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Suffering can do one of two things: break us or break us open.
Beginning with Frederick Buechner's unforgettable image, John Ortberg explores Psalm 110 and one of the deepest ways Christians have read the Psalms: seeing the story of Jesus in their suffering, longing, and hope.
Drawing from C.S. Lewis, Plato, and the mysterious biblical figure Melchizedek, John looks at how Jesus brings together two ancient hopes: the victorious king and the suffering servant.
Jesus doesn't overcome suffering by avoiding it.
He enters it.
And because the story ends in resurrection, suffering doesn't have to get the final word.
The difference between being broken and broken open is hope.
In this episode: Psalm 110 • suffering • hope • Jesus • C.S. Lewis • Melchizedek • resurrection
00:00 Broken or Broken Open? 00:10 What Will Suffering Do to You? 00:37 The Danger of Armoring Yourself 00:54 Seeing Jesus in the Psalms 01:20 Is Biblical Prophecy a Crystal Ball? 01:55 How the New Testament Reads the Old 02:15 C.S. Lewis and “Second Meanings” 02:41 Plato's Remarkable Picture of a Righteous Man 03:32 Written Hundreds of Years Before Jesus 04:02 The Great Story Behind the Story 04:28 The Most Quoted Psalm in the New Testament 04:50 The Difference Is Hope 05:06 “The LORD Says to My Lord” 05:27 Who Is David Talking About? 06:10 Our Longing for a Good King 06:30 What If God Himself Comes? 06:54 The Mystery of Melchizedek 07:16 A Priest Before Israel Had Priests 07:39 God Is Bigger Than Our Tribe 08:13 God Is Way Bigger Than That 08:34 A Priest Who Is Also a King 08:59 Israel Expected a King Who Would Crush Enemies 09:18 The Other Story: The Suffering Servant 09:41 Jesus Brings the Two Together 09:50 The King Who Gets Crushed 10:13 Suffering Doesn't Get the Last Word 10:35 The Heavens Are Broken Open
SPEAKER_00
At Become New, get 10 minutes of spiritual formation every weekday with John Orberg.
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Writer Frederick Biekner said that when suffering comes and it will come, we can respond in one of two ways. Some people are broken, and some people are broken open. Broken like a useless thing, or broken open, broken up like soil that's now finally ready to receive a seed and be the home of life. He says sometimes we just steal ourselves against suffering, but the trouble with stealing yourself against the harshness of reality is the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed, secures your life also against being opened up again and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from. We're learning uh how to live from the Psalms, learning how to name what's in our hearts from the Psalms. And what I want to try to do for these few moments, I don't even know if I'm gonna be able to, is to talk about one of the deepest ways that the church, followers of Jesus, have read the Psalms through the centuries, that we see in it, particularly in places of suffering and in places of hope, the presence of Jesus. And I want to talk for a couple of minutes about how that comes about. Sometimes people think that it's kind of like uh crystal ball prophecy that's going on in the Old Testament, and uh Old Testament predicts he's gonna be born in Jerusalem, he is born in Jerusalem. What are the odds of that? That proves it must be true. But that's not actually the way that the New Testament writers were looking at it. It was much more that they were looking at a story, a great story of existence and what it is that God is doing and seeing the themes that were going on, what Israel was called to be, who how Israel was called to live, and that the ultimate fulfillment of that is explained in the life of Jesus. And when you read that story in the Old Testament, and then you look at Jesus, you come to understand him more fully. That's what he was thinking, that's who he was, that's what he was doing. And then when you look at him and you look back at the Psalms, you would see more truth. CS Lewis uh writes in his book Reflections on the Psalms a couple of chapters about what he calls second meanings that gets to precisely this point. How is it that the church sees Jesus in the Psalms? And can we do that with genuine integrity? Because it's easy to just project anything into any text that you're reading. Lewis makes the point that uh uh there are some times when uh we discover a meaning that an author may not even have known themselves, and yet they understood a great truth, a great story, and so in a sense, in a deeper way, they did know. He writes about a passage uh that Plato writes in his uh book, The Republic, um where he talks about how righteousness, goodness, okayness is often praised for the reward it brings, honor, popularity, and light. But to see it in its true nature, we must separate it from all these, strip it naked. And then Plato uh writes about what might happen if a truly good person, a perfect person were to enter into our world as imperfect and often cruel and harsh, and uh rejecting of justice and judgment our world is. He asks us therefore to imagine a perfectly righteous man treated by all around him as a monster of wickedness. We must picture him, Plato writes, this is Plato hundreds of years before Christ, still perfect, while he is bound, scourged, and finally impaled the Persian equivalent of crucifixion. At this passage, a Christian reader starts and rubs his eyes. What is happening? This is not just a lucky coincidence. Um he sees there's something here that cannot be called luck at all. Plato is talking about what he knows of the fate of goodness in a wicked world. But that's not simply something other than the passion of Christ. It is the very same thing of which that passion of Christ is the supreme illustration. Plato wasn't predicting it, but he understood something about the great story of the world that now when we look at Jesus, we understand is its fulfillment, and that in a deeper way, in a way directly inspired by God, is what the church has understood with the Psalms. Do you know what the most quoted Old Testament passage is in the New Testament? It's Psalm 110. And it's precisely because of this dynamic, it's telling of a story, and it's partly a story of suffering. When you suffer, you can either be broken or you can be broken open. And the difference between the two is hope. So Psalm 110 of David, a psalm, the Lord says to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying, Rule in the midst of your enemies, your troops will be willing on the day of battle. Now, at one level, this is the story of a king in Israel. But Jesus actually quotes this when he's talking about his identity. It's a remarkable passage to people who question or who don't understand. And he says, Now we're invited to think about this as David saying, The Lord says to my Lord. In other words, the Lord, that is the Lord God, says to my Lord, that is to one above me. Now, if it's David saying that to my Lord, uh, that cannot ultimately be a human figure. And Jesus understands that ultimately the reference is to himself. We all have this longing. Uh it comes up all the time when we find a writer that we love or an influencer, or probably particularly in the realm of politics, or sometimes in the leader of a church, if there was just somebody who knew, if there was somebody who was both strong and good, if there was somebody who could set things right, if there was only a once and future king. And that's what keeps getting pointed to uh in the Old Testament scriptures, the idea that there is one who is coming who will be the anointed of the Lord. That was the king or a ruler or a leader, somebody who can come and set things straight. Why is there this longing that's in every human heart so much? Oh, if he'd come, if he would just come. And Jesus is saying, uh, it's there because God has placed it there. And that one is God, God Himself who comes. The Psalm goes on, the Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. When you suffer, you can be broken or you can be broken open, and the difference is hope. You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek. A word on this, uh, because this is also written about in the New Testament. You might remember if you're a Bible person, Melchizedek is a is a real shadowy figure way back early on when Abraham's around. Melchizedek is a priest that comes to him and uh actually kind of leads him, and Abraham tithes under the influence of Melchizedek. Now, what's interesting is, of course, this is Abraham. That's way before Moses. That's way before the Ten Commandments and all that stuff on Mount Sinai. That's way before Aaron. That's way before the priesthood. So, way before there was a priesthood in Israel by Aaron and his tribe, there was another priest. And this fascinated the people of Israel because it said God's up to something even bigger and wider and deeper and more profound than our little tribe can express. That there was one who was a priest who was also a king. That's part of what was fascinating about Melchizedek. And what I love about that is it says uh in any religion in Judaism, in Christianity, um, the goodness of God and the wonder of what it is that God's doing often gets kind of boxed into these traditions that we have, or our tribe versus their tribe. And every once in a while we get a glimpse of how big God is. Now he's way bigger than that. He is way bigger than Israel, he is way bigger than Christianity. Thank God for Christianity, and thank God for Israel, but thank God that God Himself can come sneaking through in any number of ways. And so Melchizedek is a picture of that. God's up to something, God sends a priest who is also a king. Our longing to worship and our longing for everything to be set right will somehow be met, and and Jesus, that that's me. And then maybe most extraordinarily in this psalm, because again Jesus cites it, the Lord is at your right hand, the Lord says to my Lord, He will crush kings on the day of his wrath, he will judge the nations, heaping up the dead, crushing the rulers of the whole earth. And somehow, although pretty much everybody in Israel, when they read that, may look forward for the Messiah, they look for a king crusher, they look for a nation judger, they look for a dead heaper. And then Jesus comes and he sees all this, and there had always been this longing for the Messiah, but there were also always these passages about the suffering servant of God, and that Israel, especially the faithful remnant, uh, especially Israel in exile, that kept looking for God and seeking to be faithful to God and praying for the welfare of the city where they found themselves, seeking to be a blessing to others, was somehow a part of that stream of God. And what Jesus saw was that Messiah who would reign and that servant who would suffer. They were one and the same. And it was Him. And so the king who will be crushed on that day will be me. The wrath of God that will be expressed will be expressed not towards this person or that person, but towards the sin that messes us up. Uh the death that will be heaped up then is the death that will come to me. And somehow Jesus sees this in a way that nobody else does and lives it in a way that nobody else could, and suffers in a way that nobody else could, and is raised up again. You couldn't make this story up. And that's why the church, the followers of Jesus, have loved the Psalm so deeply for so long. So when suffering comes, when suffering comes, it's hope. I could be broken, or I can be broken open. And in Jesus, it's not just you and me, not just our lives that are broken open, the heavens are open, and that's where we live.
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Among other things, this teaching was a great reminder for me to always be on the lookout for God. It made me think about a quote from Dallas Willard that God is in the church, but he's not boxed in by the church. He's at work always, everywhere. So we want to keep our eyes open, beyond the lookout for him. And then the other thing that struck me is just that the distinguishing factor between being broken and being broken open is hope. That we have hope beyond this life. And we can rest assured in that hope, no matter how difficult the circumstance and situation. So we'd love for you to say hi if you're tuning in for the first time. If you had a takeaway, you felt like God was speaking to your heart, don't hold that inside. Share it with us so that we can cheer you on. You can drop it in the comments on YouTube, text it to us, email it to us. And if you never want to miss a video from John, you can subscribe on YouTube or you can text the word new to the number 51504. I'm Tim, the channel host. I'm so glad that you stopped by today. We'll see you next time.
