All right, we're gonna try to start right on time, because it is nine o'clock, and we need two weeks to look at Psalms. It figures that the longest book in Scripture, I appreciate Logan giving me two weeks to cover it. Yeah, so we're gonna, basically today what I wanna do is look at kind of the nuts and bolts of what the Psalms are, and then next week we'll look more at kind of the narratives, the themes that you see. And so if there's like questions unanswered today when we're done, hopefully next week we'll get to those. And then also we're gonna wrap up next week talking a little bit about what makes the Psalms unique as far as they are meant to be sung. It's the only book of scripture where every everything is meant to be sung. So that's the plan over the next two weeks. So let me open in prayer and we'll get started. Heavenly Father, thank you this morning for everyone that's here. Thank you for your word that is always not just relevant, but it is inspired and errant. authoritative and sufficient for anything and everything in our lives, Lord. We are thankful for it. We're thankful that we've spent this time and that Logan and Jake and others have spent the time to study the word and give us overviews of the Old Testament. It's such a wonderful, rich place to spend last fall and this spring. And so just pray that you bless our time today and next week as we continue looking at this wonderful, wonderful hymnal. so to speak and I pray this in your name amen so one of the things that the scriptures makes clear is that though God's presence permeates the world, he does choose to dwell in a certain way, in certain places, and to make his presence known at certain times. And when we read the Psalms, it's like we're entering a literary sanctuary, okay? It's a place where God meets men and women in a special way, and it's where that conversation between man and God and his people is direct, it's intense, it is intimate, It is above all honest, and in the same way that you think about the tabernacle, probably thought about it through the Old Testament, the tabernacle, the temple, those were considered to be those physical centers of the people of God. It's interesting that the book of Psalms is smack dab in the middle of your Bible, okay? Calvin called this book an anatomy of all the parts of the soul that quotes I think on your notes there for there is not an emotion of which anyone can be conscious that is not here represented so in other words it's all here like a mirror he says rather the Holy Spirit has here drawn to the life all the griefs sorrows fears doubts hopes cares perplexities and in short all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men are want, or commonly, often, however you want to understand that, to be agitated. So all the things that you could imagine about the human experience particularly with regard to emotion and affection, it's found in the Psalms. Nothing's excluded. And so again, what we're going to do is to try to approach this 35,000-foot level. Two weeks doesn't even give it justice, of course. But we're going to look at three main points of emphasis. And today, most of what we're going to talk about is how the Psalms were actually put together. Who wrote them, how they were written, why they were written, how it's put together. It's a thoughtful organization. And then the next week we'll look at the narrative and then thinking about them as songs. So a Pentology is a collection of five. So this is a collection of five and it's somewhat misunderstood. And so one of the things that's important is that the Psalms is unlike any other book in scripture. So when you think about well-known literature, the Greeks have Homer, the Romans have Virgil, the, what is it, the Italians have Dante, the British, they have Shakespeare, and Tolkien, I guess. But nothing sings like the poetry of the Psalms. And it's important to acknowledge that the Psalms are not just poetry, it's poetry that's written to be sung, and so in the Psalms, every single one of the some 30,000 Hebrew words, they're intended to be sung with a musical instrument accompanying it. Every word's supposed to pass through your vocal cords. It's supposed to be breathed out in a song, okay? No other body of poetry lyricizes the epic deeds of our living God. that celebrate the past in the same way, that signify the future, they interpret the present, they make God known. There's no other body of poetry that claims to be the word of God and has the Holy Spirit bear witness to the claim that's recognized by people across space and time. So we recognize this as God's word. There's no other body of poetry that has as its principal author God's chosen king, whose line traces back through Judah to Abraham. I'm sure we've been talking about these patriarchs in this class, all the way to Shem, to Noah, back to Adam. And no other body of poetry or really any literary tradition lays claim to the fact that in the same way that King David, in writing of his own experience with God in the world, who is one of the primary authors in the Psalms, He simultaneously wrote as a type of the one to come, Jesus, the world's best and only hope. And so we love the Psalms, okay? We love the Psalms because in them we encounter God. And one author writes, knowing God, you'll love this, knowing God is not a means to something else, it is to know God. The psalms are their true history, their fulfilled promise, fulfilled prophecy, their enduring praise, and it's like a school of prayer. It's like a fountain of truth, you know, and we could never hope to master it, but hopefully it would master us, you know. So what are some of the facts? You think about the authors. So again, each psalm is an individual song. So it's one song. contained in and of itself, written by different authors. So David, I'm sure we all know David wrote many psalms. So 73 of them, name him as the author. There's another 50 that don't mention the author, but most scholars think that David probably wrote those too. So at least half, if not more, probably more. Solomon, David's son, he wrote Psalm 72, he wrote Psalm 127, so he wrote Psalms, both of those acknowledge God as the source of the king's justice, the source of his righteousness, his power. You have songs that are by the sons of Korah, and they're just labeled sons of Korah in the general sense. So if you've, I don't know how much you talked about Korah before in Numbers, but in Numbers there's a story about Korah. He led this uprising against Moses, And Aaron, he was jealous of Aaron. He was jealous of the priesthood. And so he and his followers were swallowed up and consumed with fire because they tried to offer worship in a way that was unacceptable. You've probably heard strange fire. That's where that comes from. We don't know if the three sons that survived, if it was just because they were too young, perhaps, or maybe because they were wise enough not to follow their father. But they did survive and they clearly took a different path. And so most of the 11 Psalms that are labeled to the sons of Korah, those would have been who wrote them. And most of them pour out warm, personal affection for God, like Psalm 84 is a wonderful example of that. Now, there are two sons of Korah that are named. So Ezra, or I'm sorry, Ethan, the Ezraite, he was a young man that in 1 Chronicles and 1 Kings, we see David put over the service of song. He was known for wisdom, so Ethan wrote Psalm 89. And that's a psalm that begins a little bit differently. So he wrote a lament psalm, one that is pleading for God to give aid, to give help. It's interesting though, he doesn't begin with lament and then move to praise. He starts with praise. before turning really to despair and pain and plea for help. So that's Psalm 89. Heman, the Ezraite, he was also another one that David assigned as a minister of music. He wrote Psalm 88, so one before. And it's one of the darkest Psalms that you find, Psalm 88. It's one that really grieves deeply. And really, there's only one small phrase that gives even the faintest light of hope that God is going to save him. Asaph. Asaph, you've probably heard that name before, he was appointed as one of David's chief musicians, and he served in the tabernacle before the Ark of the Lord. So 12 Psalms were crafted by him, where you find in most of those, even in the midst of great sorrow and distress, he again and again returns to the justice of God, is what he appeals to. And then Moses, we know Moses wrote as well. So often he prayed, so like Psalm 90, is an excellent example of this. We read that a couple of months ago. We're reading through Psalms on Sunday morning as part of our scripture reading. Psalm 90, you notice that if you look at Psalm 90, he speaks for the whole nation. So he uses pronouns like we and us. He's speaking on behalf of his people, okay? So the Psalter, we often call it the Psalter. It's a collection of 150 songs written by different authors, characterized by different literary forms, all things we'll talk about. and collect it into five books, so that's why a pentology. But I also labeled that heading a misunderstood pentology because I think one of the chief concerns I've had is that most Christians, I think, today don't have a right understanding, really, of what the Psalms are as a whole together, okay? And I think one example of that would be, you know, when we do use the Psalms, I think one of the things we're drawn to whether it's corporate worship, whether it's perhaps a funeral, personal worship, we tend to gravitate to the Psalms that we already know really well, ones maybe that describe comfort. So like Psalm 23, you could go to a funeral for someone who doesn't know the Lord and did not know the Lord, and they'll read Psalm 23 quite frequently. Psalms like Psalm 100, you know, praise and thanksgiving. If you ask the average Christian, I bet, And it's not to make anyone feel bad if this is kind of what you've thought up to this point. What's the dominant theme of this altar? Probably most people would say praise. I mean, the title itself. So the book of Psalms in Hebrew is called the Tehillim. I mean, that means praise. It's about praise, right? Well, we shouldn't be surprised to find expressions of praise, like hallelujah, we find hallelujah, we find praise the Lord, amen and amen. But if you spend really any significant time reading through the Psalms, particularly the ones that maybe we don't normally turn to, like Psalm 37, like Psalm 137, like Psalm 12, it becomes apparent that there are mentions of praise. There are certainly mentions of worship, commitments of praise. The majority of the Psalms are not devoted to praise. In fact, 40% are lament Psalms of one degree or another. It is not to bring the Psalter down. There's a reason for that, and we're gonna talk about that. I'm excited to talk about that. So why would the book, this is an important question, why would the book be called Praises if many of the psalms are not praises? Okay, well again, this is not a loosely collected collection of psalms. This isn't CCLI saying, hey, let's get the 100 best songs and make a list together. That's not what happened here. It's not a loosely connected collection. without any particular order. Someone did collect these. Someone did group them together. Someone did put them in the order that they're in. And probably that happened during the Babylonian exile, and a lot of scholars think it was Ezra that did that, or Ezra and other scribes, or some other scribes that Ezra directed. We don't know that for certain, but that's one of the common thoughts on how that happened. But these editors arranged the Psalms in a particular order for a specific purpose. In fact, and I love that the LSB maintained this, one of the things that you find in the original Hebrew is these, like Psalm 119 has 20, what is it, 24? There's 24 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, so there are sections of eight verses, 24 sections of eight verses, and each one begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. There's a reason for that. There's a clear reason for that. It's to bring order, it's to bring structure. It's not, it didn't just happen, okay? And so there's all sorts of clues, I think, that indicate that kind of thoughtful organization. And one of the reasons is that the books are arranged in five, or the book of Psalms is arranged in five books. And you can kind of see, I think I included this in your, your notes, but you can kind of see this when you look at, yeah, on the inside page, the doxologies that end each of the books. So you see the books in which Psalms belong to each. But four common elements are found in each of these doxologies at the end of the books. Blessed be, so blessed be the Lord. And then you see the name of the Lord, Yahweh. To the age, so forever and ever is the idea. And then it concludes with an amen. And even book five is really just five, the doxology is five psalms of doxology. It's not even just a few verses. And so they're like punctuation marks at the end of the books within the Psalter. And again, those final five psalms are like a prolonged doxology. So book one, which is 41 songs, 37 of those David wrote. Book two opens with a series of psalms by the sons of Korah. They often address, kind of like I said before, distress. and difficulty that's experienced by individual people, and generally, they are Psalms that eventually lead to great comfort in the Lord, in the midst of that. And then following the doxology, if you have your Bibles open, look at Psalm 72, and look at the very end. So following the doxology that you find in verses 18 and 19, you see a verse that's written at the end. that says the prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are completed. And this kind of casts a Davidic, sorry, casts like a Davidic shadow over books one and two. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't any other Psalms by David that come after, but primarily the large collection of his Psalms are in those two. So book three, written after the exile to Babylon, It seeks to comfort people during that time, horrible time. They help us understand in a general sense what appears to be the apparent triumph of evil and yet fleeting, it's actually fleeting in light of God's greater promises, God's greater purposes. Book four, there's an importance of worship. So we know Psalm 95, 96, Psalm 100. A lot of those Psalms are wonderful to use for calls to worship that we do use on Sunday morning. But they stress the divine kingship of God in contrast to human kingdoms. And then book five, that's the longest section in the Psalms. It contains Psalm 119 that we're working through on Sunday morning. But you see themes of praise. So here's where the praises really come into view. Praises to God. If you ever heard someone refer to the Psalms of Ascent, so that would be Psalms 120 to 134. These were ones that the pilgrims would sing when they're on their way approaching the temple. Songs of Ascent. But it also includes, I mentioned Psalm 137, really like an emotional low point in the Psalter, where in graphic traumatic images, the horrors of what would have been experienced during the Babylonian pillage of Jerusalem, it's captured there. in imprecatory language, so calling judgment upon the enemies of God. But then it builds back up to Psalm 138, begins another set of psalms that are written by David, and then it finishes with, again, that climax of five doxology psalms to end the book. And so again, the important thing to understand here is that the psalms teach us how to communicate with God, they teach us how to express our emotions, and I would even encourage using the term affections whether your factions are ordered properly. They teach us how to express those rightly. The Psalms teach us how to understand God's kingdom. They teach us how to worship him rightly, certainly. And it's all in a world where evil still remains and where Yahweh's universal reign is not yet fully manifested on earth. So even as you think about this, The people that would have read these when they're in captivity, they would have sung these in captivity. During David's reign, he would have written this and people would have sung them in the temple. Even though there was a representative kingdom established in the nation of Israel, still the Psalms even look beyond it. They look to the kingdom that is still yet to come. It still hadn't been visualized yet. So, next thing we'll look at is genre. Now, even though I have a list there, and you might be able to think of other things, other ways to classify genre for psalms, there can be a danger in overemphasizing how we classify them. And what I mean by that is when you isolate psalms by genre and kind of, okay, so psalm One goes over here and I'm going to put Psalm 9 with it because it also has to deal with this issue and so forth. You leave the flow of how they were written. And that's important. And we'll talk a little bit more about why that's really important. But isolating them by genre, it can lead to a loss in understanding that flow. canonical flow through the Psalms. But I do think, you know, when you think about how to use them in corporate worship, personal worship, singing, praying through them, reading through them, it can't help to classify them. So it's not a harmful thing to do, just as long as you don't lose the grasp of kind of how they all fit together. So, I mean, I gave nine in very general terms. Again, there's probably others. But like lament is one of the primary psalms that you find. So Psalm 51 is the confession of David after his sin with Bathsheba. Now lament would include psalms that are imprecatory. So I was teaching on Psalm 12 a week before last in the small group on Wednesday, and Psalm 12 is one that calls upon God to literally cut off the tongues of the wicked. You can think of that more figurative, perhaps, or literal, but it's an imprecatory psalm. It's asking for judgment upon the enemies of God. And what's important about imprecatory psalms that we talked about is that they are pronouncing judgment, asking God to mete out judgment that he has already promised that he will do. It's not vengeful. It's not a fit of rage. It's not David seeking to, you know, restore honor that he had or something. It's simply God, these are wicked people, deal with them how you must. So imprecatory psalms would be part of psalms of lament. Penitential psalms, so ones that are repenting, asking for forgiveness. Psalm 130 is an example of that. Psalms of praise, of course. Psalm 8 is a wonderful example. We sing this often on Sunday morning. We probably should, probably not often enough, but Psalm 8, You'll notice soon as my pages weren't stuck together. Psalm 8, O Yahweh our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth, who displays your splendor above the heavens. The mouths of infants, nursing babes, you have established strength. So again, I see the work of your heavens, to see your heavens, the work of your fingers, what is man that you remember him. Just this wonderful hymn of praise. And what you find in there too is like these psalms that speak of the enthronement of God. Like Psalm 99's a wonderful example of that. You see Psalms like 132, Psalms that are royal in nature. They speak of kingship, of dominion, of kingdom. You see psalms of thanksgiving, of course. Psalm 138, great example of that. I think Psalm 16 is one that I'm teaching on in a couple weeks on Wednesday night. Psalm 16 is a psalm of trust. It's simply trust in who God is, what he's done. I have confidence that you will work in the ways that you have in the past. Okay. Psalm 1, the opening psalm, and we really probably should have even started this class because Psalm 1 and 2, by reading it, because Psalm 1 and 2 really set the tone for the Psalter itself. But Psalm 1 is one of wisdom. I'm sure we know it well. Eric's preached through it. How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the seat of a way of sinners, or sit in the seat of scoffers. His delight, so the contrast, his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. And next week we'll talk a little bit about, in verse three, why it's described in these imaginative terms, like a tree that's planted by streams of water. Well, it's a song. and what's the purpose of describing things in that way. We'll talk about that next week. But Psalms of Wisdom, Psalms that are liturgical, so I want you to look at this. Look at Psalm 136. This is a wonderful psalm. I realize I'm being redundant. I keep calling each psalm. It's a wonderful psalm. Well, they're all wonderful. But look at Psalm 136. So this morning, we have a call to worship. It's not this psalm. Maybe it should have been. where the leader will read verses and then the congregation will respond by reading verses. Psalm 136 is meant to be sung in that way, okay? And so it's recounting. So on one side, whether it's the chief musician or whether it's a group of musicians, or whatever, it's someone over here that's recounting what God has done. Like verse 4, to him alone who does great wonders. Verse 5, to him who made the heavens with skill, to him who spread out the earth above the waters. And then over here the response is the exact same. It's affirming His loving kindness endures forever. His loving kindness endures forever. Sometimes you get a little taste of that when we sing, Behold Our God, and the men sing, You Will Reign Forever, and the ladies sing, Let Your, thank you. Let Your Glory Fill the Earth. Yeah, Julia, you were in choir, remember? Yeah, Let Your Glory Fill the Earth. And it's these echoing of truths about God over one another. And so sometimes we do that with men and women. But that's what Psalm 136 is. It's very liturgical in that way. Psalm 78 would be an example of a psalm that's historical, that it really details, even though it's still a song, it's very detailed in what it's describing. It's describing a historical event. And then Psalm 119 would be one that, for lack of a better term, it's a Torah psalm. It speaks of the law of the Lord. It speaks about delighting in it. It speaks about his, and it describes it as law, as statutes, as commandments. as ways, you know, let the law of the Lord, let the word be like a lamp unto my feet and a light to my path. So a Torah psalm, of course, it's the longest one in the Bible, 176 verses. Now, so what I said before, I don't want you to get me wrong, there is much profit to reading and meditating on one psalm for its own sake, of course, okay? and preaching it, certainly. Most of the Psalms were written as individual compositions. Some of them, you can see how they tie together, or they're almost identical in so many ways. But each one stands on its own, absolutely, okay? One of the things that I think is important, and I'm not gonna be dogmatic about this, but one of my favorite biblical, like textual critic scholars who examines the original manuscripts, he knows the Hebrew and all that stuff, He notes that what's authoritative as inspired scripture is the canonical text. So in other words, and I hope you get this, I truly believe that the intention of God is not just for us to have the Psalms, to have 150 Psalms, but it is for us to have them in the order that they have been passed down to us. And one, there's a professor at Southern Seminary, I like what he says, and he would argue that you could easily ascribe inspiration to those who put the Psalms together in the same way. I would agree with him, I don't want to be dogmatic about that, and if we differ on that, that's okay. But the point is that it's so important to see how the text has been handed down to us. Like if you look at your Bible, so wherever you have it open, whatever chapter of whatever book, there's a chapter number and there maybe is a chapter heading. So the chapter heading in my Bible is His loving kindness endures forever. That's the publisher. That is not what's handed down to us. The verse numbers are not what's handed down to us. The chapter numbers are not what's handed down to us. Even some of the book titles are not quite how they were called necessarily, you know. And so, like Kings, was it Kings, like just all of them together, you know. It wasn't first and second, it was Kings. What is Handed Down, and we're going to talk about this more in just a moment, what is Handed Down is the order that they're given, and even the instructions that are given, and we'll talk about that in a minute. So I think what can be helpful, so if you're a music person, maybe if you're not, you know, I think this analogy can still work, but a cantata, like a five movement cantata, I think it's a helpful analogy because a cantata is a musical composition where the composer takes songs that are already written, not necessarily by him. Like Bach did this all the time. A lot of people marvel at how Bach would seemingly write cantatas every single Sunday. Well, it wasn't all his music. He would tweak it and he'd make it work. But a composer takes, in a cantata, previously composed songs, combines them with some of his own material, and then weaves it together so there's this unified flow. And that's kind of how I think it's helpful to think about the psalms. Someone, you know, The Spirit did not inspire David to say, okay, I'm writing Psalm 1 today, or I'm writing Psalm 2 today, and I need to make sure that I, you know, it lines up with whatever Asaph's gonna write tomorrow. Like, that's not how it worked. The flow that they're put in is important, and I'll just kind of leave it at that. Now, I wanna talk about something, the superscription. Anyone know what a superscription is? What is a superscription? Yeah, yeah, the very tiny words. So the overwhelming majority, so 116 of the 150 Psalms have a superscription, okay? And so those include, and you'll recognize it as soon as you see it, those include things like instructions, so you might see with stringed instruments, or something that says like on the Gideth, what does that mean? It's probably a stringed instrument from Gath, but an instruction, how we're supposed to play it. A genre or type, sometimes it simply just says a psalm, a song. It might say something like, well, when we went through Psalm 12 a week and a half ago, a shemineth, which the thought there is that it's a lower musical register, and so it's probably meant for men to sing. You know, just interesting things like that. The author is often mentioned, so you'd see David, this is Psalm of David, or the Sons of Korah. Some other genre information like Psalm 38, you see it says for causing remembrance, okay? Or like Psalm 3, there's something that's historical about this Psalm that describes what happens in the Psalm or when it was written. So Psalm 3, when he fled. So David's writing it, it's written when he fled from before Absalom his son. So an important note there, there's, There's historically been, I think, debate on whether those are authentic, whether those are authoritative, which I think turns on the question of the canon. And so I'd hold that the canonical form of the biblical text is inspired, it's inerrant, it's authoritative. And I think there's a compelling case, again, I'm not gonna be dogmatic about it, but I think there's a compelling case that those superscriptions, they're not later additions. Crossway didn't put them in, that's for sure. They're not later additions. They're integral to the composition of the individual Psalms. And an example of this would be, look at Psalm 18, look at Psalm 18. So what you find at the beginning of Psalm 18, so ignore the part that says Psalm 18. Ignore the part that says something about the Lord is my rock and my fortress. That's the editors of your physical Bible. It says, for the choir director, and yours might say Lord, but of the servant of Yahweh of David who spoke to Yahweh the words of this song in the day that Yahweh delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. Now look at 2 Samuel chapter 22 verse one. 2 Samuel chapter two verse one says, and David, so this isn't a superscription to 2 Samuel 22, this is verse one. And David spoke to Yahweh the words of this song in the day that Yahweh delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. He said, Yahweh's my rock and my fortress and my deliverer. It's exactly what you find in verse two of Psalm 18. So the only reason I give that is it's an example of how what is a superscription is in 2 Samuel, no one would deny that as being authoritative. No one would deny that that is actually what Ezra would have written, okay? And so, in the same way, I think, you know, and that's one of the arguments for Ezra being the one that compiled the Psalms, is that he would have added some of these, so we know who wrote them, we know why they were written, and so forth. Again, there's the New Testament, in a number of places, treats some of them, not all of them, because the New Testament doesn't quote all the Psalms. But the New Testament treats some of them as scripture. So Mark, in Mark, I have a typo, so I think that's Mark 12, but Acts chapter two, Acts chapter 13, there's a number of places where they are treated as scripture. And then we also find a superscription, which is really a subscription, because it's after. So one more place I want you to look, look at Habakkuk three. Habakkuk chapter 3. This would be a fun like who can get there first. Who knows where it is. Have you guys covered Habakkuk yet. Yeah. Oh Jake saying no. I can see. Habakkuk 3. Ends, so Habakkuk is written in a very poetic form, and it is the oracles of God through the prophet Habakkuk. It's three short chapters, you come to the end of chapter three, and it says, for the choir director, on my stringed instruments. No one, no one would say Habakkuk 319 is not inspired scripture. So again, I don't want to be dogmatic about that, but I think there's examples where we shouldn't treat the superscriptions in the Psalms as lesser than, or at the very least, don't treat them as unimportant. They're very important. So again, I mentioned Dr. Hamilton. He's a professor at Southern. He promised it for years and he finally got it published, but he has a two-volume commentary on Psalms. I have it. If you ever want to borrow it and kind of read more on that, welcome to borrow that from me if you're curious. But I think the pervading thought, the important thing I want to leave with you as far as that goes is that each Psalm was composed by an individual author in a particular setting for a specific reason. And I believe the editors, as moved by the Holy Spirit, arranged the order, and in some cases, even some of the texts themselves, into the five books, into the movements that we see today, with deliberate thematic progression as their intent. Now, we're really gonna probably talk about it more next week, but if you look at the very back of your notes, we kind of mentioned how Psalms are largely lament, Lament is the largest genre of all of them. But you see this kind of graphic back here? So the ones on the top are Psalms of Praise, the ones at the bottom are Psalms of Lament. You see the progression? So there's far more Psalms of Lament to begin the book. And again, gradually moving towards the end where praise is the dominant theme. That's what you find in the Psalms, and there is a reason for that. And without giving too much away, that's a lot of what we're going to talk about next week. But anyway, so those superscriptions, last thing, they contain historical setting for individual Psalms. They do accurately identify the author, the situation. But the Psalms, just like the rest of the Old Testament, they're not chronological. They're not ordered chronological. In fact, there's as much as a thousand-year gap from the earliest psalm to the oldest psalm. which is, it's like a microcosm of scripture itself, which is thousands of years gap between when Moses wrote the Pentateuch and John penned Revelation. And probably other New Testament writers that may have even been after Revelation. But, so it's kind of a microcosm of that. You have a thousand years of Psalms contained there. So, just an important takeaway would be the Psalms are arranged thematically toward a specific end. Okay. So I'm going to I'm going to save the other two points for next week. That's that's kind of where I hoped we would get today. So anybody have any thoughts or comments or questions or I like how Stephen's like deletions subtractions. Whenever Stephen teaches he asks for that. Anybody have any thoughts. Questions. No, no, there may be a few examples that are debated. Maybe he did put that in, but no, they would have been scribes after. Yes, yes. Yes. Things, but again, like things like Psalm, I just opened up Psalm 52. I think David would have put that in. For the choir director, a mascal of David, when Doeg the Edomite came and told Saul, so he wrote this then. And so, or he wrote it soon after, and so when they would have commissioned, he may have wrote part of the superscription, but it would have been shortly after, because when they're worshiping in the temple, here's the psalm, here's how you're supposed to use it, it's a mascal, it's for the choir director, a choir's supposed to sing it. Yeah, I mean, there may be a mixture of both, but I would say the editor primarily, not your publisher, the editors. Anybody else? So if you look at one of your Psalms and there's kind of like a little note, an instructory note, Ms. Jessica can show you. She'll show you an example. Anybody else? Yes, ma'am. Yeah, and the earliest, you know, you go back to, I don't know if you've mentioned it in this class or not. I mean, so there are no originals. There are no originals, but we have the manuscript record that is, It's unlike any other literature. We have absolute confidence in what we've received. The Psalms, some of the earliest manuscripts, especially ones that have large portions intact, they're ordered this way. Again, it's not a new novel invention to order the Psalms this way. I'm going to lump all the comfort ones over here and put a little note here. Here's where everyone can turn to the comfort ones. It doesn't work like that. Yes, sir. I guess I'll defend it from their standpoint. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it is. Like, I mean, not only are the Psalms the most commonly referred to scriptures, you know, I mean, among unbelievers in this world too, but the Psalms are what the people of God say. and prayed and read and meditated on, but this was the hymnal. Calvin held to, we should only sing the psalms. I mean, so there's a stream of history where only psalm singings was permitted in the church. These, I mean, I'm kind of, I guess I'm kind of Spoiler, you know, spoiler a little bit for next week. There is something about singing that is unique, that forms something within us. And the psalms are written for that purpose. Not just the order, certainly. We've talked about the order enough today. But the psalms themselves, there's something about them that is particularly formative. And one of the reasons, and again, I'm spoiling it. I want to save it for next week. 65 books of the Bible are God revealing himself to his people in instruction and different ways. The Psalms are uniquely God giving us words to speak back to him. There is something that is profoundly unique about that. I mean, like when, I don't remember the publisher of this, 316 or whatever, when they first published, you know, and they were still working on the LSB, it was New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs. I think some of it had to do with some editing decisions with, you know, with the Tetragrammaton and Yahweh and all that stuff. But yeah, I think that's one of the reasons I would say, I mean, what do you think? And they foreshadow that, I mean, we'll talk about it next week, but I mean, there's Psalms that clearly, they're hard to miss, that clearly describe in a future looking towards the Messiah, and then Psalms that you can't help but even hear the Messiah singing them, you know, like Psalm 22. So, and we'll talk about that more next week. That adds to, I think, what you're saying. Yes, ma'am. Legacy Standard Bible. With the Psalms, one of the primary things you just see is the tetragrammaton, so the covenantal name of God is, in English, is Yahweh. So most of probably everyone's Bibles here say Lord, the Lord, same thing. Yeah. Yes, ma'am. If you think of it like, well, I guess maybe, and we're out of time, but if you think of it like, there is so much yet to be revealed, The further back, the further left you go in your Bible, there's so much further to be revealed that is unfolding as you turn to the right. I think, yeah, I mean, it's not necessarily that the authors of the Psalms and the early Psalms were stunted in their understanding. We'll speak a little bit to that, sorry. We'll speak a little bit to that next week. We don't have time for it today. Or you have to cut it short, because it's 945. There we go. Let me pray for us, and we'll dismiss to the service. Lord, thank you so much for this morning. Thank you for the time we've had. I just pray, Lord, that, especially in my inadequacies, Lord, that you Help us all to just see with refreshed eyes. It's not new, but refreshed eyes, Lord, at the wonder of how you have crafted your word to be, in this case, sung and to be prayed and to be devotionally read and understood. And it's just so very personal in the Psalms. Help us, Lord, to just see where we might even approach the Psalms a little bit differently with perhaps fresh eyes and just depending on your spirit to speak to us through them. And as we said, knowing you as God is not an end to something else. It is to know you. it is to glory in you it is to delight in you and and that's that's our desire today so I just pray that Lord you'll bless our time as we gather to worship just a minute amen all right thank you everybody so next week part two part two next week