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Proclaiming the Psalms · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to Reformed Thinking. I am your host and I'm really
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glad you pulled up a chair for this session today.
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Yeah, it's good to be here. We are opening a file today that
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sits right at the intersection of, you know, rigorous theology
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and just raw human emotion. We are looking at the hymn book
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of the Old Testament, right? The Psalter.
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But we aren't just reading it for comfort today, though it
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obviously provides that. We're asking a much harder, more
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technical question. How do we actually proclaim it?
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Yes, because it is one thing to read a Psalm in your quiet time
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when you're having a rough Tuesday.
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Oh, for sure. But it's an entirely different
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discipline to stand up in a pulpit or sit down in a small
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group and teach the Psalms as authoritative, binding,
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covenantal instruction. It really is, and proclaim is
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the operating word for this discussion.
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So to guide, we are doing a deep dive into Mark de Futado's work
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today, specifically his handbook called Interpreting the Psalms.
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It is we are zooming in on his section regarding proclamation.
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But before we get into the how to, I want to start with the
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elephant in the room. Or maybe the elephant in the
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presbytery. I have a feeling I know which
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elephant you mean. The silence right there is this
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strange phenomenon in our circles.
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We love the songs. We chant them.
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We sing them. Sometimes exclusively, depending
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on your specific denomination. Yeah, exactly.
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And we believe, per the Westminster Standards, that the
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Word of God is the only rule of faith and obedience, right?
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But when it comes to the actual sermon?
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We run to Paul, Yes. We gravitate toward Romans or
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Ephesians or maybe the narratives of Genesis.
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There's a real hesitation to preach the Psalms as doctrine.
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Why do you think that is? Well, it is a very common
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tension, and Futado addresses this right out of the gate.
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The objection usually boils down to genre.
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Like they are just poems. Right, the argument goes,
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something like these are lyrics. They are emotive responses to
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God, not necessarily instruction from God.
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So the fear is that if you treat a Psalm like a theological
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lecture, you ruin it. You, the frog, and the frog
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dies. That's the fear.
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Right, you don't analyze the grammar of a love letter to find
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a systematic theology. Or if you analyze the syntax of
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a cry for help, you kill the emotion.
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That is the assumption. So the default mode for a lot of
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guys is to just read it, let the people feel it, and then quickly
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move on to something with clearer bullet.
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Points, but Futado pushes back on that.
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He pushes back hard. He argues that the primary
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purpose of the Psalter is not just expression, it is
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instruction. He points to Psalm 96 to make
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that case, doesn't he? He does.
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Look at Psalm 96, verses one through 3.
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It says, Sing a new song to the Lord, proclaim the good news
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that He saves, publish his glorious deeds among the
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nations. Proclaim.
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Publish. Tell.
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Look at those verbs. Yeah, the Psalms themselves
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claim to be news. They claim to be a record of
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God's deeds. So they are a vehicle for the
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gospel. They aren't just us talking to
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God, they are God talking to us through the vehicle of human
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emotion. Precisely.
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And as Reformed believers, we really have to hold that line.
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These poems are part of the Canon.
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They are given for the edification of the Church.
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So our goal in this deep dive is to bridge that gap.
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We want to move from simply appreciating the Psalms as nice
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literature to understanding how to structure, interpret, and
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apply them as Torah. As instruction for the covenant
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people. Let's get practical them.
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If we agree they should be preached and taught, how is it
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usually done? Futano outlines a few
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approaches. The first one is what I think
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most of us grew up with. The occasional approach.
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Yes, the occasional approach. You might call this the medicine
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cabinet method. You have a specific occasion, a
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life event, a crisis, a celebration, and you reach into
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the Psalter to find the pill that matches the symptom.
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The classic example being a funeral.
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Right. I don't think I have ever been
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to a Christian funeral where Psalm 23 was not read.
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The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.
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Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
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it is iconic for a reason. It brings immediate, visceral
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comfort to people who are grieving.
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Or think about Good Friday. You almost have to go to Psalm
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22. My God, my God, why have you
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forsaken me? It captures the agony of the
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cross in a way that plain narrative just cannot do.
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Or Psalm 45 for a wedding. Exactly.
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So the benefit here is obvious. It meets the listener right
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where they are emotionally. It applies the balm of scripture
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to a fresh wound. And that is a good thing.
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We shouldn't knock that. We shouldn't, but if that is the
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only way we interact with the Psalms, we have a massive blind
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spot. How so?
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Because we are treating the book as a random collection of
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inspirational quotes rather than a coherent system of truth.
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Oh, it's like only reading the Beatitudes but never reading the
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rest of Matthew. You get the blessings, but you
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miss the whole Kingdom structure.
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That is a great analogy. That is why Futado advocates for
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the series approach systematic exposition.
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Where you teach the congregation not just what a specific Psalm
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says, but how the whole book works.
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Right, But how would you structure a series like that?
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Because there are 150 of them. You can't just start at 1 and go
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to 150 unless you plan on being there for half a decade.
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Well you you could, but yes you might lose the congregation by
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year 3A. Better way might be to do a
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series by category. By category.
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You preach a hymn of praise one week, then the next week a
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lament, then a Thanksgiving Psalm, a confidence Psalm, A
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kingship Psalm, and finally a wisdom Psalm.
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I really like that because it functions like a course on how
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to read the Bible. It does.
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If you sit through a sermon on a lament, you learn the actual
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grammar of grief. You learn that it is OK to
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complain to God, provided you move toward trust.
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Then, when you're reading a different lament in your own
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devotional time, you know how to handle it.
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You are equipping the listener, you're handing them the tools.
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Another fascinating way to do a series which Futado highlights
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is following the shape of the book.
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This is something I think a lot of lay people completely miss.
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We tend to think the psalms are just shuffled like a deck of
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cards. Just dropped in at random,
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right? But there is a macro structure,
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isn't there? A very intentional 1.
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The Psalter is divided into 5 books, mirroring the five books
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of Moses, and there is a real progression.
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How does it progress? Generally speaking, it moves
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from lament in the early books. Lots of crying out, lots of
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enemies pressing into praise. In the end, the whole book ends
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with just a fireworks display of hallelujahs.
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So you could preach a series that traces that emotional arc
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from darkness into light. You could, or you could trace
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what Futado calls the drama of kingship.
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He sketches this out in the source material and it is
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brilliant. He suggests you start with Psalm
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2. I have installed my king on
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Zion, my holy hill. The inauguration, high hopes,
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the Davidic king is on the throne.
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God is in control. Then then you jump to Psalm 89.
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This is the end of book 3 and it is a Psalm of severe crisis.
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The Davidic covenant seems to have failed.
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The crown is in the dust. The walls are broken down.
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It is the exile, right? So we go from inauguration to
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failure. That's a heavy shift.
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It is, but then you turn the page to Book 4, Psalm 96.
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The Lord reigns. Since the human kingship failed,
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Yahweh steps up and asserts His own kingship directly.
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And then where does it land? You get to Psalm 132 in Book 5,
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which renews the hope for a horn to sprout for David, the coming
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kingship. That turns the Psalter into a
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narrative arc. It isn't just a collection of
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disconnected songs, it is the story of the Kingdom of God.
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Preaching that series would really help people see the
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messianic thread running through the whole Old Testament.
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It anchors the poetry and actual redemptive history.
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There is one more approach he mentions integrated groups.
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This is preaching through a contiguous block.
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The most famous example is probably the Songs of a Sense.
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Psalms 120 through 134. Right.
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These were likely sung by pilgrims traveling up to
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Jerusalem for the annual feasts. That makes for a perfect series
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on the Christian life as a pilgrimage.
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It really does. Or you could take Psalms 93
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through 100 which are heavily focused on the kingship of God.
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This approach teaches the listener to read a Psalm in its
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immediate literary neighborhood. You start to see how Psalm 121
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informs Psalm 122. OK, so we have our strategy.
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We know we want to preach this book.
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Now we have to get into the kitchen and actually cook the
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meal. Time to prep.
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Futado breaks this down into four steps.
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Step one is getting oriented, and he starts with something
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that sounds almost too simple to even mention, reading and
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rereading. It sounds elementary, doesn't
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it? It does, but be honest with
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yourself. How often as teachers, or even
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just students of the Word, do we read a single verse and
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immediately grab the commentary off the shelf?
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Oh, all the time we want the answer before we have even felt
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the weight of the question. We treat the text like a Riddle
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we need to solve, rather than a voice we need to sit and listen
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to. Futado says there is no
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substitute for immersion. He uses a phrase I really
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appreciate. The text must grasp the
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interpreter, not just the interpreter grasping the text.
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That implies a posture of submission.
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You read it until it gets inside you, until the rhythm of the
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Hebrew thought actually becomes your thought.
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And this reading is not just staring at the words on the
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page, It has to be contextual, right?
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We talk a lot in Reformed circles about the analogy of
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faith interpreting Scripture by Scripture.
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Usually that means asking, does my interpretation of this verse
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match what Paul says in Romans? Which is a valid question, but
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in the Psalms context is often much closer to home.
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It means looking at the Psalm right before and the Psalm right
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after. Because the editors of the
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Psalter put these poems in this specific order for a reason.
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Exactly. Furtado gives a striking example
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of this with Psalm 26. I want to spend some time here
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because it's really unlocked something for me.
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Let's do it. Psalm 26 is a classic problem
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text for Protestants. Yeah, let's look at the first
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few verses David writes. Vindicate me, O Lord, for I have
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led a blameless life. I have trusted in the Lord
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without wavering. And later in verse 11, he says,
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But I lead a blameless life. OK, stop right there.
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Yeah, to modern ears, especially ears tuned to the New Testament
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and the doctrine of total depravity, that sounds
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incredibly arrogant. It sounds like the Pharisee in
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Luke 18I Thank you God that I am not like other men.
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Right. If a guy in your small group
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started praying, Lord bless me because I have lived a blameless
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life, you would pull him aside for a theological correction.
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You'd hand him a copy of Calvin's Institutes.
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Exactly. Is David claiming to be sinless
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here? Because if he is, that
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contradicts the rest of scripture.
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It would. And if you read Psalm 26 in
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isolation, just cutting it out and pasting it on a blank wall,
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you might conclude that David is suffering from a delusion of
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grandeur. But this is where the contextual
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reading saves us. We have to look at the neighbors
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who wrote Psalm 26. David.
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And who wrote Psalm 25, the 1 immediately preceding?
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Also David. And what does David say in Psalm
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25, specifically verses 7:00 and 11:00?
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Let me pull that up, he says. Remember not the sins of my
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youth and my rebellious ways. And then verse 11 says, For the
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sake of your name, O Lord, forgive my iniquity, though it
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is great, right? Though it is great.
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Wow. OK, so in Psalm 25 he is openly
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confessing great iniquity. Correct.
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He is on his face, admitting he's a miserable Sinner.
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Now look at the other side of sandwich.
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Psalm 27. In verse 12, David prays.
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Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes, for false
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witnesses rise up against me. I see the sandwich now.
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He is standing right between a confession of sin and a
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complaint about false witnesses. Precisely.
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So when we read Psalm 26 in that specific slot, we realize David
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is not claiming absolute ontological sinlessness before
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God. He isn't saying I have never
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sinned. He is making a specific defense
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against a specific false accusation.
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It is a courtroom scene. Imagine you are accused of
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robbing a bank. You stand before the judge and
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say I am innocent. You aren't saying I have never
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lied or cheated on my taxes. You are saying I did not rob
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that bank in this matter. My hands are completely clean.
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That changes the entire tone of the Psalm.
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It goes from being the prayer of a self-righteous Pharisee to the
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desperate prayer of an innocent man who is being slandered by
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his enemies. And that, my friend, is why
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context is king. If you miss the context, you
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misinterpret the theology. You might end up preaching a
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sermon on the danger of pride, using Psalm 26 as a bad example,
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when actually it is a Psalm about the integrity of the
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believer under persecution. Which is a massive difference.
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Putado also mentions category context.
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How does that differ from literary context?
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That is looking at what kind of Psalm it is.
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Take Psalm 15 as an example. Lord, who made well in your
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sanctuary? The answer comes back, He whose
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walk is blameless, who does what is righteous, who speaks the
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truth. Often I hear that preached just
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as general wisdom literature like here is a helpful checklist
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for being a good person. Be nice, tell the truth, don't
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backbite. Right, general moral instruction
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for everyday life. But Futado argues, based on the
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category, that it is actually an entrance liturgy.
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An entrance liturgy? Unpack that for us.
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Imagine the scene in ancient Israel.
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The worshippers are processing up to the Temple Mount.
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They reach the gates. They can't just waltz right in.
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They have to stop. They stop and they asked the
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priest at the gate who is allowed to come into Yahweh's
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presence. That is the question in verse
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one. And the priest answers them.
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The priest answers with the requirements of the covenant,
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those with clean hands and a pure heart.
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Only after that exchange did they actually enter the
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sanctuary. So it connects the ethics
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specifically to the act of worship.
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It grounds the morality in the presence of God.
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It isn't just be good in the abstract, it is be holy because
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you are approaching the holy hill.
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If you preach it without that liturgical context, you risk
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turning it into mere moralism, just a list of rules.
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But when you see it as an entrance liturgy, it becomes
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about access to God who gets to stand before the King.
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That leads us naturally into Step 3 of Futado's process, or
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rather the analysis phase. We have read the text, we have
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checked the neighbors. Now we need to look under the
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hood at the structure and the mood.
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This is where eyes usually glaze over in seminary classes, but
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stick with me because this is where the sermon actually takes
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shape. Futado talks about strophic
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analysis. Strophy.
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It is a technical term, but it's useful.
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It just means a stanza, a group of lines that belong together.
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In English poetry, we have nice physical spaces between verses
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on the page. But in Hebrew, we have to look
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for clues in the text itself. Changes in topic, changes in
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speaker, changes in who is being addressed.
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Finding these strophes helps you trace the logic of the poet so
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you don't get lost in the exegetical weeds.
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Let's use Psalm 24 as an example.
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How did the strophes breakdown there?
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Psalm 24 has three distinct movements, or strophes.
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Verses 1 and 2 focus on the Lord as Creator.
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The earth is the Lord's. That is the cosmic universal
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claim. Then verses 3 through six shift
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the topic becomes the worshipper who may ascend the hill of the
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Lord. This is very similar to Psalm
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15. Just the holiness requirement,
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the second movement. And then verses 7 through 10,
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shift again. Lift up your heads, O you gates.
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Suddenly we aren't talking about the earth or the worshipper.
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We are talking about the Lord as the victorious warrior entering
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the city. So the structure gives you the
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sermon outline right there on a silver platter.
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The king of Creation. The character of the subject.
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King of Glory. You don't have to invent a
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clever outline, you just have to expose the one the Holy Spirit
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already wrote. It creates a completely logical
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flow for the listener. Another structural tool he
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mentions is patterning or symmetry.
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This is where Hebrew poetry really shows off.
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Oh, the Hebrews loved symmetry. They loved chiasm.
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Chiasm that is spelled CHIASM, named after the Greek letter
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chi. It looks like an X is a crossing
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structure. ABBA Psalm 133 is a beautiful
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bite sized example of this. Walk us through it.
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Unity is good. That's verse one.
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It is like oil in verse 2. It is like dew in verse 3.
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A unity is where the blessing is in verse 3B.
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So the main point, unity and blessing, wraps around the
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images of oil and dew. It hugs them.
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The images are the center of the thought.
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Or look at Psalm one. It contrasts the righteous and
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the wicked in a perfect mirror image.
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How does that one lay out a? The righteous are blessed.
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They are like a tree. They prosper, and then the
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mirror flips. The wicked do not prosper.
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They are like chaff, which is the exact opposite of a rooted
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tree. The wicked perish, the opposite
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of being blessed. Seeing that structure really
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helps us understand the definitions.
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The perishing of the wicked is the direct inverse of the
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blessing of the righteous. Right, it defines the terms for
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us based on their opposites. If you miss the structure, you
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you might miss the starkness of the contrast.
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My favorite part of this section, though, was the
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discussion on grammatical mood. Futado calls this Tracking the
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Soul. This is fascinating.
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Grammar is usually dry, but in the Psalms grammar is emotional
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autobiography. Futado uses Psalm 13 to show
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this. Let's walk through that.
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Psalm 13 is a classic lament. It is in the first trophy,
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verses 1 and 2. The mood is interrogative
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questions. How long, O Lord?
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How long will you hide your face?
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How long must I wrestle with my thoughts?
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It is just hammer blow after hammer blow of questions.
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It perfectly represents the agony of the soul, the
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confusion. But then look at the shift in
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verses 3 and 4. The grammar actually changes.
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It becomes imperative. Commands look on me, answer me,
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give light to my eyes. The psalmist stops asking
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rhetorical questions about time and starts making specific
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demands, or rather specific petitions to God.
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That is a huge shift in posture, he goes.
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From where are you to look at me right now?
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And in the final shift in verses 5 and 6, the grammar changes yet
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again. It moves to the indicative and
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the volative, but I trust in your unfailing love, I will sing
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to the Lord. Statements of fact, statements
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of will. The grammar reveals the literal
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movement of the soul from despair, which is the questions,
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to prayer, which is the requests to assurance the declarations.
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That is so helpful for preaching.
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You aren't just explaining vocabulary words, you are
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walking the congregation through the emotional trajectory of the
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text. Yes, you are taking them by the
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hand and saying it is OK to start your prayer with how long?
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As long as you let God walk you toward, I will sing.
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That is the real value of the Psalms.
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They don't just teach us facts, they train our emotions.
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They model how to process suffering in real time.
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This leads us perfectly into Step 2, focusing on details.
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We have looked at the big blocks, now we look at the
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bricks. Futado talks about parallelism
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and imagery. Parallelism is the heartbeat of
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Hebrew poetry, but a lot of people misunderstand it.
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They. Think it is just repeating
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yourself, right? I washed the car, I scrub the
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auto. Just saying the same thing twice
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with a thesaurus to sound fancy. But biblical parallelism is more
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substantial than that. It almost always involves
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movement or intensification. It is A and what is more, B.
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Let's look at Psalm 24.1 again. The earth is the Lord's and
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everything in it, the world and all who live in it.
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Look at the movement there. Earth is the broad global term,
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the physical mass of the planet. But the second word world tebble
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in Hebrew specifically refers to the inhabited cultivated land.
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So you were zooming in and. Everything in it, the fullness,
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moves to all who live in it, the specific people.
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The poet is zooming in from the cosmic scope of the planet to
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the specific scope of human habitation.
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The point isn't repetition, it is focusing the lens.
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God owns the rock we stand on, and he owns the people standing
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on it. Another example was Psalm 30.4.
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Sing to the Lord, you Saints of His praise, His holy name.
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The Hebrew literally says give thanks to his holy memorial.
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The movement is from sing to Yahweh generally to praise His
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Holiness. Specifically.
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It specifies what about God we are praising.
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We are focusing specifically on his character as the Holy One.
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Now we really have to talk about imagery.
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This was perhaps the most eye opening part of the source
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material for me. We talked about the structure of
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Psalm 133, the Unity Psalm, but let's look at the images
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themselves. How good and pleasant it is when
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brothers live together in unity. It is like precious oil poured
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on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron's
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beard, down upon the collar of his robes.
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OK, let's be honest, to a modern reader, oil on the head sounds,
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well, greasy. Sounds like a terrible hair day.
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Or maybe we think of suntan oil. Or, as some commentator
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suggests, just a refreshing lotion for a wary traveler, Like
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a nice spa treatment. Oh that feels nice after a long.
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Walk. But that completely misses the
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biblical association. This is not Johnson and Johnson
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baby oil. The text specifies it is running
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down on Aaron's beard. And Aaron was the high priest.
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Correct. This point is straight back to
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Exodus 30 and the holy anointing oil.
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This was a specific divine recipe.
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Myrrh, cinnamon, cane cassia mixed with olive oil.
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That is a very spicy mix. It was extremely aromatic.
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It was perfume, and more critically, it was restricted.
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You cannot just make this for fun in your backyard.
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If you used it for common purposes, you could be cut off
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from the people. It was holy.
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It was set apart. So when the psalmist compares
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the unity of brothers to this specific oil, what is he saying?
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He is saying unity is not just nice, it is holy, it is
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priestly, it is sacred. And it is aromatic to God, yes.
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When brothers dwell in unity, it smells like the high priest
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entering the Holy of Holies. That is a much heavier reality
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than just friendship is refreshing.
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It elevates unity to a Sacramento level.
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Then there is the second image in that Psalm, the dew of Herman
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falling on Mount Zion. This one is a geographical
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puzzle. Mount Hermon is way up in the
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north. It is the highest peak.
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It's snow capped, very wet environment.
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Mount Zion is in Jerusalem, down in the South, right on the edge
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of the wilderness. It is DRY.
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So, physically speaking, the dew from Herman does not fall on
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Zion. They are hundreds of miles
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apart. Right.
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You can't look at a weather map and see this happen, but the
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image is theological. In the dry season, from May to
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October, there is almost no rain in Jerusalem.
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The vegetation relies entirely on morning dew to survive.
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Herman represents an unlimited, copious supply of moisture.
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So the poet is essentially saying, may the Super abundant
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life of Herman fall on the dry, desperate ground of Zion.
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Yes, it symbolizes A miraculous transfer of life and blessing.
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Unity among believers brings a supernatural life sustaining
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blessing that completely defies geography.
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It is where God commands the blessing life forevermore.
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That is just wealthy. It shows why we can't just skim
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these poems. We have to unpack the
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associations. If you don't know Exodus 30, you
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don't really understand Psalm 133.
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And that unpacking is what leads to the proclamation.
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Which brings us to Step 3, shaping the presentation.
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This is the homiletics part. How do we turn this study, all
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these insights, into a sermon? Furtado quotes a saying.
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If there is a mist in the pulpit, there's a fog in the
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Pew. I have heard that many times and
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it remains painfully true. Clarity is essential.
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You need a logical outline, not just for yourself, but for the
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listener's sake. If they can't follow your path,
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they won't arrive at your destination.
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He discusses 2 main ways to outline analytical and topical.
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Analytical is linear, verse by verse.
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This works best for Psalms that have a clear forward
23:29
progression, like Psalm 13, which we discussed.
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You preach .1 the agony, .2 the request .3 the assurance.
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You just follow the text straight down the page.
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But then you have something like Psalm 119.
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The Giant. It is the longest chapter in the
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Bible, 176 verses. You really can't do a verse by
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verse sermon on that in 40 minutes unless you talk like an
23:48
auctioneer. You'd be there until next
23:50
Tuesday. For a Psalm like that, or for
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psalms that are very repetitive, A topical or conceptual outline
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is much better. You ask, what is the central
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theme in Psalm 119? The theme is obviously Torah,
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God's instruction. So you look for sub themes
24:03
inside that massive chapter. Right, Futado suggests grouping
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the verses into conceptual categories.
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What does the Psalm say about our attitude towards Scripture?
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What does it say about our desire for it?
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Are resolved to obey it, the benefits of it?
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And finally, what does it reveal about God's heart?
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That organizes the massive amount of material into
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manageable buckets for the listener.
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It helps them digest the feast without getting theological
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indigestion. Precisely.
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And whether you use an analytical or a topical outline,
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there is one crucial shift you have to make in the pulpit.
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You have to move from exegetical language to expository language.
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This is a subtle but powerful distinction.
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Define the difference for us. Exegetical language is third
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person in past tense. It describes the text from a
24:48
safe distance. For example, in the Psalm, David
24:51
felt abandoned by God or Israel was a Pilgrim people walking up
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to Zion. That is true, but it keeps the
24:58
truth back there in history. It creates a museum exhibit.
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Look at how sad David was 3000 years ago.
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Exactly. The listener nods and says, Poor
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David. Expository language, on the
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other hand, is second person, universal and present tense.
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Instead of saying David felt abandoned, you look at the
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congregation and say when you feel abandoned.
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Instead of saying Israel, walk through the valley, you say as
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you walk through the dark valleys of life.
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That is a powerful shift. It turns the observation into an
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application. Immediately it engages the
25:29
listener. It says this is not just David's
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story, this is your story. It operates on the principle.
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The exposition is application. You don't wait until the last
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five minutes of the sermon to apply the text.
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The way you phrase the explanation applies it as you
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go. That brings us to the final
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step, Step 4, reflection and covenant application.
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We have analyzed the text. We have outlined it clearly.
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Now we have to answer the big question.
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The So what question? Right.
25:54
James 1.2627 warns US against hearing the word and not doing
25:57
it. Religion that doesn't change us
25:59
is worthless. And this is where the Reformed
26:02
framework on covenant comes in. So, well, a covenant is a
26:05
relationship vertically with God and horizontally with others.
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So when we apply the text, we ask three covenant questions.
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I love these three questions. They cover the whole person.
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What does this text teach me to believe?
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What does this text teach me to do?
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What does this text teach me to feel?
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That first question, believe, targets the head.
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It deals with doctrine. Psalm One, O 4, for instance,
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teaches us to believe that God is the sovereign Creator who
26:31
feeds the lions and waters the mountains.
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We learn about His attributes. This is the comfort zone for
26:36
most of us in the reformed camp. We love the believe question.
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We. Do and the second question
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targets the hands. It deals with ethics and
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obedience. Psalm 15 teaches us to walk
26:47
lamelessly, to keep our oaths even when it hurts, to not
26:50
charge interest to the poor. You can handle that one too.
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But it is that third question. What does this text teach me to
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feel? That is often the most
26:58
challenging for us. Why is that?
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Because we prize the intellect so highly.
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We are the people of the book. We worry that focusing on
27:05
emotion leads to subjectivism or irrationality.
27:08
We have seen excesses in other traditions where emotion
27:11
overrides objective truth and we react by swinging the pendulum
27:15
way over to the other side. We become the frozen chosen.
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We do. But the Psalms are relentless in
27:20
commanding emotion. They are.
27:22
They command us to rejoice. They command us to fear.
27:25
They give us raw words for grief.
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They model extreme frustration. Look at Psalm 13 again.
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It does not just teach us that God delivers, it models the
27:34
actual feeling of abandonment. How long, O Lord, will you
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forget me forever? If we preach that Psalm and only
27:41
extract the doctrine of God's omniscience, .1 God does not
27:45
actually forget, but we fail to validate the feeling of being
27:48
forgotten. We have completely missed the
27:50
point of the text. The Holy Spirit inspired those
27:53
words of desperation just as much as He inspired the words of
27:56
praise. That creates A holistic faith,
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head, hands and heart. Exactly.
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If we go back to our Psalm 13 example and synthesize it
28:03
through these three questions, it looks like this.
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OK. Lay it out.
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Believe God is sovereign and loving even when He seems
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completely hidden. Pray, ask him to look at you.
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Keep talking to him. Do not go silent.
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It is permissible to feel honest frustration.
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You don't have to fake a smile in church, but you must let that
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frustration move you toward a resolved trust.
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That is a full meal deal. It respects the intellect,
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directs the will, and shepherds the emotions.
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And that is the goal of proclaiming the Psalms.
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We want to present a God who is big enough for our minds, our
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actions, and our deepest feelings.
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We have covered a lot of ground today.
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We started with the need to proclaim the Psalms as
28:44
instruction as God's news to us. We looked at the different
28:47
approaches, occasional series and integrated blocks.
28:50
We discussed the value of getting oriented through reading
28:53
and understanding the literary context, remembering that Psalm
28:55
26 is the prayer of the falsely accused, not the self-righteous.
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We broke down the structure of strophies, symmetry, and
29:01
grammatical mood. We zoomed in on the details of
29:04
parallelism and that incredible imagery of the priestly oil and
29:07
the dew of Hermann in Psalm 133. And we talked about how to shape
29:11
the presentation with clarity using expository language that
29:15
speaks directly to EU in the Pew.
29:17
Finally, we landed on the covenant questions Believe, do,
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and feel. It is a clear path that moves
29:24
from the text on the page to the heart of the listener.
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As we wrap up, I want to leave our listeners with a provocative
29:30
thought, something to chew on that builds on what we have
29:32
discussed. We talked about the hesitation
29:35
Reformed believers sometimes have regarding the feel
29:37
question. Consider this.
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If we only analyze the Psalms theologically, if we parse the
29:43
verbs and map the chiasms, but we fail to feel the weight of
29:47
the lament or the height of the joy, have we actually understood
29:51
the text? Or are we like a musicologist
29:53
who analyzes the score of a Symphony but refuses to listen
29:57
to the music? That is a challenging thought.
29:59
Understanding is not just cognitive, it is experiential.
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The songs invite us to taste and see, not just define and
30:06
categorize. Indeed, thank you for joining us
30:09
for this deep dive into proclaiming the Psalms.
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We hope this helps you not just to read this book, but to let it
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read you. This has been reformed thinking.
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Until next time.