And as you take your seats, please turn with me this evening to the word of God that comes from the gospel of Luke chapter 24. And I'll be reading from verses 44 to 48. Luke chapter 24, verses 44 to 48. Hear now this reading from the word of God. Then he said to them, these are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me and the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. And he said to them, thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. Thus the reading of the word of God. Let's bow in a word of prayer. Ask for the Lord to bless us as we meditate upon his word this evening. Let's pray. Our gracious God, our heavenly Father, we come before you this evening. We thank you, Lord, for Jesus, our Savior, he who is the crucified and resurrected Savior. We celebrate and remember, Lord, those great redemptive works this day, this weekend, and we pray, Father, that you will help us to rejoice in it still continuously tonight. Be with us now, dear Lord, as we meditate upon your word. that it will remind us once again of how powerful and great you are as our God, the rich blessings that you have given to us as your children. Hear our prayers for we pray these things all in Jesus name. Amen. Folks, as you may or may not be aware, as I've had several opportunities and invitations to share the word of God with you all, my kind of congregation away from my congregation, my home away from home, family, away from my family. As you all may realize, I do a lot of preaching through the Book of Psalms. And in fact, one of my recent visits, someone came and asked me, why is it that I keep preaching from the Book of Psalms? It wasn't a rude question. It was actually an understandable one. And I have a great answer. It's because they're awesome. When I was a student in seminary not too long ago, Thank you for that. In my seminary experience, folks, I have to say it was just one of the best times of my life. I look back on it with such fondness. I grew so much as a Christian, much less as a future pastor of the church. One class that stood out so vividly to me was the Psalms and Wisdom class, and ever since then I've just had this fascination and love for the book of Psalms. When I teach this class here at RTS here in DC, students have kind of somewhat disrespectfully perhaps just over so slightly have renamed my Psalms and Wisdom class as just the Psalms and Psalms class because I have a hard time getting past it. Just sort of like my Genesis to Deuteronomy class is sort of just Genesis and Genesis, my Joshua to Esther class is Okay, that's actually just about Deuteronomy. I have a lot of explaining for that, and that's for an entirely different setting here, folks. When I was a real pastor and preaching regularly, I always wanted to preach the Book of Psalms, but you know, you have to do more than that, and to preach 150 psalms, you know, surreatum, is just not practical, and so one goal I had that I had started way back was to spend every summer dedicated to the Psalms. I don't know what I was going to preach in the fall, winter, or the spring, but I knew what I was going to do in the summer. I figure there's about 12 weeks in the summer. Give me two weeks for vacation. That's 10 Lord's Days of preaching. So that's about 10 psalms. On average, then, in about 15 years, I would finish the entire book of psalms. So didn't quite get it there, but every chance I get, that's part of the reason why I do so. There's perhaps multiple different reasons why we can meditate on the Book of Psalms. There's multiple different reasons why the Lord gave us the Book of Psalms. And as I kind of contemplated that question tonight, what I'd like to do is to maybe just answer that simple question. Why did God give us the book of Psalms? And again, there are so many ways to answer that question. Tonight, I just want to just give four. So the main message I'd like to give tonight is just simply this, that the Lord revealed his book, his word, the Lord revealed his word, at least part of his word to us in the book of Psalms in order to care for us holistically in mind as well as in heart. He gave us the book of Psalms so that it can minister to us in our intellect, as well as our will, our mind, as well as in our hearts. And the application I hope that you'll gain from this is just to be thankful and that in your own personal times of reading the scripture, that you'll spend more time reading the book of Psalms. Four answers that I'd like to share with you tonight on why the Lord gave us the book of Psalms. Number one, the Psalms are poems. Let's just begin with the most obvious point, the Psalms are poems. Number two, the Psalms are an expression of the human heart. They record oftentimes the struggles and the praise, the joys that we experience as believers. Number three, the Psalms celebrate redemption. They are powerful celebrations of the redemptive work of God. And then finally, number four, the Psalms are about life. So those four things for us to, again, there's so many more things that we can reflect on, but for tonight, just those four things. The Psalms are poems, the Psalms are an expression of our hearts, the Psalms celebrate redemption, and then finally, the Psalms are about life. First, the Psalms are poems. Perhaps that's an obvious observation, but perhaps one that we should not overlook too quickly. They are poetry. They're not prose. They're not narrative. And one thing we ought to appreciate is the fact that God, when he revealed his word, did so in the form of poems. We are even told, remember, in the book of Hebrews, chapter 1, verse 1, that the Lord revealed himself in his word to his people in the Old Testament in multiple different stages in a variety of different ways. And one way that he revealed himself is in the form of poems. And for that reason, we ought to be sensitive to the fact that the Lord, in his divine wisdom, chose to give us poetry. In that sense, it's a different way, perhaps, of studying the Bible, but it's still very meaningful and very God-centered and very valuable. We oftentimes, perhaps, study the Bible a lot like the way that we will look up a word in a dictionary. If you want to know what the word sin means, we just look under S and look for the word sin. If we want to know what the word literature means, we'll just look under L. And we do a lot of that with the Bible as well. If we want to know what the Bible teaches about God, we kind of look under G and see everything that it has to say about God. If we want to know what the Bible teaches about sin, we'll look under S. That sort of systematic theology, it's where systematicians have taken everything that the Bible teaches about one particular doctrine. take all of that biblical data, and then organize it in a logical whole that makes sense, that we can understand as God's people. And it's a beautiful, worthwhile thing. And we should thank God for the fact that we have great doctrines of truth, doctrines of grace, that make very clear to us what God has done for us, the way he has revealed himself, who we are as image bearers, and just a variety of other things. But the Bible was not revealed to us as a systematic theology. One way that the Lord revealed himself in his word is in songs. In that sense, these songs and poems are pleasurable in a way that prose is not. Prose and narrative and epistles and letters and things of this nature might be an opportunity for us to just put together very logical argumentations and data. In fact, the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 10 says exactly that. That one way that we can combat the powers and principalities of this dark world in which we live is by putting together logical arguments against them. And we can use the Bible towards doing exactly that. The Book of Psalms is that. It is truths, it is doctrine, but it's truths and doctrine that is celebrated in songs. It doesn't minister just to our minds, it ministers to our hearts as well. One Old Testament commentator once suggested that poetry is not as precise as prose or narrative, But what is lost in precision is often gained in the vividness of expression. I like that phrase, the vividness of expression. We can say that the Lord is the one who cares for all of my needs, and that is absolutely true. We can say that same idea in the phrase, the Lord is my shepherd and I shall not be in want. You see, it tells you the same exact thing, but it ministers to you in a very different way. John Calvin, commenting not on literature or genre, but commenting on nutrition, interestingly, and diet, once said this, for what end did God create food? food, we shall find that he consulted not only for our necessity but also for our enjoyment and for our delight. You see, if God was only interested in our health, our physical bodily health, then the Lord would have only given to us what? Beans, rice, some vegetables. Boy, I'm way out of my league here. I am not a nutritionist. So whatever other things that your bodies need in order to be just healthy, if that's all he was interested in, then that's all he would have given to us. But he didn't just give us that. He gave us steaks. You know, he gave us lobster. You know, he gave us chocolate. You know, he gave us coffee. He gave us Doritos. All right, maybe Doritos is not a natural thing, but you get my point. If God was only interested in our nutrition, then we would only have a certain select things within creation, but that is not. He is interested not just in In communicating truth, he wants us to be able to enjoy that as well. You see, there's a foundational theological reality to the fact that the Lord revealed himself not just in one way, but in a variety of different ways, and one of them was in poems. The Psalms are poems, you see. The second thing that we can say in terms of why the Lord gave us the book of Psalms, the Psalms also are an expression of our hearts. Often, prose describes God's great acts of redemption, that is true, the great objective works that he has done in the history of salvation for the well-being of God's people for us. In fact, even today we celebrate the death and the resurrection of Christ, important historic events in the life of God's people. The Psalms oftentimes will celebrate those great acts in poems and in praises. But they also not just celebrate the great redemptive works of God, they are oftentimes an expression of the heart of God's people. We live in a corrupt world, folks. We live in a world, and you know this as well as I do, tragically, sadly, we live in a world that has been corrupted and tainted by sin. And we struggle with that sometimes on a regular, routine basis. You know what you find in the book of Psalms? You find writers who are expressing that same exact struggle and lifting that struggle in prayer to the Lord. I remember talking to, and for that reason, you do see a lot of introspection in the psalmist. He is reflecting internally upon the turmoil oftentimes that is going within his own heart and the issues that he is struggling with in life. We oftentimes, perhaps, can be a little too critical of modern contemporary praise songs. And there might be a lot there to be critical of. One comment that one person once said is that they're just way too introspective. They're just too talking about the heart and the struggles of humanity, which is true. I don't deny that. But we find that in the songs as well. And perhaps what is important here is that we take our internal struggles and point it to the Lord in prayer, lift it to him in song. That is what the Psalms do here. They don't just give you though a record of the trials and difficulties of the human experience, but they also even give you the praises, the joys. It's not just the struggles that we struggle with in a life, in a world just filled with sin. But we have to remember the Lord answers these prayers. He is worthy to be praised. And for that reason, the song gives us songs of praise as well. Notice and just reflect on just a few passages here that just expresses the experience of God's people and the struggles that they have had. For those who have struggled through loneliness, turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. This is Psalm 25 verse 16. What about sorrow? My soul weeps because of sorrow. Strengthen me according to your word. Psalm 119 verse 28. What about rejection? O Lord, why do you reject my soul? Why do you hide your face from me? Psalm 88 verse 14. Or grief. Be gracious to me, O God, for I am in distress. My eye is wasted away from grief. Psalm 31 verse 9. And I could go on and on. Talk about contrition, shame, brokenness, pain, and so forth. But again, it's not just the struggles that we go through. It's also the experience of joy, of satisfaction in Christ. The Lord hears our prayers. He answers them. Praise God. He is blessing our lives. And we have ways to see that very tangibly and then to express our hearts to Him in praise. What about love? Some great expressions of fidelity and of truth. I love you, O Lord, my strength, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer. Psalm 18, verse 1. What about delight? His delight is in the law of the Lord. Psalm 1, verse 2. Joy, you have put joy into my heart more than when their grain and new wine abound. Psalm 4, verse 7, hope. If there is a virtue that our world is in desperate need of in our day-to-day, it's one of hope. Why are you so in despair, O my soul, and why have you become disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I shall again praise him. Psalm 42, verse 5. And we can go on and on and on. I'll talk about delight, gladness, peace, gratitude, confidence, thanksgiving. The list is endless in terms of the expressions of what we go through as image bearers of God in a fallen in corrupt world. No one single person monopolizes any of these virtues. This is not something that one particular person experiences exclusively. This is something that we experience corporately as a people. So it's not just one voice, it is a community that is lifting their voices in song. There is no divas in the church or or we are all divas in the church. Actually, no, I take that back, really bad image. My point simply is that we are all blessed by the Lord, and he gives us these songs of praise to be able to articulate words of gratitude, as well as words of despair in prayer to him, and you find this all in the Psalms. You see, there's a theological basis then for saying that God gave us the Psalms because it is not just pleasurable, but it communicates the experience of the human image-bearers here in our world in which we live. To ignore the Psalms is to ignore the richness of God's intention then in Revelation. He uses various literary means to give his word to reflect the multifaceted aspect of humanity. We are not just intellect, we are also will. To ignore the Psalms is to emphasize either the mind or the heart at the expense of the other. and neither of which is a true God-centered approach to the study of scripture. The godly believer then grows in both aspects as image-bearers, in our mind as well as in our heart. J. Gresham Machen, the founder of our denomination, once stated that knowledge without zeal or zeal without knowledge is ultimately injurious to the church. Isn't that a fantastic statement? So well balanced. That knowledge without zeal, and that really is sort of describing demons, if you think about it, knowledge without zeal. Demons even are the best of theologians sometimes, as they know our truth, but they have no zeal, they have no heart for the Lord. You see, knowledge without zeal is going to hurt the church. But also zeal, that is without knowledge, is not something that is healthy either. If all we're looking for is an experience that is not based on fundamental objective realities of Christ and what God is doing in our lives, you see, that's not healthy. If that's what we're looking for, you don't need to come to church for that. You can just go to a a Taylor Swift concert, and you'll get a lot of experience, I'll tell you that, but none of that is really going to be Christian. It's not going to be religious, at least not in the Christian sense of the word. You see, we need both, and the Psalms allows us to be able to be ministry in both aspects, in our minds as well as in our hearts. So we see the Lord gave us the Psalms because they are poems. The Lord gave us the Psalms because they are an expression of our hearts. The Lord gives us the Psalms, number three, because they are great celebrations of redemption. They are powerful in that sense. What's interesting, and once you're sensitive to this, you start to see this really everywhere, that whenever the Lord seemed to have something extraordinary to say, He shifts genres, he shifts gears, and oftentimes he uses it in the celebration of a song. Think of creation in Genesis chapter 1. God is doing his work of creation day after day after day. He gets the creation of humanity. The only creation, by the way, that can claim the privilege and the blessing of saying that we are made in the image of God. No one else can say that but us. So monumental, so powerful, and so majestic is that moment that when God did so, he couldn't just keep going in his work of creation. He had to pause, and he stops, and one German theologian once says that God begins to soliloquize. What does he do? He sings a song. Chapter 1, verse 28. So God created man in his image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. In Genesis chapter 2, you actually see the same exact thing. Adam is given his cultural mandate to fill, rule, and subdue the earth. He can do two of those things on his own, but he can't fill the earth on his own. And so the Lord parades before him all of creation for him to find a suitable helper so that he can, in fact, fulfill the cultural mandate. And none of them are able to do so because nothing else in creation is a fellow image bearer just like him. And so what does God do? He creates a woman. He creates his wife and when Adam sees his wife, what does he do? Folks, he breaks out in a song. Chapter two, verse 23, this is at last, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. In Exodus chapter 15, that follows Exodus chapter 14, because 15 comes after 14. But in chapter 14, what you read about there is the parting of the Red Sea, that great redemptive work of God as a victorious divine warrior king who is fighting on behalf of his people. And soon as Israel witnesses this extraordinary redemptive work of God, Do you know what they do? They sing a song. The Song of Z in Exodus chapter 15, that is a celebration of the Lord as a great divine warrior king who is fighting on behalf of his people. 1 Samuel chapter 2. In 1 Samuel chapter 1, you have now the difficulty of Hannah being barren and unable to have children. She prays to the Lord and the Lord blesses her with a son and that son, as you know, is going to be Samuel. So what does Hannah do as soon as she experiences this extraordinary birth of a son? She sings a song, the prayer of Hannah in 1 Samuel chapter 2. And we could go on and on and on. When Jesus finally comes, the apex point, you could say, of everything that the Old Testament has been pointing to, the birth and the coming of the God-man, the one who would be the great priest-king, who would give his life as a ransom for many, and then show his power over sin and death in his victorious resurrection. When that moment had come, what does the gospel describe? They describe the shepherds of the field seeing the myriad of angels, tens of thousands of angels, and what are they doing? They are singing a song. Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth towards all men who do his will. In the book of Revelation, again, you find the people of God, the angelic council there, also singing the song of redemption. You see, when you see this pattern, you see that there are certain events, certain things that God does that once he does it, you can't just move on. You've got to pause, slam the brakes, pause, and you've got to celebrate that in a song. When we go to weddings, what do we do? We sing songs. In a birthday party, what do we do? We sing a song. We do the same exact thing, and it's almost built within our own human experience, our psyche, to celebrate great events in song. Are there any Star Trek fans here? Okay. Anyhow, in the Star Trek world, there is an alien race that are referred to as the Klingons. And now the Klingons are a conquering people and their whole culture and history is just built on one extraordinary battle and war after another. But when they When they have a monumental battle, you know, like 500 enemies against one warrior and somehow that one warrior wins that battle. Do you know what the Klingons do? They immortalize that victory in a song. Which is why in the Star Trek universe, the Klingons are singing all of the time. They're either singing or drinking blood wine or doing it both at the same time, but they are constantly singing and remembering these great heroes and these great victories that have been passed on from generation to generation, and they do that in song. So imagine it, folks, even in our day-to-day. You're in a great church. I know your pastor. I know your elders. I know some of you. Your pastors, your elders, they're coming to you week after week, and they are preaching to you the gospel of Jesus Christ. They are reminding you that there is no longer any condemnation for those who are in Christ. They remind you of the great redemptive work of Christ in terms of his cross, his resurrection. And they are reminding you of this from week after week after week. so that when you are going through your week from Monday through Saturday and we struggle with sin and shortcomings in our lives and when we come into church riddled with a certain level of guilt, you hear that gospel message and you're reminded once again of the great forgiveness of sins that we have all because of what Christ has done for us. Folks, that is what you hear week after week after week and praise God that you do. And when you do, and you celebrate that great redemption that is ours in Christ, after hearing that, I challenge you folks, try not to sing a song. Try it. You can't. It's impossible. Everything within our fiber wants to lift a song of praise and glory to our Savior for what He has done for us. Everything in us wants to praise. And you know why? Because God is worthy to be praised. This is a reason why, folks, that praise and song is an element in our regular principle of worship. There's a reason why this is not a an optional circumstance. We don't get to choose or not choose whether we want to praise God or not in our worship. It is part of what we need to do on a regular routine basis because it is just embedded in our nature, you see. God is worthy to be praised and he is worthy to be praised by those who are recipients. of those great redemptive acts of God. So you see the Psalms are poems, and the reason why the Lord gave us the book of Psalms, Psalms are poems. The Psalms are expressions of our hearts. Number three, the Psalms are great celebrations of the great redemptive works of God. And then finally, the Psalms are about life. It is interesting that the title of the book of Psalms, at least in Jewish tradition, is actually the Book of Praises, is what the title is. Which is ironic given the fact that the majority of the psalms, the actual 150 psalms, if you just kind of categorize them broadly, very broadly and generally as just sort of sad songs on one side, happy songs on another, if you just broadly categorize them that way, actually what you will find is that the majority of the psalms are really more kind of sad lament songs. you actually don't have that many praise songs in the Book of Psalms. In fact, if you, for that reason, wanted to name the Book of Psalms according to its most common statistical genre, you know, psalm kind, category, then what we have here really is the proper Book of Laments. The Book of Lamentations really is the Book of Psalms. Another interesting tidbit, though, is that if you actually see the distribution of these sad and happy songs, what you will find is that the majority of them are actually in the first half of the Book of Psalms. If you just step back and look at the 150, just for it broadly, what you will find is that the majority of these sad songs are actually in the first half of the Book of Psalms. What you find then at the very end of the book of Psalms then is just the highest concentration of praise. In fact, when you look at Psalm 145 to 150, what you find is a repetition of that line, praise the Lord. You see that each Psalm there begins with that line and ends with that line, praise the Lord. When you get to Psalm 150, the last Psalm in the book of Psalms, what you find is that every poetic line in Psalm 150 begins with that phrase, praise the Lord. So yes, although we start with the highest concentration of doubt and the struggle and the lament, The book of Psalms ends with the highest concentration of praise. And the reason perhaps for this explanation is because the book of Psalms properly is about life. It is not just about our lives, it is about the life, that is the life of Christ. We looked at this passage earlier. uh this evening in terms of luke chapter 24 and notice what jesus says there in verse 44 he says these are my words i spoke to you while i was still with you that everything written about me in the law of moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled He goes on, says, then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. Notice, by the way, to see the Old Testament as a fulfillment in Christ, only when you see it that way do you truly understand the scriptures. And then he says, thus it is written that the Christ should suffer on the third day and then rise from the dead. You see how he summarizes the Old Testament really as what? As the sufferings of Christ that leads to the glory of Christ. And if that's the Old Testament, for sure it is definitely also in the Book of Psalms. And you find that, in fact, that Jesus even mentions the Book of Psalms there in Luke chapter 24. The Book of Psalms then is a movement of suffering to glory. Or using Psalm language from lament, to praise. So when you read the book of Psalms and you see this broad, easy, very general distribution of lament to praise, what we are reading about there is not just some earthly psalmist in the Old Testament. What we are reading about here is in fact properly the life of Christ. And in our faith, in our union with Christ, what we are reading about in the book of Psalms is not just about the life of Christ, we are reading about our lives as well, as a movement from lament to praise, from suffering unto glory. There are some in the church who really, because of the extraordinary blessings that we have in the Book of Psalms, want to sing nothing but the Psalms. In fact, let's just get rid of our hymns and our contemporary praise songs. If we're going to do any praise, let's just sing Psalms. Now, that's a view that we can discuss at a later date if you so would like to, and one that I don't necessarily agree with, but I can understand why that they would hold to such a view. At the very least, perhaps what we can conclude is that we ought to celebrate the Psalms just a whole lot more than we do in the context of the church. Why? After all, they celebrate God's acts in song. They express our hearts and lives with power. They tell the story of Jesus and his accomplished work of redemption in his suffering and his glory. They also tell the story of our redemption as well and allows us to rejoice in that in song. Praise God for his word. Praise God for Christ. Praise God for the book of Psalms. Let's bow, folks, in a word of prayer together. Our gracious God, our Heavenly Father, we thank you for Jesus Christ, our Savior. We thank you, Lord, for his great work of redemption, the cross, his victorious resurrection from the grave. And we thank you, Lord, that how in Christ we also, our sinful natures, have been put to death. and how in Christ we also have the newness of life. We see this pattern, Lord, of lament to praise in the book of Psalms, and we thank you, Lord, for the way that it so powerfully and beautifully and majestically depicts the picture of our blessed Savior, as well as our lives as your church in union with Christ. We thank you, Lord, that you have given these words that articulate both the grief of living in a world in sin, as well as exalted praise that we can lift up to you. And as we read this book and study it, as we meditate upon Christ, we pray, Father, that you will continue to bless us and continue to give us songs of praise that we can lift up to you. Hear our prayers, dear God, and be with us, for we pray these things all in Jesus' name. Amen.