can look back through the later prophets and historians of the Old Testament to see how the things Micah predicted occurred roughly a century afterward.
The second way of looking at the chapter connects it with the book of Revelation.
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Chapter 6 concluded with God speaking, rendering judgment on Judah for its sins. The final chapter of Micah represents yet another change of voice, as Micah now begins to speak on behalf of the Israelite remnant.
The chapter lends itself to interpretation on at least two levels. On the first, it is an expression of faith and repentance from the 6th century BC Judean remnant before and during Babylonian exile. That captivity was still more than a century away when Micah prophesied. On the second, it reads as an expression of faith and repentance from the Israelite remnant thousands of years later, during the great tribulation, looking forward into the millennial reign of Christ.
“There was a widow in that city who kept coming to him …”
Don’t measure God’s care for you by what you’ve got and haven’t got; by your problems or your prosperity. Don’t measure those things. They have nothing to do with the character of God.
The character of God is to be measured at the cross — “God so loved the world”, “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” — that’s where the measure of God’s love is. That never changes.
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Almost as long as there has been an Israel, there has been an Israelite remnant.
In its very first generation, Joseph explained his own suffering and subsequent exaltation to his brothers in this manner: “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors.” God may have been the author of the worldwide famine they were experiencing, but he had made provision for Jacob’s family so that they would not be eliminated from the earth.
However, not all who went to Egypt and were thus preserved were men and women of faith.
All true Christians are believers, but not all believers are Christians.
That is in the Bible. Abraham wasn’t a Christian. Christianity belongs to the time following the ministry of the Lord Jesus, the descent of the Holy Spirit, and the inauguration of the church. That’s when the disciples became Christians. You don’t read the word “Christian” in the Old Testament, nor is a Christian described. What you have is godly or ungodly Israelites; those who believed God and those who didn’t; the wicked and the righteous in Israel — and of course some Gentiles saved as well.
The position from which a godly Jewish believer would look at things and the stance of an equally godly Christian looking at things are quite different.
Make room for an Israelite remnant.
I would urge you to do this as you read and think through the scriptures, whether for your own benefit or in planning to teach others.
Allowing for the possibility of a remnant will provide a key to the understanding of prophecy, which occupies such a large part of the Bible. Without doing it, you may fall for Replacement Theology, which teaches no future role for Israel in God’s plans, transferring to the church all references to a bright future for that nation, and leaving all Jews to experience only those parts of scripture that speak of divine displeasure with Israel’s past and her present condition of unbelief.
Precious promises to a believing remnant within that nation are thus understood as finding their fulfilment in the church.