Psalms (Page 2)
David’s confession in verses 1-5 bypasses the whole Old Testament sacrificial system entirely, addressing God directly rather than through the prescribed rituals. Paul picks up exactly this psalm in Romans 4 to make his case for justification apart from works. Christ himself stands behind that directness, the one who makes addressing God without mediation finally possible.
Psalm 32 works on three levels at once: strategically placed within the Psalter, doctrinally loaded with justification by faith alone and the gospel’s extension to the Gentiles, and deeply personal in its confession. Its structure reflects all three, moving from blessing to confession to instruction. None of the three levels can really be separated from the others.
God’s own coming in glory is the real focus of Psalm 29 from start to finish, not the storm as a natural phenomenon. The temple, named explicitly in verse 9, provides the setting where that glory is finally seen and named. What the psalm describes is nothing less than God’s ascent and enthronement as sovereign King.
Psalm 29’s structure turns on its opening call, addressed to the ‘sons of the mighty,’ to give the Lord the glory due his name. ‘Glory’ here means something far more specific than vague praise: God’s own self-sufficient, omnipotent judgment displayed openly. The mighty Son that glory ultimately belongs to is Christ himself.
Psalm 29 does more than teach a lesson; it stages God’s own dramatic intrusion, the same kind of direct confrontation seen in Deuteronomy 31. That distinction matters for why preaching itself remains essential, not optional. The mighty acts on display here also answer, in passing, the case for singing psalms exclusively: God’s mighty acts call for every kind of response, not one alone.
Spurgeon, Delitzsch, and Calvin all weigh in on Psalm 29’s thunderstorm imagery, each finding something different in it. Calvin’s own reading leans toward natural theology, God simply revealed through the storm itself. Van Til’s critique of that reading matters: general revelation alone, however powerful the thunder, cannot get us to the gospel.
The Lord functions as real refuge in the danger described in verses 1-3, present help for a present threat. Verses 4-6 look further out, to dwelling in God’s house forever, already true and not yet fully realized. The man born blind in John 9 lives that same tension, given real sight now while still waiting for something fuller.
The watchman waiting through the night for dawn in verse 4 pictures the psalmist’s own longing for eternity to break in. Verses 1-3 move from eternity toward the psalmist; verses 4-6 move the psalmist back toward eternity, a real structural reversal. Christ himself stands at the center of that longing, the dawn the psalmist cannot yet see but trusts is coming.
Psalm 27 is familiar, oddly structured (moving backwards from confidence to need rather than the reverse), and beautifully made all at once. That same confidence marks Christ, Paul, and Barnabas alike, never merely private assurance. Real confidence, on this model, has to express itself outwardly in praise, not stay locked inside.
Psalm 24 shifts abruptly from Psalm 23’s pastoral confidence into the language of warfare and conquest. David’s own question, ‘who shall ascend?’, finds its real answer only in Christ’s fulfillment in verses 7-10. Obadiah’s closing vision of the kingdom belonging to the Lord reads as a commentary on exactly that same coronation.