the Psalms and then bridging the gap. So the gap between the Old Testament world and our world. So let's begin in prayer. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the Psalms that you have given to us. It's a unique portion of your word that is given to us for worship and for devotion. It is one of the places in your word where you give us the words that we can use to praise you and to pray to you and to call out to you in any circumstance in life. We pray that you would help us, Father, this morning as we learn together to get a handle on the Psalms and know how to apply them in our lives. Father, we pray that your Holy Spirit would prompt us and lead us in praying the Psalms and that we would do so for your glory and for our benefit. And we ask this in Jesus' name, amen. All right, so there's two topics we're gonna be covering today and next week. The first is major themes. So the Psalms, not all the Psalms are alike. And also, within any psalm, there's different angles that you can look at it from. So we're gonna look at the psalms as covenantal songs, that is, songs that reflect our covenant relationship with God as his people. As battle songs, if you've read the psalms at all, you notice there's a lot of conflict and warfare and violence in the psalms. The psalms as portraits of Christ. The Psalms as liturgy for worship. There's a reason why when we're doing our worship together, we draw a lot from the Psalms. And the Psalms for private devotion. So those are the kind of five themes that we're gonna look at. And then we're gonna talk about the gap between the Psalms and us. There's a cultural gap. The culture of the ancient Near East is very different from our modern American culture. There's a chronological gap. The Psalms were written anywhere from between 1800 to 400 BC. And then we, of course, live in the year 2016. So we've got this 3,000 year gap, 4,000 year gap. And then there's also a covenantal gap in that the Psalms were written before Christ, and we are in Christ. Isaac Watts. the famous hymn writer in the early 1700s, he began writing hymns by taking this covenantal approach to the Psalms. And so his first book of hymns that was published was the Psalms for Christian singing, the Psalms in Christ. So, probably his most famous hymn text is Joy to the World. And Joy to the World takes Psalm 98 and it applies it to the Christian to sing. Joy to the world, the Lord has come, let earth receive her king. And so, we can go from before Christ to in Christ, bridging that gap to see a lot of this will come clear as we go through this. All right, so let's begin with the Psalms as covenantal songs. What is a covenant? Anybody know what a covenant is? It's a legally binding contract that your homeowner's association comes up with to dictate to you what color your shed can be and how often you need to cut your grass, right? That's one of the ways we hear that word, right? That's a very twisted use of that word. The Children's Catechism says that a covenant is a relationship that God sets up with us and guarantees by his word. So marriage is a covenant and marriage is put forth in scripture repeatedly as a picture of our relationship with God. And so, it's a relationship, but it's a relationship that is legally binding and that has various aspects to it. There's parties involved and there's obligations involved, but at the heart of it is a loving relationship, and it's a relationship that God initiates and that God sets up the terms of. So, when we look at the Psalms, we're looking at relational songs between God and his people. The central covenant promise, which is repeated numerous places throughout Scripture, from Exodus to Revelation, is this promise that God makes, your God and you will be my people," or, I will be their God and they shall be my people. And I gave you just a few of these references, but variations of this saying from God, this promise from God, are found beginning in Exodus and going all the way to Revelation, where in the New Jerusalem That promise is finally fulfilled. Now the dwelling of God is with man, and he will walk among them and be their God, and they will be his people. So this is the heart of the covenant relationship. We are the people of God, and he is our God. And that has implications for everything in life. And the Psalms bring out a lot of those implications. Let's talk a little bit more about the covenant. There is an aspect of the covenant that God is responsible for, and then there is our response to the covenant that's our part in it. God is the one who saves us, who adopts us, who blesses us, who protects us, who guides us, and he's the one who is the Lord. One of the unique things about God's covenant with us, and we get this picture particularly in Genesis 15, is that the Hebrew word to make a covenant literally means to cut a covenant. And so when you make a covenant, there's always a cutting involved. And no matter what form, there were different forms that different ancient Near Eastern cultures would use, but all of them involved the shedding of blood. All of them. And the shedding of blood, the fancy term for this, you can write this down and impress somebody later if you wanna bring it out. The fancy term for that is a self-imprecatory oath. And a self-imprecatory oath is simply cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye. Okay, it's basically to say, I promise to my own hurt, right? Nobody wants a needle stuck in their eye, right? Anybody wanna sign up for that? We can do that after church in the parking lot. No. There's an older thing that boys used to do before we got all hypersensitive about safety and everything. I don't know if boys still do it, but there used to be this thing called being a blood brother. and you used to sort of cut your hand and your friend would cut his hand and you'd like shake hands or grasp hands and your blood would mix and you were blood brothers, you know, it was just like manly and you were like eight years old or whatever. But all of this kind of impulse in the human nature goes back to what a covenant is. A covenant would be set up by cutting an animal, usually, and shedding its blood. And we see that picture in the tabernacle worship and the temple worship of the animal sacrifices. But in Genesis 15, we know God did something very unique with Abraham, and that is he asked Abraham to set up the covenant ceremony by cutting all these animals in half. And Abraham is clearly the lesser party in the covenant. God is clearly the greater party in the covenant. And in that cultural context, Abraham was waiting for God to ask him to walk through the animal parts or maybe to come and walk through with him. But God didn't do that. God actually put Abraham to sleep so that he would be out of the way. And then God walked through the animal parts. And the significance of that is God was saying in that covenant, I will keep my promise to you, and it's all on me. It's not part on you, part on me, it's all on me. So our part in the covenant is to respond to God by faith. to trust in His promises, to love Him and worship Him, to obey His commands and to thank Him and glorify Him. But we don't do any of this, we know, in order to get saved. All of this is a response to what God has done and what God has promised. Now where do we see this in the Psalms? There's three different areas that I want to focus on that you see regularly in the Psalms. One are the history Psalms, and these are some of the longer ones, Psalm 77, Psalm 78, where you get this recounting of this salvation history. Particularly in the Psalms, they'll focus on the Exodus. And so the focus will be on recounting the story of the Exodus, and usually with a particular emphasis, but there are several Psalms that do that. Why are they doing that? Well, from the standpoint of the psalmist writing the Psalms, the Exodus is the high point, the central identifying point in the redemption of God's people. How do the Ten Commandments begin? I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the house of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. So God's covenant, in the form of the Ten Commandments, opens with this statement. Who is God? God's the one who brought you out of Egypt. God's the one who brought you out of slavery. So it's a redemptive context, and this is the redemption. Notice that this redemption involved the shedding of blood of the Passover lamb, and it also involved passing through judgment of the Red Sea and then the vanquishing of the enemies. So these Psalms remind God's people of what God has done for them in the past. And very often the Psalms will contrast God's faithfulness in delivering his people and the people's faithlessness in not following after God and not doing what God told them to do. And yet God would still be faithful, and the people would still be a bunch of boneheads, and God would still be faithful. And so this is helpful to us. When we read those Psalms, we can look back at the cross, which is the central redemptive act now for God's people, and we can say God has been faithful, He gave his son for me, God has been faithful, he's kept his promises, and surely I can trust him in this situation that I'm going into. Some of these were written to encourage God's people as they were going into exile in Babylon. They wanted to be reassured, they needed to be reassured that God was gonna be faithful to bring them out again, just as he had. And for us, if we're struggling with something, we have some doubt, we have some struggle, we have some fear, we have some anxiety, we need to know that God will walk with us through that, just as he's been faithful in the past. And ultimately for our faithfulness, we go back to the cross. So these are some of the examples of that, but you'll see this in various places as you're reading the Psalms. You'll see this history. You'll wonder, why is this history here? What does this have to do with my life? The God who has been faithful in the past is the God who will be faithful today and tomorrow. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The second major way we see this in the Psalms is as God the Deliverer. The Lord is our Deliverer. And David in particular, you'll see this from him a lot. Help, Lord, for the evil men surround me. Help, Lord, for the waters have come up to my neck. Help, Lord, for wicked men pursue me. And we'll get to this again when we get to battle songs. But some of those psalms, when you read one, you might be 6 o'clock in the morning. You're sitting in your kitchen. You're drinking your coffee. Nobody else is awake yet. And you read this from David. Help, Lord, for the ungodly are surrounding me. And they're threatening to cut off my life. And you might think, oh, I don't know. I'm just sitting here in my pajamas drinking my coffee. And I feel pretty comfortable and pretty safe. But one of the things that that can do is maybe wake you up a little bit spiritually to realize, you know what? You're not comfortable and safe. You live in a dangerous world, and you are surrounded by enemies, and they are attacking you, whether you realize it or not. And so maybe we need to wake up and realize it. I can't possibly list all of these, but Psalm 3, 4, and 5. Some of these are very reassuring. So, I lay down and slept. I woke up again, for the Lord preserved me. Now that has one cultural context when David is fleeing from Saul, and he's hiding in the caves, and he literally, he's able to go to sleep at night, and wake up in the morning, and Saul hasn't run him through with a spear, because the Lord has preserved him. But even for us, that's true. I went to bed at night, and I woke up the next morning because the Lord preserved me. And we need to be thankful for that. Another way we see the covenant context of the Psalms has to do with the call to repentance. When our covenant relationship with God is damaged because of our sin, our intimacy, our fellowship with God is broken because of our sin, God will call us to repent. And so several of the Psalms will deal either individually or collectively as a call to repentance, and then we'll see God's people respond in repentance. So I've given you some of these, Psalm 6, Psalm 50, Psalm 51. You can find others, but this is a reminder to us. Again, we might not feel necessarily guilty, but as we reflect on the Psalm, we might realize, yeah, you know what? There are ways that I'm guilty, and I need to confess, and I need to be made right with the Lord. So again, when we're talking about the Psalms as covenant songs, the relationship is on, the focus is on the relationship that God has with his people. God may ask us to remember what he's done in the past for us. So a Psalm could be an opportunity for thanksgiving to God. If you're reading one of those Exodus history Psalms, you can just say, you can just take that as an opportunity to thank God. Lord, you've been so faithful to me over the years. You have brought me through so many trials. You gave your son for me on the cross so that I can have salvation, and you've shown your faithfulness in my life in so many ways. And just let it be an opportunity for thanksgiving. At other times, he's calling us to repentance or to obedience, to faithfulness. Sometimes he'll pronounce the blessedness of the man who perseveres under trial or who is faithful to the Lord. So God's covenant. Sometimes God's covenant comes up explicitly in the Psalms. And what's interesting is sometimes the focus is on how God keeps his covenant, and then sometimes the focus is on how we keep his covenant. And that reminds us that this is a relationship, and there are Although God is the one who initiates the relationship and who secures it and who sets it up, we have the responsibility to respond. And so, Psalm 105, he remembers his covenant forever. The word that he commanded for a thousand generations, the covenant that he made with Abraham, his sworn promise to Isaac. Galatians, in particular, the whole point of the book of Galatians primarily is to remind us that we are under God's covenant promises to Abraham. They're fulfilled in the seed of Abraham in Christ. So if you read anything in the Psalms about God's covenant to Abraham, you think, that's me, because Christ is the seed of Abraham, who's the fulfillment of the covenant, and I'm in Christ, so that is for me. But then there's our side of it. All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth to such as keep His covenant and His testimonies. Of course, we know even our ability to keep His covenant is dependent upon the power of His Holy Spirit who dwells in us. Any questions about covenant songs? We could say a whole lot more about it, but just trying to touch on the surface a little bit. We start reading a psalm a day on Wednesday of this week, and we'll go straight through the Psalter. The only time we'll read less than a full psalm in a day is when we get to Psalm 119, and then I've broken that up over several days. There will be some that are pretty long, that you're reading all at once, and I think it's important because I have found, when I've been in Bible plans that take a psalm like, I don't know, Psalm 78, and they say they read one half one day, and the next half the next day, So much happens in those intervening 24 hours. I pick up in the middle of a psalm, I forget where I was and what's going on. So it's worth, I think, spending three or four more minutes to get to the end of the psalm to be able to see the whole scope of it. All right, the psalms as battle songs. The focus shifts from our relationship with God to our relationships with our enemies. And with our enemies in mind, we turn to God for salvation, deliverance, and victory. Why do we need battle songs? Emily, why do you need battle songs? Are you going to fight somebody today? You got to get your sword and shield and spear ready? Yeah, yeah. So in a sense, it might seem silly to say, are you gonna fight somebody today? Do you have your sword and shield ready? Yes, you are gonna fight somebody today. So do you have your sword and shield ready? The shield of faith and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. Are you prepared for the battle that is going to happen today? And that's why I'm a believer in getting up early in the morning and spending some time in the Word, because look, I hate the mornings. And when I don't have to get up early in the morning, I don't. But I need that reminder first thing in the morning of who I am and who I belong to and what the day is going to hold. So you have three mortal enemies, and they are the world, the flesh, and the devil. And the world never stops talking to you. You ever notice that? The time you wake up in the morning, the time you go to bed at night, the world never stops talking to you. And it can talk to you in subtle ways or it can talk to you in blatant ways. It will put in front of you those things that it knows you like and you want. Your flesh is restless in its desires, in its craving. which are always things that are hurtful to you, but it wants to convince you that this is what you really need. And of course, what lies behind the world and the flesh is the devil, who's a master manipulator and who's attacking us all the time. He comes to steal, kill, and destroy. So those Psalms, when David talks about being outnumbered and surrounded by his enemies, that is us. Now, greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world. You know, and those who are with us are more than those who are against us, but we need that reminder because if we're just on our own and we're just trying to go through life, like, blind to it, we are surrounded by enemies. They are outnumbered, they have us outnumbered, and they are stronger than we are and craftier than we are, and, you know, if we're not reminded of these things, we can be cut off. So the battle songs call us to put our confidence in God and not in ourselves. Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. When David wins a victory, he gives the credit to God. When David is preserved, he thanks God. When David is overwhelmed and he can't see the way out, he cries out to God. So at every stage, he is relentlessly God-focused. In fact, if you know David's life, what was spiritually the most dangerous time for David? When he was in battle or when he was at ease? Yeah. You know, that story with Bathsheba begins, you know, it was spring when the kings went out to war and David stayed behind in Jerusalem. It was when he chose not to engage in the battle. It's when he decided to choose pleasure and comfort over the battle that he was in the most danger. Battle psalms are everywhere. This is just a few of them. And again, you can get lots out of these battle psalms. So, Psalm 18 begins with, the Lord is my fortress and my strength, a strong tower. And you can just use that as adoration. Lord, you are my fortress and my strength. You are my strong tower. You are my shield. You are my rock. You are my defender. You are my deliverer. Just take the very words of the psalm and offer them up to God as praise. And it reminds you of who he is, and it reminds, it reconnects that relationship. Ultimately though, whether it's a covenant song or a battle song or a kingship psalm or whatever, Christ is really the focus of all of the psalms. You may have heard of messianic psalms that are about Jesus. Jesus is really, at one level or another, the focus of all of the psalms. And so we see Jesus in the Psalms as our promised Messiah. There's several explicitly Messianic Psalms that talk about the promised king to come, so we see him in that way. All of the kingship Psalms The king may, in an immediate context, be talking about David or Solomon, but in an ultimate context, it's talking about Jesus. Psalm 45 is a very famous one of these. It's talking about the wonderful wisdom and beauty of the king. And scholars will tell you it's probably written about Solomon at the time of his coronation. But it's not about Solomon, ultimately. It's about Jesus. We see Jesus as our perfect and eternal priest. You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek." We see Jesus as the righteous one who suffers unjustly and is vindicated. This helps us with what used to be the most difficult part of the Psalms for me, and that is when David is praying and he's pleading his own innocence. I am innocent. They're attacking me without cause. I've not done anything wrong. My hands are pure before you." And, you know, David in his context is probably talking about his relative guilt or innocence in a particular situation. So, you know, if someone were to want to, you know, beat you up because they thought you had, you know, kicked their dog or intimidated one of their kids or you know, flirted with their wife, you could say, hey, I'm innocent. And you're not meaning, of course, in an ultimate sense, I'm innocent. You're just meaning in that particular situation, I didn't kick the dog. I didn't harass the kids. I wasn't trying to pick up your wife. I'm innocent. That's really what David means in that limited sense. But as those Psalms point us to Christ, Christ is the one who was pure and innocent and holy and blameless. And yet he was hated and rejected and conspired against, and put on a false trial, and condemned to death. But in the end, he's vindicated. Repeatedly in the Psalms, when it talks about how greatly blessed is the man, we should look at those as being ultimately about Christ. So Psalm 1, how greatly blessed is the man, which is why I don't like some of the modern translations that try to make those things gender inclusive. And they say things like, how greatly blessed are those who, like, well, you lose the singularity of the focus because it really is supposed to point us to Jesus. So let's look at just a few of these. There are obvious pictures of Christ in the Psalms. And so Psalm 22 is one of the most detailed prophecies of the crucifixion. This was written by David, but there's no point in David's life when these things particularly happened to him. Psalm 22 reads like a detailed description of crucifixion in the middle of a mocking mob. And yet it was written hundreds of years before the Romans even started crucifying people. Dogs have surrounded me. That's a reference to Gentiles. That's what dogs means often in the Psalms. Dogs have surrounded me. A band of evil men has encircled me. They have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all of my bones. Jesus didn't have any of his bones broken on the cross, which was a typical Roman practice in crucifixion. If you weren't dying quick enough, they'd come along and break your legs. The whole thing with crucifixion, You suffocate to death is how you die. You don't bleed to death, you suffocate to death. And the reason is that you have to pull yourself up on your hands and feet, which are pierced, in order to be able to breathe. And it's so incredibly painful. Our word excruciating comes from out of the cross, excrucis. It is so incredibly painful and it's exhausting that you lose the strength and you lose the ability to be able to lift yourself up to breathe and so you suffocate. And so, if you weren't dying quickly enough, they would break your legs, because as hard as it is to lift yourself up with pierced hands and feet, if your legs are broken, it becomes impossible. Well, they didn't need to do that to Jesus, because he died of his own will. He said, into your hands I commit my spirit, and he breathed his last. He was sovereign over his own life to the very end. He gave himself up for us on the cross. They divided my garments among them, and cast lots for my clothing." You remember how they did that with Jesus? They divided up his clothing, but then they had the inner garment that was in one piece, and they didn't want to tear it, and so they cast lots for it. So you have an explicit, detail-for-detail description of the crucifixion of Jesus written a thousand years before it happened. Other prophecies Psalm 105, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. Jesus referred to this one in the Gospels when he said, whose son is the Messiah? Is he the son of David? Well, if he's the son of David, then how could David write about the Messiah, the Lord said to my Lord, why would David call him Lord if he's his son? And so Jesus refers to this explicitly in the Gospels. And then later on the psalm, it says, the Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek. Now that's an obscure reference, but what does that mean? How was Melchizedek unique as a priest? that the priesthood of Aaron, the Levitical priest, could not be. Melchizedek was, yeah, he was also a king, yes. And so Hebrews goes into this in detail. But the word Melchizedek means king of righteousness. And then he was also king of Salem, probably Jerusalem if he was a real historical figure. We don't need to get into that. But King of Salem means King of Peace. So he had a name that meant King of Righteousness. He had a title that meant King of Peace. And yet he was a priest. He was a priest who was so great that Abraham gave him a tithe. And he blessed Abraham. And Hebrews goes into that whole greater lesser thing. But then Melchizedek disappears. We have him in a half a chapter or a little end of a chapter in Genesis. And then he comes back in Psalm 105. This is about the Messiah. and he's going to be a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek, a king priest. But there are other places where we might not think, oh, that's clearly about Jesus, but it is. Psalm 15, Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy hill? He whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous. Who has the right to stand before the presence of a holy God? Only the one who is blameless. If we don't see Jesus in Psalm 15, Psalm 15 gives us no hope whatsoever. Who is worthy to stand in the presence of God? Who is worthy to be before the throne of God? Only the one who's blameless. Only the one who's done what is righteous. And so we can read it and say, oh, that's not me. And the point of Psalm 15 is not to say, try harder, The point of Psalm 15 is to give us a portrait of Christ and then to show us how we are in Christ and how we in Christ are counted righteous, and it also does show us how we ought to live as those who belong to the Lord. But you're never going to get there by just keeping it like a law. It's a gospel psalm. Psalm 1 already referenced, blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. Now should this be true of us? Absolutely this should be true of us. This is our call. This is the way we should live our lives. Absolutely. But this is also a picture of Jesus. This is how Jesus lived his life. Jesus did not walk in the counsel of the wicked. One of the ways we see that in the Psalms is that he did not submit himself to the Pharisees' teachings regarding the law, but he took their teachings and put them back on them and said, look, you guys are doing this and it's wrong. This is hypocritical. This is not what God meant. He would not go along with the corrupt leadership but he delighted in God's law, so much so that he is the embodiment of the law. Vindicate me, O Lord, for I have lived a blameless life. I have trusted in the Lord without wavering." Hebrews tells us that during the days of his earthly life, Jesus cried out to the Lord with loud cries and groaning and tears, and he was heard because of his righteousness. So this is another picture of Jesus. You picture Jesus in the garden in agony. God answered that prayer of him by raising him from the dead, Hebrews says. So Christ is throughout the Psalms, and one of the things we need to do as we read it is just train ourselves to look for Him there. I'm looking at Psalm 29 right now, just happened to be open to it. Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name. Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness. So this is our call to worship as God's people. But then it says, the voice of the Lord is over the waters. The God of glory thunders, the Lord over many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars. The Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon. Who is the voice of the Lord? Jesus. Jesus is the Word of God. He is the voice of the Lord. So even when you hear things like that, the voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire, the voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness, you should think Jesus is powerful and mighty. Some other things we see about Jesus in the Psalms. He's the obedient servant of Psalm 26. He's the blessed man of God of Psalm 1 and Psalm 112. He's the true Israel, the son of God, the king enthroned on Zion, my holy mountain in Psalm 2. He's the suffering servant of Psalms 22 and 69. And he's the righteous king of Psalm 45. He is a priest forever in Psalm 105. and the victorious Lord of Psalm 2. So again, as you get used to reading the Psalms, you'll see more and more of Jesus, particularly if you pray that, Lord, show me yourself in your word. All right, the Psalms as liturgy. The psalms were written by a variety of people over a number of years, from Moses, who wrote one of the oldest psalms, to David, who wrote more psalms than anyone else, to Solomon, who wrote a few psalms, to the Sons of Korah, to the Song of Asaph. So we have lots and lots of them are anonymous. They were compiled and canonized sometime around the time of the exile to Babylon. And they were put together for use in corporate worship. It was the worship book, it was the hymn book of Israel. And so this is what they would have sung together in worship. And so in that way, we can look at the Psalms and understand how we should approach God in corporate worship. There's a reason why we do things the way that we do them. One of the best sections, which I'm thinking about preaching through this summer. I've told you I'm going to preach on the Psalms this summer. I don't know which Psalms yet. But I haven't even figured out what I'm doing for Easter yet. And that's coming up soon. But I'm thinking about doing the Psalms of Ascent, which would be Psalms 120 to 134. But I might not. But it's one of my favorite sections because it teaches us what it means to approach God in worship. It teaches us what it means to be God's people and be on pilgrimage. These are the Pilgrim Psalms that would have been sung by God's people as they were making their way up to Jerusalem for one of the three annual feasts and would have been sung while they were in Jerusalem. On one of Michael Card's CDs, you guys know who Michael Card is? You should if you don't. But on one of his CDs that deals with the Psalms, he sings one of the songs of ascent in Hebrew to the oldest known melody for that one. And I love listening to that. And it's been years since I've heard it. because I think Jesus, as he was going up to Jerusalem, may have sung that song exactly that way. And so it was pretty cool. So we see the various elements of worship. Psalm 86 is an invocation. There are lots of calls to worship. We use a lot of them in our worship. There are confessions of sin. There's assurance of pardon. There are hymns. Some of them will just say a hymn. And that's, you know, we use it that way. Psalm 19 is a creation hymn and a hymn about the Word of God, the revelation of God. And Psalm 103 is more of a gospel hymn about the benefits of God to our soul. There are prayers of intercession, and there are benedictions. So we can see all of the major elements of corporate worship reflected in the Psalms, which is part of why we worship the way we do. It's because we see the pattern in the Psalms. All right. We're going to end with this quote. The last aspect of the Psalms that we can talk about is the Psalms as personal devotion. And we're going to pick up with this next week and then we'll cover bridging the gap next week. And then at the end of class next week, we're going to pray a psalm individually. I'm going to pick an easy one and give it to you and give you about 15 minutes to spend some time with the Lord praying that psalm to him. So that's how we'll end class next week. But this quote from Calvin is really helpful. I shared part of it with you last week. The anatomy of all parts of the soul is what he's sort of the title that Calvin gives the psalms. But he says, I have been accustomed to call this book, I think not inappropriately, the anatomy of all parts of the soul. There is not an emotion of which anyone can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or rather, the Holy Spirit has here drawn all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities with which the minds of men are wont to be agitated. The other parts of scripture contain the commandments which God enjoined his servants to announce to us, but here the prophets themselves, seeing they are exhibited to us as speaking to God and laying open all their inmost thoughts and affections, call, or rather draw, each of us to the examination of himself in particular, in order that none of the many infirmities to which we are subject and of the many vices with which we abound may remain concealed. It is certainly a rare and singular advantage when all lurking places are discovered and the heart is brought into the light, purged from that most baneful infection, hypocrisy. The Psalms encourage us and give us a language to avoid being hypocritical in our prayer life. We don't need to just come up with a stock set of religious phrases and offer them up to God in our prayer lives. We can take the language of the Psalms and we can say, God wants us to cry out to him when we are overwhelmed and we just don't know what to do. And he wants us to cry out that way and say, help, oh Lord, save me, oh Lord. God wants us to rejoice in him. and say how great He is and how thankful we are. God wants us to weep over our sin and be broken by it. God doesn't want us to pretend before Him. He wants us to be open. And so this quote by Calvin is just one of my favorites for that reason. All right, we'll pick up with how we use the Psalms in devotion next week. Let's pray. Father, You are our God, and you are mighty. And you are our Father, and you love us more than we could ever imagine. And you are the one who searches our hearts and knows our deepest, innermost thoughts. You know us all together, as you say in Psalm 139, Lord. Some of us are here this morning and we are struggling deeply over sin in our lives that has gripped us and we can't seem to shake it and we want to be rid of it and we're sorry for it. And we might know that we are forgiven, but we want to be free. Some of us are here this morning and we've been hurt very deeply this past week, maybe even last night, maybe even this morning. And we're carrying a hurt from words that were said or from actions that were done or not done. Some of us are here this morning and we're lonely. We feel like we don't have anyone in this world that we can really talk to or who really understands us. And we feel like we're all alone. Some of us are here and we're bored and distracted. And we're thinking about a football game later today, or we're thinking about what we have to do this coming week. You alone know our hearts, Lord. And you alone are the Lord of our hearts who loves us perfectly. The only thing that matches your perfect knowledge of us is your perfect love for us. And so we're in awe of that. And we ask that as we come and prepare for worship, that you would draw us into your presence and you would speak to us. And as we renew the covenant before you in the Lord's Supper this morning, we pray that you would use that as a time to reassure us and to teach us and to correct us and to comfort us and to encourage us. And we pray this week as we begin reading the Psalms together, we pray that in the Psalms we would find a language for prayer and for worship, that we would see Christ beautifully portrayed, and that you would strengthen our faith for the battle all around us and within us. We pray these things, Father, in Jesus' name.