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Then Peter did something with the psalm that took tremendous chutzpah and would have been absolutely outrageous if the Lord had not given him the authority to do it: He said that David wasn't really talking about himself; he was talking about Jesus: "Dear brothers, think about this! You can be sure that the patriarch David wasn't referring to himself, for he died and was buried, and his tomb is still here among us. But he was a prophet, and he knew God had promised with an oath that one of David's own descendants would sit on his throne. David was looking into the future and speaking of the Messiah's resurrection. He was saying that God would not leave him among the dead or allow his body to rot in the grave" (Acts 2:29–31).

Peter could say this because Jesus had opened the door for him to say it. The church has been going through that door ever since. The writers of the New Testament write with the conviction that every story and psalm of the Old Testament "whispers his name." The Bible is all about Jesus. As Bonhoeffer put it, "If we want to read and to pray the prayers of the Bible and especially the Psalms, therefore, we must not ask first what they have to do with us [and, I would add, David or Israel], but what they have to do with Jesus Christ."

Adapted from God's Prayer Book: The Power and Pleasure of Praying the Psalms (Salt River), by Ben Patterson. Patterson is the campus pastor at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California.

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

This article was published with "Five Ways to Pray the Psalms."

Previous Christianity Today reviews of books on prayer and the Psalms include:

Praying the Psalms | James Sire teaches us to Pray Through the Psalms. (January 30, 2007)

When You're Sick of Prayer | Two books that make a delightful difference. (December 21, 2006)

Devotions on the Run | Help for going short and deep. (May 19, 1997)

CT also has a slideshow of hymnals found across the world.

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October 2008, Vol. 52, No. 10