Question: Which of the 150 Psalms are Messianic (i.e., which of them point to, relate to, prepare us for, or are about Jesus)?
Answer: All of them.
Attached are the notes for a sermon (or Bible study) on Psalm 147, written to relate all the parts to Christ. The first page (a PDF file) has notes for use by the teacher, and the second PDF is a one-page handout to accompany.
Introductory Remarks
Every Psalm is Christo-centric — i.e., centered on Christ. That means, when Jesus was reading the Psalms, he was reading about himself, and that’s how he quotes them (always). He was identifying with King David, for David was but anticipating the reality of Jesus. Jesus, in a few places, spoke of scripture working this way. Jesus was clear: The Old Testament is about Jesus.
In this way, each Psalm is to be read with Christ at the center of our understanding. Jesus is at the center of our understanding of God, History, Israel, Kingship, Suffering, Hardship, Praise, etc., and all of this is captured by the Psalms. But the Psalms were written before Jesus came in flesh. So how can this be?
The Psalms are part of the shadow-world which foretold his arrival. To that end, Israel was a copy of the reality that was to come. The reality has arrived, and where Israel was called God’s son (Exodus 4:22), they but anticipated the reality where Jesus proves to be the true Son. And this way of reckoning extends in every direction: Israel’s temple was preparing us for Jesus, the true Temple; Israel’s king was preparing us for the true (lasting) King; Israel’s high priest was preparatory for Christ, the eternal High Priest (Hebrews 5-8).
The Old Testament is the shadow that was cast by the standing of the resurrected Christ. Jesus rose up from the grave, and his shadow extends backwards as the Old Testament. Strangely, the shadow appeared first as the King strode over the horizon onto this plane of fleshly incarnation. Jesus emerged from eternity past, and his shadow came before him. When he appeared, we discovered that the shadow of the Old Testament was found to map to the reality which is God-in-flesh.
The Psalms are now seen in the reality of Incarnated-Deity. To that end, I put in one column the text of Psalm 147, and in the other column I put New Testament verses which map shadow to reality. To present this material, one need only read a verse in the Psalm column, and then see how it consummates in Jesus as per the New Testament column (which also lists other Old Testament verses that had been preparing us for the same conclusion).
I hope all of this will aid us in reading the scriptures in the light of Christ. Jesus was revealed in flesh, and he is the paradigm for understanding the Old Testament; we don’t just have the Old Testament, we have the Resurrection of Jesus and the New Testament as well! And so we look back at what was once only known as shadow, and we read it in the light of the Risen King. All the Psalms are to be read with this understanding, and to that end, Psalm 147 is here presented so that we can fix our gaze upon Jesus.
Note: The perspective of the sermon notes come from a reformed and covenantal, amillennial, Vosian (Gerhardus Vos) and Klineian (Merdith G. Kline) view of redemptive-history. If you know what all that means, great, but if not, the notes are still highly useful and are devoid of such technical terms.