It is impossible to read the sixty-ninth Psalm without feeling the anguish of the Messiah as he faced his final days on the earth. The language is pungent with visual pictures to express the feelings of David in the moment and the Christ at a future date. It begins by talking about how the water had risen to his neck. He was sunk in deep mud and could not get his footing. There is an overwhelming weariness as he presses on in his mission, while people lack understanding and hate him for no reason.
It’s a powerful psalm, and I encourage you to read it in its entirety, meditating on the cost Christ paid on our behalf. Today, we’re going to focus on one verse that is quoted in two separate places in the New Testament. Each conveys the level of commitment and cost Jesus paid to attain our salvation.
Consuming zeal.
In order to fulfill God’s plan, Jesus had to be completely separated from his own people. We know he was already set apart, completely holy unto the Lord, because of who he was, but he also paid a price in the physical realm, as he was rejected by his earthly brothers, the sons of Mary and Joseph. He left his own house out of a zeal for the House of God—the Temple of God and the People of God.
For I have endured insults because of you, and shame has covered my face. I have become a stranger to my brothers and a foreigner to my mother’s sons because zeal for your house has consumed me, and the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me. (Psalm 69:7-9 CSB)
It is that consuming zeal that his disciples saw in action on the day Jesus displayed his righteous anger against the people selling animals and also money changers in the courts.
After making a whip out of cords, he drove everyone out of the temple with their sheep and oxen. He also poured out the money changers’ coins and overturned the tables. He told those who were selling doves, “Get these things out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a marketplace!”
And his disciples remembered that it is written: Zeal for your house will consume me. (John 2:15-17)
The presence of merchants and money changers in the temple courts was a desecration to the house of God and impeded the people from true worship. This would not be the only time he cleared the temple from such desecration. Thus, an even better understanding of the despair in Psalm 69.
He took our shame.
The second half of the ninth verse of our psalm is another way Christ took upon himself a weight no one else could bear. David writes of the insults he accepted on our behalf. Later verses further illustrate the impact.
You know the insults I endure—my shame and disgrace. You are aware of all my adversaries. Insults have broken my heart, and I am in despair. I waited for sympathy, but there was none; for comforters, but found no one. Instead, they gave me gall for my food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. (Psalm 69:19-21)
Jesus Christ took the ultimate insults of his own people and of those not his own (the Romans) in order that we would know salvation and be filled with his Spirit. That is the same Spirit who enables us to endure insults thrown our way. Paul wrote about this kind of strength in the face of attack in his letter to the church in Rome. (I hope you catch the irony there).
We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up. For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: “The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.” For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope. (Romans 15:1-4)
Now, in Christ, when others insult us because we follow the One who was insulted on our behalf, we have strength to endure. Without him, we would have no hope of perseverance through trials.
The mind of Christ.
Of course, we have the wonderful passage in Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi about the mind of Christ, but I think it’s telling that he uses the same language here in Romans after speaking of being insulted for his sake. David’s psalm was a foreshadowing to the trials and emotion Christ would face and conquer on the road to the cross. Now, we can look at that psalm once again to be better prepared for potential trials in our future.
As you study Psalm 69, I pray this for you:
May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 15:5-6)
Grace and Peace
If you missed the last Learning from the Past post, click HERE, or start the series from the BEGINNING.
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