In the first gospel sermon, Peter proclaims that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the promise of the Messiah in Pss 16 and 110. He reasons that these passages are inherently messianic because David knew that the Messiah would come on the basis of the Davidic covenant. Such reasoning runs counter to critical scholarship, which argues that the Old Testament is not inherently about the Messiah at all. These two competing views of the Old Testament are diametrically opposed to one another.
In this book, Michael F. Grasso defends the inherent messianic nature of the Davidic covenant, arguing that the promise made to David that one of his sons would build a house for God and receive an everlasting kingdom refers to the Messiah even in the original context of 2 Samuel. Furthermore, if the Davidic covenant is inherently messianic, so is the rest of the Old Testament, and it proclaims salvation in none other than a divine Messiah—the Messiah proclaimed by Peter, Jesus Christ.