In some ways, most of everything that you need to know about the Psalms is found in Psalm 1. You find out what the Psalms particularly focus is. You find out about the Psalms purpose. And so as far as focus and purpose of the Psalms, we see this in Psalm 1. So I'm going to read this and then we'll pray and then we'll begin looking at the writings. Blessed is the man which is used to speak of a godly person. Blessed is the godly person who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his or her delight is in the law of the Lord. And on his law, he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish." Thus ends the reading of God's Word. Note a few things how there can be a progression of sinful wickedness that we want to be aware of. Notice in verse 1 that you have someone who first is walking with the wicked, then someone who's standing, being identified with the wicked, and then someone who is sitting with the wicked as part of the wicked off the path, the narrow path that leads to life. Verse two, the delight, the blessed man or person has a delight in the law of the Lord. And that's where law here, surely means at least the law of God concerning the Ten Commandments, but it's more broadly the Torah. And when we think of Torah, you think of not only commandments, but you just think of the teaching of Scripture. So Torah is the word used here, and it means, of course, nothing less than the Ten Commandments, but it means so much more. Essentially, it's saying one is delighting in the teaching. the commandments, the teaching of all the old covenant. And then you notice the fruitfulness, the fruitfulness that all that no matter what season one goes through, you'll bear fruit that will last. And then the Lord, Yahweh, the covenant Lord, knows the way of the righteous. That is, He intimately knows us and Because of his knowledge and love for us, we then seek to avoid walking and standing and sitting in the way of sinners, but we want to delight in the teaching. And in that teaching, we give ourselves to saturate ourselves, to fully embrace, to ask the Holy Spirit to help us so that we can meditate and think about it day and night all the time. so that it will grip us and help transform our hearts so we're fruitful people. So let's pray and ask the Lord to help us as we look at the writings in general and particularly the Psalms today. Our Father and our God, we thank you that you're the great and holy King. We thank you for your majesty. We thank you for your covenant of grace. We thank you for that eternal covenant that you made with your Son and the Holy Spirit to redeem a fallen people. We thank you that before the foundation of the world, you chose us in Christ to be holy and blameless in your sight because of your love for us. You set your affection on us long before we were born or had done anything good or bad. We thank you, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, that you took upon our nature in permanent hypostatic union with deity in order to come and to accomplish our redemption through your precious blood. and to be raised for our justification, our vindication, our being made righteous in God's sight, though we're sinners. We thank you for the imputation of your perfect righteousness, and we thank you that you have taken our sins and imputed them to yourself on the cross and died in our place so that we could be forgiven, so that God's just wrath might be removed from us. Thank you. for undergoing that great work on our behalf, both in your life, your death, your resurrection, and your enthronement ascension. We thank you, Holy Spirit, that you would come now and help us. Help your teacher as he ministers the word, as he serves, that he would decrease so that Christ would increase. Let us hear your word. We don't, by nature, have ears to hear your word. We don't, by nature, understand your word. We need spiritual hearing. We need spiritual insights, illumination. You are our inner teacher. And so we pray that you'd teach us now. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so today, We're going to begin the writings more in general and the Psalms particularly. And I just want to remind you of the three parts of the Old Covenant writings that we've already looked at called in Hebrew the Tanakh. The Tanakh is Torah for Moses, particularly Torah for Moses. The Nevi'im for the prophets, and the Ketuvim are the writings. And when Jesus is referring to the Old Covenant, he refers to Moses, the prophets, and the writings as the three parts of the Old Covenant. And within that three-part division, we want to remember that the Torah is particularly covenant law. covenant law that we've looked at. It is the the covenant biblical sun around which the prophets will orbit. They'll be looking back to that covenant law that God revealed, particularly through Moses. And also in the Lord Jesus, you'll find Jesus often pointing them to Moses. The majority of the time, he says, for instance, in John 5, I do not condemn you. There is one who will condemn you, Moses. upon whom you have set your hopes. And that's in John 5, right in the context of verses 39 to 45. When Jesus is asked about marriage, he refers to Moses in Genesis 1. When Jesus is asked about the resurrection, he refers to Moses, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He's the God of the living, not the dead. So, in every account, most every time, in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, how does he come out talking? But he says, I have not come to fulfill the law, or I have not come to abolish the law and the prophets, I have come to fulfill them. Alright, so covenant law. Prophets, if you remember as we just went through that section, was about covenant history. It was both two types of history. It was narrative history and poetic history. We make a distinction between the narrative history and the poetic history. The narrative history are what we call the former prophets, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings. That's the narrative history. It's primarily narrative, though it contains some poetic sections. And then the latter prophets, who are what we call the major and minor prophets, that are mostly revealed through poetry, though they also have narrative within as a genre. So covenant history is are the former and latter prophets. And then today we come to the writings, and that gets us to the covenant life. It reminds us that there is this scriptural drama from which we take doctrine or teaching in order to lead to discipleship. And so the covenant life is so that within the community of God's people, we might live according to His Word and grow as transformed people in reliance upon His grace. So what we're going to do for the next five or six weeks is we'll look at the Psalms today, And these make up all the writings, by the way, if you want to review or write this down, perhaps you remember it. But the Psalms will start with, then wisdom literature, including Proverbs and Job particularly, and then number three, the Megilloth. The Megilloth are five books, and Megilloth just means scrolls. And during the time of the intertestamental period in the synagogues, the Megilloth were used as kind of the readings throughout the church calendar of that time. For different seasons in the church, the Megilloth were read. They would read from Ruth, and then the Song of Songs, then Ecclesiastes, and Lamentations, and Esther. And so you would know where you are on the church calendar in the intertestamental time if you went into a synagogue just based on the readings of these five books. These were five scrolls. And if you notice, what they have in common is living the covenantal life in a fallen world, being reminded of God's mercy in the book of Ruth and how he brought about David so wonderfully. The king was brought about so wonderfully so that their minds would ponder that God can do that again, even more so bring about the king so wonderfully. Little did folks think about it would be an incarnation. They didn't see that as well or as clearly as we do. Song of Songs is about that great love story between one man and one woman and particularly between a king and his bride. and you can keep going, that between God the covenantal king and his glorious bride, his people. Ecclesiastes was just trying to make sense of what seemed to be meaninglessness in this fallen world, looking at things with a finite perspective, and knowing that God came down, or will come down, would come down, under the sun to make sense of it all, and that we were to rely on his word. Lamentations, just because a lot of the life, though they were returned from exile during these writings in this time of synagogue, they still suffered a great deal and they were still under oppressive governments. The Persians and the Greeks and then the Romans, as they were waiting God's promises to be fulfilled. And then Esther, just remembering that God, though He's not mentioned in the book at all, He's a God who's with us completely, and He will preserve and protect His people to bring about His promises. So all of those we'll be looking at soon, number three. Number four, the fourth week from here, by God's grace, we'll be looking at Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles. And then we'll complete the writings by looking at Daniel, all right? And then we'll be to be continued. We'll leave it hanging, continued, waiting on the Messiah and continue in New Testament biblical theology in fall 2019, okay? So that's the schedule, Lord willing. at this point. So let's talk about the Psalms for a moment and look at a few things that are important about the Psalms. I think the first thing we want to understand about the Psalms are that they are an inspired, inspired heavenly sanctuary. They're an inspired heavenly sanctuary where the people of God can come in and experience the dwelling of God with men. In Psalm 63, we hear this language. Oh God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you, my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you." And he could go on, but that's an example of the Psalms being an inspired heavenly sanctuary, a place in which the people of God can go to encounter three particular things. Number one, the king. we can go in and see the glory and beauty of the king, and we can behold his glory, particularly through promise. A lot of what we call the messianic psalms are revealing this king, but I will argue in a moment that all of the psalms are about the king, all right? And I'll tell you why in a moment, but it's not just the messianic psalms. Those are very specific The second thing, when we go into this heavenly sanctuary, we see is a covenant. We see that the reason why we have this psalm book, this hymn book, this inspired book, is because God has been faithful through covenant to reveal himself and to give us something where we can enter into with our whole selves and find comfort, find hope. find transformation, and that God has given us this hymn book that's a revelation of himself and his promises. And then, of course, dwelling. The psalm book is itself a verbal dwelling. It is the sanctuary. Remember, the physical temple and sanctuary at its most glorious was pointing to a heavenly one. And so the Psalms is just a heavenly sanctuary through words. It's the same place. It's just in words and pictures. It's so beautiful when you see that, because then you run into the Psalms. David's not saying, oh, I wish I had something to run into. I wish I had a temple. give me a sanctuary to run into. No, he's saying that through the Psalms, through the Word, there is sanctuary. It's a place where you can behold the King, you can know His covenant promises, and where you can know that He is with you no matter what you're going through. It's a sanctuary. It's a place where you can be alone but never lonely. And we're going to put that in practice at the end today. I'm going to teach you, by God's grace, Communion 101 with God, using the Psalms. That's how we're going to end today, by God's grace. It's just a Communion 101 with God, or Meditation 101, what it looks like to meditate on the Psalms in three easy steps. All right, so King, what do we behold? The Psalms in this inspired sanctuary, well, it leads our heart to what? To worship Him. Our hearts are lifted up. All the cares and the burdens and the weight of this world can be lifted off as we go up, as our hearts are lifted up by His Spirit through the Word. Adoration. We can tell God how much we love Him. And we can behold His beauty and glory. And we're told in 2 Corinthians 3, verses, verse 18 particularly, as we behold Him through His Word like that, whether it's preaching or whether it's reading or meditation, whether it's just hearing the Word of God read, we are being transformed by His Spirit. So it's a heavenly sanctuary where God's power is at work through the Word. And then we can have communion with the king now Don't forget there were only a few folks in the Old Testament had this special privilege of being called a friend of Yahweh There were only a few who were called Yahweh's friend who could speak to him lip-to-lip literally in Hebrew or mouth-to-mouth Abraham and Moses and so what's so profound about the Psalms is that we have a foretaste of what we'll have in Christ When Christ says I no longer call you servants, but you're my friends. So you're all my friends And though that doesn't fully reveal it, the Psalms help us to know God is our friend. He loves us. He's with us. He's our friend. We commune with our friend. We get to know him better. reminds us the covenant part of this inspired sanctuary reminds us that there are promises for life, promises for life. And this is why it's covenant life is because though the covenant history calls us back to God's word, particularly covenant life teaches us how to live out God's word. So this is calling us, if you will, to repentance and faith. This covenant life is calling us to an ongoing sanctification and a daily faith. and how we live. And blessed is the man who delights in the teaching, who meditates on it day and night, right? That's what we read in the beginning, Psalm 1. So the dwelling is just remembering that God dwells with us, all right? And so this points forward to a greater reality that came to its consummation or fulfillment on the day of Pentecost in the New Testament. where God would bring the inspired heavenly sanctuary that we see, that we enter in through the Psalms and bring that inspired sanctuary and make us that inspired sanctuary, you know, make us the very temple of the Holy Ghost. So, the temple was a picture of the temple of the Holy Ghost in all its beauty and glory. It was a picture of a heavenly reality where God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit lives. forever and ever, amen. The temple was that picture of that beauty and glory, and you could enter into a physical place. The Psalms are a verbal sanctuary where you could enter in and experience in the Old Testament what would be fulfilled in the new when you, all God's people, would be made his spiritual temple, founded on the apostles and the prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone, and you being living stones, being built up to be the spiritual temple unto the Lord. So the Psalms are profound in that way. So let's talk a few things. So when you're going into the Psalms, let me try to apply this. When you're going into the Psalms, listen to the language that is used. As I was reading Psalm 63, turn there for a moment and listen to the language that's used with regard to this heavenly sanctuary. David is longing to be in the presence of God. And so what he does here with his imagination through the Word in Psalm 63, verse 2, is he says, I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory, because your steadfast love, that is, your covenantal love, is better than life. My lips will praise you. So he's looking at the king. in his situation, in his circumstances. And so he says, this is the worship, the adoration, the communion. He says, I will bless you as long as I live. In your name, I will lift up my hands. He's encouraging himself. Verse five, my soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, kingly food. My mouth will praise you with joyful lips when I remember you upon my bed and meditate on you in the watches of the night for you have been my help. And in the shadow of your wings, I will sing for joy. My soul clings to you. My right hand upholds you." It's wonderful, isn't it? This verbal sanctuary that David himself was shaped and formed by God's Holy Spirit to become not just a shepherd king of Israel, but an anointed, spirit-filled, psalm-singing shepherd king of Israel. David already possessed musical gifts and the Lord raised him up, the Lord gave him those musical gifts, then he helped him to perfect those musical gifts. We see that through David's humiliation, a lot of the Psalms were written. Through his humiliation, he was... dwelling with God. He was communing with God. And God used him as an instrument of his Holy Spirit to give us an inspired hymn book, an inspired verbal heavenly sanctuary that we can enter in. And so we want to understand that up front. There's another Psalm I would have you look at that's, it's just beautiful. Psalm 42 verses one and two. This is where you're cast down. This is where you're struggling at this part in your life. And you need to know that God is there. And the three things that you're reminded, and that I encourage you when you go into the Psalms is to remember a king, the covenant, and the dwelling, that this is where you'll find God, through His Word, by His Spirit. Listen to Psalm 42, for instance, verse 1. As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. It's like, instead of instinct that a deer would have, it's sanctified longing. It's not a mere instinct, but as a picture of that, it's sanctified longing. It's, I gotta have you, Lord. I gotta have you, God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? He's saying, go into that heavenly sanctuary, appear before the king, adore him, have communion with him. And verse four, or verse three, my tears have been my food, day and night. And even scoffers are around him saying, where's your God? Well, he knows where to find his God through the Psalms. He knows where to find his God through prayer. He knows where to find his God in God's promises to him. Verse four, these things I remember as I pour out my soul, how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with loud, with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you cast down on my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him. my salvation, and my God. Amen. There's another one that I try to memorize and meditate on regularly. It's Psalm 34. I'm sure it's everyone's favorite. As you've gone through hard times, Psalm 34. And it's a wonderful psalm to get in your mind, especially as the first thing that you might think of when you wake up each morning. You know, not every morning you get up feeling physically well or emotionally well. You know, as long as we're in this fallen world, we're going to have our good days and our bad days. That's normal for the Christian life. The Psalms teach us it's normal. There's going to be the glad days. There's going to be the sad days. There's going to be the physically painful days. There's going to be the persecuted days. There's going to be the confident days. There's going to be the downcast days. The Psalms tell us that God has incarnated Himself in the Psalms to show us, that is, He's revealing Himself to show us that He knows us and that He sympathizes with our weaknesses. Think of it like that. When He addresses pain, it's because He knows that we are in pain here in this world. And He's done something about it in Christ that we'll get to in a moment. But we can't always have enough Christ in our teaching and our preaching, all right, in our lives. He is always knowing when we're glad and when we're sad, and He gives us a word for it. He helps us to actually, when we don't even have the words to speak, He gives us the words to speak to Him. And that's Psalm 34, for instance. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord. Let the humble hear and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me. Let us exalt His name together. There's no better way to wake up in the morning. Right? Now, you may not feel it. You know, I always remind you of something, you know, though you don't feel it, don't let your feelings lead. All right? So you don't feel it, but let your faith lead. General faith. Get behind me, feelings. fall in line. Feelings. Faith will lead. Faith. I will bless the Lord at all times. And I'm telling you, there's something about that spiritually that then helps us, it seizes us, that grips us, that embraces us, that then helps us to say, you know what, I don't feel like this praising, but it sure is helpful, you know. And it's true. It's true. It begins an ascension of sorts. Magnified the Lord you can't be sad there. I saw the Lord. He answered me delivered from all of our fears. You will suffer sadness Don't get me wrong. Don't hear me wrong. You might even have to work really hard to get there, but it's true It is true that you let the faith in the word that God has given you to lead you and if you have to first thing in the morning just say I'll bless the Lord at all times his praise shall be in my mouth Say it over and over if you have to do it. I have to do it a lot. All right, I So, covenant life is, let's say a few things now to unpack some of this inspired heavenly sanctuary. Covenant life is, because that's what the writings are about and that's what the Psalms are particularly about, covenant life that we see in the Psalms are God-centered. It's the life that's centered on God. It's the life that's centered on God and particularly His promises to us. And again, as God gives you a word for your sadness, for instance, or He gives you a word in the Psalms for your joy, all right, or God gives you a word for your longing, He will give those things to you. It's very centered on a God who has promised Himself in covenant to you to give you promises for life. So anything you see in the Psalms, you can not only see that God sympathizes with you in your weakness, but you can see a God who is with you and can help heal you, all right, from the inside out. It's beautiful. Number two, covenant life is about knowledge and doctrine. It's about knowledge and doctrine. It's about the head, but it's about the head that leads to knowledge that will bring the transformed life by the Spirit, the transformed life, transformed life. It's because the primary means that the Holy Spirit is pleased to make righteous and to bless His people is through His Word, okay? You remember the old saying that we said that is quite humorous, I think, but it's helpful to get at. When you talk about the Spirit and the Word, if you have the Word without the Spirit, what do you have? You tend to dry up. If you have the Spirit without the Word, you tend to blow up. If you have the Spirit and the Word, as it's rightly given, you grow up. It's very true. It's silly, but it's true. You know, if you put too much focus on the Word, you're blowing up. You know, as Martin Luther said about the enthusiasts, as they called them in the day of the Reformation, you know, that they were all emphasizing how the Spirit was leading them apart from the Word. And he says, ah, they have swallowed the Holy Spirit, feathers and all. I thought it was funny. It's a really good, really good story. It's a typical Martin Luther phrase, right? So they have swallowed it all. The spirit is pleased to use the knowledge and doctrine for the transformed life. So what you're reading, you're guiding your thoughts into the sanctuary to become like him and then worship. It's the worshiping life. The knowledge and doctrine leads to a worshiping life. And so you realize that what were we created for? I was having this conversation with somebody yesterday that it's a big difference to talk about man after the fall and how we're born. And somebody said, well, I'm born that way. I'm just born angry. I'm born with this disposition of sin, et cetera. And the answer to that is, well, of course you are. Well, we all are. It says that in Psalm 51, that in my mother's womb I'm conceived in sin. We're all born with a propensity to hate God and to sin. So what's your point? The question's not how you're born. The question is, what were you created for before the fall? And the Psalms get us back to that. What were you created for? You were created to worship and serve God, to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. That's what you're created for. So yes, we're all born with a propensity to do wicked things. What's the point? I do wicked things. You do wicked things. I think wicked things. You think wicked things. People do wicked things publicly. You get to the point where you do it publicly. with no shame. People do wicked things. That's what we're being saved from. But what is it you're created for? The Psalms teaches what you're created for. Worshiping, transforming life, serving. OK. All right. Now, the third, and this, I think, is most important. If I'm going to do knowledge and doctrine, then we also need to emphasize this. Emotions. Covenant life is emotional. You know, God has not made us as stoics, who couldn't really get a hold of life. Stoics and legalists are in a very similar category, in that they're very unhappy people who have these high demands they put on others that they know because he cried a lot before he went to bed. He knows he's, he can't just say, Case of Russell Riott, whatever it will be. Keep a stiff upper lip. Nobody can live like that. We're emotional creatures. The Lord Jesus is emotional. He's oftentimes righteously angry. He's zealous. He praises God. He has all the emotions of humanity without sin. We have emotions. Now, emotions have been tainted by sin, but the psalm book helps us to have the sanctification of our emotions. We are emotional creatures. So the psalm book, Covenant Life, is about having your emotions sanctified, which is another way of saying you let faith lead your feelings at all times. So I fear faith. Take charge. I need you, Lord. I'm scared. I'm humbled now because I'm reminded of my dependence upon you. You've given me this so that I'll look to you. Thank you, Lord. If I was overly confident. I might not look to you. If I didn't have this sinful taint of my emotion, I might not know my need of you. If you've been kind, you've made me scared. If you've been kind, you've caused me to mourn. All of these things help me to realize that my emotions, they need sanctifying. We're not just thinking creatures, we're feeling creatures. And if you're a thinker, if you're more in that area, then concentrate more on maybe Jesus's, the experiential aspects of the Christian life and how Jesus was a very emotional man. And then on the other hand, if you're more of the emotional sort, then tend to think sometimes more precisely biblically and doctrinally, fill your mind more with the truth. I'll give you an example of how Jesus addresses emotion and how God knows us so perfectly. It's with Martha and Mary. So Lazarus has died. And both of them say the same thing to the Lord Jesus. If you had been here, Lord, my brother would not have died. To one, he knows Martha is a thinker. Martha's a doer. Martha just needs the truth. So he says to her, didn't I say you'd see the glory of God if you just believed? That's Jesus. And she says, that's right, Lord. Thank you. Mary, she's more emotional. She's been sitting there mourning with the whole town in her house. She hears the Lord's coming. She's so excited. I've got it. Lord Jesus, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died. Jesus wept. That's what the Psalms will do to teach you to know when to speak truth to yourself and to other and when to weep with the other. Jesus wept. Don't ever forget that. He knew that those women were different and he knew how to administer to each one of them. And sometimes it's truth, sometimes it's just standing there emotionally weeping and sharing the moment and just not saying anything. And that's what we're gonna learn in Job, right? We learn about that. Lots of truth we can tell, but just misappropriated, misimplied, all kinds of this, that, and the other that offends God. God gets really upset about it. So Jesus is one of the great, if I had time to do this, we'll do this in the New Testament class, you wanna get a foretaste of it. The Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield, the great B.B. Warfield, the Lion of Princeton at its height of orthodoxy, 19th century. Warfield, you can Google this, you can Bing it, whatever you do, you could get this online. The Emotional Life of Our Lord, one of the best essays ever written about the humanity of Jesus and his emotional life. I'm going to go over it. It's a signed reading in the fall when we get to the New Testament class because it's so rich and very important to know about, but he talks about each of Jesus's emotions. So when the covenant life is God-centered, Covenant life is about knowledge and doctrine that leads to transformed worshiping life. And so it's experiential. That's another way of saying experiential, by the way. And then covenant life is emotional. Covenant life is emotional. It has its ups and downs. Okay? Any questions or thoughts so far on that? You have a God who cares and who knows how you feel. He knows how you think and he knows how you feel. And that's a wonderful thing. He made you like that. He made us to think and feel. You know, one of the moments of feeling that we have in Genesis that we know everything's gone wrong is when God calls Adam and Adam was made, we were made to hear the voice of God and say, here am I. We're covenant creatures. That's what we're able to do that's distinct from all other creatures. Here am I. I hear the voice of God. Here am I. I'm here to serve. When he hears the voice of God, he hides when he's asked. Counseled by God, why are you hiding? Because God knows he's just getting at him to understand this. I was scared. I was scared. And so, again, another example of what the Psalms are to do is to help us in our fright that we hear the voice of God speaking to our fears and not causing us to fear. All right. So, again, it's sanctification of emotion. All right. So, there's five books of the Psalms. Everyone pretty much know that? All right. Everybody's heard that before, right? You know that? Let's go over the five books and maybe look at, I think what would be helpful is look at each of the headings of the books, okay? What I want to show you, that's the main point here, is that it's the song of David's greater son. The songs, I should put for Psalms, songs of David's greater son. Kind of say, think of the five books of the Psalms as the songs of David's greater son. You see, what will happen here then is the covenant will bind you. It'll unite you, right? Because you'll think back to Moses and you'll think, okay, the covenant of grace revealed to Adam, the seed of the woman, right? You'll think of then the Abrahamic covenant, right? That kings will come from you. all right, that your seed, okay, that I'll give you a seed. And then, of course, the covenant with David that your son shall rule upon the throne forever and ever. And so then you think the songs of David's greater son, that's what the psalm book is about. It's about the songs of David's son. In other words, the fourth part of this is this, that the fourth part of covenant life is that it's Christ-centered. The fourth part of covenant life is it's Christ-centered, right? You knew that was coming, I'm quite sure, but that's just to say it's about David. The songs are all of David's greater son. Now, I want you to note this of here, this genitive, and you know there's two kinds of genitive at least, right? You guys who are in language, you know this, right? What two kinds of genitive are there? There's genitive of Okay, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of them, yeah, okay, I better tell you. Yes, there is genitive opposition, absolutely. That's a primary use. But in that, we'll do the genitive of an objective genitive or a subjective genitive, all right? Thank you. We'll do the songs of David's greater son. Now, how would it be an objective genitive when we say songs of David's greater son? it would be objective, it would be the songs about him, right? I'll put objection. Objection, your honor. Objective. All right, so they're about David's greater son. So the songs of David's greater son, the songs about David's greater son, okay? So they're about David's greater son. They're about the Messiah. But the subjective genitive, teach us that they're the songs of David's greater son, the subjective or possessive. They belong to David's greater son. In other words, to put it in another way, they are the Psalms where David himself or David's greater son is actually speaking or singing. And you know why I say that ultimately? I'll give you a couple of scriptures. In Hebrews 2, right? There's this, in all of Hebrews, particularly chapters 1 and 2, but in Hebrews 2, there's the quotation of Messiah in his enthronement and his ascension and his exaltation. And what is he saying, but what's put in his mouth is, here am I and the children that you've given to me. They're Psalms, right? And so if you would, Hebrews 1 talks about the Psalms being about Jesus Christ, but Hebrews 2, and these are just two places I'm showing you, Hebrews 2 is about the Psalms being of Jesus Christ, being the songs of Jesus Christ, the songs that belong to Jesus Christ, the songs that are sung by Jesus Christ. Have you ever thought about this? This is, I think, a wonderful illustration of this. Whenever you're singing, in a congregation. You know how you love to sing near someone who has a really good voice and who can keep you on pitch? And so, you know, you just love it. And even if they're singing really bold and loud behind you, it sounds like you're singing better. You know, it's really a community thing, right, to worship and praise God. Well, what you want to do is not only hear the others around you, but try to hear the voice of Jesus. because he's singing with you as the worship leader in heaven. You see, especially if you're singing for the congregation or as a part of leading the congregation, remember that Jesus is the praise leader in heaven. In Hebrews 8 through 10, it tells us about Jesus singing. We're given, or Jesus being the leader in heaven, the praise singer. In Hebrews 12, 25, we're told that Jesus comes to meet us on Mount Zion and worship. So picture or try to think of, imagine Jesus' voice and your voice being united with his voice. I would apply the same thing to prayer. When you're praying, you're uniting your prayers with Jesus who's already interceding for you. So you're entering into his prayer time when you pray. So when you're entering into praying or singing the Psalms, I should say, or singing hymns about him, you are then singing with Jesus Christ, the hymn leader of Israel. All right, that's wonderful, isn't it? He fulfills the purpose of the old covenant priest who would lead the people in song. He does that from a heavenly place as the great high priest, right? So David's greater son, David's greater son. Let me write a few things down here. All right. So let's do books one and two of songs of David's greater son. First, this is just a general summary of how to think of these, but these two would be the life of David. These would be the life of David and of course, David's greater son. And they would be chapters one, through 41, and chapters 42 through, what is it, 73? 72? I think it's 72. Yep. All right, so those are the two books. So the first two books are the life of David or David's greater son, the life of David's greater son. And you can see this in that, for instance, with Psalm 2, you're brought into the anointed one, the king, who sits on God's throne. So after the opening of the Psalm, in Psalm 1, you have the entryway into the sanctuary that promises the blessed man who meditates on the law day and night. And then in chapter 2, you have the anointed king. You have the one who is the enthroned messiah or king. And so this life of David can be summarized in songs about the life of David, or David's greater son, in book 1, which is chapters 1 through 41, and then book 2, chapters 42 to 72. Then in book 3, we have chapters 73 to 1, I think it, no, no, no. And this is David or David's greater son in exile, David in exile. Now, these are general ways of looking at it. There's variety within this, but this as an overview, I think is helpful. So book three, we'll sing about David in exile, all right? It starts in Psalm 73 about exile. It ends in Psalm 89 about the promises that were made to David in covenant. that there will be hope from exile. In book four, Psalms 90 through 106, this would be songs of repentance. Songs of repentance and faith that return to the Lord. All right. you have Psalm 90 starting out as a psalm of Moses, a wisdom psalm. So think about it for a second. What the prophets did in pointing back to Moses, Psalm 90 starts out as an inspired song of Moses that tells the people, Lord, help us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. All right. So this part of the psalms are their songs of repentance and faith, the songs of returning to the Lord. And then finally, There's book five, which point to a victory. Book five, 107 to 150, points to restoration, victory for God's people, resurrection, and a greater exodus. a greater exodus, a greater redemption that's coming for God's people. All right? So, the five books of Psalms, then, as the fourth part of covenant life, is Christ-centered, in that they are songs of David's greater Son, both objectively about Jesus Christ and subjectively, they're sung by Jesus Christ. They're incarnational. When Jesus, when the Son of God unites Himself to humanity, He's going to come in and He's going to sing these songs. These are His hymn book two. And in His exultation, He's going to sing these hymns with His church. Okay? So in books 1 and 2, which are chapters 1 through 41, chapters 42 to 72, it's the life of David or David's greater son. In book 3, 73 to 89, Psalms 73 to 89 are David in exile, particularly a lot of suffering for David there. Again, not exclusively, but it's helpful as an overview. Book four, Psalms 90 to 106, songs of repentance, faith, a return to the Lord, and then Psalm 107 to 150, the restoration, victory, the resurrection, the greater exodus that's coming. And so you see how as a whole, there are songs of Jesus, songs about Jesus, and songs that are sung by Jesus. Let me read something for a moment. If I may, in Hebrews chapter two, as I mentioned, what we have here is this singer of Psalms, the Lord Jesus, the song of David's greater son being put in Jesus's mouth. Listen to this. When the author of Hebrews is talking about Jesus, the founder of salvation, he says, what is man that you are mindful him? Oh, the son of man that you care for him. You made him for a little while lower than the angels. You've crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet. It's speaking of the humiliation of Jesus, the humbling of the son of God. And that Psalm is what Psalm. Psalm 8. It's the life of David. It's being applied to Jesus Christ, but not only applied to Jesus Christ, it's being sung by Jesus Christ. Listen to what it says, verse 9 of chapter 2 of Hebrews, we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. It was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies, and those who are sanctified all have one source. That's why he's not ashamed to call them brethren." And then in his mouth, you hear, "'I will tell of your name to my brothers. In the midst of the congregation, I will sing your praise.'" That's Jesus singing Psalm 22. And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, behold, I and the children that God has given me. There he is quoting from one of the prophets from Isaiah. And so, this whole idea of incarnation is in shadow form, revealed even in the Psalms, that God will dwell with man. And I'll show you that in another way, in three ways. All right, let's look at it. So in the five books of the Psalms, you have the songs of David's greater son, both objective and subjective. And then let's just do a close-up here on the messianic hope or king, okay? And let us remember that this is more than just looking for messianic Psalms, though that is important. I'm going to write some of the central Psalms down to show this. But what we're looking at, again, is the five books of the Psalms and how they're ultimately about messianic hope or about the King who, through covenant, comes to dwell with man. The King who, through covenant, comes to dwell with man. All right. So here it is. First of all, in this messianic hope, salvation is central. Sin is a problem, and God's people need to be saved. And you see that as in Psalm 32, Psalm 51, a wonderful Psalm 103 and 130. Okay? Salvation is central, and there's a need for Israel to be saved. There's a sin problem. It needs to be taken care of through blood sacrifice. The implication is all the goats and the beasts and the bulls and the lambs were not sufficient to take away sin fully. All right? So there's looking for that day when the sin can be fully taken care of. And so that means that we want to remember that Jesus is central to the Psalms. And we learn this in John 5, 39 to 40 that you've memorized, that that the Scriptures speak of him, that they search everywhere to find life and the Scriptures speak of him. All right. And then in Luke, our very favorite passage, Luke 24 to 27, and then 44 to 48, Jesus is central to the Psalms. And then finally, God-man is central. And this is where you see in the Messianic Psalms, as we'd call them, 2, 45, 89, and 110. Those are particularly what we'd call. And the reason you want to see this is because the God-man is revealed as already in David, okay? How is that so? The king, through covenant, comes into the dwelling place, and God is with him. And the Psalms are not only about David, David sings the Psalms. They're not only about him, They're by him. They're in his mouth. They're written by him. And so as type, we already see that God is with his people in this way. In the fullness of time with Jesus coming, we have salvation being central. We have the name of Jesus, Jesus himself being central to the Psalms as it is about Jesus. But then we have the God-man subjectively singing the Psalms just like David, but as the greater son, who is king through covenant and dwelling in our flesh. Very, very unbelievable, wonderful things to think about. And one of the things I think that's so grand is even on the cross, You know, one of the great ways that Jesus interprets for himself, in his death, what's going on is he quotes Psalms. He quotes Psalm 22, particularly. Eli, eli lama sabachthani. He quotes, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And so the Psalms are in his mouth, even as he's delivering his people through the means of the cross. And in Hebrews 2 and other places, but Hebrews 2 particularly, we see that Jesus in his exultation is singing the Psalms and singing these hymns about his people. All right. Now, lots more we could say, but are there any questions so far? Why don't we close with a few of the thematic theological truths, okay, that aren't on the board But I think we'll repeat some of these things, but let me just say a few things about God, how God's revealed. The first thing we've already said, God is king, God is one who dwells with us through covenant, and God has promised to dwell with his people. And so, very simply put, God is a covenantal God. That means he keeps his promises. That means he not only reveals himself to us in creation and conscience, but he reveals himself to us in Christ and ultimately through covenant in Christ. So he's our covenant Lord. And it's wonderful because we see that his promises continually given to the people so that they can live on those promises, they can live by his promises no matter what circumstances, but they can also honestly talk to God about what they're going through. That's important. So God is a friend in that sense, covenantal friend. Number two, our God is a literary artist and a genius, as you would expect from a creator. Both the form and the content of the psalms is inspired revelation of God. Form and content. The shape of each psalm. For instance, there's an inclusio over the entire psalm book. You walk into the sanctuary through Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who goes into the sanctuary to praise and worship and adore God. And then you go out, Psalm 150, let everything that has breath praise the Lord. So you go in as the one who is seeking to be blessed and seeking to commune with God, and you go out praising His name. Look at Psalm 150. In Psalm 150, the psalm book ends with, praise the Lord. And look, praise God in His sanctuary. So you've experienced Him. Praise Him in His mighty heavens, which the sanctuary points forward to. Praise Him for His mighty deeds. Praise Him for His excellent greatness. So in the psalm book, you learn about God. You learn about David's greater son. You learn about the things He's done for us by way of salvation, the works, the deeds, the words. And you learn about His excellent greatness. And so it's everything that has breath, praise the Lord, is the end. So there's form and content. The whole of the psalms is an inclusio. It begins with this walking in. to an entrance into the Psalms with hope in the sanctuary and ends going out of the sanctuary as a transformed, God-centered, God-focused, Christ-saturated, Word-informed believer. So, God is a poet, a bard par excellence. You can see the amazing way that His promises used through the Psalms will use images of king and shepherd. husband, father, even mother, even mother. Another thing you learn is our God loves to sing. We find that in Zephaniah. Remember that God is in your midst, the mighty one who will save. He rejoices over you with loud singing. So we see that in the New Testament, that in the exaltation. I want you to, when you go to worship, I want you to understand you're entering into a worship service already in progress, where Jesus is the worship leader at God's right hand for all of His churches all over the world, right? And by His Spirit, He's with all of them. And He's the worship leader. He's the preacher. He's the high priest leading everybody like Kenaniah in the praise of God. He's the prophet and He's the ruling king. And he's the one who deserves our worship. He loves to sing. And he says, here am I and the children you've given me. And then finally, our God rejoices in the Messiah and Savior. Our God rejoices in the Messiah and Savior. Now, I can send you my notes that have this section where we see Jesus as the object and the subject of the Psalms, and it's more detailed. There are four categories that I just want to remind you of, and I'll send you this in my notes. But you remember the anointed king, the son, God himself, and the servant. In other words, listen, here's the way to always remember the Lord Jesus. If you have a hard time remembering a way to go into God and think about Jesus' attributes, all you have to do is think about David. All right, because he's the great type. It's a day full of grace and truth. Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you are a servant of God. You served us by laying down your life for us. Thank you, Lord Jesus. You're the psalm singer. This is David wrote the psalms. You ultimately wrote the psalms and they're about you. Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you're the center of all the psalms. Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you're the shepherd. You're the one who brings and unites the Israelite and the Gentiles together. And you rule us with your rod. We thank you, O Lord Jesus, that you're the shepherd. And we thank you, Lord Jesus, that you're the king. And you're from Bethlehem. And that gets at really more particularly is humanity. All of those emphasize deity and humanity, but particularly servant, particularly from Bethlehem. It's important, isn't it, that he's called Jesus of Nazareth because that's the incarnation. He grew up. And even before he went into his official work as Messiah, before his day of ordination that happened in the Jordan River with John, he was someone just like us, who is working, doing his vocation, being raised in a little backwoods place like Nazareth. And so, at every season, at every aspect of our lives, Jesus was man. He's with us. Even though he wasn't formally in his calling of ministry until he was 30, his whole life was spent in this state of humiliation. so that he would experience all of the broadness, the breadth and the width, the depth of our emotions, one very important thing, so that he could sanctify them. And, as the book of Hebrews says, so that he can sympathize with us in our weakness. So it's not like he didn't have an understanding of what it means to be a child, to have to, for instance, obey mom and dad. He did. We get that in Scripture, that he had to learn that obedience. All right. So many things we could say, right? But the God-man, especially, I want you to see in that God is with us in Jesus Christ in an ultimate way, and even now we sing the songs. And so let me just close by saying the communion with God through the Psalms 101, Meditation 101. When you go in the Psalms, so you're wanting to do this. You can start with the person of Christ, like I just did. Whatever you can think of Jesus Christ, you begin with, okay? You are God. You are great. You are mighty, okay? You just say those things. Remember, Eastern meditation is a perversion, right? So when we hear the word meditation, let's bring it back into the Christian fold because it was original with us and our God. It's an Eastern thing. It's been very perverted. Eastern meditation is an emptying of Christian meditation is a filling full of knowledge, doctrine, and word by the Spirit. So what you're doing is, in meditation, you're not emptying your brain. You're emptying it of sinful thoughts. You're emptying it of being, by nature, an Eastern meditative depraved pagan. You're saying by nature that my mind is empty, it's easily distracted, and I need to have it filled with your word, O Lord. And so the meditation 101 is then to take that scripture that you have and fix your thoughts on that scripture. Decide that you're going to look at this one scripture, say the one we looked at, the Psalm 34, I will bless the Lord at all times. And you think about what that means, blessing the Lord. Praise being continuing your mouth. thinking about why you want to praise him, because of who he is and what he's done. And then ignite your heart. Let your heart be ignited with zeal or passion. In fact, fix your thoughts and say it aloud or prayerfully until you feel something. Until you feel something. Until your, what our forefathers said that was very helpful, until your affections have been touched. Your affections that lead to doing the will of God with joy. The affections, they drive you. They drive you. Whatever you love the most or desire the most or long for the most is what your will will go toward. It's what you will want so much because your affections are driving you. So you fix your thoughts on the Word, fill up your mind with the Word, then you let by the Spirit, those Word and Spirit ignite your affections, cause you to be hot with zeal. And then that leads to gust. That's an old word, but gust is a great joy in the midst of trouble. It's a gust. It's a high. It's a delight that our Puritan forefathers taught us to look for. Gust, I think that's an old word because we think of a gust of wind, but it's getting at it. That's exactly what it is. Next time you get blown over by the wind, say, I want the Holy Spirit to do that for me. I want that in my soul. I want a gust. Edwards used gust. The Puritans used gust. Sibbes used gust. Gust is a great word, so just get gust. All right? Not gassed, but gust. And so you fix your eyes. You think of gust as that Acts 2 kind of where somebody outside you maybe thinks you're drunk because you're so happy and delighted. You know, they thought they were drunk on the day of Pentecost because they were gusting. They were like, woo-hoo! Delight! But it was not based on just circumstances. That's where you've got to remember. It is not based on circumstances. It's based on your fixing your thoughts on the truth. All right. Because your circumstances would be falling apart. David could delight when he was under pressure, when he was being humiliated, when he was being chased, when he was running for his life from Saul. Right. So the best Psalms are those help. What is my fortress, my strength, my rock, my foundation? my shield, my fortress, my savior. So ignite your affections. If you don't ignite your affections, you're probably not gonna will it again. And gust gives you that joy that makes you, well, it's like an addiction, you want more. So get addicted to the right things. Meditation's very helpful. Meditation's very helpful. Anyone can do it, it only takes a few minutes. And one of my mentors used to say that, You don't leave your devotional moment until you get that gust. Do everything you can to not leave until you've got a smile on your face. Not because things have changed necessarily for you around you, but because you've changed. Now, for a long time, exile's hard. We're in exile. The exile has begun to be over in the resurrection of Jesus, but only Jesus has made it home. For the rest of us, that means we still are in exile. So let us walk by faith and try to get that gust now and then. That'll build us up and strengthen us, build our hope. All right, so that's the way you can use the Psalms. Are there any questions or thoughts about the Psalms? I'm always wishing we could have had more time, but you know what? There's, in my written notes, I go over the different genres of the Psalms, the five different types of Psalms, primarily, and I go over some particular scriptures you can look up and start your pursuit of communion with God, or not just pursuit of it, perhaps, but maybe perfection of it. Maybe you wanna do it better. But fix, ignite, gust, all right? Yes, ma'am, hi. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, I saw that. No, no, I didn't. That's really good. Yeah, in fact, in fact, that, yes. Okay, now I'm speaking off the top of my head, but I have to say that that, yes, that is a call to worship to the benediction. That's a book. Anybody want to do a PhD thesis? All right, there it is. You got one, right? They can do that? Okay. So anyone want to study that, you find out how the psalm book is actually a form of liturgy for the church. That's a great point. It's absolutely correct. Yeah. In fact, I'm going to go and look at our liturgy and I'm just going to test it by and I encourage you to do the same. I think I think it would line up, but there'd be elements of the life, the gospel. There'd be the exile reality, the mourning for our sins. There'd be the songs of repentance, asking forgiveness or returning to the Lord. And then there'd be the gospel presentation, the victory, the resurrection. And then when we leave, we're praising. Oh, I'm excited. I got gust. Oh, I got some gust. No, I did. That's really good. Gust is good. It feels good. All right. Thanks. Yeah, that was outstanding. Hey, 10 years ago. 10 years ago, the Lord blessed this world with one named Elizabeth Hope. No, Esther Hope. I got to get my girl straight. Esther Hope Salomo with bigs. I know, isn't that crazy? She just crosses her eyes. So I didn't embarrass you so much. Happy birthday, Esther. I'm so grateful you're my daughter. All right, let's pray. Our Father and our God, we thank you for your love for us. We thank you for all that you do for us. We thank you for the Lord Jesus. We thank you that you give songs and you put songs in our mouth, literally, through the Psalms and you help us to encounter you, come into the sanctuary to see the glory of the King, to worship and adore you, to bow down before you. We thank you that you remind us of your covenant promises, your covenant keeping, your covenant kindness, your chesed in Christ. And we thank you that you also give us that enjoyment of your presence through the Psalms. We know that you are about sanctifying and renewing our minds, but we ask also you'd sanctify and renew our emotions, that we'd be the people you've called us to be and that we would be blessed when we mourn and blessed when we rejoice and be glad. And we pray that we'd have the right balance that Jesus had and that we give you all the praise and glory today. We ask that you'd help us in meditation, that we'd use the Psalms well to worship and serve you and to change us, to help us to live no matter what is around us, that no matter whether our circumstances change or not, that we would change in our circumstances. And so we're reminded it doesn't matter where we are, it matters most what we become where we are. And so we ask that you would help us to know that you're with us today. In Jesus' name, and all the church said, amen.