Psalms

Reading: Psalm 1 & 16

Welcome to a new series >>>

“Feast your eyes!” We want you to see what God is like.

Far too much theology is very ‘me’ focussed’ >>>

but in this series I want us to see the wonder of who God is and the way he acts towards us – and to do it from the Psalms.

Fundamentally the Psalms constituted Israel’s song book

They come is all sorts of flavours
Psalms of praise to God
Psalms of lament – when life gets tough
Psalms of complaint – when life is really unfair

So what are they?

Songs that shape us

God has given us two wonderful capacities – and he deigned both to help us get to know him in a deeper way – our emotions (the capacity to feel) and our minds (the capacity to think)

The Psalms are capable – indeed they are designed – to mould both of these capacities.

The heart

As I read the Psalm my heart thrills with wonder at the sheer greatness of who God is!

I give thanks to you LORD with my whole heart (Psalm 86:12 & 111:1)
Blessed are those who seek him with their whole heart (Psalm 119:2)
With my whole heart I seek you (Psalm 119:10)

the mind

The psalms are poetry with a unique motive

Most poetry aims to entertain and inspire, or to move us in some way. This poetry also aims to instruct us about the Lord and about life.

Psalm 1: blessed, happy, to be envied is the person whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.

Indeed, being moved by the poetry is an essential part of being instructed by it. My spirit is an integral part of my understanding the spiritual message of these wonderful poems. Paul said:

1 Corinthians 2:14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned

My desire for Victoria is that we are a church of people for whom sound thinking kindles deep feeling and for whom deep feeling motivates sound thinking.

So I urge you to

Read them
feel them
wrestle with them

Psalms open up the wonder of

God

Psalm 1 opens the book

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers,

2 but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.

The word ‘delight’ is key here. We are not intended by David just to learn in an abstract and detached sense about the Lord – his intention is that we delight in him – and that we do it constantly.

What sort of things do you ‘delight’ in?

They will be the things that give you a buzz
the way you’ve decorated you home
the car you drive
the job you’re holing down
your children or grand children

All these things are given to us by God to be a source of delight and pleasure – without becoming gods in themselves.

Here the Psalmist is saying “the way to get the best out of life and know God personally is to delight in His law”

Why? Because the law reflects his character!

The word for ‘law’ is ‘torah’ => instruction so we’re to make it our business to meditate on God’s instruction – and let that instruction infect every part of our being!

Man

In the Psalms almost every human emotion imaginable can be felt

Love, praise, awe, loneliness, shame, delight, joy, fear, frustration, rage , hope, broken-heartedness, gratitude, enthusiasm
They’re all there!

More explicitly than any other book in the Bible, the Psalms are designed to awaken and shape our emotions so we understand God better and understand ourselves better

and by ‘understand’ I don’t just mean an intellectual or academic understanding of Him, I mean a personal walk with his as well.

Take Psalm 139 for example

[Lord], you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained(Y) for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

I am just a fascinated by the who concept of God knitting!

Of him weaving us together and knowing us, seeing us even before we took our first breath!
To realise that his knowledge of us is so comprehensive is an awe-inspiring thing.

Life

Many of the Psalms were written out of deep experiences of life.

E.g.

David in trouble after adultery with Bathsheba … Psalm 51 >>>
David pretending to be mad to get out of a dangerous situation with a foreign king – Psalm 34 >>>
David feeling God had abandoned him – Psalm 22 >>>

These Psalms will help us in the experiences of life – whether easy or difficult.

So how do the Psalms work?

What should I look out for when I’m reading them that will help me to see the wonder of the Lord and feast my eyes on him?

How Psalms work – Look out for

Pictures

A word or a phrase that cunjors up a visual image that says something about the message of the verse.

16:11 You make known to me the path of life;

the ‘path’ is not a literal path at all – it’s a picture that illustrates

16:8 I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.

I’m not intended to look to the right hand side of my body to spot God! I’m intended to feel that he’s with me, right beside me, leading me by my dominant hand (usually the right)

metaphors

A metaphor is an implied comparison, even though I may not be told it’s a comparison

Psalm 23:1 The Lord is my shepherd

But God isn’t a shepherd, and I’m not a sheep! But enter into the metaphor for a moment and instantly we can see what we’re being told here.

I’m as weak, unwise, direction-less and defenceless as a sheep
and The Lord is the one who guides me to good pasture, guides me in the right direction, protects me and sees me as valuable – worth his while caring for me

similes

This is where the writer compares two things, often using words like ‘like’ or ‘as’

E.g. Psalm 1

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers,

2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.

3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water,

so what does such a tree look like?

it yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither – whatever they do prospers.

So what happens in nature is similar to what happen in life. The refreshing, stimulating personally nourishing effect of drinking in God’s law makes us strong and fruitful.

Personifications

This is where a human attribute is given to something that’s not human

Psalm 43:3 Send me your light and your faithful care, let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell.

>>>

hyperbole

Is an exaggeration that’s done to make a point:

Psalm 42: As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.

2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?

3 My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’

Is the psalmist really asking me to believe that he ate and drank his teas? Of course not! But so intense is his distress its’ as if his tears we as unavoidable a part of life as his daily food. Now we get it.

Usually the effect is emotional so hyperbole is usually emotive, rather than literal. – In fact Jesus used it too

“If you eye offends you, gouge it out!”

Was he advocating radical surgery? No! But he was urging us to be radical about things we see with our eyes that we ought not to!

apostrophe

This is where the writer of the Psalm addresses something that may be nonhuman is if it’s human

Psalm 148 Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars. 4 Praise him, you highest heavens and you waters above the skies.

and especially parallelism

This is the act of saying the same thing twice using different words

E.g.

Psalm 16:5 Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;

you make my lot secure.

6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;

surely I have a delightful inheritance.

7 I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;

even at night my heart instructs me.

Can you hear those words rhyming thought-for-thought, instead of word-for-word >>>

So how should I get into the psalms? Above all, read them as poems, read them just for the sheer fun of it, the wonder of it.

Let them speak to you and do what you can to see God through a new lens as you do it

My challenge

use the day-number to read a psalm each day.

Try writing one and send it in to us at the church – we will publish some of them.

Pray >>>

Feast your eyes on this God