Good morning, everybody. I'll go and grab a seat. I just wanted to make a quick announcement before Colin got started. This is part two of the Book of Psalms, and if you don't have a handout, these wonderful gentlemen are passing them out. So if you don't have a handout, raise your hand, and they'll bring you one. This is from last week. So make sure you have a handout. Colin, put those together for us. And just to tell you a little bit of where we're going, we did Job a little bit out of order that way Colin could teach this class. And hopefully it's pretty clear to you why I wanted Colin to teach this class. He spent a lot of time in the Psalms. And I think all of his study has really benefited those of us who have sat through part one, and I have no doubt will continue in part two. Colin also taught a series on Proverbs. And so I asked him to do that as well. So you'll have Colin this week and then also next week to teach through Proverbs. So look forward to that. After that we'll be moving into Ecclesiastes and then we'll take a week off in order to have a street from Albania come and teach the Sunday school. So that's a few weeks away. So make sure you try to come for that just so we can hear him. Wonderful man. I think you'll really enjoy getting to know him. So I just wanted to make those things clear to you and then I'll let Colin take it from here. So thank you all. All right, this is week two of, well, not week two for all of you, week two of Psalms. I'm out of breath, I had to go get my jacket. So last week, we kind of broke up Psalms into basically two parts, and the first thing we did is really look at the formation of the Psalms themselves, like what actually are they, who wrote them, why did they write them, when did they write them. We mentioned things like there's a thousand year gap from the oldest to the newest Psalms, and just the way that God has divinely, I believe, put them together, ordered them in the way that they are ordered, and they have been passed down to us in that form. It's just very important, but today we're gonna look at part two, and so in your handout is really the second page on the inside and then on the back. And so these two parts are, the purpose of the psalm, so Yahweh's purpose, the master narrative, what are some of the themes, characters, the setting that we find, and then thinking about the power of just songs. So there's something unique about the psalms that really set them apart. from other sorts of scriptures, not in importance, not in whether they're more inspired or not, but just they're songs, they're meant to be sung to God. And we even talked about it last week a little bit, how 65 of the 66 books are God's revelation to man, him speaking to us, And so Psalms are God's revelation to men on how men may speak to God, which is just, it's something that makes it unique and something that's worth noticing. So before we go in, let's pray and then we'll jump into this. Heavenly Father, just thank you this morning for the opportunity to open your word, the opportunity to talk about your word, the opportunity to fellowship and worship in this house today. We're thankful that the Psalms have been written in such a way that they encourage, they motivate, they mandate even our response to you in certain ways, and it's what makes them unique, it's what makes them so beloved. Help us to just see with eyes, perhaps, that we didn't in the last few weeks as we approach the Psalms, that you would open up wondrous things for us to see, and pray this in your name, amen. So for those who are maybe a generation older than me, Irving Berlin, you know that name, right? All right. So he uttered it in a totally different context, but the adage I think still holds true for the Psalms. So one thing that he said many times, not just once, was that songs make history and history make songs. Now the Psalms, in much the same way, they were forged in the history of God's people. They're God's mighty acts, made his people sing, made them write songs about them, and those songs informed hearts, they created expectations. They provided interpretive frameworks for how we understand the world that we live in. And so if we understand interpretively the perspective of the Old Testament authors, I think there's a perspective that we see embraced in the New Testament as well, in the Psalms especially in that regard. So of all the books regarded as scripture in the New Testament, the Psalms is the most widely cited. So of the 150 Psalms, 129 make their appearance in some way in the New Testament, which is fascinating to me. And the trajectory of the storyline throughout the Psalms is consistent with the Old Testament at large as well, which of course is why it's fitting that we talk about it in this class. The Lord God is king. He's appointed an earthly vice-regent who represents his heavenly rule on earth. The earthly vice-regent and his people travail against the rebellious on the earth. That's a consistent storyline that we see. And of course, when we think about characters, the Lord God, Yahweh, is the most important character, not only in the Psalms, but all of Scripture. But the Psalms particularly, they rehearse history to celebrate his mighty deeds. They provide prayers that petition him in some way or shape or form, and they communicate his character. And his character ensures that his word is going to be kept. And one could argue, really, the center of any biblical attempt at theology is the display of God's character. And I think that's seen most clearly when his justice serves as the backdrop. for the demonstration of his mercy that is stunning in so many ways, where he's accomplishing, showing his glory in salvation through judgment. And so in the Psalms, we see that God's world is under attack. The Messiah comes in many ways and many Psalms presented to us as the hero through whom Yahweh's reign is going to be reestablished. And explicitly introduced, we talked about Psalm 2 a little bit last week. Explicitly introduced is the one against whom Yahweh's enemies rage, is the anointed king from David's line. He's the subject of so many key psalms, really at the seams of the Psalter. So like Psalm 2, we talked about, joins Psalm 1 in kind of introducing the whole collection. At the end of Book 2, Psalm 72, It prays for the fulfillment of God's promises concerning the Messiah at the end of book two. Psalm 86, or I'm sorry, Psalm 89 is at the end of book three, and it rehearses again the covenant with David about his reigning seed. It asks how long are those promises gonna be deferred to the end? And even near the beginning of book five, so Psalm 110, one of my favorite psalms, David recounts how his Lord was invited to sit at Yahweh's right hand and is installed, we see clearly in the New Testament, as a sort of Melchizedekian high priest. And so those who identify Yahweh's character which in the Psalms is predominantly identified by that term, chesed, loving kindness. Those people come to be referred as the chesedim. The English is gonna translate that in many Psalms as saints. You'll see saints, you'll see godly ones, you'll see faithful ones. I love how one author, he kind of likes to build on the foundation of what that word originally meant, and so he likes to call them loving kind ones, the loving kindness of God. They're ones that receive the loving kindness of God, loving kind ones. But these are people who embrace Yahweh as God. They believe his promises because they trust his character. Hopefully that describes us today. They live out their commitments by identifying with this king from the line of David. They're not perfect, but when they fail, they confess their sins, they repent of their sins. And then the enemies do the opposite at every point, don't they? So in the Psalms, we see that they don't take God at his word. They don't believe what God has said. They don't follow God's instructions. They don't trust his character. They don't submit to God's Messiah. They don't submit to Yahweh's Messiah. Whether they're worshiping themselves, they're worshiping idols, we see that in Psalm 2, or maybe something else. They don't love God, and they certainly don't love God's people. This puts them in constant conflict with God, constant conflict with his purposes, constant conflict with us, really, as his people. And so the authors of the Old Testament, they believed that God has, they believed everything that God's revealed about his character, his goodness, his righteousness, and they embraced his instructions for life. And so the wicked contrasted in the Psalms. They worship idols instead of God. They replace their righteousness, you know, or replace his righteousness, I should say, with their own. They depart from his instructions. They want to fulfill their own desires. And so their actions at every turn, they dishonor God, they harm God's people. and the people of God whom the psalmist speak on behalf of and give us words and songs to sing, they denounce their treachery, they pray against their agenda, okay? So that would be the main character that you find or character qualities of those that you find in the Psalms. What about the setting? I love thinking about the Psalms in this way and really love thinking about Scripture in this way. I think the most significant thing you could say about the setting has to do with how the Old Testament, it presents creation as a cosmic temple, so to speak, which in many psalms, Psalm 78's one example, it's a very long psalm, but you see this comparison of the temple to the heavens and the earth, and the references to the heavens being Psalm 104, being spread out like a tent, they reflect that tabernacle kind of imagery And those concepts, they really inform David. Look at Psalm 29, if you would. They really inform the way that David describes the upheaval of creation at the flood. That's in Psalm 28, or 29, I should say, verses three through eight. He describes the upheaval of creation, and then in verse nine, before saying everything in Yahweh's temple, so he talks about that upheaval, and then he says in verse nine, glory, he cries glory. Psalm 29 is depicting everything in Yahweh's cosmic temple, so to speak, everything in this created world, shouting the word glory. And so this idea, it has suggestive implications about why David says things like he will dwell in Yahweh's house forever, Psalm 23, implications that entail the renewal of a cosmic temple. You see that in Psalm 102, in the form of a new heaven, a new earth, a resurrection from the dead. There's a reference to that in Psalm 17. And so if the setting is this kind of cosmic temple idea, the human characters, humans, are the visible image and likeness of the invisible God. We've talked about that in Genesis 1 a number of months ago in the preaching. And these characters are placed in the cosmic temple to make manifest God's own character, his presence, his reign, or as representatives of. And in a significant sense, we think of Adam as God's own son, the first Adam, and the Messiah has come as the new Adam. And so when you think about themes, think about themes, There's so many different things we could talk about, and we talked about the different genres, but I just wanna look at three kinds of themes about God's word that, they're found in other parts of scripture, but I think these are some of the primarily dominant ones, or three or four. Your notes have four, my notes have three, we're gonna just say four. But promises about blessing and success would be first to those who meditate on God's word, consistently, constantly. Some of the claims about God's word would be that it affirms its pure truth, it contains pure truth, and it affirms that. The Psalter makes claims about God's word that by it, God made the world. God's Word has life-giving, wisdom-imparting, enlightening, lasting power, and the Psalms speak of that. They speak of how God's Word teaches people. We saw that in Psalm 1, teaches people how to think rightly about God's Word, and how to think rightly about God's world. God's Word makes promises about how and what he's going to do to redeem, to cleanse, to renew this world, and with those promises, there are instructions on how to please God. and the instructions, they're as sound as the promises are, relatable and reliable. And so we talked a little bit about that in Psalm 2, didn't we? Psalms, they begin a rehearsal of those promises in Psalm 2, they kind of set up this pairing that's pretty interesting in Psalm 1 and 2, Psalm 18 and 19, 20 and 21, and then all the way to Psalm 118 and 119, there are these pairings of Psalms where they celebrate God's word, with psalms that celebrate the promise to the king in David's line, and there are these beautiful pairings. Of course, Psalm 119, the most wonderful one, right in the middle, which is this Torah psalm, singing of the law of God, the statutes of God, the commandments of God. And so when you think about God's word as a theme in the psalms, it's really about how he has promised to redeem sinners, And part of that is his promise to the king from David's line. And so there's there's this strategic alignment within the Psalms that puts a spotlight on God's word is reliable. It's going to guarantee the reliability of his promise to do what he says. So another theme would be the suffering righteous servant. So we kind of mentioned this at the beginning those who believe God They believe his saving, creating word. They always seem to be in the minority in the Psalms. The majority always seems to resent them, to hate them, to inflict punishment and pain and suffering on them. You think about just in the narrative of the Old Testament, Cain killed Abel, okay? Ishmael mocked Isaac. Esau wanted to kill Jacob. David steps right into that line. And of course, we've talked about David wrote so many of the Psalms. Well, he steps right into that line and he receives the same kind of treatment from Saul, from Absalom, his own son. I mean, you see that at the beginning of Psalm 2. So you have Psalm 1, which is this wonderful introduction, wonderful instruction type Psalm. And then right in Psalm 2, speaks of the nations that are raging against the Lord's anointed. Psalm 3 illustrates that raging. And remarkably, even the enemy in Psalm 3, David wrote Psalm 3 on the run from his son. So it's not a foreigner that's chasing him, that's afflicting him. It's his own son. It continues throughout the Psalter, David especially. He again and again, he speaks of the difficulty he faced from his own kinsmen. That includes Psalm 7, from Cush in Psalm 18 and 57, from Saul, from the Ziphites in Psalm 54, and then from a traitor that's not even named. in Psalm 41 and 55, and so on those occasions, the righteous sufferer is often complaining that his enemies hate him. Psalm 35, they hate me without cause, meaning that he hasn't wronged them. He's done nothing objectively, biblically wrong. Their enmity is arising from their own selfish ambition, and isn't that the story of Saul? And that's the story of Absalom. They wanted the throne. David was a threat to Saul's throne. Absalom coveted David's throne. So a third theme that you'll find in the Psalms is the sudden destruction of the seemingly powerful wicked. So David, particularly, he interprets his own experience of betrayal and heartache in light of other scripture. You see David identifying with Abel. He identifies with Isaac, with Jacob, with Joseph, with Moses. And one of the ways we know that is because his enemies, he identifies his enemies with their enemies. He seems to have understood the conflict as a Genesis 315 conflict. It's enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. And he seems to have expected that the king is going to arise from his line and he's going to also experience enmity culminating in the king who his experience the whole pattern is gonna come to a culmination. But anyway, so this future king, he's going to be righteous, but he's also going to suffer at the hands of those who oppose him. You see this dramatic picture that's presented in Psalm 22 that we often refer to as a messianic psalm. He's suffering at the hands of those who oppose him, and then ultimately there's a triumph that's just as dramatic as his death and as his resurrection. It's poetically described in Psalm 22. But for David to kind of see the outworking of this pattern in his life, it was in keeping with the intent of earlier biblical authors. And likewise, later kings, including the man from Nazareth, Jesus, to identify with David's experience, even to see David's experience fulfilled in his own. All this is fully in line with David's intent. And so the enemies, these seemingly once powerful enemies, the seed of the serpent, they're described as the kings of the earth, In Psalm 2 again, they seem more numerous and in worldly terms, more powerful, more impressive than the seed of the woman. That's what it feels like. Psalm 73 describes, they live long lives of indulgence, but we'll find in the Psalms consistently when you make your way to the end, the Psalms speak to the way that though they have power to dig pits, they're going to fall in them. And in fact, all their sin is going to fall right on top of their heads. And suddenly, Psalm 1, they'll be like chaff before the wind. They're destroyed in the way by the wrath of the king that's going to come. And you see that in Psalm 2. You see how Psalm 1 and 2 keep referring to those? They're foundational to the book itself. Well, let's think of a fourth theme here. The assumption of Christological presence. What do I mean by that? The presence of Christ is everywhere, and I even have that in your notes. Both Jesus and the New Testament writers assume Christ in the Psalms. They may have been written in a time of pre-fulfillment, in shadows, in anticipation of his coming, but the New Testament church, the New Covenant church, we find sweetness in the Psalms because they speak about him. And how do we know that the New Testament authors, Jesus, assumed the Psalms are about him? Well, Luke 24, I don't know when Eric will get there, maybe four years from now, five years from now. Psalm 24, Jesus is on the road and he said to them, these two men that he's walking with, these are my words which I spoke to you. while I was still with you. This is Luke 24 verses 44 and 45. These are my words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about me in the law of Moses, we know that, and the prophets, we know that, and the Psalms must be fulfilled. And then it says, Luke says that he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. So he brought understanding. That's what we want, isn't it? There's an author in the name of Charles Drew. He wrote a book called The Ancient Love Song, Finding Christ in the Old Testament. And one of his chapters was so helpful because it's called Songs of the Messiah. What he does is he tries to divide many of the psalms, not every single psalm, but many of them into two types, psalms that speak about Messiah and songs that are, in a sense, it sounds like they're by the Messiah. That's how they sound at least. And I think that's helpful because I think it can help us see how Jesus fulfills. What does Jesus mean by saying he fulfilled the Psalms and how to read them as Christians? Well, when you think about Psalms that are about Christ, those are usually not that hard to identify. We probably could think of some off the top of our head. One example, again, Psalm 2, it tells us about a coming Messiah who's going to be installed as the king He's going to dash his enemies like pieces in pottery, and in Acts 4, Peter and John tell us that that's speaking about Jesus, okay? Paul, in a short span of verses in Romans 3, he cites Psalm 5, Psalm 10, Psalm 14, Psalm 36, and Psalm 140, all in that short span, and what's striking is that he's interpreting those verses in their original context where they speak about the enemies of God, they speak about the Davidic king, and he uses them to prove the universal sinfulness of mankind apart from Christ. And so in other words, the Old Testament enemies of the Davidic King are, in the context of the New Testament and under the New Covenant, they are all those who've sinned, all those who sin and fall short of the glory of God, Romans 3.23. Those are all the same, one and the same. And so in the Psalms, we can clearly see places where it speaks of Christ. speaks of things that Christ would fulfill in a matter of fact way, in a sense, in a very clear black and white way. But I think there are places in the Psalms where we need to listen for the voice of the Messiah. I think that can open up just new depths of understanding about his humanity in particular. There's a sense in which you read some of these Psalms and it's as if they're written or sung by the Messiah. We know that Christ sang the Psalms. But I think we can find ourselves drawn into really just the broad range of human experience and emotion that Jesus experienced in his life here on earth. So John 2, so Jesus is, or not John 2, that's a typo, but in John, the account where John's talking about Jesus clearing the temple, one of the things that Jesus says is a quotation from Psalm 69. Zeal for your house has consumed me. That's a direct quotation. So when you read that Psalm, you can hear Jesus speaking that, or at least you should. So in John 15, Jesus is going to his death, and he quotes from two Psalms, Psalm 35, Psalm 69. He says, they hate me without cause. We mentioned that before, David writing that. Well, now Jesus is saying that as well. These are the words that are in our own Messiah's heart. describing his heart's turmoil in John chapter 12. He's describing his turmoil and he quotes from Psalm 6, my soul is greatly dismayed. Some of the last words of Jesus are taken from the Psalms. Psalm 22 starts with, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That's Matthew 27 verse 46. Some of his last words, even when he writes, I thirst. Psalm 69. Into your hands I commit my spirit. Psalm 31 verse 5. There's a place in Acts 2 where Peter is giving this sermon at the day of Pentecost where Peter points to Psalm 16 to explain the resurrection where it says you will not forsake my soul to Sheol. You will not give your Holy One over to see corruption. Hear that in the voice of our Savior. You will not give your Holy One over to see corruption. You will not forsake my soul. That is true of our Lord Jesus. Psalm 22, of course, this Messianic Psalm, he quotes on the cross, but it's also used to describe his ministry today in the church by the author of Hebrews, where he says, I will surely recount your name to my brothers. In the midst of the assembly, I will praise you. Remember when Jesus says to the sinner on the cross next to him, today you'll be with me in paradise? You see some reflection there. But really the crux of the matter is that Christ was in, the spirit of Christ was within David praying for us so long ago. And how do we know that to be true? This is something that is just kind of a concept that I don't know many of us think about when you come across Peter's words. So I wanna read this and I want you to think about what Peter's saying. Chapter one, verse 10 through 11. Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries, inquiring to know what time or what kind of time the spirit of Christ within them was indicating he was predicting the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. Jesus himself prays for us and with us in the Psalms. Even in the Psalms of confession, like Psalm 51, we're reminded, or we ought to be reminded, Christ identifies us in such a way that he was even made sin, made to be sin for us. When he revealed himself to the disciples in Luke 22, he plainly tells them, for I tell you that this which is written must be completed in me, and he was numbered with transgressions. So he's quoting from the Psalms again. For that which refers to me has its completion. And then just as he insisted to John to undergo the baptism of repentance in our place, Isaiah 53 verse 12 speaks, about him being numbered, he was numbered with sinners. Christ insisted on that baptism so that he would join with us as our head in confessing our sins. So there's really two voices that we hear in the Psalms. We hear the voice of the Lord's people, certainly, but we also hear the voice of the Lord's anointed. He is in David, so to speak, as the Christ of God, and we hear him also as the voice of the church. We are his body. We pray through Christ. We pray in his name as our head. And so really, when we read the Psalms and hopefully sing and pray the Psalms, we're standing on holy ground. We ought to hear his voice as he prays to the Father. We're privileged to join with him in these kinds of songs. And so those are some of the narratives that we find. But but the last thing that I'm I was just thankful that Logan asked me to cover the Psalms with you is that I want to just spend a little time thinking about what makes what makes this song so special as songs like what is so special about songs and do not tune out if you're someone who's like well I can't sing so this doesn't pertain to me. This is the Word of God. Let's ask that the Lord would impress on us that it pertains to all of us, whether you think you can sing or not. I bet we could help you with that. There's a reason why we love the Psalms. They are so real. That's such a cliche thing to say today. But they tell it as it is. And I think they can scare people sometimes who maybe wish the Bible only said things that always sounded pious, always sounded nice, always sounded confident, however you're gonna define that. But they also, I think, help you connect what's objective and what's subjective. They help connect the truth about God and the truth of God. They give us the connection between fear and faith, between failure and trust, between suffering and joy, even hate and forgiveness. And it's almost like they take your pain, if you will, they transcend it by a means of passion where the suffering of the soul is in communion with God. We are offering this to God as this is my suffering, Lord. Please help me know how to respond now, how to live now. And again, I've kind of mentioned this, how God designed most everything in the Bible to be read as his words to us. When we read Genesis, we listen as God speaks to us about the origins of the world and the nations. We read the Gospel of John, we listen as God speaks to us through John about the life and the teachings of Jesus. That's how we receive 65 of the 66 books. The Psalter is different in that it's comprised of a collection of songs from men to God. They're no less inspired, but of all the books in the Bible, in the Psalms we receive this gift designed to become our words back to God. Sometimes, Don Whitney has a book about praying the Psalms. We gave it away one year at Resolved, I think. But he has this term that he talks about, like speaking God's words back to him. What an incredible gift that we've been given words to speak back to him. There's other books that have songs in them, so prophets like, I don't know if you've covered Isaiah, yeah, Isaiah and Jeremiah, they composed a lot of their writings in song-like poetry, but they're lyrical prophecies, they're songs from God to his people. Zephaniah 3.17, God speaking, God even says how he is singing a song over his people. The Song of Solomon, it's almost an entire book of songs. It's not really designed to sing back to God, With the exception of the Psalms, the many books of the Bible that do have songs in them, they're addressed to God's people. They're God's truth that is sung to us. But the book of Psalms is unique. It's like a hymnal, really. It's the only book of the Bible that God is the audience throughout. God's people are its anointed speakers. The Psalms are words that God's people use to sing to him. to pray to him. And the fact is that God's Spirit inspired those Psalms for us. So therefore, they are useful for instruction, right? They are useful for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, with all the rest of God's breathed-out words. And so they're worthy of study, they're useful for preaching. I love whenever Eric's like, we're gonna preach a psalm this week, and I get so excited. They're useful for that. They're worthy of study. But because they're inspired hymns, God has given us them for a further purpose. And that's one of the reasons why we try to sing psalms regularly at our church. We want to speak to people, In the Psalms, we want the Lord to be able to speak to us about the things we need to sing to him, and so we sing those when we gather. The Psalms are really, they're written, this is in your notes, they're written to help us place our feelings, our emotions, and a word I like to use more often than those, affections, in the right biblical context. The Psalms help us do that. So rather than giving voice to just what we feel, They train our response in that full spectrum of emotion that we encounter in the Christian life. So, you know, this is not a, I'm not throwing rocks or anything, that's not my point today, but so much of modern worship I think is stunted. because the emotional breadth, it's far more limited than that. The Psalms, and often we think of modern worship songs, and really we're focusing on the music, and well, it's very experiential. There's lights, and there's all these sounds, and all this wonderful things, and smoke, or whatever. They're actually not that experiential. The Psalms are way more experiential. They can guarantee, though, in their expression or description of our experience, that we have God's perspective on it from his words about a particular emotion. And so when we sing songs, not just the Psalms, when we sing songs that are perhaps inspired by the Psalms, they're based on the Psalms, I think we're better, we're formed to be better at processing this life and responding to it in godly ways. all with biblical insight to give voice to those experiences. And I just have a couple more. Two more pages of notes and hopefully we'll have time for some questions. Just think about why we sing. One of the reasons we sing is a response. We're giving voice to express our hearts to God in response to past realities, present realities, about his nature and about his works. And Psalm 96, you wanna go ahead and turn there? Psalm 96 is a great example of this. So in verses one through three, You see an example of how we bless his name, we declare his salvation, we give him glory, really because he's worthy of those expressions. They serve as a powerful witness to the unbelieving world. It makes sense to sing in response to things that God's already done. You see that in those first three verses. And then in verses four through 10, to sing in response to present realities. He is great. He is majestic. He is faithful. You see that through verse 10. But then you come to verses 11 through 13, it's like, well, but how are we gonna respond to this? Somebody read verse 11. So when we sing Psalm 96, should we stop at verse 10? Because verse 11 and following, is speaking of future things, right? How would we respond to something that hasn't yet taken place, right? So again, singing forms something within us. So a response to something, it implies that you've experienced it, right? You're responding to something. The experience usually comes first. That experience forms us in some way, and then out of what's been formed in us through our experience, we respond to it. But how can you respond to something that you haven't yet experienced? We haven't yet experienced all the nations giving glory to the Lord, all the earth, all the rivers, the trees, creation singing for joy. We haven't seen the Lord yet come to judge the earth. So how does David, as he's writing this, how does he expect us to respond to this? That's one of the great powers of, broadly, the arts, but we're talking about singing. So as one writer posits, I think helpfully, art or singing, so we're gonna apply this to singing, it's a way of creating an experience that we've not actually experienced so that we can be formed by it as if we've experienced it. So an example of this is, I think is helpful, hopefully you do too, but The Pilgrim's Progress by John Munyon. What's the value of this fictional story about a man traveling toward the celestial city? We read about his journey, one in which he's formed by all sorts of different experiences along the way, and Bunyan's point in writing it, in creating an allegory, and obviously this isn't scripture, but it's a small picture of this, in creating this allegory of salvation and the Christian life in such a way that when we read it, when we walk along with Christian, we're finding ourselves formed by his journey. It's not our journey. but we're formed by his journey as if we're experiencing it ourselves. The goal of something like a song is not simply to inform our intellect, it's to shape the inclination of your heart. So sometimes we call that our worldview. And we do that as we, so many of the Psalms talk about meditating on or musing on. It's, that happens when we muse on God's songs, the Psalms, the flow of the Psalms, the poetry in them. So by singing about all the families of the redeemed, praising God, all of creation praising God, the Lord coming to judge the earth, so if we were to sing Psalm 96 today, all about him coming to judge the earth in righteousness and faithfulness, to sing about that, It hasn't happened yet, but our hearts are shaped as if we are experiencing that right now. It's more than just an expression of hope that those things will happen, and indeed they will. But through the form of a song, which is why the Psalms are written, we're making, it's like we're making that future momentarily present such that it can form us. Think about that day. Think about that day when all the peoples will be gathered together to worship God. And then you hear all the church, especially if you sit in the front row and all those voices behind you just powerfully singing behind you. It's almost like you have a taste of that right now. So that's why good songs don't just express things like joy, like praise, like thanksgiving, like adoration. We talked about that a little bit with that graph. So many of the psalms really are lament psalms. They're not all happily praising, joyfully praising. Good songs also recount the reasons why we have responses like joy, like thanksgiving, like adoration. Because by singing the reasons, we're formed by them as we experience them over and over through that song when we're singing together. That's why God's given us the Psalms to form our hearts, which lead us on the path of true blessedness. Thinking back to Psalm 1, blesses the man. It's heart orientation that provides the foundation on which we live, we move, we have our being. You know, we talk a lot about today, Christians talk a lot about today, about worldview. I mentioned that. Something that, you know, what will guide us to live according to Scripture. I think what, sadly, sometimes that discussion primarily seems to always focus on what we think. Thinking is important, doctrine is important, but to focus exclusively on the mind misses what even just the first psalm sets up as the fundamental purpose of the psalms. They don't primarily inform our minds like the prophets do. It's different kind of writing than the prophets. Or inform our wills like the law does. It's writing the will of God upon our own hearts so that it's our will. The Psalms form the innate inclinations at your core. It's important because our imaginations, the way we interpret things that are factual, the way we make sense of God's world, that's why the Psalms use tools of the imagination to communicate truth. Psalm 1, what's the picture of the blessed man? It's a tree. It's planted by water. It has everything it needs. And that's not to say that it's not going to lose leaves at times, that there's not going to be a drought that comes, but because it's firmly rooted, it's firmly planted. And that's the picture that the psalmist is painting for us. Kevin Van Hooser, he talks about the Psalms, he says, the parade of genres in the Bible, but particularly in the Psalms, is nothing less than the imagination in full literary display. And all of this is not to be some sort of exhortation to like, you know, you just need to get all up in your feels, okay? That's, you know, get all up in your emotions and your feelings. That's not what we're talking about here. Even in the lament Psalms, even in the imprecatory Psalms. I talked about this when I taught Psalm 12 recently. It's not a fit of rage that David writes and asks God for judgment on the wicked. It's not to defend his honor. It's something that is thoughtful. It is something that is in accord with what God has said he will do to the wicked already. So even then, even in the heat of his emotion, of being afflicted, of wanting to see justice done, it's controlled, it's informed, it's shaped by God, by his character. And so again, with the image of the tree, so it's really just this image of blessedness, and he doesn't describe it in strict propositional terms. all the time. He uses the image of the tree to shape our imagination of what that would be like. The tree has abundant nourishment. It produces rich, juicy, delicious fruit. It shapes our imaginations. And in verse two, that's where you see that term meditate. So often that Hebrew word literally means to vocalize. It's like murmuring something. murmuring about something. Sometimes it's translated to muse on something. So you're allowing it to roll around in your mind. So when you read the Psalms, when we sing them, when we pray through them, we're wanting those truths to roll around in our minds. You know, that's why we try to use music that's beautiful and tries to capture when even in words the Psalm speaks of joy. Okay, what kind of joy? Is it joy that a baby's been born and it's exuberant? Is it joy that my hope is found in Christ even though death is close and it's through tears? Those are two different types of joy and if I just say joy, you may not know what I'm talking about. Music and then the descriptive ways that the Psalms helps us think about joy, that helps us know what we're talking about in ways that words themselves really can't. And so it means that meditation is more than just studying scripture. It's more than just thinking about doctrine. It's writing the word of God, like Proverbs 3.3 says, which we'll talk about next week, on the tablet of your heart. It's slow formation. It's letting the word of Christ dwell in you richly, Colossians 3. What's particularly instructive about when Paul says that, by the way, to the Colossians and the Ephesians, how do we allow the word of Christ to dwell richly within us? How do we meditate on God's word? How do we muse on God's law? He says, sing psalms, hymns, spiritual songs. So again, this kind of image-forming meditation on the law of God, it's a function of our hearts, our imaginations. It requires not exclusively, we don't leave them behind, but it doesn't require just doctrinal statement, just doctrinal conviction. It does require imagination, it requires songs. We muse on the law of the Lord when the law of the Lord takes on the form of music. And that's what the book of Psalms is for us. Isn't it interesting, there's five books of Moses of the Torah. The Torah are for the mind. They're there to inform us, to inform our intellect, inform our minds. The books of the Psalms, it's like they're the Torah for the heart, so to speak. God intends for the collection of the Psalms to form, to shape our image of what it means to be blessed, what it means to flourish, what it means to obey God, to live according to his law as we meditate on these songs, as we meditate on these inspired songs. And I'm so sorry we had much more time last week. One person. You just have something itching to ask or as Steven says a deletion a subtraction. You'd like to. Anybody at all. Logan you have anything. Yeah, when you see Christ quoting the Psalms, what, for me, what tends to come to mind is I should remember to quote songs I know or hymns I know more often. Like, how often do we find that we, it can be hard to remember exactly what someone may have taught us, you know, a month ago or two weeks ago or whatever. Man, we remember what we sing. Doesn't that put the onus on what we sing to be well worth singing? So we're totally out of time. Please, and we gotta go in, so please catch me after church if you got questions or something. Let me pray and dismiss this. Heavenly Father, I'm so thankful for the Psalms. I'm so thankful for this collection of beautiful things to proclaim, to declare, to internalize, to pray through. particularly these songs that are written in such despair and darkness in the pen of the author. And Lord, we know that your spirit inspired those to be written so that when we are in affliction, when we are sorrowful, when we are downcast, that we have words you've given us to know how to respond, how to think through what we're going through. And Lord, you've also given us songs that just mightily declare your wonders. We're gonna sing one of those today, and I'm so thankful for this church, so thankful for the attentiveness today, and we're praying for you to bless us as we continue to gather. Amen. All right, everybody, thank you so much. Appreciate it.