Our Church Service on August 28 will take place at 4734 Samish Point Rd, Bow WA 98232 at 11 am

Singing the Songs of Jesus - The Book of Psalms

Jun 13, 2021    Andrey Bulanov

Main idea:
- The Psalms as a whole penetrate to the deepest aspects of our hearts to connect us to the heart of our Savior and his story that is at work in our lives.

Outline:
1. The Psalms tell a story
2. The Psalms are medicine to the heart
1. They teach you to see everything through the lens of God’s Word
2. They invite your participation
3. The Psalms connect you to the heart of Jesus

Scripture references:
- Psalm 1-2
- Psalm 139:23–24
- Psalm 22:1
- Hebrews 4:15

Application:
- Read the Psalms as a story. Allow them to take you back to the grand story of Scripture, of God's promise and his faithfulness to his people. Allow yourself to be transported into that story to know that you are not alone and that your struggles are not unique.
- Learn to pray like the Psalmists pray. Learn to soak your prayers in the promises and truths of Scripture itself. Allow God's book of prayers to empower your own prayers, to teach you what to ask for and how to wait.
- Meet Jesus in the Psalms. See in the Psalms the heart of your God and Savior. See that he walks with in through the highs and the lows. See that he has truly come to redeem and rescue you.

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Book recommend: the Songs of Jesus, Tim Keller, ESV and CSB study Bibles

Truly throughout the ages, the books of Psalms has been one of the most prized and special parts of the Bible.

Throughout the history of the church, the reading, praying and singing of the Psalms has been a central practice of both private and public worship.

It is a place of great comfort and encouragement. It is rich in truth about God and about ourselves. It is honest about the reality of our struggles.

Martin Luther called the Psalms a "mini Bible".

At the same time, the Psalms can easily be abused as a "quick and easy" solution to our lack of depth in Scripture. In our modern fast paced life it is often the book that we open to in order to get a quick nuggets of emotional boost to make us feel better about ourselves even if we know we lack spiritual depth and discipline.

"The Psalms" are the typical answer of that one kid in the youth group who does not read his Bible.

And so because of that, due to our laziness, the Psalms can become a spot in which we get disconnected from our Bibles because we come to it for a cheep and quick emotional fix.

Over the last few months we have spent time looking at the deep struggles of the heart. Now we follow up with a series in the Psalms to help us land some of those truths in a deeper more personal way.

We will take the summer to soak in the riches of the Psalms as a spiritual practice to teach us to walk in the midst of our struggles with our Savior.

Our goal today is to enter in to the gateway of the Psalms - to take a closer look at what this book is and how it is meant to work in our lives, how it is that we can extract the maximum strength and blessing from it.

What we want to see today is that the Psalms as a whole penetrate to the deepest aspects of our hearts to connect us to the heart of our Savior and his story that is at work in our lives.


1. The Psalms tell a story

The book of Psalms was written and arranged to the people of God in order to call them to worship God, remember his truth and his saving works, be encouraged and remain faithful in the midst of trails.

The book of Psalms is not an isolated random collage of old prayers and songs. It is actually arranged with purpose and care to communicate a point.

- 150 Psalms,
- About half of the Psalms have explicit notes that David as the author, but we also have others including, Solomon, Moses, Asaph and others.
- They are arranged in 5 books
- You can see this in the notes between the Psalms


- Book 1, Psalms 1–41
- Book 2, Psalms 42–72
- Book 3, Psalms 73–89
- Book 4, Psalms 90–106
- Book 5, Psalms 107–50

These devisions were created as the book of Psalms were being arranged over the course of their writing and finalized sometime after the Babylonian captivity.

Is there a reason that the Psalms are arranged in 5 books?

When we pay close attention to the progress of this book, we also see that many of the Psalms have little notes or superscriptions that tell you who wrote the Psalm and why. This give us a clearer picture of the purpose of the Psalms.

When we zoom out and see the how the whole book connects we see that there is a pattern to the book as a whole. This has been well supported and demonstrated in the work of Dr. James Hamilton at SBTS.

- Book 1 focuses on David’s rise to power through affliction.
- Book 2 sings of David’s reign down to the time of Solomon.
- Book 3 then reflects the time of Solomon to the exile from the land.
- Book 4 consists of exilic reflections on Yahweh’s past deliverance of Israel.
- Book 5 looks beyond exile and hopes for Yahweh’s future deliverance of his people through the agency of the Davidic king, who is seated at Yahweh’s right hand until he puts all his enemies under his feet.

In this sense, the book of Psalms retells the whole story of God's salvation and God's people.

And it does that not from a bird's eye view but from the reflections and struggles of the people of God from the ground level.

If the other parts of Scripture retell the story of God from the perspective of a newspaper reporter retelling the facts of a war, the Psalms give you notes from the soldiers in the midst of the battle.

Psalms 1-2 are the gateway to the whole book. They set the stage for the whole story.

Psalm 1 - pointing back to God's instruction to the kings of Israel that the key to their joy and prosperity was that the King spend his life in the Word of God. It points back to Genesis 1 and the garden of Eden by showing that it is only by the Word of God that our life can have a green and thriving character. It points to the temptation of the false promise walking in false ways that only lead to death.

Psalm 2 - points to the promise of God to establish a perfect and eternal kingdom, to the victory of God over all evil, to the struggle the the faithful person experiences as he seeks to follow God in a world that opposes and hates God.

One of the keys to digging into the richness of the book of Psalms is NOT just that this book understands you and your problems.

Rather, this is a book that pulls your story into the common story of Scripture.

It pulls you into the drama in a very personal way (like the superbook cartoon) and it helps you see your life and your problems in light of the overall story of Scripture.

Our need is not just to be understood - it is to be returned and reminded again and again of the story that we are part of.

"Pain without a story is just pain. Pain in the midst of a story is grace."

We do not struggle alone. We do not struggle without a purpose.

When we read the Psalms, we need to learn to let them take us back into the story that THEY are telling - into the lives of the saints and the struggles that they faced.

We need to enter the story of the Psalms before we let the Psalms enter our story. Often times we skip this crucial step and make it all about us finding a little nugget of truth here and there.

One of the most powerful encouragements we can receive is not just to have someone speak into our life, but to discover that our lives and our battles are part of a bigger story, a bigger song that spans the ages. We are members of a family of saints and we share in this story together.

2. The Psalms are medicine to the heart

a. They teach you to see everything through the lens of his Word

Why are the Psalms so helpful and dear to the church?

• They are richly packed with truth about God - who he is, what he is like, how he relates to the world.
• It has been noted that almost every other biblical teaching found in other parts of the Bible is found in the Psalms

"Instead, his delight is in the Lord’s instruction,
and he meditates on it day and night."

The key to all happiness, the key to all success, the key to coming to God correctly, to responding to our stressors - is to be saturated in the Word of God and to allow it to shape how we see all things.

The anchor of joy to the believer is rootedness in the Word of God.

We have a deep problem in our time of shallow christianity, shallow spirituality - all because many christians live their lives on a very shallow knowledge of God's Word.

Notice how the whole 2nd Psalm flips on a clear and shocking statement about GOD -

"Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth take their stand,
and the rulers conspire together
against the Lord and his Anointed One:
...
4 The one enthroned in heaven laughs;
the Lord ridicules them.
5 Then he speaks to them in his anger
and terrifies them in his wrath"

You cannot pray correctly, if you don't have a deep knowledge of God!

You cannot understand yourself correctly, if you have a shallow knowledge of God!

You cannot respond to your challenges correctly, if you have a shallow knowledge of God!

This is why we place a high priority on theology and doctrine and knowing Scripture - not because we just want to be smart - but because we are DESPERATE to know God, because he has spoken to us in his word and he has taught us rich and beautiful things about himself - and we want to know those things!

The Psalms teach you to come to God in prayer through a rich lens of truth. They teach you to pray his own truth back to him. They teach you to inform your perspective of your dangers and your difficulties through a thick lens of truth.

This is why, at the very gateway, the entrance to the Psalms, we meet this person, who is truly joyful, evergreen, strong, rooted - because his delight is in knowing, prizing and meditating on God's word.

This is why the Psalms are medicine to your soul. Your spiritual life, your prayer life, your ability to stand up in the midst of daily struggles can only be supported and equipped by the power of God's Word. The Psalms train you to do that by showing you the hearts, prayers and meditations of fellow saints just like you seeking to do just that.

But theres another reason that they are a medicine -

b. The Psalms invite your participation

"The Psalms are note meant to just be read, but to be done." Tim Keller

Because the Psalms are prayers and songs from man to God, they are meant to be DONE, not just read. We are invited as participants in the Psalms, not just spectators.

"We are, in a sense, to put them inside our own prayers, or perhaps to put our prayers inside them, and approach God in that way. In doing this the psalms involve the speaker directly in new attitudes, commitments, promises, and even emotions."

"When, for example, we do not merely read Psalm 139:23–24—“search me . . . test me . . . see if there is any offensive way in me”—but pray it, we invite God to test our motives and we give active assent to the way of life called for by the Bible."

"The psalms lead us to do what the psalmists do—to commit ourselves to God through pledges and promises, to depend on God through petition and expressions of acceptance, to seek comfort in God through lament and complaint, to find mercy from God through confession and repentance, to gain new wisdom and perspective from God through meditation, remembrance, and reflection."

Keller, Timothy; Keller, Kathy (2015-11-09T22:58:59). The Songs of Jesus . Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

You don't read the Psalms and think, "That is so interesting that thats how David talked to God..."

You read them and think, "This is how I am invited to talk to God."

In this sense, the Psalms must constantly function in our own prayers as "onramps" to prayer - you follow the model of the Psalm you reflect on how the Psalmist is pouring his heart out to God and you make that prayer your own.

In the Lord's prayer Jesus teaches us WHAT to pray about, but in the Psalms, through many rich examples, we learn HOW to pray.

3. The Psalms connect us to the heart of Jesus

Notice how Psalm two has God speaking to the King whom God calls his own Son. Here we have an echo of God's promise to David in 2 Sam. 7 when he says that he will establish through David's descendants an everlasting King and an everlasting Kingdom - and he will be a Father to David's son and David's son will be a son to God.

This was only partially fulfilled with Solomon. But we obviously know that Solomon went astray from God and the kingdom was divided. So throughout the whole story of Scripture we have this hanging promise of God restoring the world through the everlasting kingdom of the son of David.

Psalm 2, as the gateway Psalm establishes that hope firmly.

Interestingly, Psalm 2 tells us that all kings and people's of the world must bow to the Son, to be afraid of his wrath that will crush them - but then the call is to take refuge IN the Son. So it warns us of the wrath of the Son, but it also calls us to take refuge IN the Son.

As New Testament readers of the Psalms we can clearly see that this is not just speaking of some human king who is a descendant of David. We know that it is speaking of Jesus, who, though he was the eternal Son of God, humbled himself and entered our world to become the Son of David who can sit on the throne and never fail us.

Notice what Psalm 2 does for us - it shows us that Jesus is the perfect fulfillment of the promised Son of David who will establish the everlasting kingdom of God.

This theme in Psalm 2 connects to all the themes of the Psalms where the author is looking forward to the promise that God will come through, God will rescue us. At New Testament readers we see that God HAS PROVIDED that fulfillment in Jesus. He has come. His kingdom is working. He is redeeming his world as we speak. In this way the whole book of Psalms is connected to the fulfillment that we have in Jesus.

What is interesting is that the author of Psalm 2, though he is the reigning promised King, is also the suffering saint. He is asking the question - why do the evil people of the world come against me? He is experiencing the trails and hatred of the evil world against him.

This sets the theme for all the psalms of the trials and difficulties of the person who is seeking to follow God in a world that his hostile to him. Not only is Jesus the answer to our hopes - he is also the suffering voice in all the Psalms, he is the one crying out for God to come rescue, he is the one experiencing abandonment, he is the one hoping in God in the midst of darkness.

How do we know that? Because that is what Jesus did. On the cross Jesus cries out, "My God my God, why have you forsaken me??" That was not just his feelings in that moment. That was a direct quote of Psalm 22:1.

In the darkest and most difficult moment - Jesus was praying the Psalms. Not just because they are nice words - but because these words are his very own heart. Though he is our hope and our fulfillment, he is also the suffering servant who has known our darkest pains.

Because Jesus came to suffer in our place and pay the penalty for our sin with his life - he can be the main character at the center of the Psalms - he is the suffering servant, he is the King who will judge the world and rescue us, AND he is the one in whom we take shelter.

Because of this, the Psalms become a place where your heart and your emotions become a place where you connect deeply with the heart and emotions of God himself. When you read the Psalms you see how the words connect to your experience.

"I cry out to you Lord..."

"I feel trapped..."

"I feel alone.."

"I want to praise God for his answers to prayer!"

"I am so amazed by the glory and power of the Lord!"

At the same time, you meet in the Psalms a fellow traveler on the road, a fellow servant, a friend, an older brother who has gone the same path as you, but without sin - you realize that the Lord, the great Redeemer that you pray to is not just up there, far away - he is right here with you. Walking the road.

The Psalms are the songs of Jesus and they connect you to the heart of Jesus.

He is both your rescuer, your Savior - AND he is your companion. He is walking with you. He is reminding you of the story of his salvation.

What is your approach to the Psalms today? Are you benefiting from this rich treasure chest of grace?

Practical pointers from today

• Read the Psalms as a story. Allow them to take you back to the grand story of Scripture, of God's promise and his faithfulness to his people. Allow yourself to be transported into that story to know that you are not alone and that your struggles are not unique.
• Learn to pray like the Psalmists pray. Learn to soak your prayers in the promises and truths of Scripture itself. Allow God's book of prayers to empower your own prayers, to teach you what to ask for and how to wait.
• Meet Jesus in the Psalms. See in the Psalms the heart of your God and Savior. See that he walks with in through the highs and the lows. See that he has truly come to redeem and rescue you.