Proclaimer Blog
The Old Covenant is not the New
Spent a day on Saturday teaching occasional preachers about how to teach from the psalms. It's an interesting topic – most occasional preachers might be asked to preach every now and again when the vicar or minister is away and they think to themselves, what can I preach that is standalone and straightforward. The irony is that many choose the psalms which are neither standalone nor straightforward.
One very common error is to forget that these are, for the most part, Old Covenant psalms, rooted in the language of blessing and obedience. Those blessings and curses in, say, Deuteronomy, help explain the unashamedly prosperous language:
7 He raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
8 he seats them with princes,
with the princes of their people.
9 He settles the barren woman in her home
as a happy mother of children. (Psalm 113)
But it also explains the so called imprecatory psalms when the psalmist calls down judgement on his enemies. God promises, as part of Old Covenant blessing to afflict his people's enemies with the same curses they will suffer if they do not obey his commands. So, when the psalmist asks for God to bring down judgment he is saying, fundamentally, "Sovereign Lord, be faithful to your covenant promises."
It's simply not possible to preach the psalms faithfully without grasping this (or indeed, much of the Old Testament). The Old Covenant is not the New and though there are links, lines, similarities, shadows, copies and so on (what we might call continuity) there is also discontinuity and we need to be able to answer the differences to be able to preach the psalms faithfully.
If only more preachers (occasional and otherwise) knew that!