II.	Foundations of biblical interpretation
A.	The legitimacy of biblical interpretation
B.	The framework provided by a biblical worldview
C.	Submission to the author of the Bible
D.	Submission to the structured organization of the Bible
E.	An example of Christocentric interpretation: the Psalms.
1.	The challenge of the Psalms
2.	Ways in which we meet Christ in the Psalms
3.	Seeing Christ in Psalm 23
4.	Seeing Christ in Psalm 22
5.	
The general pattern of Christ’s suffering and glory (Luke 24:25-27)

		The psalms express the emotional heights and depths in the experiences of God’s people throughout the ages.  In psalms called “laments” we hear people groaning in distress, either because of external enemies, hard circumstances, or the guilt and shame of their own sin.  These psalms expose the emotional depths, the pit, the emotional bottom that tempts one to complete despair.  At the other extreme, in psalms of praise and thanksgiving we hear people celebrating God’s greatness and goodness with exuberant celebration.  Here we find the emotional heights.  Other psalms are in between, either because they combine groaning and thanksgiving, or because they represent a more calm, meditative reflection on the ways of God with man.
		Once we come to grips with the true humanity of Christ, we can see that this full spectrum of emotions was his also.  In fact, it was his supremely and uniquely, because he represents in perfection what Israel experienced only in imperfection; he represents in supreme intensity what Israel experienced only partially and in symbols.
		Christ’s whole earthly life came to a climax with his death and resurrection.  In all four Gospels, it is evident that his earthly ministry moved up to this climax, and at crucial points he instructed his disciples concerning the necessity of his death and resurrection (see Luke 9:22, 51; 12:49-51; 18:31-33; 20:9-18; 24:6-7).  In his death and resurrection, therefore, we may expect to find the supreme expressions of his emotional life as well.  His entire life, including his human emotions, was the final, perfect service to God the Father.
		The crucifixion of Jesus is the point of his supreme distress (Luke 22:40-44; Matt 27:46).  His resurrection is the point of his supreme triumph.  The path through death to resurrection corresponds to the pattern of Psalm 22, which begins with groaning and ends with celebration.  And the same pattern is found in many other psalms.  More precisely, we must say that the Old Testament saints in their suffering and their celebration dimly anticipated the great suffering and celebration to come, namely that suffering and celebration of Jesus Christ.  God by his eternal plan arranged that the Old Testament should prefigure the emotional experiences of Jesus Christ, because all true emotional service to God must be an image and shadow of his great service.

Lament

		Thus all the psalms of groaning and lament find their fulfillment and climax in the groaning and lament of Jesus Christ as he prays in Gethsemane and goes to the cross.  Some of the Old Testament groaning speaks of surrounding enemies.  Jesus had Satanic enemies as well as the immediate human ones (Luke 22:3).
		Other groanings involve confession of sin.  Jesus Christ was sinless (Heb. 4:15).  So, superficially, these psalms do not apply to him.  Yet his very sinlessness qualified him to be our sin-bearer (1 Pet. 2:23-24).  He confesses and asks forgiveness, not for his own personal sins, but for the sins with which he has identified himself through substitution (2 Cor. 5:21).

Thanksgiving

		The psalms of thanksgiving are fulfilled in Christ’s resurrection.  In the resurrection Christ is definitively delivered from the power of death, and sends his Spirit to testify in praise of God to what God has done for him.  Christ is the final singer of God’s praise, as Hebrews says,

I will declare your name to my brothers;
in the presence of the congregation I will sing your praises.

All the deliverances of the Old Testament are only faint replicas of this one great deliverance, since only through Christ and on the basis of Christ’s merit does any of us receive mercy.

Praise

		Thanksgiving psalms speak of God’s past acts of deliverance, typically deliverance of the psalmist himself.  Psalms of praise are closely related, but they focus simply on praising God for who he is and what he has done in the world abroad.  But Jesus Christ is uniquely qualified to bring this praise also.  He uniquely knows the Father and is uniquely able to reveal him:

	All things have been committed to me by my Father.  No one knows the son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.  (Matt. 11:27).
	No one has ever seen God, but God the only Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.  (John 1:18)
	Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.  How can you say, “Show us the Father”?  Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?  The words I say to you are not just my own.  Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.  (John 14:9-10).

Hence the psalms of praise belong preeminently to Jesus Christ, the chief singer.

Celebration of Zion

		Some psalms of celebration have a more narrow focus.  One type, sometimes called “songs of Zion,” praises the glories of the temple and of Mount Zion where it stands (see, for example, Pss. 46; 84; 87; 122).  The chief glory of Zion, of course, is that God dwells there.  But God’s presence and blessing through the Old Testament temple was only a shadow or copy of his supreme and final dwelling place, our Lord Jesus Christ.  When Jesus spoke of raising the temple in three days, John adds, “the temple he had spoken of was his body” (2:21).  The songs of Zion therefore become songs in which Jesus praises God the Father for the resurrection and also enjoys in heaven the fullness of God’s presence for which the psalms longed.

Royal psalms

		Other psalms, so-called “royal” psalms, are praises of the king.   Not just any king, but the king of Israel, who foreshadows and depicts the coming kingship of God and of God’s Messiah.  Thus the royal psalms also are fulfilled when Christ the Son of David is invested with final royal honor at his ascension.  God

raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.  (Eph. 1:20-21)

Confidence

		Other psalms express primarily the psalmist’s confidence in God, God’s faithfulness, and God’s deliverance.  Jesus Christ during his earthly life was the supreme example and embodiment of firm trust in God.  His enemies even taunt him concerning his trust (Matt. 27:43).

Meditative psalms

		Other psalms meditate on some aspect of God’s ways with man—whether the history of God’s dealings with Israel (Ps. 105; 106), the contrast between the righteous and the wicked (Ps. 1, 112), or the law (Ps. 19; 119).  The history of God’s dealings with Israel, both God’s repeated acts of deliverance and Israel’s ingratitude, come to a climax with the ingratitude of the crucifixion and the deliverance of the resurrection.  The contrast between the righteous and the wicked reaches its climactic polarization in the death of Christ the Righteous One, a death that accomplishes the defeat of Satan and his hosts (Col. 2:15).  The law finds its fulfillment in Christ who supremely understands and obeys it.
		In fact,  all God’s treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ (Col. 2:3).  Christ as the One who supremely possesses the wisdom of God is the supreme meditator, the supreme teacher of the wisdom found in meditative psalms.  In Jesus’ parables Matthew sees fulfilled the psalm that says,

I will open my mouth in parables,
I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.  (Matt. 13:35; Ps. 78:2)

Predictive

		Some psalms, rather than meditating primarily on the past, turn their attention primarily to the future.  Many call on God to act in favor of his friends and to crush his enemies.  Frequently these requests come in the context of lament.  They are fulfilled in the supreme act of God, where he vindicates Jesus Christ his Son and Friend, and crushes Satan the foe.  Other psalms take the tone of prediction rather than request, the so-called “oracular” psalms like Ps. 2; 91; 110.  Christ in his resurrection is the central fulfillment of all God’s promises (2 Cor. 1:20).  He is himself the central promise, and he gives to us many precious promises by his own voice and that of his apostles.

		Thus all the various types of psalms find fulfillment in the emotional life of our Lord Jesus Christ.  If we wish, we may even in a somewhat oversimplified way associate the various moods of the psalms with the various experiences of Jesus during his earthly life.

public ministry				confidence, meditation
					
suffering and death				groaning, (confidence)
									
resurrection					thanksgiving, praise, predictive
									
ascension					songs of Zion
									
ruling at God’s right hand	  		royal psalms
									
sending of the Spirit,			praise, thanksgiving, meditation
causing participation			in some respects, all of the above
of Christians					
									
the second coming				all of the above, except that groaning is eliminated (Rev. 21:4)

He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!  Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”  And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.  (Luke 24:25-27)