Rediscovering the Psalms: A Spiritual Treasure

I'm always delighted to be able to talk about the Psalms because I think they are, first of all, a great treasure in the Scripture, but I think for many of us they are also a neglected treasure, and that is actually something fairly new in the history of the church. In the history of the church, the Psalter was turned to over and over again in the ancient church period, in the medieval church period, in the Reformation church period. [00:00:11]

There are so many things to bless and to encourage and strengthen us in the Psalter that not to know it is to really impoverish ourselves. It would be like being handed a huge inheritance and putting it under the mattress and forgetting all about it. You'd still have it, but you're not profiting from it; you're not being blessed by it in any way. [00:01:11]

The biggest single problem, I think, with the Psalter for many of us is it's all just random, isn't it, all these Psalms? Aren't these Psalms like taking a hundred and fifty playing cards and shuffling them, and if you completely rearrange the order it wouldn't make any difference. And the effect of that for us is that if we find something in the Psalter that really speaks to us, we may find that we can never find it again. [00:05:44]

If nothing else, we ought to see the power of the Psalter in that the Psalter was so important to New Testament authors. The Psalter, I believe, is the most quoted book in the New Testament. Isaiah may be in the running, but the Psalter is really important. Time and time again Jesus in His ministry will quote or allude to a Psalm. [00:08:03]

The Psalms were in their brains, it was in their hearts, it was in their reference world, that there were Psalms that were important to them, that spoke to them. Sometimes they spoke to them for really polemical purposes. Remember, Jesus after the triumphal entry, had the Pharisees and Sadducees come and challenge Him with questions, and finally Jesus said, "I have a question for you," and Jesus quoted Psalm 110. [00:08:38]

The Psalms are the only book in the Bible that are both God's Word to us, every book of the Bible is God's Word to us, but the Psalter is God's Word to us to give us words to Him. So, how do we speak to God? What can we say to God? What's legitimate to say to God? Well, the Psalter shows us how we can speak to God. [00:15:34]

Honest communication has a range of emotions. It has communication of gladness, of thankfulness, of joy, but it also has honest communication of suffering, and distress, and questioning, and confusion. And what the Psalter does is enable us to see God really is our heavenly Father, and there are no questions and there are no concerns we cannot bring to Him. [00:18:00]

Real Christianity is a personal religion in the sense that God in His saving work is establishing a community of people with a personal God. And one of our temptations over and over again is to turn our relationship to God into something mechanical. That's an essential characteristic of idolatry. "I do this and God will have to do that." God doesn't want a mechanical relationship with us; He wants a personal relationship. [00:19:44]

There is a kind of character to each of the five books of the Psalter. So, the first book ... now one of my contentions is, you can think about this, the Psalms are particularly the psalms of the king of Israel. Some psalms talk about "I," sometimes the Psalms talk about "we," but whether it's I or we, I think it's the king speaking for the people. [00:22:13]

Book three of the Psalter, which is the heart of the Psalter, the center of the Psalter, Psalm 73 through 89, is the crisis of the kingship. Everything seems to be falling apart. If your life is falling apart, the psalms in book three are the psalms that will help you, or at least describe you. Psalm 88 is the bleakest psalm in the whole Psalter, "I am alone, darkness is my only companion." [00:24:35]

There really is a structure to this book. There really is a sense to this book, and by digging into the book, by seeing its structure, by seeing its beauty, by appreciating its poetry, we are really going to be building ourselves up in the faith and we're going to be preparing ourselves to help people when they're in trouble, to help people when they're in difficulty, to have a word for our soul, but also to have a word for the souls of others. [00:26:22]

One great way to begin to learn the Psalms is to sing them. Did you know the Psalms are set to music? You know, we live in a world where lots of people are really eager to find new music to sing. And so, this is a moment of opportunity. The Psalms will be brand new for most of us! And a wonderful way to get them in our souls and in our minds and in our hearts. [00:26:54]