Heavenly Father, You are strong and mighty, a fortress, a rock, a strong tower, a stronghold, a shield, and You are good, and You care for us, and You indeed save us. You are our deliverer, our salvation. When we were weighed down by the guilt of our sin and under the sentence of death, you answered us from heaven and you sent forth your Son to be our Redeemer. And as we walk through this life, we face many enemies. We are in constant warfare. And so we are in constant need of you to be our refuge. Surround us, deliver us, protect us, and hear us. Teach us, Father, this morning from your Word. Guide us into truth by your Spirit, and lead us in paths of righteousness for your namesake. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. There was a handout last week, so if you have it, if you happen to remember it, I didn't even remember mine, but you can use that. If you want a copy of it and you've lost yours, because it's the kind of thing you might want to refer back to, you can feel free to email me and I'll shoot you an electronic copy. We've been covering two things last week and this week, major themes that we find in the Psalms or major ways we can look at the Psalms and then how we can bridge the gap between the world of the Psalms and our world. We talked about covenant songs and battle songs, portraits of Christ, liturgy for worship. So these are And we're going to start off with private devotion, which is where we left off last time. So these are just ways we can look at the Psalms or major themes that we find in the Psalms. The Psalms remind us of our covenant relationship to God. Sometimes it reminds us of our covenant obligations, that we would keep the covenant by trusting in God and by following after Him. More often it reminds us of God's covenant promises to be our God and to be our shield and to be our deliverer. Even these battle songs like Psalm 18 that I just read have that covenantal relationship. God is our strength. God is our rock, our fortress, our deliverer, our refuge, our shield, the horn of our salvation. That's all that covenant language because he's entered into covenant with us and he's made promises to us and so we can trust him. We are in battle, and so many of the Psalms remind us of battles. All the Psalms show us something of Christ. The Psalms give us our liturgy for worship, teach us how it is that we should approach God in worship. And the Psalms also are intended for private devotion. But there's a gap, and we're going to talk about this today. There's a cultural, chronological, and covenantal gap between the Psalms and us, and we'll get into that today. So we talked about the fact that a covenant is a relationship that God sets up with us and guarantees by his word, and that the central covenant promise is, I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And so I've, one Christmas, preached a sermon on Matthew 1, where it talks about Emmanuel, God with us. And I said that if you could summarize the whole Bible in one word, it would be the word Emmanuel. God with us. That tells us of God's desire for why he created us. It tells us of why Jesus had to come, because that relationship had been broken and needed to be restored. It tells us the essence of Jesus coming and what he does for us. And so the essence of our covenant relationship is that we would be God's people and that he would be with us and be our God. And when you get to Revelation 21, the fulfillment of all things, that's the proclamation. Now the dwelling place of God will be with man. He will be with them and will walk with them as their God. God's part in the covenant. He's the one who saves us, adopts us, blesses us, protects us. We're the ones who respond and believe and love and worship. Some Psalms remind us of our covenant history, and a lot of them, I said, look back at the parting of the Red Sea and the Exodus. That should remind us to look back at the cross, which is our deliverance event from where we stand. God is our deliverer. Sometimes the Psalms call us to repentance, which is part of our covenant. When we are out of fellowship with God, we're called to turn back to Him and find forgiveness and reconciliation. And then we talked about the Psalms as battle songs. where the focus is on our enemies and how we are surrounded. We are surrounded by enemies. It's easy to forget that sometimes, and then there are times when we're painfully aware of it. But we need to be aware of it at all times, because we're always surrounded by enemies, and we're always under attack. It's when we're not aware that we are under attack that we're most vulnerable to the attack. And so it's helpful to have those battle songs to remind us that we are, and in the battle, we don't trust in human resources, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. Ultimately, the Psalms are about Jesus He's pictured as the promised Messiah, the enthroned king, the perfect and eternal priest, the righteous one who suffers and is vindicated, the blessed one, and in many other ways. There are some pictures of Christ that are obvious. We get a detail-for-detail description of the crucifixion in Psalm 22. We get a proclamation of Christ's status as a priest forever in the Order of Melchizedek in Psalm 105. But also, when it talks about who is able. to stand in the presence of God, who is able to live in God's presence, the one whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous, that's Christ. Christ is the one who fulfills Psalm 15, and Psalm 24 talks in similar language. He's the one who is ultimately the blessed man who never did wrong and always delighted in God's law, and he is also the one who was vindicated by God for the blameless life that he led. So there's several pictures of Christ in different Psalms. So we talked about this one last week, too. We get our structure for worship. Why do we worship the way that we do? A lot of that we draw from the Psalms. They teach us things like having an invocation, asking God to come and to meet with us and to work. They call us to worship. They encourage us to confess our sins. They give us assurance of pardon. They even give us hymns to sing and prayers of intercession, benediction. And then this is where we stopped last time. So, John Calvin said, I've 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 has 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, more than any other section of Scripture encourage us not to be hypocritical with God. If there's one place where we should be able to take off the mask and be who we are, it's in prayer before God. Because God knows us better than we know ourselves anyway. So you're not fooling Him. You can fool everybody else on Sunday morning, you can fool the members of your family, you can fool yourself, but you're not going to fool God. And so there's no point in wearing the mask in prayer. But sometimes we have groanings that are too deep for words, like we learned in Romans 8, and sometimes we need language for how to express that, and some of the Psalms will do that. They'll come in and they'll say painful things like, How long, O Lord? How long? Will you forget us forever? Will you cast us off? Remember your mercies, O Lord. Remember not the sins of my youth, but according to your steadfast love, remember me. And so they'll give us words. Last night was a tough night for me after I got home from that wonderful Valentine's Fellowship. It was wonderful. But I got home to find out that Maryland got smacked at home by Wisconsin, who's unranked. So it's their first home Big Ten loss. Bonnie's very upset, I'm sure. Do you need some tissues? Can we get you some cleaning? Okay. Justice Scalia died yesterday. We need to be in prayer for our country about that. I don't want to get all political, but he was really a voice for the Constitution on the Supreme Court, very consistently so. And now there's the whole political thing of Obama being in the White House and getting to make an appointment and how that's going to work in the presidential election. And then that Republican debate last night. It's very discouraging. Anyway, so, wonderful fellowship at the Valentine's event, and then we got home and was just frustrated, but God gives us words for all of our feelings. We also can experience fellowship across the ages. One of the reasons why I love singing old hymns is that you're singing something that the church has been singing for 300, 400, 500, 600, 1,000 years, and you have fellowship with other brothers and sisters in Christ. I loved going to, when I went to China back in 97, We went to one of the publicly authorized three self-patriotic churches, and it was the official Protestant church in town, and I couldn't understand a word that was going on, but we sang hymns. And they sang a lot of the same hymns that we sing with the same tunes. They're just singing them in Chinese. And so we sang in English, and we're able to sing together. And so when we pray the Psalms, we're praying words that God's people have been praying, in some cases, for 3,000 years. And so it's pretty powerful. And God responds. But how do we bridge the gap? We build a Lego bridge, that thing's gonna fall apart. That's totally faulty construction. My kids could do better than that. But I like this because it has three planks, and we're talking about three different aspects of our gap. There's a cultural gap, a chronological gap, and a covenantal gap. I am a preacher, and so I think in threes, and I think in threes that start with the same letter. I try not to do that too often in my sermons. All right, so the cultural gap. The ancient Near Eastern world of the Psalms is pre-industrial, so there's no technology that we would think of as being technology, although technically anything that's made by humans to do a job is technology. But it's pre-industrial, it's agricultural. It's a violent, warring society. They pretty much went to war every year. in the springtime after the planting was done and before they would need to weed it. So you till the ground and you plant the crops, you go to war, and then you come back and weed your crops. It was the annual cycle. That's not part of our lives. We don't do that. It was monarchical. There was one ruler at the top pretty much in every society, whether it was a big one or a small one. Very ritualistic. We are ritualistic, too, but our rituals are not necessarily religious in nature. And then we think of it as being a simpler culture. I don't know that that's true. I don't know that anywhere you have people interacting with other people that it's ever simple, but we think of it that way. We think, oh, it's such a simpler time. Our culture is post-industrial, commercial, so we have a consumer-driven economy, which means, you know, what drove the culture of the ancient world were two main things, three main things. Your crops, okay? Your kids. and your wars, your battles. And so a lot of what you find in the Psalms is oriented at harvest, the latter rains, the early rains, and the latter rains, which is all about having a good harvest. And then your children, and you want to have lots of children, because when you're in an agrarian society, it helps to have lots of children. It also helps in a warring society to have lots of children. Psalm 127, the famous one with the quiver full, one of the blessings of having lots of kids is you'll be able to stand up to your enemies in the gate. And part of the practicality of that is when you've got a whole bunch of boys who are grown, it's like, well, Are you going to fight with me? I've got five grown boys at home. You've got two. So our six will take on your three. I mean, it was a very real practical thing. We don't do that today. It's not part of our life. Mostly we live in a peaceful world, mostly. There are times like this past week when that peace is shattered and we're reminded that our world is not peaceful. We live in, we think, a democratic society. We live in more of an idea-oriented culture, supposedly, although even that's becoming less and less true. It's more personality-oriented now. And we think we live in a complex society. There's a chronological gap. The Psalms were written a long time ago, and over those hundreds and hundreds of years, kingdoms have risen and fallen, nations have changed. Another aspect of the cultural gap, really, is that there are references to places in the Bible that, for the original psalmist and his audience, would have immediately brought to mind certain things. like the mountains of Bashan, and you might think, I don't know what the mountains of Bashan are. Well, everybody knew what that was. Those are the green, fertile, rain-blessed mountains on the north of Israel where the cattle graze. The mountains in the south of Israel were generally dry and rocky, and so There's that Psalm about unity that says, Psalm 133, it is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Zion. And we read that and say, what does that mean? Well, Mount Hermon is up in the mountains of Bashan, up in the north. It's a very green, very lush, and so it has a lot of dew, it has a lot of moisture. And when people are in unity, there's such a blessing of God, it would be as if all of that moisture were to fall on Jerusalem, which, if you've seen pictures of Jerusalem and the surrounding, it's very dry. And so, we don't get all those references because we don't live in that place. But we need to, with a little bit of work, we can understand what they're talking about. So vocabulary and references have all changed. Everything is pretty much very local, geographical, too, in Israel. And so we tend to think in different ways, different whole categories, because of our times in which we live. And then there's a covenantal gap. The Psalms were written before Christ and are looking forward to His coming and to the fulfillment of God's promises. It's also written at a time when Israel was a geopolitical nation called by God to wage war against other nations. Well, when the kingdom of God is associated with a nation-state, that's Old Covenant. We don't have that anymore, and so a lot of the warfare language isn't necessarily appropriate for us to take literally. And then you also had temple worship with animal sacrifices, so we could say this is the you know, the time of before Christ, after Christ, from shadow to fulfillment, but this is the sort of the civil law, and this is the ceremonial law, and we're not under either one of those directly anymore, and so we're not America is not Israel. America is not the kingdom of God on earth. And so there are times when we think we can get into a trap of trying to directly correlate those things if we're not careful. So how do we bridge the gap? Ultimately, we need to see that we have some things in common, and then we need to see who bridges the gap. We still worship the same God. God has not changed. 3,000 years later, God is still God, and when we pray to the God that David prayed to, we're praying to the same God. He said to God, you are my rock and my fortress. We say to God, you are my rock and my fortress, and we're talking to the same God. He has not changed. We really do live in the same world. I mean, a lot of the circumstances have changed, but people are still people. There's still jealousy, there's still rivalry, there's still ambition, there's still deceit, there's still disappointment, there's still heartache, there's still sin, there's still forgiveness. It's still the same world with the same kind of people and we're under the same covenant. We are children of Abraham by faith according to the book of Galatians and other places, and so we're under that same covenant promise relationship with God that the Old Testament saints were under. So we need to realize what we have in common, and then we need to realize the one who bridges the gap, who is Christ. And this is kind of practically how it works. David is able to pray to God and bring his request before God because, covenantally, he's counted as being in Christ. If David were just David all by himself, he would have no standing before God. His standing before God comes from being in Christ, even though he's before Christ. He's in Christ by the covenant promises. And so much of his language points us to Christ, points us ahead to Christ. as the greater son of David, as the eternal king, as the righteous one, as the vindicated one. So, so much of David's own language is actually pointing us ahead to Christ. We stand before God because we are in Christ, and Christ is in us. So, we're counted as righteous before God because of Christ and not because of ourselves. God is our God because we are in Christ. And so, if we see ourselves as joined to Christ, And Christ is joined to the psalmist. It's Christ who brings us together as the Church across the ages, and gives us that access before the throne of God. And so, the same ways in which the psalmist would need to look beyond themselves to Christ for their hope, we need to look beyond ourselves to Christ for our answers. Now, there's also a lot of technical things here that, when you get into each individual psalm, there are some nuances. I'll give you some general categories. One has to do with warfare, the battle psalms, okay? So, if Christ is at the center, and he's the one who bridges the gap, When David or the psalmist are praying about a battle and praying about their enemies, or my enemies are pursuing me, they're violently persecuting me, David, there's two aspects. One, he could call on God for deliverance because he was in Christ. But the other thing is, his deliverance was not really the temporary deliverance of getting out of that tight spot. It really was looking forward to the final deliverance of being with the Lord. He's facing physical enemies, and he's taking troops into literal battle. We, on this side of Christ, we're no longer in an earthly kingdom, so we're not battling, most of the time we're not battling literal enemies. Paul says in Ephesians 6, we don't wrestle against flesh and blood. But we do have enemies, and we're not into a human battle on a battlefield, although there are times when soldiers are doing that. But really, we should understand that as being the kingdom conflict that we face, which is against our spiritual enemies and against sin, and also the advance of the church and the gospel within the world. And so we can pray for God to tear down the enemy. That may look like We're supporting a ministry in Haiti. Haiti is full of the strongholds of the enemy in voodoo, in sex trafficking, in sin, in poverty. There is lots of enemy territory there, and we're supporting a ministry, Reformation Hope, that's bringing the light of Christ into that darkness. So just as you have psalmists who would say, you know, go with us into the battle and give us the victory over our enemies, we can pray that for Haiti. Lord, go with Pastor Jean-Paul and go with Reformation Hope into the battle. I'm looking over the book table because there's a new book on the book table that's a book all about Reformation Hope and their ministry. So if you want to borrow that for the week, you can look through it. If you want a copy of that, I can get them directly from the ministry for about $15 a piece. I can order you one if you want one. But, so, there's ways in which we personally are in battle, but there's also larger ways in which the church is engaged in a kingdom conflict against the forces of darkness, and so that's one. You know, it really varies psalm by psalm, and so what I want to do with our last 15 minutes I'm going to stop jabbering. I think that's all I have. And I want to go to Psalm 27. And we've got just about 15 minutes left. So what we're going to do is I'm going to read the psalm. I'm just going to read it straight through. And then we're all going to be quiet. And this is your time to spend in quiet prayer before the Lord, meditating on and praying Psalm 27. This is not a theology quiz, okay? There's no right or wrong answers here. There may be something in here that may remind you of something. It's fine. You can pray to God about anything. So don't feel like you have to fully understand every line of this psalm. You're not asked to exegete it. You're just asked to meditate on it and pray it up to the Lord. So I will read and then I'll be quiet and we will pray. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh, my adversaries and foes, it is they who stumble and fall. Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. Though war rise against me, yet I will be confident. One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble. He will conceal me under the cover of his tent. He will lift me high upon a rock, who is Christ. And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy. I will sing and make melody to the Lord. Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud. Be gracious to me and answer me. You have said, Seek my face. My heart says to you, Your face, Lord, do I seek. Hide not your face from me. Turn not your servant away in anger. O you who have been my help, cast me not off. Forsake me not, O God of my salvation. For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in. Lead me in your way, O Lord. Lead me on a level path because of my enemies. Give me not up to the will of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen against me, and they breathe out violence. I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord, be strong, and let your heart take courage. Wait for the Lord." Just spend the next 10-15 minutes meditating and praying this up to God. Heavenly Father, You are our God. and we are your people. You are our light and our salvation. You are the stronghold of our life. We are under attack all the time. We are tempted by our enemy to sin, to doubt, to despair, We see a world that rejects you and hates you and runs after selfish pleasures and desires and would have us run after the same. Our flesh wages war against us and would seek to ensnare us by our appetites and our desires. Our enemies surround us and they attack us. Give us confidence. Let us be confident in You. Let us not fear. But let us have this single-minded desire that David expresses here, that You would be the one thing, one thing that we need is You, O Lord. To be in fellowship with You. To hear from You. To know You and to walk before You. Lead us, O Lord. Teach us your ways and lead us in a level path. Fill our hearts with joy that we might sing and make melody to you. Even this morning in our worship, Father, may you give us such confidence in you and such joy that our songs would be full of exuberant worship making melody to you with our hearts and with our lips. And give us the patience to wait on you. We live in a fallen world. We live in a broken world. And we live in a world where you have told us to wait. Sometimes we're waiting for a temporal deliverance from some feeling of depression or isolation or doubt or sorrow. But ultimately we're waiting for that day when we will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. We will see Jesus face to face. He will come to this earth and He will claim it for Himself. And we will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. So give us the patience to wait and the faith to trust. We ask all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright. Hello? Is it on? Hello? Hello? Hello? How about the monitor? Is the monitor on? It is? Mic check. What did I do? That might have something to do with it. I'm gonna pull the microphones back. Okay. Sometimes when, if that is aimed at it, that can do it. Yeah, so I'm gonna stand back here Yeah, will you put it back in the basement for me to please when we get it back to my house I All right, beautiful. So a little high-end-y. Check, check, check. Sibilance. I'm good with it, if you are. I think it was just the level was too high out here. You might have an output level that's turned up. You hear that little pop? You might have a little output level that's a little hot on there to the monitor. But other than that, I'm good with it. I just want to make sure all the microphones are behind it. or excuse me, like aimed away and keep that behind the...