Inspired Prophecy

Scripture Reading: Psalm 22

Read the 22nd Psalm and then come back to this. Now, having read this Psalm, what does it sound like David is describing? Well, if you are familiar with the four Gospels, you would say it sounds a lot like the crucifixion account. You would be correct. As a matter of fact, you might have noticed that Jesus quoted this Psalm while He was being executed. During the hours of darkness he cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” The exact words with which this Psalm opens.

This Psalm’s importance does not lie in how it reflects on some experience of David, nor on how it might speak to our suffering, but in how it points us to Christ and His death and what that means. It is a Messianic Psalm. If nothing else convinces you that the Scriptures are divinely inspired, texts like Psalm 22 ought to do so. Hundreds of years before it happened, David describes the crucifixion of Christ as one who was standing on Calvary watching it transpire. He was able to do so because God’s Spirit was guiding and overseeing what he thought and wrote.

Therefore, we can attribute passages like Psalm 22, not to some deep insight of writers like David, but to the God who sees all things as though they are and will be. God doesn’t just see what will be though. He doesn’t just look into the future and tell us what will happen. He decrees what will be. History is the unfolding of His story. It happened this way because God decreed it to happen this way.

Amid the uncertainty of our present day, it is comforting to know how things go is not under the control of men, nor evil spirits, but this is a part of the unfolding story of God. And we know how the story ends. Read the end of Revelation. The crucifixion happened exactly as Psalm 22 predicted and the future will look just like Revelation 22 promises.