Well, I'm delighted to be here with you. And when Mark says I'll manage my own questions, I hope that doesn't mean I have to ask them as well as answer them. As I understand this, this is an occasion to stimulate some reflection on the suns and to hopefully give you opportunity to not only think about it, but ask questions if you have questions. I find often my lectures are greeted with a stony silence during question and answer time. I always say to my wife, either it means the lecture was so outstanding that there are no remaining questions that hadn't been anticipated and answered, or it was so terrible they're just eager to get away. So I still haven't figured out quite which it's more likely to be. I do sometimes say to my wife, why am I so bad at leading discussions? And she, who was a high school teacher and an excellent high school teacher and an excellent discussion leader, smiled sweetly and said, well, Bob, in order to lead a discussion, you have to think there are some open-ended questions. And your problem is that you rush right to give people the answer. And I think that is a fault of mine. So I hope there are some open-ended questions that you may want to plunge into and ask and discuss. I don't think this has to be just me. So let's, uh, let's have a good time of discussion. Um, I think Psalms are a marvelous, uh, resource for pastors in their work. And, um, a marvelous resource, therefore, to congregations as they're being ministered to. And the greatest single problem that pastors have of making effective use of the Psalter is not knowing the Psalter well. You can't use a resource that you don't know. And so part of the reason I wrote the book I did was to try to make the Psalter a little more accessible. I think the Psalter is not a book that's immediately easy to read and understand. It's not easy like a book like Romans. This is a good group, you're laughing at the right places. Romans has its challenges, but Romans is not a difficult book to outline. Romans is not a difficult book to know the general path of the Apostles thought in the book. it may not even be as difficult a book as we're inclined to make it out. I remember we had an Italian Catholic family visiting regularly in our congregation and they had been very uncertain whether to leave the Catholic church and join us or stay in the Catholic church. And one Sunday they came to church and said, we decided to join you. And we were all very excited and said, how did you come to that conclusion? Well, On Saturday, they said, we just decided we had to make up our minds and figure out what was right. And so we sat down and read through the book of Romans together. And it was crystal clear that what you were teaching is what the Bible teaches. And I thought, praise God, the word is clear. Now, obviously, that doesn't mean they could have explained every verse to you. They would never have claimed that. But they saw the argument as the book unfolded. The Psalms, of course, are not like that. the Psalms are a collection of poems. And of course, that's the first problem we run into. Most of our ministers have not studied poetry extensively. The old approach to ministerial education was to insist on a broad liberal arts background before you went on to specialize in theological studies. That broad theological background has increasingly shrunk in recent decades as a requirement for the ministry, and I do think something has been lost in that. We can't despair, but we ought to be aware that if we're going to understand poetry, we may have to work at it as a literary form that is wonderful, has wonderful power to it, wonderful persuasion to it, but again is not immediately always self-evident in its in its meaning and its structure in the way in which it communicates. So the pastoral use of the Psalms is going to require of us both an effort to know the content of the Psalter and to know something about poetry. And we need that because, of course, if you're going to use the Psalms in ministry, you have to know where to turn in different circumstances. If you're in a hospital visiting with someone in distress, it's best if you don't have to say in answer to a question, I'll be back in a week after I've looked that up. It's much better if you know where to turn. I thought we might look at a few psalms together that I've used in ministry or other people I've known well have used in ministry, hopefully as a stimulus to see something of a range of expression in the Psalter, the range of approaches to questions, to situations, to needs. I had drawn this list up. Some time ago and all appearances to the contrary not understanding I did try to prepare for this and I got back to my hotel room last night to have a Receive a call from a dear friend who has just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer So suddenly all of these psalms take on a slightly different Read for me And as I went over the list, I thought this is still a great list And in the different moods that accompany people when they receive really bad news, these psalms speak in different ways to those varying moods with which we greet the calamities of life. The first one that I wanted to read some of to you was a psalm I used with another dear friend who in old age was in the hospital. This was one of the most pious Dutch reformed elders I had ever known. He had helped found our congregation. He had helped found the Christian school. He had served as an elder in the church. He had served as a member of the school board. He had contributed generously to the life of the church. He loved to go to church. He loved to sing the Psalms. He was an immigrant to this country. He actually loved ministers. I mean, to my mind, that was sort of a pinnacle of holiness seldom achieved. And he was just a really fine man. But all his life, he had struggled as a certain stream of reformed piety struggles with the question, could God really love me? Could God really love me? And so I turned to Psalm 56, Psalm of David, where David wrote, you have kept count of my tossings. This is verse eight of Psalm 56. You have put my tears in your bottle. Now there's a wonderful poetic expression. God doesn't really have a Bible. I hope that doesn't mean you're going to go away and say, I don't believe what the Bible says. This is a poetic image, a powerful poetic image. And what it says is every tear God's people have ever shed have been remembered by God. He's preserved them. He's remembered them. He's cared about them. You have put my tears in your bottle, are they not in your book? Then my enemies will turn back in the day when I call. This I know, God is for me. In God whose word I praise, in the Lord whose word I praise, in God I trust, I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me? And I said to him, I want you to remember just this verse. God is for me. As we've experienced as ministers, sometimes when we visit the elderly in the hospital, their minds are not entirely clear. It may be useful to read a whole chapter of the Bible, but it's probably equally useful to point out something you really want them to hold on to. And I said, when the devil comes to whisper doubts in your ear, I want you for a moment to be a Lutheran and spit in his eye and say, God is for me. And, uh, so the word encourages us, uh, in that sort of way, uh, the word orients us. Um, I don't know if you have a favorite Psalm. I don't know if your church has a favorite Psalm. I suppose taken as a whole, um, Americans, their favorite Psalm would be Psalm 23. Um, It's the one we most often sing in various occasions, the one perhaps we know best. But amongst the Dutch reform, the favorite psalm is Psalm 103. And that's the psalm that's always sung at communion as well as at other times. And there too, you have this wonderful word of encouragement, a realistic word of encouragement. Again, reading just a part of Psalm 103 from verse eight, The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever, but he does not deal with us according to our sins nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love to those who fear him. As far as the East is from the West, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, So the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. He knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass. He flourishes like a flower of the field, for the wind passes over it and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and to his righteousness to children's children. Here's a promise that although we are dust, although we return to dust, although in our greatest strength, we're only like the flowers of summer that the wind blows over and are gone. Nevertheless, not only is God from everlasting to everlasting, but God's love is on us from everlasting to everlasting. And I think that's a wonderful promise of eternal life. We don't live forever in ourselves, but we live forever in the love of God. At the same time that the Psalter can encourage us so much to confidence in the Lord, the Psalter also helps us when we're not confident to give voice to the struggles of our soul. I was asked to preach some years ago at the funeral of a 12-year-old daughter of a friend who had died unexpectedly. She was just dead in the bed after seeming well when her mother put her to bed the night before. This funeral I have always hated weepy preachers. I don't mind other preachers weeping, it's just me. Famous Dutch minister who was known as Weepy Willie Massalink. He could weep in every service. Anyway, moving on. This funeral was the day after my father died. So I thought, you know, what's on everybody's mind as they come to this Funeral. It was an interesting cultural experience. The girl was a Korean-American. Her father was a Korean-American Presbyterian minister. We got to the chapel where the funeral was going to be. There were about 600 people there, everyone dressed in black, except the dumb American who was in a dark blue suit. It was great reverence, great reflection. And I thought, how can it be but that these people are just filled with questions? And so I preached from Psalm 77. Will the Lord spurn forever and never again be favorable? Has his steadfast love forever ceased? Are his promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up compassion? Are those not the questions of our hearts in times of great distress, in times of great difficulty? Where is God? When the psalmist laments in Psalm 74 about the destruction of the temple, the psalmist says to God, this is the Godfrey paraphrase, but it captures what is said here. The psalmist says to God, why are you standing around with your hands in your pockets when there are things to be done? Now see, most of us are too pious to say that. And we don't want to say that all the time. We don't want to say it irreverently, but the Psalter you see gives voice to the real questions of our hearts. I concluded some time ago, ministers are forever saying, don't ask why, because they don't know. But God doesn't mind you asking why. God never minds that we come with the honest struggles of our heart to him. It's very interesting. The only emotion that God objects to, I shouldn't say only, the great emotion in Israel that God objects to in the Old Testament is when Israel grumbles and complains behind his back. Exodus 17, mumble, mumble, mumble. Masa and Meribah. But when we're suffering, our God doesn't mind that we come and lay out the pain we're enduring. and say, why are you doing this? How long will it last? What does it mean? There are dozens and dozens of questions like this in the Psalter. They're given voice to. And it's interesting then how this psalm begins to help us in facing these questions. Then I said, I will appeal to this, to the ears of the right hand, of the Most High. I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds. Where's the path when we're completely mystified in the present? It's to remember what God has always been to us, what God has always been for us, what God has always done for his people. And while we may not understand it fully and immediately now, it will help us to stabilize the boat of faith and rest in God. The psalm goes on to reflect on the struggles and on the works of God, and then closes verses 19 and 20, the psalmist is taking them back to the Exodus and he says, your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters, yet your footprints were unseen. Now see, that's a remarkable poetic image. When we think back on that great event of the Exodus, an event unrivaled in the history of the Old Testament people, where God was there. And don't we sometimes think, oh, if God were only there in the pillar and the fire for us, you know, how much easier it would be to live for him. If he was only there to perform miracles. And yet here's that little, this amazing little phrase, yet your footsteps were unseen. We had Moses and Aaron telling us what was true. We had your word. but we didn't really see you. We had signs of you, but we had to walk through that sea without seeing your footsteps leading us. We had to walk in faith. And that's what this marvelous Psalm teaches us. Some of you may know Psalm 88. Psalm 88 is the bleakest Psalm in the Psalter. And I had a good friend in the ministry who went to visit a very distant relative. He didn't know her well. She was elderly. She wasn't in very good health. She didn't have any close family, and she'd been in a retirement community for a long time. And he visited with her. He said it was a nice visit. And at the end, he said, is there a passage of scripture I can read for you? He said, yes, read Psalm 88. Well, he said, I have to confess, I didn't know what was coming. I had not anticipated what was coming. It starts out well. Oh Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out day and night before you, let my prayer come before you, incline your ear to my cry, for my soul is full of troubles and my life draws near to Sheol. There are lots of Psalms that begin kind of like that. A lot of trouble and distress, and then there's prayer, and then the Lord answers prayer, and then there's deliverance. It all turns out very nicely. This Psalm does not turn out nicely. Verse 15, afflicted and close to death from my youth up, I suffer your terrors. I am helpless. Your wrath has swept over me. Your dreadful assaults destroy me. They surround me like a flood all day long. They close in on me together. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me. My companions have become darkness." I said, and what did you do with that after you read it? Why is that in the Psalter? It does begin with this declaration of faith in God. It does begin with prayer. The whole psalm is a prayer, but it's a prayer with really no hope, no escape, no way forward. Why is that there? Well, it's because it gives words to people who have moments in their lives where darkness seems to be their only companion. It says to them, you're not alone. Your sense of a helplessness and darkness does not mean God has forgotten or abandoned because other people of God have experienced just this. And their experience is recorded in the word of God. So you'll know you're not alone. So you'll know your feelings are not a sign of unbelief or a sign of abandonment. But a powerful expression of struggle is legitimate. Now our time is going. Let me offer one more example of, maybe two, of things that are wonderful in the Psalter for different kinds of occasions. One of the great things about the Psalter is we learn so much about Jesus in the Psalter. We're gonna talk about Luther and the Psalms tonight. Martin Luther said, no book of the Bible talks more about the death and the resurrection of Jesus than the Psalter. If you don't find Jesus in the Psalter, you're not reading it right. A Scottish minister said, we learn more about the emotions of Jesus in the Psalter than we do anywhere else in the Bible. I think that's right. And I think that's right because when we hear King David speaking, he is often speaking in anticipation of his greater son. And what David is experiencing gives us insight into what Christ will experience. Let me try to illustrate that. with the opening verses of Psalm 21. Think of this now, not so much as David, David wrote this, but think of this now, not so much as David, but as Christ. Psalm 21, Oh Lord, in your strength, the King rejoices and in your salvation, how greatly he exalts. You have given him his heart's desire and have not withheld the request of his lips. For you meet him with rich blessings. You set a crown of fine gold upon his head. He asked of you life. You gave it to him. Length of days forever and ever." Luther would say, how could David say he has length of days forever and ever? It's great David's greater son who has length of days forever and ever. His glory is great through your salvation, splendor and majesty you bestow on him. For you make him most blessed forever. You make him glad with the joy of your presence. For the King trusts in the Lord and through the steadfast love of the Most High, he will not be moved. Well, that applies, obviously, in so many ways to David, but it also connects us to Jesus, to his experience, to his trusting the Father in his incarnation, to his glorification. And then let me read, and then we'll have some discussion, I hope. That's up to you, you know. You've gotta try now. I think this is the greatest missions passage in the Bible. Now that's a big claim. Psalm 87, Psalm 87, right before Psalm 88. You almost have the highest and the lowest put together there in the Psalter. Psalm 87, on the holy mount stands the city he founded. The Lord loves the gates of Zion. more than all the dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God." That line probably inspired the hymn, glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion city of our God. Why, what are the glorious things spoken of Zion? Among those who know me, I mentioned Rahab and Babylon, behold Philistia and Tyre with Cush. This one was born there, they say. And of Zion it shall be said, this one and that one were born in her, for the Most High himself will establish her. Now think about that for a minute. Rahab, the Philistines, and Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, Kush, enemy peoples, first of all, then distant peoples. And what is said of them? What is said of them? Not that they were adopted into Israel. Not even as Paul says in Romans 9, that they were crafted into Israel. It said they're declared to be natural born members of Israel. I don't know how many of you are of Jewish ancestry here. I'm pretty sure most of us aren't. but we're not adopted into Israel. This Psalm says, the Lord looks around this room and say, you were born in Zion. You were born in Zion. There's a man here who was born in Columbia. I have even better news for you. He was born in Zion. And this is a great celebration of God's plan for the world. This is why we do missions, that this great truth would be realized, that every Christian can say of himself and can say of every brother and sister, I am a citizen of Zion. That's who I am, because of the work of Christ. So the Psalter does so many things for us, gives voice in powerful, poetic ways to so many things for us. I encourage you to learn more and more about the Psalms. The great thing is every bit of energy you give to the Psalter will be more than rewarded. And every teacher knows the best way to learn anything is to teach it. The teacher is always blessed before the hearer. And so the blessings of the Psalter, I hope, will encourage us all in our life and in our work. Now, if there are questions. Yes, sir. That's good. You're good. You may already know too much about the Psalter. Psalm 137 is the psalm about praying that the Lord will take the little children of the enemies and dash them against the rocks. Now let's think together about the occasion on which we might use that psalm. I'm leaving. That's an excellent question because the matter of the imprecations are a a regular feature of people struggling with the Psalms when they run across them. I will get to the specific question, but I often think of Psalm 69, where the prayer is against the enemies, may they be blotted out of the book of life. That's a pretty strong implication. Implication is a fancy word for curse, praying that your enemies would be cursed. And someone like C.S. Lewis suggested in his book that these are sub-Christian attitudes, sub-Christian spirituality, and not appropriate to Christians. And that's a way of dealing with the problem. It's just not a good way of dealing with the problem. What we have to say, I think, in the first place is that The implications of the psalm and any use we make of the psalms is never to curse our personal enemies. That is what Jesus specifically calls us away from. We're to suffer, we're to turn the other cheek. But you notice when Paul reflects on that matter of not resisting the enemy, he goes right on to say, because God will judge the enemy. This is not a fuzzy sentimentality that eliminates judgment from the picture. Too often people conclude that because Jesus says to us we should turn the other cheek, that God will always turn the other cheek. That's not what the scripture says. And Romans 12 is very powerful on that point. When we pray, come quickly Lord Jesus. Is that not an imprecation? It is. It's not as explicit an imprecation as we find in places in the New Testament. But when we pray that Jesus would come again, we know that he'll come with vindication and blessing for his people, but he'll come with judgment on his enemies. When we pray that Jesus would come quickly, in a lot of ways we're praying that the day of salvation would end for the world. and the day of judgment on the world would come. So we have to sort of get our minds around the reality of judgment. The reality of judgment is such an unpopular subject in our day that we don't want to face it. We don't want to think about it. It is a terrible thing to contemplate, but it's the very clear teaching of scripture that those not found in Christ on the last day will face judgment. And so the appeal for judgment is a legitimate Christian appeal. And where we have to be very careful with the Psalms is we never allow that appeal for judgment to be based just on our own personal animosities or our own personal enemies. Now, about the dashing of children against the rock, unfortunately, that clock won't move fast enough for me to say, oh, if we only had time to do that. When you look at various points in the scripture, what becomes clear is the ancient way of battle was that when you defeated an enemy and wanted to see the utter destruction of the enemy, it was not just the soldiers that were destroyed, but all the inhabitants in the town, men, women, and children. And part of the motivation for that was so that the enemy could never rise again. So the new generation would not arise to take vengeance on those who had defeated them in battle. And Psalm 137, you remember, reflects the situation. in which Israel has seen its children killed, where Babylon has overrun them and they have been defeated. And so what this is, is a prayer for the vindication of God's people and the utter destruction of his enemies. And this is a poetic form that may not commend itself to us. I tried to preach on this Psalm 1 to the Pious, Dutch Reformed Church, Sunday night. I thought I did a really good job. I would recommend that most of the time you not preach on it. And then I had them sing it afterwards. So I think that's what's going on there. It's a prayer for, not specifically against children, but a prayer for the utter destruction of the enemy that they might not be able to rise again. But it is particularly in our day a very difficult poetic image. Yes. Well, I think the crucial thing is that we are so helped to learn psalms by singing them. It just seems so obvious that we ought to sing Psalms with regularity. And if having a Psalter would help that, then it would be very good to have a Psalter. I know as a preacher who preaches in a lot of different churches and denominations that very frequently you'd like to sing a certain Psalm and it's not available in the songbook that is available. So there's certainly great value to having to having a Psalter. The great problem, of course, is that it's hard to find a Psalter that has both good versification of the psalm and good tunes that a congregation can sing. It's a tricky business. It is interesting that there's been a kind of great revival just in recent years of trying to do that. So the Free Church of Scotland has produced a new psalter, I think for the first time since 1650. So this is a, those Brits always right on the edge of, and I must say, as I have looked at it, the versification of that psalter is marvelous. Simple, straightforward, One of the older covenant or psalters that I looked at, I thought diversification was so wooden. It was very difficult. So producing a good psalter for singing is a work of many artists. But the tunes in the new free church psalter are not very familiar to Americans. So that's problematic. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church and the United Reformed Churches, of which I'm a minister, have just agreed to produce a new Psalter hymnal that will have a complete Psalter in the front of it. That's supposed to be out late this year, early next year. We're already late this year, aren't we? But it should be out within the next few months. And they've worked hard to try to have a good versification with familiar tunes. So there are a lot of things that are being done to try to encourage the availability of Psalms. Yes, sir. flesh out the concept of our citizenship in Israel as recorded in Psalm 87, give you a pastoral perspective in light of the various theological views on that. Today, I'm a pastor of a small church, and we are full of them. We have every advantage, every viewpoint you can imagine. So, I just want to give you a way to flesh that out a little bit. You know, normally I try to come to town and find a way to annoy everybody. And so I'll just say it. You can ignore me. You know I don't see how if the church had sung Psalm 87 regularly, dispensationalism could ever have arisen. So I think it would be great to have people sing Psalm 87 and when people have questions about it, You know, there are values to occasionally playing dumb as a minister and say, well, what do you think that means? Because it seems to me it only could possibly mean one thing, that there is no dividing wall between Jew and Gentile in the missionary plan of God. And I think You know, it is a really important pastoral skill to not push the truth so hard, so fast that you have no one to pastor. That's a hard skill to teach certain seminarians. And since we're in the sort of Reformation time, that was a great concern of Luther's. He did not want to offend the weaker brethren. He didn't care about offending the strong brethren, but the weaker brethren, he did not want to offend. And that has to be a real concern. But I, you know, I think some passages of scripture are just ignored or overlooked. Ephesians 2, Psalm 87. If you meditate on those, it seems to me you're going to have to reach certain conclusions about the unity of the people of God. But, you know, Luther, one of his most famous sermons said, you know, I could have plunged Germany into civil war, but instead I preferred to sit in the garden and drink beer with Philip Melanchthon and let the word do it. And there is advantage to letting the word do it. And so that would be my suggestion. Yes, sir. I think we're all hearing you motivated from your speech last night. And I'm just wondering if you could give me a list of several practical suggestions about how we as individual believers can engage ourselves in the psalms. And maybe you could speak, I think you already said that the psalms are one way how we can corporately do that. But I'm interested, individual lay people sitting in the pew, how can we engage ourselves in the psalms in a deeper way? Well, if I weren't such a capitalist, I wouldn't say this, but I have a book for you. I wrote the book I just wrote, Learning to Love the Psalms, just for this purpose. I had read a number of books on the Psalms, and I always thought, not only are they not helpful to me, although I am a fairly scholarly person and used to reading scholarly works. But this would be no help to the average lay person. I would start to read books on the Psalms, and they would say, there are various genre in the Psalms, like lament. And then they would say, and this is random numbers, so this isn't accurate, Psalms 7, 37, 82, 91 are Psalms of Lament. Now, what real usefulness is that information to you? Even if you were briefly to memorize that list, there's no way it's going to stay in your mind. There's no way it's going to be vastly helpful. So I said about at the beginning of my book, I say, I think the central problem lay people have with the Psalter is they read it, They find a psalm that they really love. There's a verse that really speaks to them, and then they could never find it again. Because the Psalter seems to be randomly arranged. So if I want a happy psalm, where do I look? If I want a sad psalm, where do I look? And my book doesn't answer that definitively for every psalm, but it really tries to draw you in to the proposition there is an organization to the Psalter. And so the Psalms, you know, are divided into five books. We almost always ignore that fact. But the first book, I think, tends to be the king's personal reflections on his life of faith. And then the second book of the Psalter tends to be, not every psalm in either book fits this absolutely, tends to be the king's reflection on the life of the kingdom. And then book three, and I'm very mathematical, so I know book three is at the middle of five. And that means, from the character of Hebrew poetry, the center is often critical. It's a short book, and it's full of crisis. Now, not every song there is crisis. 87's in that book. But there's lots of crisis in book three. And then book four is beginning to try to answer the crisis of the kingdom and of the king by reflecting back on God as creator and God as giver of the Mosaic covenant. And you remember, we looked at Psalm 77, briefly solved the questions. And then how the psalmist begins to deal with the questions by saying, I will look back on the deeds of the Lord. Well, that's what's happening in book four. He's looking back to creation. Psalm 90 is a great place where it starts, because that's both a psalm of Moses, but also a psalm of creation. So you get both parts of that. And then book five is the culmination of this altar. where there's a kind of recapitulation of the history of Israel moving towards what the Psalter is named for, namely praise. In Hebrew, the Psalter is the book of praises. And it's not because every psalm is a psalm of praise, but because it moves towards the culmination. So in the book, I try to lead people along step by step on how to read the psalms and how they're put together to make it hopefully easier to find a psalm. Yes, sir? While you're on this topic or in this area, can you say something about the value of the consecutive reading of the psalms, rather than just individual psalms, or flipping through from what you want? The value of a consecutive reading of the whole book. Right. I think that is very valuable. And one of my recommendations to students is that they should read through the confession of faith, the Westminster confession of faith, or the Belgian confession, whatever their confession of faith is, read through it every year, and then pause over those elements that trouble you. You don't have to publicly confess your sins, but you may run across a phrase or a sentence or a statement that you say, I wonder if I really believe that, or I wonder if that's really right. And then spent time asking, why did the authors of the confession put that in there? And why has the church confessed this now for hundreds of years? And what's the likelihood that you're right and they're wrong? That's the historian in me coming out, the traditionalist in me coming out. But I would recommend reading through the Psalms that way too, because you're going to run into things like Psalm 137, where you're going to pause and say, now what's going on there? I have my own that I'm still working on that I want to preach someday when I figure it out, but maybe there's someone here who's preached on it and can tell me what I should do with it. It's, it's a fine Psalm until the end. Verse 12, hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry. This is Psalm 39. Did I say that? Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry. Hold not your peace from my tears, for I'm a soldier with you, a guest like all my fathers. If it had ended there, that would be fine. That's a good ending. I'm still struggling, but I'm with you and I'm praying. And then verse 13, look away from me that I may smile again before I depart and am no more. Yeah, what? Say what? You know, what's the great hope of God's people? That his face will shine upon them. That's a great Aaronic blessing, isn't it? Turn your face to me. And here's this verse. I think, again, what this expresses is the kind of spiritual devastation of a heart for a moment. I don't think this is the final word about anything. but it expresses the pain of the psalmist's heart. God has been so severe with me that the only way I can think of severity being lifted is for him to look away and then I might be able to smile again until I die. I bet there are people who have felt that way in their life. might even be a person or two here who felt that way. God's presence is too much for me. God's mercy is too heavy for me. God's ways are too difficult for me. The only way I think I can go on is if he leaves me alone for a little while. And that's as far as I've got. So I think reading consecutively through the Psalms will force us to face things and meditate on things, we may not be able to solve every problem. But when you get to Psalm 39 and figure it out, drop me a note. But I think that's a very stimulating thing to do. Yes, sir? Speaking of leaving you alone, how and when did you part ways with Methodism? I don't know what you know about the history of Methodism in California, but the Methodists were the early Protestant missionaries to California. And when the Spanish Roman Catholics saw the Methodist missionaries coming from the East, they said, here come the Methodist wolves. And the Methodists were remarkably successful in planting churches all over California. And almost any place you go in California, the old churches are very often Methodist churches. My grandparents' generation and before were very pious Methodists and involved in the Methodist church. But my parents were not churchgoers. And so they They sent me to Sunday school for a time, but then in high school I was on a swimming team and I met a friend there who was Dutch Reformed, Christian Reformed. He and I used to walk home together after work out. And he invited me to go to church with him. So as a junior in high school, I went to church with him. I have no idea why I accepted the invitation. I just did. And as best as I can remember, this Christian Reformed church struck me as sort of the anti-Methodist church, only in the sense that it seemed so different from everything I experienced in the Methodist Church in California. I was in California when I grew up there. And for example, the Methodist Church my grandmother went to and took me occasionally to was a big building, seat five or 600 people. And on Sunday morning, there were maybe 50 people there. And of course, as a high school kid, I remember going and looking around and saying, There's nobody here but old ladies. And when I come next year, they may be all dead. They were probably 50, you know. But anyway, a high schooler's perspective. And I went to a Christian Reformed church, and it was nearly full, and it was all families, every age of people, lots of kids there. I always remember at the Methodist church, you could never hear the singing. All you heard was the organ. And then I went to the Dutch Reformed church, and the people sang. very vigorously, mainly Psalms, not exclusively Psalms. So the very first impression I had was of vitality. And then there was a real eagerness to study the Bible. Now, I don't want to say that no one was interested in the Bible at the Methodist Church, but I hadn't run into it. And then when I went to seminary, my grandmother, still a follower of the Methodist Church, invited me back to preach. And so I tried to preach a simple gospel message, I think from John 3, 16. I'm sure it was a terrible sermon. But I tried. And it was interesting. Two elderly ladies in their 80s came out and said to me they had not heard preaching like that since camp meeting days when they were girls. So I figured, That was a bit of a measure of what was going on in the Methodist Church spiritually. So I was converted amongst the Dutch Reformed, and I've been stuck with it ever since. We're coming up on the hour. Some of you may need to get to lunch. I want to ask you, we're going to close in prayer. I want to ask you now to join in prayer for Dr. Godfrey. As you can hear, he's battling a little something. But after he leaves us tonight, he'll be getting on a plane in Charlotte tomorrow, flying to Northern California. And he's got a very full schedule awaiting him when he gets back there. His wife's going on to be with grandchildren, so he's partnering in the gospel with his wife far away right now. He's got a lot upon him. So if you've been grateful for what you have received, repay that gratitude by praying for him. And we're going to close with using Psalm 25 to guide us in our time of prayer. Would you go ahead and sit down, Reuben? To you, O Lord, we lift up our souls. O our God, in you we trust. Let us not be put to shame. Let not our enemies exult over us. For none who wait for you shall be put to shame, but they shall be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous. Make us to know your ways, O Lord, and teach us your paths. Lead us in your truth and teach us For you are the God of our salvation. For you we wait all the day long. Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Remember not the sins of our youth or our transgressions. According to your steadfast love, remember us. For the sake of your goodness, O Lord, For good and upright is the Lord, and therefore you instruct sinners in the way. You lead the humble in what is right, and you teach the humble your way. All your paths are steadfast, your love and your faithfulness, for those who keep your covenant and your testimonies. For your name's sake, O Lord, pardon our guilt, for it is great. Who is the man who fears the Lord? Him will he instruct in the way that he should choose. So grant us grace that our hearts may choose you. Our souls shall abide in well-being. Our offspring shall inherit the land according to your grace, O Lord. For the friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him. You make known to them your covenant, so our eyes are ever toward you, O Lord. and you will pluck our feet out of the net. Turn to us and be gracious to us, for we are lonely and afflicted. The troubles of our hearts are enlarged. Bring us out of our distresses. Consider our affliction and our trouble, and forgive all our sins. Consider the number of our foes, with what violent hatred they come against us and your gospel. Oh God, our souls and deliver us. Let us not be put to shame, for we take refuge in you. May integrity and uprightness preserve us, for we wait for you. Redeem Israel, your people, oh God, out of all our troubles. We thank you for our servant and for what has been given to him that he may give to us. We thank you for the work of your spirit within him. And now we pray for him that you will uphold him and heal him. Let his strength be renewed like the eagles, that he may go forth in the power of the spirit to proclaim your gospel among all your people. Sustain him in his travels, give him rest and refreshment, and keep him according to your steadfast love. For we ask it all through Christ our Savior. Amen. Thank you all. Yeah.