Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / May 26, 2021 | Chronological Bible Study with Patty Diliberto - Session 15: Psalms

Transcript

May 26, 2021 | Chronological Bible Study with Patty Diliberto - Session 15: Psalms · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Hey, welcome to Crono today.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: Pray with me.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: Father God, we thank you for this time and we just ask for your spirit to come and give us insight and knowledge.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: We look to you for that so that we can bless you and know you better.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: We pray this in Jesus' name.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: I remember like it was yesterday, the night I found out that my father had cancer.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: He was in surgery for cancer, and that was the first I'd even heard about it or known that he had cancer.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: Actually, it was the first time he knew about it as well.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: But I was alone with my four young children, and after I got them to bed and held it together, I went to my couch, opened the Psalms, and I said, God, speak to me and comfort me.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: And he did.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: And the things that I received that night have stuck with me to this day.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: I remember like it was yesterday.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: Today we are looking at the Psalms.
1:01
SPEAKER_00: And I pray that it's just a blessing to you, that you've had experiences like I just described, that you've had times when you've had to go to the Psalms, go to the Word, and it's just spoken to your heart and to your need.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: We turn to the Psalms more than any other book in the Old Testament.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: And in we do that in order to find direction for our lives, to receive comfort, encouragement.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: When I'm struggling emotionally, that's where I go to.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: And you are probably the same.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: In the Psalms, we find a whole range of human emotions from joy and love and ecstasy to anger and fear and sadness and grief.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: It's all in there, wrapped in that package.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: Why do the Psalms hold all of these emotions?
1:55
SPEAKER_00: Because the people who wrote the Psalms were having the same human experience that you and I are having.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: They were having the same circumstances or similar ones.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: And they wrote down how they were feeling, how they were dealing with those difficult circumstances.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: When we find ourselves in a similar circumstance, the Psalms speak to us.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: They minister to us in a deep way because of the deep need that we have.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: You may have turned to the Psalms when you were troubled about something or needing guidance or wisdom about a decision or you were grieving a loss.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: God used the principle of Psalm 46.10 in a profoundly deep way for me.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 46.10 says, Be still and know that I am God.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: He worked deep emotional healing in me through that Psalm using that 26 years ago.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: Next to Psalm 89, I have written the date 103198.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: I have no idea what I needed that day, but it impacted me so much that I was able to write down so that I would remember.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: And even though I've forgotten what I received and what spoke to my soul, that day God knows what spoke to my soul.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: How many times has the concept of Psalm 914 helped you?
3:28
SPEAKER_00: He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: How gracious, how incredibly gracious of God to give us a book that can touch us to the very depths of the human experience we are all having.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: Twelve Psalms are attributed to Asaph, the Levite, musician that David appointed to lead the worship and the singers.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: Two are believed to have been written by Solomon, and one was written by Moses, one was written by another singer named Heman, one was written by a singer named Ethan, and the remainder are anonymous.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: The Psalms are broken down into five books, and each of these five books ends with a doxology.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: A doxology is an expression of jubilant praise.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: And in the book of Psalms, that doxology usually ends with a double amen.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: Amen and amen.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: Book one is chapters one through 41, and the emphasis is humanity.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: David wrote most of these Psalms, and they are very personal in nature.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: Book one, the doxology for it, is Psalm 41, 13.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: Amen and amen.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: Book two, the second book, are chapters 42 through 72.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: And the emphasis is deliverance.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: These songs talk about the trouble and the trouble and how God's power to deliver us from that trouble.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: The doxology of book two is Psalm 72, 18 and 19.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: Praise be to the Lord God, the God of Israel, who alone does marvelous deeds.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: Praise be to his glorious name forever.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: May the whole earth be filled with his glory.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: Amen and amen.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: Book three are chapters 73 through 89.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: And the emphasis is sanctuary.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: God's dwelling place is the focus of the fourth book.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: And this book can contains the prayers of the ancient Israelites as they drew near to God in worship.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: The doxology for that book is Psalm 89, 52.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: Praise be to the Lord forever.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: Amen and amen.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: Book four are chapters 90 through 106, and they represent God's righteous reign over the whole earth.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: In his that view is in focus here, that the Lord reigns is the truth that rings throughout that section of scripture of the Psalms.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: The doxology for book four is 106.48.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: Let all the people say amen.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: Book 5 or chapters 107 to 150, and the revelation of God through his works and his word is the emphasis of book five.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: The last 44 Psalms celebrate the greatness of God and his revelation through his word to us.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: Book 5 doxology is 150, verse 6.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
7:29
SPEAKER_00: Besides an amen or a double amen, these doxology repeat the words praise and God of Israel and everlasting or forever.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: I think the point he's making here is that we should praise God forever and ever.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: At the most basic level, we can divide the psalms into two different groups.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: There are hymns, which are psalms that praise God for his goodness, and there are laments, which are psalms that ask God to help in difficult times of depression or need.
8:09
SPEAKER_00: You might think of them as psalms in the major keys and psalms in the minor keys.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: Today we're going to look at the Psalms as poetry, as Psalms of prayers, and as Psalms of songs or praise.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: These three features, poetry, prayer, and songs, need to always be kept in mind as you look at the Psalms.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: First, we'll look at poetry.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: Poetry is a language of intensity and beauty.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: Poets use words to drag us to emotional places that we wouldn't necessarily get to on our own.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: Chuck Swindahl says, poetry gets at the heart of our existence.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: Poetry doesn't so much tell us something we never knew as much as it brings it into recognition what was forgotten or what lies just below the surface.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: Poems tell a story.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: Did you know that you yourself are a poem?
9:15
SPEAKER_00: That's what Ephesians chapter 2 verse 10 tells us.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: The Greek word for workmanship is poeme, and it means poem or masterpiece.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: You are God's poem.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: He is writing a story through your life.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: That's what he's doing.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: What kind of story is he telling through your life?
9:53
SPEAKER_00: What kind of story did he tell through David's life?
9:58
SPEAKER_00: We know how David felt when he sinned against God with Bathsheba.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: We know how he felt when Saul was pursuing him.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: We know how he felt to be alienated from God.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: And we know his story because he shared it with us in the Psalms by writing down his feelings.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: Here are some comments about poetry from famous poets, and let's see how what they say relates to the Psalms in Scripture.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: John Keats says poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: Who is the subject of the Psalms?
10:46
SPEAKER_00: God is.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: God and man, basically.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: William Wadsworth says poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: Leonard Cohen says, poetry is just the evidence of life.
10:58
SPEAKER_00: If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: T.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: S.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: Eliot says, genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: Rita Dove says, poetry is language at its most distilled, most powerful.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: And the reformer John Calvin called the Psalms an anatomy of all the parts of the soul.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: The Psalms do those things, don't they?
11:23
SPEAKER_00: They kind of sneak up on you and surprise you with emotions that can come to you.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: You can read a psalm one day and not get anything out of it.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: And then the next day or two, your circumstances can change, and you can read the very same psalm and it can minister to you in a way that it didn't the first time you read it.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: Poetry is a special use of language.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: And someone has said that poetry might be defined as a kind of language that says more and says it more intensely than does ordinary language.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: Poetry is the language of experience.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: So we've seen how poetry is in the Psalms, that the Psalms are poetry, and now we're going to see that the Psalms are prayer.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: For over 2,500 years, the book of Psalms have been the prayer book of God's people, the Jewish people, and of the church age people.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: There's no greater collection of prayers in the history of humanity.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: The Psalms were the prayer book of Jesus.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: He used the Psalms.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: And they have guided His followers ever since, since the church was formed.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: Prayer is language used in relation to God.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: God speaks to us, and our answers to him are our prayers.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: Prayer is response to God.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: The Psalms are provided not so much to teach us about God, but to train us in responding to Him.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: Not so much to teach us about Him, but to train us in responding to Him.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: And in that process, we learn more about who God is.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: The poetry of the Psalms required that we deal with our humanity, our emotions, our sin, and our struggles.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: But the prayer of the Psalms requires that we deal with a holy God.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: A holy God who is intent on renovating and transforming our lives so that we become that beautiful poem that He wants us to be.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: Prayer is answering speech.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: Our usual approach to God's word is to ask, what is God saying to me in this passage?
13:53
SPEAKER_00: Or what is God saying in the text?
13:56
SPEAKER_00: We often ask both of those.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: That is almost always the correct question when we're reading scripture.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: But with the Psalms, it's different.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: The question is, how do I answer the God who speaks to me?
14:11
SPEAKER_00: How do I respond to God?
14:14
SPEAKER_00: That's the better question for the Psalms.
14:17
SPEAKER_00: God's word has not done its complete work until it evokes an answer from us.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: And the Psalms help us with those answers.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: They help us with our prayers.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: All our prayers, all our answers are prayers, and the Psalms train us in this answering speech.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: It makes sense that we bring a different mindset to the Psalms than we do to the rest of Scripture.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: We are learning to pray, not necessarily study.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: Although those two activities are always going to be intermingled and mixed up together and connected, we are learning how to respond to God through the Psalms.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: Chuck Swindah says, the Psalms address the full spectrum of human needs.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: Everything that anyone can feel or experience in relation to God is in these prayers.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: I really love what Timothy Keller, the pastor of, I think he's the former pastor of the Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City, says about praying the Psalms.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: The Psalms teach us to pray through imitation and response.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: Real prayer is always an answer to God's revelation.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: And the Psalms are both prayer and revelations about God, which is the ideal soil for learning prayer.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: Number two, the Psalms take us deeper into our own hearts a thousand times faster than we could go to if left to ourselves.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: He says religious moral people tend to want to deny the rawness and reality of their own feelings, especially the darkness of them.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: The secular world has almost made an idol of emotional self-expression.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: But the Psalms neither stuff their feelings nor ventilate them.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: They pray them.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: They take them into the presence of God until they are changed or understand them.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: I love that quote by Timothy Keller.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: It's so true.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: It's so true.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: Number three, the Psalms force us to deal with God as He is, not as we wish He was.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: Left to ourselves, we will pray to some God who speaks what we like hearing.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: Or to the part of God we manage to understand.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: But what is critical is that we speak to the God who speaks to us and to everything He speaks to us.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: The Psalms train us in that conversation.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: Here are some suggestions on how you can use the Psalms for prayers.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: First, try to understand the Psalm.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: Try to understand the Psalm before praying it.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: A commentary is helpful.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, look at the look at the verses really closely and study them really closely.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: Ask God, what is this saying?
17:22
SPEAKER_00: But then if you get stuck, you can use a commentary to help you understand the context of the psalm.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: What was the psalmist going through at the time that they wrote that?
17:32
SPEAKER_00: The psalms that David wrote in the midst of his trials mean more to you when you read them within that context.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the reasons this chronological is so cool, is because you are reading them in the context of the time that David is experiencing them.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: And then linger or marinate yourself in a psalm.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: Is there a verse that's particularly relevant to you?
18:02
SPEAKER_00: Write it down, keep it in front of you, meditate on it, read, read it out loud over and over, or with you can read like with a different different emphasis to each word.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: I like doing that with Psalm 23.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: You meditate on one of those words at a time, one word, the Lord is, and you meditate on that word.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: Then you move on to the next word.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: It's a great way to marinate yourself in a verse.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: And then use the Psalms to praise God for different aspects of his character.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 13, 5 says, But I trust in your unfailing love.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: Camp yourself in God's unfailing love.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: Speak that, pray that to him, and then and then marinate yourself in that.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: This is how you can use these psalms to evoke answering speech with your relationship with God.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: The psalms are not only poetry and prayers, but they are also songs of praise and they are a pattern for worship.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: The psalms are poetry put to music, but the tunes were not recorded.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: The psalms lead us to the heights of celebration, praise and worship.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: And they've done that for thousands of years.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: Again, even when Jesus when he's having the Last Supper with his disciples, they are praying the Psalms.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: They're singing the Psalms before they go out to the Mount of Olives.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: There's remember this, they're singing the halal, those psalms of ascent to God.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: The Greek word for psalm is psalme, maybe.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: That's how you say it, and it means songs, from which comes the idea of praise songs.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: The book of Psalms is many things, but it's basically a hymnal for the for the Jews.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: There were many musical terms in the book, and they all indicate that this that the psalm was written for music.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: In 55 of the Psalms, there's a reference to the choir director.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: All through the Psalms, musical instruments are mentioned like the stringed instruments, like the harp, or the wind instruments like the flute and the trumpets and the drums.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: The psalms are meant for praise.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: And what does praise accomplish?
20:36
SPEAKER_00: Praise elevates the one praised.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: It elevates our God in our heart and in our mind.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: Praise is preopu preoccupe preoccupation with the one praised.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: Praise involves freedom and spontaneity.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: Boy, I'm having trouble with my words today.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: And praise brings joy.
21:03
SPEAKER_00: Try this sometime.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: Take a moment and write down a couple of words that express who God is to you.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: Just a couple of words.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: Don't focus on what he's done for you, but focus on character traits about God.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: And then take some time to thank him and praise him for those character traits.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: Just enter into that.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: And when you do that, you have entered into worship.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: You've entered into a time that the Psalms describe as worship of Yahweh, of God.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: Your knowledge of God has just moved you to worship.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: I know that you are faithful, Lord.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: And here's the ways that you've been faithful to me.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: It's just moved you to worship when you do that.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: Teaching the heart of the Old Testament says the essence of worship is not great music.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people talk about worship as if it's synonymous with music.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: Worship is not primarily about getting to hear music I like.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: Worship is not about having an emotional experience.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: It is also not simply about showing up at church making it through and making it through the service.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people go to a service of worship, a corporate gathering of Christ followers, and their focus is on can I feel what I want to feel?
22:33
SPEAKER_00: That is not the heart of worship.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes God gives gifts of great joy or great emotion in worship, but that is not the heart of it.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: Worship is more than this.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: William Temple said, To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that great?
23:10
SPEAKER_00: The heart of worship is to delight in the goodness, in the greatness and the glory of God.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: It is to reflect deeply on his character and attributes and then to respond in natural praise and adoration.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: When we express this directly to him and we know he receives it, worship has happened.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: Worship is to reflect on God with our mind, our will, and our heart in a way that moves us to delight in him and then to be overwhelmed when we realize that he also delights in us far more than we ever dreamed.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: I love those quotes.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: And one more by H.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: C.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: Leopold in Exposition of the Psalms.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: Excuse me.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: He says, true praise elevates God, not the speaker.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: True praise magnifies God in the community, not just in the thoughts of the one speaking.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: Praise is constructive worship.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: It should be a part of everyday living.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: Praise is a matter of life and breath.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: As long as the believer has life and breath, praise is due from his lips to our incomparable God.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: Those are such great quotes.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: And that is the essence.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite worship songs is Psalm 73, 25.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: Whom have I in heaven but you?
24:41
SPEAKER_00: And there is nothing on earth I desire besides you.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: My heart and my flesh, many times they fail.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: But there is one truth that always will prevail.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: God is the strength of my heart.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: He's the strength of my heart.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: I love the psalms that are put to music and that we get to worship with.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: God is the strength of our heart and our portion forever.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to feel those words.
25:11
SPEAKER_00: And that's why he gave them to us.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: When the Philippian jailer fell before Paul and Cyrus and asked the question, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
25:23
SPEAKER_00: It was because Paul and Silas had responded to their persecution and to their imprisonment with praise and worship.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: That's what they were doing all night.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: And about Psalm, I mean Acts 16, 25, but about midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: At once all the prison doors flew open and everyone's chains came loose.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: What a powerful worship experience that was.
26:04
SPEAKER_00: And next is the Psalms of Lament.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: The Psalms of Lament are much different than the praise songs.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: These Psalms are recorded in the Bible to help us learn how to pray in this way, also.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: It's a different kind of prayer.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: Just as God invites and gladly receives our prayers of praise, he also welcomes and blesses our prayers of lament.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: What do we mean by lament?
26:31
SPEAKER_00: Here are some questions that might help you realize that you know more about lamenting than you might have thought you did.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: Do you know how to complain?
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SPEAKER_00: If your body is aching, do you know how to groan?
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SPEAKER_00: When hard times come, do you know how to shed tears of sorrow?
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SPEAKER_00: When people treat you unfairly, do you ever tell God that you don't understand?
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SPEAKER_00: If you answered yes to any of those questions, then you already know something about lamenting.
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SPEAKER_00: A lament is a psalm, basically a complaint.
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SPEAKER_00: It is an honest and a heartfelt expression of pain, of sadness, and of brokenness.
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SPEAKER_00: Interestingly, the Psalms of Lament are the largest single category in the whole book of the Psalms.
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SPEAKER_00: How encouraging is that?
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SPEAKER_00: But God knows we're gonna have those questions.
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SPEAKER_00: He knows we're gonna groan and we're gonna moan and we're gonna have troubles.
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SPEAKER_00: When you're struggling, go to the Psalms of Lament and let them be a catalyst for your prayers.
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SPEAKER_00: If you don't know which ones are the Psalms of Lament, just Google it and they'll they'll a list will spring up.
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SPEAKER_00: And now I want to take a minute to talk about imprecatory psalms.
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SPEAKER_00: Bible Gateway says imprecatory psalms are songs to be songs so designated because of their particularly vigorous attitude toward the enemy.
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SPEAKER_00: The verb imprecate imprec imprec whatever it is, you can read it there, means to pray evil against or to invoke curse upon.
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SPEAKER_00: Another, hence the name for these prayers.
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SPEAKER_00: Imprecatory psalms are actually a specific kind of lament.
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SPEAKER_00: These are the prayers that deal with the issue of vindication.
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SPEAKER_00: We might call them get my enemies kind of lament.
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SPEAKER_00: The impregatory psalms can be confusing with their cries for vengeance upon Israel's enemies.
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SPEAKER_00: Basically, realize that calls for justice are absolutely right and remind us of how important God's holiness and justice are.
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SPEAKER_00: But secondly, recognize that the psalmist did not have the justice of God completely satisfied in Christ Jesus.
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SPEAKER_00: And there's a big difference there.
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SPEAKER_00: Thus, now we pray for our enemies, not just wish them ill.
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SPEAKER_00: Yet we as Christians can pray these psalms as longings for social justice and hatred against powers or principalities behind the world systems.
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SPEAKER_00: I use the imprecatory psalms a lot when I'm praying for the world and when I'm praying for justice.
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SPEAKER_00: I love using the imprecatory psalms.
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SPEAKER_00: Rather than go out and get revenge, the psalmist cries out to God and he leaves the gut the judgment where it belongs in the hands of a just God, which is why I like using those psalms in prayers when I'm petitioning God for the world.
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SPEAKER_00: When we see the absolute evil in our world and on our computer screens or our TV, it evokes a response in us, right?
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SPEAKER_00: Or it should, and if it doesn't, we're just dead.
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SPEAKER_00: We cry out to God to take action and to take these individuals who are killing or the innocent in hand.
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SPEAKER_00: That's what we're doing.
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SPEAKER_00: That's what the imprecatory Psalms are doing.
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SPEAKER_00: Psalm 28, 4.
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SPEAKER_00: Repay the wicked for their deeds and for their evil work.
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SPEAKER_00: Repay them for what their hands have done, and bring back on them what they deserve.
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SPEAKER_00: Psalm 10, 15.
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SPEAKER_00: Break the arm of the wicked man, call the evildoer to account for his wickedness that would not otherwise be found out.
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SPEAKER_00: The last thing I want us to see about the Psalms is that Jesus fulfilled the Psalms.
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SPEAKER_00: There are many, many messianic prophecies in the Psalms that Jesus fulfilled and proving that he was God's Messiah sent to the earth.
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SPEAKER_00: And Jesus fulfilled all of the Psalms in the essence that he perfectly completed the righteous and honest life of prayer that they express.
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SPEAKER_00: Psalm 16, 10, you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your holy ones see decay.
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SPEAKER_00: Psalm 22.
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SPEAKER_00: Let me go back.
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SPEAKER_00: Psalm 22, 1.
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SPEAKER_00: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
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SPEAKER_00: But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people.
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SPEAKER_00: All who see me mock me, they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
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SPEAKER_00: I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.
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SPEAKER_00: My heart is turned to wax, it is melted away within me.
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SPEAKER_00: My strength is dried up like a potchard, my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
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SPEAKER_00: You lay me in the dust of death.
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SPEAKER_00: Dogs have surrounded me, a band of evil men has encircled me, they pierced my hands and my feet.
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SPEAKER_00: I can count all my bones, people stare and gloat over me, they divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.
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SPEAKER_00: Psalm 22.
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SPEAKER_00: Right before Psalm 23, the shepherd's psalm, Jesus is giving the Jews a clue that it's him, that he is the Messiah through this very prophetic Psalm.
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SPEAKER_00: Psalm 41, 9, even my close friend, whom I trusted, who I shared, who shared my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.
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SPEAKER_00: Psalm 69, 21, they put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst.
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SPEAKER_00: Psalm 118, 22 through 23.
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SPEAKER_00: The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
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SPEAKER_00: The Lord has seen this and it is mar done this and it is marvelous in our eyes.
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SPEAKER_00: It certainly is marvelous in our eyes.
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SPEAKER_00: No other masterpiece, poeme, that God ever created has been as beautiful or as inspiring as the Lord Jesus Christ.
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SPEAKER_00: Luke 24, 44, he said to them, This is what I told you while I was still with you.
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SPEAKER_00: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the law of Moses, in the prophets, and the Psalms.
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SPEAKER_00: Let that sink in a moment.
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SPEAKER_00: Soon we'll be reading all of the prophets, and we will clearly see him in the prophets, and we are seeing him in the Psalms.
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SPEAKER_00: We see Jesus beautifully through the Old Testament.
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SPEAKER_00: In his humanity, Jesus relied on the Psalms for comfort and worship in many different experiences.
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SPEAKER_00: He needed the Psalms because he felt all the same basic struggles and emotions that we do.
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SPEAKER_00: The most dramatic and moving example of Jesus praying the Psalms is when he hung on the cross, suffering for our sins, and he cried out in that loud voice that we just read in Psalm 22:1, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
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SPEAKER_00: He knew how it felt to be in pain and to cry for out for God and yet feel alone.
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SPEAKER_00: He knew what it was to long for the Father's love and feel abandoned for that moment.
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SPEAKER_00: But he also knew the joy, the absolute joy of reconciling us to God when he rose from the dead.
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SPEAKER_00: We see the Psalms quoted all through the New Testament too.
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SPEAKER_00: Why?
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SPEAKER_00: Because they were having the same human experiences that you and I are having.
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SPEAKER_00: They needed the Psalms too.
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SPEAKER_00: We've seen today how the Psalms are poetry, how they are prayer, and how they are songs of worship, and so much more.
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SPEAKER_00: I pray that you learned something new about God's glorious Psalms that He gave us.
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SPEAKER_00: And I hope they make a difference for you.
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SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
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SPEAKER_00: Father, we do thank you so very much for giving us this book that can touch us at times like no other.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm so grateful for it in my Christian life to be able to turn there and be encouraged or get um get what I need from you.
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SPEAKER_00: I just I just thank you so much, Lord, for that.
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SPEAKER_00: And I pray that you just awaken us to um the things that you want us to to understand and see in the Psalms.
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SPEAKER_00: And if someone's never had that experience, Lord, where they had a deep need and and it was met in the Psalms, I just pray that you give them that experience.
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SPEAKER_00: That just sticks with you forever.
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SPEAKER_00: So, God, we thank you and we praise you.
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SPEAKER_00: In the sweet name of Jesus.
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SPEAKER_00: Amen.
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SPEAKER_00: I'll see you next time.