An Overview Of Psalms

Since I don't do this. Every week I've taken to writing down on the tops of my notes the times that I teach These lessons at various places so that I can you know keep track, and if I want to pull one out again to use and it turns out that Exactly a year ago.

On January 22nd, so it was this week's Sunday one year ago. I taught a lesson about Psalms and it I have a feeling since. What's happening right now is that Steve and Janet are at the Ligonier conference?

I'm thinking that maybe that's exactly what they were doing one year ago. Today, too, and that's why I taught this then.

And.

I also happen to be preaching the p .m. Service this evening and my text this evening is on Psalm 16. And there were some things about the psalm and Psalms. That I had to cut for time so to speak to the sermon and so I said oh well I'm also teaching Sunday school, so maybe I could do that.

And so I'm going to pull out this lesson from a year ago. And if you were here one year ago, and you remember it I'm willing to let you test out. Okay, so here we go if you can define for me chiasm and Also name the titles of the five books of the psalms.

You can go grab yourself a donut and go just hang out in the kitchen for the hour, okay? Anybody want to Take a shot. Okay, that's fine. That's fine. All right, so let's do it all. Right, so we're going to talk this morning about loving your psalms.

Alright loving your psalms and I'm sure I know that a lot of you were here last year, and that's great. So hopefully this will just be as I'm talking it'll just sort of bubble back into your short-term memory.

And it'll be something that you can really use and apply when it comes to your personal Bible study. So I titled this lesson Love your psalms because that's the important message I want for you to take away from today not the love part, but the your part they are your psalms.

All right, the Bible of course is the Word of God. It is God's message to us and that is absolutely true of psalms too, but Psalms are a unique and special in the canon in that they are the one book in which there is also us Speaking to him there us speaking to him and in a way that gives us Kind of a very interesting special ownership.

An unusual relationship that we have with psalms compared to any other book in the Bible. John Calvin called the psalms an anatomy of all parts of the soul an anatomy of all parts of the soul and Up until the 19th century which is really not that long ago in the grand scope of things.

Psalms were the church's primary hymn book. The only thing they sang was psalms. Athanasius said that they embraced the whole life of man the affections of his mind the motions of his soul. Luther described them this book as in it is Comprehended most beautifully and briefly.

Everything that is in the entire Bible. So the deal the thing is is that the psalms belong to the church and you are the church these are your Psalms. Now, let's talk a little bit about the some of the fundamentals when it comes to the psalms.

All right now Spurgeon if any of you are familiar Spurgeon's commentary on the psalms anybody know what he what it's titled. It's called the Treasury of David right. It's called the Treasury of David.

And that's a bit of a misconception because while David certainly wrote a lot of psalms. He's not the sole author right not the sole author. Jewish tradition counts at least 10 10 different offers authors.

Are you ready Adam? Melchizedek. Abraham Moses David Solomon Haman Jettison ASAP and at least one son of Korah. Okay, so there's the ten now of those ten I can be definitive about seven. Seven of those in particular.

Why can I be absolutely definitive about seven? It's because the names were In the beginning right in the title right in the title psalms another part that's unique about psalms is it's the only place where there's like Extroversical I just coined that phrase content.

All right.

Because the titles they don't get a verse number. They're just right underneath the heading and everywhere else in your Bible where you might see headings in your Bible. Those headings are not inspired.

Those headings were put in there by the Bible publisher or by the translators. But the Psalms they have a title or a lot of them do have a title and that title is inspired. It is in the original Hebrew text and So when it says a mictum of David or a song of David or a song of Moses We can be sure that Moses David whoever wrote that.

All right.

So there is at least that and the reason I say at least seven is because ASAP and Korah which I'll talk about in a moment here seemed to be not just the name of a singular person, but rather a group of people and so it's possible that There were multiple people within the group who wrote and contributed to some of these psalms.

But there's at least seven of the ten that I just listed from Jewish tradition Adam Melchizedek and Abraham they don't there is no psalm that is attributed to them in the inspired text. So that's pure tradition that those three wrote one or more than one.

All right.

So.

Well, you know who Moses is. I'll tell you a little about authorship the biographies of these authors. You know who Moses is. Moses only has one credit to his name Psalm 90. Solomon you know who Solomon is, of course, he has to Psalm 72.

Psalm 127. And then there's the sons of Korah. All right now the sons of Korah. Like I just said, they're they're a group of people. They have their roots in believe it or not in numbers in the story of a rebellion That takes place in the Israelite camp against Moses and that rebellion is led by none other than Korah.

So you'd be kind of surprised. You're forgiven. I suppose if you're surprised that there would then be a group of people who named themselves the sons of Korah and end up writing parts of the Bible if Korah led a rebellion against Moses.

But it it does seem to be that that the sons of Korah did not participate in their father's rebellion. They remained loyal to Moses and by the time of David. This group this family clan seems to have become have a special charge of music at the temple.

They were to put it in modern terms David's worship team. They were Charlie Crane.

Right.

And they seem to have in fact continued in that role for several generations beyond David. All right. So like I said, we're the name. Very possibly a lot of commentators think that the name Doesn't even refer to a family anymore, but is in fact more just like an organization or a band name.

Right just I wear the sons of Korah.

Right.

Asaph. Who is the author of 12 Psalms he was a contemporary of David. He was named in First Chronicles as the chief minister before the Ark. That's his title which probably means that he was a skilled singer and a poet as well as a prophet and.

Again in later generations beyond David there seems to be a group that starts to name themselves Asaph or the sons of Asaph. And so we can't really say that all 12 were written by David's contemporary in particular.

It might be that some of them came by some followers later on Haman and Ethan the Ezra Heights. They are credited with only one psalm each. But I want to please note that when you look in the inspired title.

It says, you know Haman the Ezra Heights and Ethan the Ezra Heights. Please note that it's not. They're not descended from the famous Ezra. Okay that you know in the Bible, but rather from Ezra with an H.

Okay, who is a completely different person? And yet again, that just seems to be another choir group. Yeah, in fact Psalm 89 which is one of the ones credited to them sounds very post exile. So there's content in it that probably came from much much later on in the history of Israel.

And then of course David the big gun. He has 73 of the hundred and fifty Psalms to his credit not quite half. Just under half and the remaining 50 are anonymous. They're anonymous, we just don't know because they are all songs and it's very important for you to remember that as you read Psalms.

You can sometimes kind of lose that fact because in English when they're translated they don't rhyme. They don't really have some of them have choruses that repeat but not all of them. And so they they don't really look like a song as you know songs, but they are all songs.

And and they are all poetry because they're songs they are all poetry that's really important to understand. The thing though about Hebrew is that even in Hebrew poetry doesn't rhyme. Or at least doesn't necessarily rhyme.

There's probably a handful of psalms that do have some rhyming or at least some play on words in the original Hebrew, but Poetry in Hebrew was not organized around rhyming rather. It was organized around chiasm.

Okay, chiasm that word phrase. I mentioned earlier chiasm is. What happens when something patterns around a central point? Okay, it patterns around a central point and. So for most Psalms what you can expect that to mean is that the message?

The theme the big takeaway of the psalm is somewhere in the middle. Somewhere in the middle some psalms. There's actually like multiple Chisms where it's like each stanza has its own. Most or lots of psalms.

It's just that there's a whole v-shaped kind of thing going on. Where in the in the almost smack middle of the psalm is the the climax or the the most important? Thing that you're supposed to know from the psalm.

Whereas in English poetry. You know the main message is is usually in the first or the last line or repeated in both places. There are some psalms that are not chisms at all. They are acrostics. Does anybody know the most sort of famous one of that?

Psalm 119 is an acrostic. Yes, so that one the longest chapter in the Bible. It's kind of even a misnomer to call it a chapter, but it's the longest one in the Bible. That is a giant acrostic each section of Psalm 119 is Labeled with a heading of a different Hebrew letter and in within that section.

Every single line in the Hebrew starts with that letter. So there you go. Yeah, so it's and and I look at that and I think to myself of how we do that similar kind of thing with our children's Sunday school, and I can't help but Wonder if Psalm 119 was originally written in sort of like a children's catechism kind of way because it's all about Psalm 119 is all about how wonderful the scriptures are every Single line in Psalm 1 for as long as it is every single one of them says something about how great Your law is your scriptures are your commandments are and like it changes the all the different terms for it.

But it's just over and over again about how wonderful The Bible is and I'm like, yeah I have my kids sing songs about how great the Bible is to in in children's Sunday school. So I Wouldn't be surprised at all.

All right. Now most modern Bibles. With our fancy publishing technology print Psalms with special indentation right to indicate their poetic structure.

However.

If you're like me and your brain tries to follow the lines and whatever it can get really hard especially in those Bibles that are printed in two-column formats, so first off I'll just say before I get into this if you ever have the opportunity to buy a Copy of the Psalms as a sort of standalone thing like a scripture journal or something else where it's one column.

Okay, single column format nicely wide-margined but but big and spacious. Definitely get that that's fantastic. Even better if and there's this is starting to become a thing now. They call them like readers Bibles where they don't even print the verse numbers in them because the verse numbers aren't matching with the actual verses of the psalm and so when you take away all those numbers and everything and you just see in One nice single column the indentations correctly in the spacing correctly.

I think you really get a better grasp of the poetic structure of the psalm. But I do want to help you most of us probably have the two column one. So I'd like you to turn to Psalm 104, but I want you to do it in your pew Bibles.

All right, that way we're all looking at exactly the same thing. So grab a pew Bible and turn to Psalm 104. So let me try to explain the indentation to you. All right, here's the key. The map legend. All right, so you can understand what's going on.

All right, first off look between verses 9 and 10 verses 13 and 14 verses 18 and 19. Versus 26 and 27, right? Do you see how there's sort of an extra line of space there? Okay. Those are the stanza breaks.

Okay, those are the stanza breaks. So each. So when you count that up, what is that Psalm 104? Well, one, two, three, four, five six. Okay, so there's six stanzas in Psalm 104. All right. Then if you sort of if you have another piece of paper or you just want to kind of put your hand Like that vertical across the page.

You'll notice that there's actually multiple levels of indent. Okay, multiple levels of indent first there's sort of the level zero, right everything that's as far over to the left as you can. And then level one.

So one tab over. Okay, if you see something in indent level one that indicates a couplet. So for example verse four. All right. So if you look at verse four, there's he makes his messengers wins his ministers a flaming fire.

Right. So the the second part of verse four is just one level indent in you see that. Okay, so that indicates that those two lines Right. Those are two lines in the Hebrew poetry, but those two lines are a couplet.

Okay, they go together. There are also in somewhere other places in Psalms like Psalm 16 that I'm gonna preach tonight triplets. Okay, so it's not just couplets. Sometimes there's triplets. But they are so they're meant to be read together right as a pairing.

Definitely don't ever want to just take out of context one half of that and not the other Right, so you get you get the whole couplet. All right and also most times those couplets have some kind of Parallelism some kind of relationship right in here.

It's pretty obvious. He makes his messengers wins his ministers a flaming fire. Right is the mess the subject is really the same ministers messengers. It's the same person the same Same group of people just describing them with a different word and in a slightly different way.

Yeah, maybe it's a yeah. Yeah Right two different ways, right? Yeah. Yep. Okay, and then indent level two. So when it's indented even further over what that's telling you is just column wrapping All right word wrap the line above was too long.

To fit on one line right and that happens all the time in these two column Formats and you can see it's all over the place in Psalm 104. So like for example verse 11 they give drink to every beast of the field right field is way over.

Indented you can see it because the next line below it couplet is if there's a couplet there indented, right? So in verse 11, there are in fact two lines in the Hebrew one that starts with day one that starts with the Right, and the field is not any kind of separate line or anything else.

It just didn't fit when they were trying to print it here in this this shrunk-down two-column format All right. So what that means is if you're reading this psalm aloud, all right. Be careful, please do not pause at all Between the and field.

All right, you should just read it like they give drink to every beast of the field.

Right. Okay.

And.

Then so what how you can think about it if you're reading Psalms aloud and I encourage you read Psalms aloud a lot. They're a wonderful way to have worship with your family or personal worship. You think about it this way that on the spaces between the stanzas.

Big pause. All right, that's when you would take a really big pause a rest. Take if you think about in musical terms and you think about it and it's meant to be a like, you know. You reflect you're about to cycle over to the next stanza the next verse in Psalm 42.

There's actually a chorus where some that gets repeated a certain set of lines and you'll see the chorus in multiple places. Just like we have choruses in our in our modern worship songs, right?

And then on.

On indent level one. Those couplets you can think about just as you're reading aloud. You just take a breath between the couplet Right and then on the level to The big indents no stop at all. All right, so spaces stanzas big breath couplets little breath.

Level two no breath. Just keep going. Okay, and.

It's.

Not in Psalm 104, but in other Psalms there is a musical term that is printed. Usually on the bottom right kind of justified over to the right side of the column and that musical term is Selah. Selah, okay.

SEL a H. It is a musical term that we don't know for certain, but it seems extremely likely that it means Rest pause breath. Okay, and. So it's just an instruction, all right those of you who can read music and you've and you see musical.

You know notations and whatnot. It would be it's similar to how there's pianissimo, right? That just tells you very softly right or piano. It just means somewhat softly right that kind of thing in the same way Selah is just telling you pause here.

Pause for reflection. All right, what that means is again, if you're reading them aloud, don't read it aloud. Okay, it's kind of a bit of a pet peeve of mine, but you're not supposed to say it. You're not supposed to read it.

It's supposed to be silence that's a moment of silence for time to rip for the whole congregation who was singing to reflect probably made maybe it was a moment at which like a whole line of Instrument music just kept playing while the while the singers just didn't sing.

Okay, so it's just a moment. It's supposed to be an extended moment of reflection before you move on with the rest of the psalm. Okay. All right. So there you go. So that's the indentations and the musical notations.

If you ever also in them titles. See some weird words that you don't know for example again tonight Psalm 16 a victim of David again, that's just it's a musical term that we the translators just don't quite know.

So they just transliterate it from the Hebrew. It probably means some type of song song like a genre of song to be sung. Maybe it even indicates the particular tune that the instruments are supposed to play as you sing this song.

We don't really know right, but we know it's some kind of musical term. I just that what I'm just saying that it that it's it is a musical term. It means I think most I think most Jewish tradition says that it refers to the like the tune.

Like this this is the the melody that's supposed to go with this. So verse 3. Yeah, so He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters is one line and it's not a couplet. It's all on its it stands completely on its own.

He makes the clouds his chariot. He rides on the wings of the wind. That's a couplet. Well, the two lines together are a couple with each other. So there's so there's so within verse 3 what we label as verse 3 there are actually three lines of Hebrew poetry.

Okay, one of which stands on its own completely and the second two lines B and C are a couplet.

Okay.

Yeah, and if you really want to get into it, like if you're the your inner English teacher Gets into this there is a there can there is a lot to be found in a lot of Psalms when it comes to Discovering exactly that right like oh it goes a BC a BC right or BC BC ABC rightly, it's it's all that kind of stuff.

So and.

Then.

As you if you when you really study those kinds of things in depth, you'll be able to spot for example that like oh in Line the line I labeled a way back here in stanza one that in stanza six. There's another line a and those two lines actually have some parallel to each other in terms of the metaphor they're using or they just they picked out a certain Hebrew word that appears in both and you just you really start to see all the.

Like I said Hebrew poetry is all just about the repetition in it's not rhyming like we think of you know Audible rhyming but rather it's the the repetitive and the parallelism that makes it into rhyming.

Okay, and psalm 16, it's a bit of a plug for my sermon tonight. But psalm 16 is full of that and we're gonna I'm gonna show you at least a few places. Where where it all comes out and that really helps to tie together the whole theme of the psalm.

As you study it. Okay. All right. Now as I also mentioned a minute ago There are with the Psalms is not actually just the book of Psalms. Okay, it's not one book. It's really five books. You know that.

Five books some really old printings of Bibles. Even when so even when so far as to say Psalms one or first Psalm second Psalm third Psalm or book one of the Psalms. Kind of thing and I think in the ESV if you search through there and flip around.

You'll see it says book for right like as a heading somewhere in there. Interestingly, so the the other the alternative word or Title for the Hebrew name of the entire collection of the Psalms is the book of praises.

Okay, the book of praises and each one of these five books. Ends with a verse or a psalm of praise. I think it's kind of interesting a little neat. But those five books they do hint at at least a bit more of organization.

Sometimes if you sort of scan through the Psalms you might have thought to yourself that there. They seem kind of random, you know. If you didn't take enough time to really look at it. They seem kind of random to you in terms of their order and placement the David Psalms are all over the place.

It's not just like there's a section in which we just rattle through all 73 of David Psalms and then move on to somebody else. Now they're kind of all over right even even the Psalms of David.

Which.

Many of them refer to specific times in David's life. Right actually in the titles talk to us about work within the text we can glean from the context. What part of David's life? What did what era he he wrote this and they're not in chronological order of his life.

Right, they're kind of mixed up and all over the place. So what what is going on? What is the ordering going on here?

Well.

There are five books. Like I said, and I'm gonna give you My titles for them. All right, and I stand in a Tradition of many commentators and that it feels seems like every single commentator. I read he had invented their own names.

Okay, there's been no consensus About what the names of these books should be. But I've looked at them a lot and and these are my titles that I I I like for them. And I'll tell you why after I get through them book one which is Psalms 1 through 41 is Facing down the enemies external facing down the enemies external and then book 2 which is 42 to 72 is Facing down the enemies internal facing down the enemies internal book 373 to 89 Is about getting real during crises of faith and book 4 Which is 90 through 106 is remembering God is faithful and then book 5 107 to 150 is Celebrating God for who he is and what he has done.

All right facing down the enemies external facing down the enemies internal getting real in crises of faith and then remembering God is faithful and Celebrating God for who he is and what he has done.

So so those are in those were the original how the scrolls were in Hebrew. Like it when they when they organized the Psalms that was each one of the scrolls. Yep, so they they've always been for as far back as we have manuscripts Divided up into these five books.

So we didn't just invent where we want to break it up. Now I find extra special meaning in the way I've titled these because there is a strong correlation with the typical progression of the lament psalm.

Okay, the lament psalm and I'll get into types in a few minutes, but Laments is one type and as you can probably guess from the name It is a song about when the author is facing some kind of emotional distress or struggle.

Okay, he is lamenting over something and nearly all of the lament psalms Have the shape of a V in terms of their authors emotional state. Okay, as you read through it, they start with a statement of a situation outside of them enemy external that has Triggered the distress caused the problem.

Okay, and they proceed then to confess their emotions about it.

And.

Deal with their own sort of internal enemies and as it reaches the bottom of the V They have gotten to a point where it brings out of them cries of despair in the crisis. Okay, and then there's like a turning point in the middle of that lament psalm.

Where all of a sudden it's like some the switch inside them flips. The Holy Spirit Brings to mind again something some truth about God some wonderful promise that Yahweh has made to them personally or to the nation and that starts to bring them up out of their despair and They start to remember that God is Faithful right where they start and they start to look up to God instead of looking down at their troubles.

And by the end of the psalm every one of these lament psalms except for one psalm 88 but for every other ones. They all end by the end of the psalm. They are celebrating God and they're shouting hallelujah.

And so in that exact same way. So what you want might once have thought was randomness when it comes to the books of the Bible there are the books of the psalms. They follow that same V pattern. It's not completely true within the books.

There are some that kind of don't fit within that theme but by and large. Book one you're gonna see mostly about and it's mostly Davidic psalms there, too. David talking about fighting against his external enemies who are causing him distress and giving him trouble and.

Then book two starts with Psalm 42 one of the greatest Psalms dealing with despair with thwarted plans. With depression. Martin Lloyd-jones has an entire book called spiritual depression in which he goes uses Psalm 42 for most of the of the book to go through and explain everything as.

You know, it's about facing down the enemies internal right when your emotions start to get the best of you. And then book three Tends to be the most lament strongest laments of the lament psalms. In which they are just in utter despair over how bad things are whether utter despair over enemies attacking Israel during the kingdom era or.

The a lot of those are also of course during the exile or just after the exile. They're lamenting the fact that they're in exile. And then book four now you start to see more celebratory psalms. Psalm 103 is within book four in which we talk about how wonderful God God is my father as God as a father look pities his children.

So does God love those? Who are his?

Right and.

By book five. Most of the psalms in book five are just short little just like our hymn book or short little choruses in which they just sing Hallelujah, and they're just celebrating how good and good and great God is.

All right. So there's the structure and so, you know what the psalms tell us. I think this this structure Is the indication of what kind of instruction we should take from the psalms? Okay, I Told you this is the book that God gave us for us to be able to speak back to him.

First off. I think it's important for us to acknowledge that we are emotional creatures and that's okay. Not to be too. Mr. Rogers on you, but we are emotional creatures and that's okay. And in fact, it's more than okay.

It is good. All right, Adam and Eve Before the fall were created with emotional capacity. We are built to be emotional creatures. We don't sin. Just because we emote it is what we do with those emotions.

That becomes a statement of sinfulness or obedience. How we react how we process them how we deal with them and so many of the Psalms are Literally a roadmap for you on how to process your emotions in a godly way.

And so it should be no surprise God knows those of our emotions and he knows our hearts. He knows them better than we know them even. Which means it does no use for us to hide that from him when we were experiencing any range of emotions.

And one of the things that really strikes me the more I study the Psalms is how incredibly Bluntly honest the psalmists are with God about what they're going through and how they feel. Like to the point where it almost sounds blasphemous.

They're like, where are you God? How long will you hide your face from me. I'm like when are we gonna sing Ask Charlie, when are we gonna sing that song? Yeah, be not deaf to me. Right. It's not really a thing.

You're gonna hear on any given Sunday morning. Maybe we should because that's really real. That's really what's going on for a lot of us.

Right.

And then the Psalms so like I just said serve as a guidebook on how to process these emotions. That we experience in this sin cursed world with our fallen nature how to rightly deal with them how to live with them and most.

Especially I think the Psalms tell us that we are not alone. We are not alone. Because I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that you know as Luther said that the Psalms are a comprehensive Look at our emotional states.

Which means that Anything that you're going through there is something analogous to it in the Psalms that you can use. That God has given you to help you. Okay, and also Just to not sound too downer about this.

It's not just negative emotions that the Psalms tell us how to process. There's also talking about Happy emotions joy and celebration how to praise.

God.

So in all that I'll only offer you two approaches. One is if you're already in the midst of an emotional experience find a psalm and Use it to deepen your relationship with God. All right, and now this might be hard to do in a moment of negative emotions.

But it can be a real lifeline a real lifeline. To stick to. So that of course that does mean it's better to be meditating and consuming the Psalms. Already before you get into those hard times so that you know where to turn.

Already.

But there are there are many Psalms in my Bible that are well-worn paths. Right that my Bible my Bible just sort of you know you open it up. And it just sort of falls open to that page. And so that's the second approach the one where you love your Psalms.

And so that's sort of reinforcing the girders inside your mind in your heart. So in your soul so that you're better prepared for both the trials and the triumphs of life and in the same way if something amazing happens or wonderful happens be ready to turn to a psalm and to read it or read it.

Aloud in celebration and praise to the Lord for what's happening or what he's doing. So just for some examples I already mentioned it. Psalm 42. Psalm 42 is an excellent psalm for you if you've had a good plan thwarted.

What seemed like the wise decision the right course of action and then some circumstance outside of your control has completely ruined it. Psalm 42. Psalm 74 is a great one to turn to in an election year when you're anxious About the news.

And what's going on around you that you have no control over and it just seems like the world is spinning right off its axis Psalm 74 and then on the positive side if you're getting ready to celebrate a holiday with a family gathering Psalm 113.

Take a look at Psalm 113. Maybe read that. At the start of your at once everyone's come together before you pray for the meal or whatever. Now if you're gonna go searching I don't have a whole lot of time.

But if you're gonna go searching around the psalms for one to fit the current occasion of your life it's definitely helpful to have a map and Most time when you hear people talk about maps they're talking about the not talking about the five books that I just went to they're talking About types.