WG08 - Session #3, Mark Dever

Awesome and powerful worship this evening! God is moving mightily!

Mark Dever, Pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist church and noted author, was our speaker this evening. His text was Psalm 22. The title of his talk was "Glorifying Christ With the Psalmist". His goal was to demonstrate the we can find Christ in all of the Psalms, indeed, in all Scripture.

He began by cautioning us to avoid two mistakes in examining Scripture; (1) thinking Jesus is nowhere to be found in the Old Testament (OT) and (2) thinking you can only see Jesus and nothing else in the text.

Dever taught three main points:

• The Whole Bible has one message - the cross of Jesus


• Jesus taught that the OT was all about him (Luke 24)


• Some Psalms apply directly to Jesus in the New Testament (NT), like Psalm 22

He showed us three ways to see Jesus in the OT, particulalry in the Psalms; (1) by prophecy (Deut 18), (2) by patterning and foreshadowing and (3) by their being part of the Bible and all the Bible being about Jesus.

Dever also pointed out that when the Apostles evangelized in the book of Acts, they used OT Scripture bringing the truth of the meaning of Scriptures to bear on everyone who would listen, telling them that those Scriptures were about Jesus.

He went on to exposit Psalm 22, showing us how Jesus was revealed in David's experience. Dever then masterfully demonstrated the same truth for Psalm 78 and 110 telling us that the trick is to understand what Scripture is saying and garner the truth from it (exegete) instead of reading more into the text than is there (isogete).

Mark maintained that we should always examine the text with understanding, not whimsy. When we do, we will see God's preparation of His people for His Son.