Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction to the Exodus Psalms Book 2

Every emotion of the heart is reflected in the Psalms with words that express our deepest and strongest feelings.

They provide comfort and joy, leading us to the place where worship flows.

Psalms is divided into five books, mirroring the five books of Moses that form the Old testament.

Together they convey the depth of our longings and fears, joys and celebrations, becoming a mirror to the heart of God's people in our quest to experience God's presence.

and strongest feelings.

They provide comfort and joy, leading us to the place where

worship flows.

Psalms is divided into five books, mirroring the five books of Moses that

form the Old testament.

Together they convey the depth of our longings and fears, joys and

celebrations, becoming a mirror to the heart of God's people in our quest to experience

God's presence.

Book Two is known as the Exodus Psalms.

Like the ancient Hebrew book of Exodus itself, which chronicles Israel’s deliverance out of oppression, these psalms lament our suffering and long for similar redemption.

Many poems are cries to God for help; they ask him to wake up and do something about our trials and trouble.

Others wonder if God has forgotten his people in the midst of their pain and problems.

Still other psalms cry for revival and renewal, praying from a place of weariness and ache.

Then there are the poems that praise God for his faithfulness, protection, and grace—leading to faith and trust.

which chronicles Israel’s deliverance out of oppression, these psalms lament our suffering

and long for similar redemption.

Many poems are cries to God for help; they ask him to

wake up and do something about our trials and trouble.

Others wonder if God has

forgotten his people in the midst of their pain and problems.

Still other psalms cry for

revival and renewal, praying from a place of weariness and ache.

Then there are the poems that praise God for his faithfulness, protection, and grace—leading to faith and trust.

that praise God for his faithfulness, protection, and grace—leading to faith and trust.

Never Fear, God is on Your Side! ,

Book Two of Psalms is known as the Exodus Psalms.

Like the ancient Hebrew book itself, which chronicles the exodus of Israel out of oppression and into deliverance, these psalms lament our suffering and long for deliverance.

which chronicles the exodus of Israel out of oppression and into deliverance, these psalms

lament our suffering and long for deliverance.

The book opens with the psalmist crying for revival, a plea that his own soul’s thirst for God would be quenched.

The psalmist is like a parched deer longing for a brook of bliss to find relief from his depression and despair.

This cry is similar to what the children of Israel themselves would have offered to God while in Egypt.

The psalmist also beseeches the Lord to plead his case, to deliver him from the hands of his accusers, and to pour into him his light and guidance.

God would be quenched.

The psalmist is like a parched deer longing for a brook of bliss to

find relief from his depression and despair.

This cry is similar to what the children of Israel

themselves would have offered to God while in Egypt.

The psalmist also beseeches the Lord to plead his case, to deliver him from the hands of his accusers, and to pour into him his light and guidance.

to plead his case, to deliver him from the hands of his accusers, and to pour into him his

light and guidance.

Along his path of lamentation and beseeching, the psalmist reminds us of a singular truth: we have no need to fear, because God is on our side.

Even if the earth were to quake and shake and the mountains were to slide into the ocean, even in the midst of raging and storming seas, there’s no reason to fear—because we discover that God is our refuge, our strength.

He’s a proven help in times of trouble.

While each of these psalms can be taken separately, Psalms 42–43 go well together as a song with three stanzas: they share a refrain (42:5, 11; 43:5); 43:2 is almost the same as 42:9; and they both express the longing to return to God’s presence in the sanctuary (42:2; 43:3–4).

In these psalms the singer laments his circumstances (connected with enemies who despise God and oppress his faithful servants), which keep him from attending worship at the central sanctuary.

Singing this in corporate worship would especially foster a sense of yearning and expectation in the faithful, so that they would learn to attend worship looking for God’s presence, to mourn any circumstances that prevent them from attendance, and to count their attendance at worship as a great gift from God (certainly not a burdensome duty!).

Other psalms that express yearning for God include Psalms 63 and 84.

we have no need to fear, because God is on our side.

Even if the earth were to quake and

It is the cry of a man far removed from the outward ordinances and worship of God, sighing for the long-loved house of his God; and at the same time it is the voice of a spiritual believer, under depressions, longing for the renewal of the divine presence, struggling with doubts and fears, but yet holding his ground by faith in the living God.

Most of the Lord’s family have sailed on the sea which is here so graphically described.

It is probable that David’s flight from Absolom may have been the occasion for composing this Maschil.

shake and the mountains were to slide into the ocean, even in the midst of raging and

As the hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.”

As after a long drought the poor fainting hind longs for the streams, or rather as the hunted hart instinctively seeks after the river to lave its smoking flanks and to escape the dogs, even so my weary, persecuted soul pants after the Lord my God.

Debarred from public worship, David was heartsick.

Ease he did not seek, honour he did not covet, but the enjoyment of communion with God was an urgent need of his soul; he viewed it not merely as the sweetest of all luxuries, but as an absolute necessity, like water to a stag.

Like the parched traveller in the wilderness, whose skin bottle is empty, and who finds the wells dry, he must drink or die—he must have his God or faint.

His soul, his very self, his deepest life, was insatiable for a sense of the divine presence.

As the hart brays so his soul prays.

Give him his God and he is as content as the poor deer which at length slakes its thirst and is perfectly happy; but deny him his Lord, and his heart heaves, his bosom palpitates, his whole frame is convulsed, like one who gasps for breath, or pants with long running.

Dear reader, dost thou know what this is, by personally having felt the same?

It is a sweet bitterness.

The next best thing to living in the light of the Lord’s love is to be unhappy till we have it, and to pant hourly after it—hourly, did I say?

thirst is a perpetual appetite, and not to be forgotten, and even thus continual is the heart’s longing after God.

When it is as natural for us to long for God as for an animal to thirst, it is well with our souls, however painful our feelings.

We may learn from this verse that the eagerness of our desires may be pleaded with God, and the more so, because there are special promises for the importunate and fervent.

2. “My soul.”

All my nature, my inmost self.

“Thirsteth.”

Which is more than hungering; hunger you can palliate, but thirst is awful, insatiable, clamorous, deadly.

O to have the most intense craving after the highest good! this is no questionable mark of grace.

“For God.”

Not merely for the temple and the ordinances, but for fellowship with God himself.

None but spiritual men can sympathise with this thirst.

“For the living God.”

Because he lives, and gives to men the living water; therefore we, with greater eagerness, desire him.

A dead God is a mere mockery; we loathe such a monstrous deity; but the ever-living God, the perennial fountain of life and light and love, is our soul’s desire.

What are gold, honour, pleasure, but dead idols?

May we never pant for these.

“When shall I come and appear before God?”

He who loves the Lord loves also the assemblies wherein his name is adored.

Vain are all pretences to religion where the outward means of grace have no attraction.

David was never so much at home as in the house of the Lord; he was not content with private worship; he did not forsake the place where saints assemble, as the manner of some is.

See how pathetically he questions as to the prospect of his again uniting in the joyous gathering!

How he repeats and reiterates his desire!

After his God, his Elohim (his God to be worshipped, who had entered into covenant with him), he pined even as the drooping flowers for the dew, or the moaning turtle for her mate.

It were well if all our resortings to public worship were viewed as appearances before God, it would then be a sure mark of grace to delight in them.

Alas, how many appear before the minister, or their fellow men, and think that enough! “To see the face of God” is the nearer translation of the Hebrew; but the two ideas may be combined—he would see his God and be seen of him; this is worth thirsting after!

3.—“My tears have been my meat day and night.”

Salt meats, but healthful to the soul.

When a man comes to tears, constant tears, plenteous tears, tears that fill his cup and trencher, he is in earnest indeed.

As the big tears stand in the stag’s eyes in her distress, so did the salt drops glitter in the eyes of David.

His appetite was gone, his tears not only seasoned his meat, but became his only meat, he had no mind for other diet.