Sermon Tone Analysis

We stepped into a series last week called “Our Prayer Book”, with the goal and hope of introducing you to Scripture as a help in our prayer life.

That scripture can not only be an aid to our prayer life but breathe life into it.

That scripture helps us to pray understanding that God has revealed himself to us.

Today I want us to look at the psalms as a manual and an invitation to prayer.

Understand that in the Near East as the people began to worship God, it was different than every other worship around them in that, God had spoken!!

God had revealed who he was and how those who loved him ought to worship and speak to him.

All other worship in the ancient Near East was an attempt to reach and understand the gods with not real blueprint for worship, all with gods who changed if they felt like it!

There was no hint of a desire for the gods they worshipped to have a relationship with those who worshipped them.

PRAYER (also our scripture reading)

Ok, this is what I want us to understand this morning.......

PRAYER

The Psalms are an invitation for you and I to put our liturgy aside, our flowery language and pretence, and come to God unfiltered and raw, and to allow Him to do His justice in His time.

4th century theologian, Athanasius:

Most of scripture speaks to us the psalms speak for us.

Most scripture speaks to us about who God is, the Psalms speak for us to that God.

Psalms are the prayer book of Israel AND of Jesus.

Jesus as a first Century Jew would have grown up reading and learning the psalms.

he was involved in the synagogue (three year cycle of reading the psalms, 50 a year)

Jesus mother knew the psalms

the Magnificat -

Luke 1:46-55

it is a reflection of the psalms

it was the moms job to educate the home

Jesus prays the psalms on the cross

“I Thirst”

“Why have you forsaken me”

“Into your hands I commit my spirit”

When we face the darkest valley our hearts will use words deep within us because of habit.

Jesus uses these words because they have been a part of his life since childhood

We can find prayer for every occasion in the psalms.

I. THE PSALMS COVER THE SPECTRUM OF THE HUMAN CONDITION

It would be difficult to find a human emotion that the psalms do not address!

Calling out for forgiveness and spiritual cleansing in .

Calling our in our destress; when we are scared and things are uncertain!!

Psalm 69:

Guidance and purity.

:

And for that reason, the psalms have been a go to for God’s people!

Charles Spurgeon writes in his commentary of the psalms...

Psalm 69

Psalm 86

“Time was when the Psalms were not only rehearsed in all the churches from day to day, but they were so universally sung that the common people knew them, even if they did not know the letters in which they were written.

Time was when bishops would ordain no man to the ministry unless he knew “David” from end to end, and could repeat each psalm correctly; even Councils of the Church have decreed that none should hold ecclesiastical office unless they knew the whole psalter by heart.[…] the labourer, while he held the plough, sang Hallelujah; the tired reaper refreshed himself with the psalms, and the vinedresser, while trimming the vines with his curved hook, sang something of David....They were the love songs of the people of God.”

In other words, there was a time when those at work, in the fields, in the orchards doing the stuff of life, prayed the psalms as a regular part of their day.

“For years I avoided the book of Psalms[…]With uncanny consistency I would land on a psalm that aggravated, rather than cured, my problem.”

Instead of black and white proclamations from a prophet or a disciple, these were the raw “this is how I feel in this moment right now”, kind of prayers.

Yancey goes on to say,....

“These, however, are not pronouncements from on high, delivered with full apostolic authority, on matters of faith and practice.

They are VERY PERSONAL PRAYERS in the form of poetry, written by a VARIETY of people - peasants, kings, professional musicians, rank amateurs - in WILDLY FLUCTUATING MOODS....."

I love that!!

So we don’t come necessarily come to the psalms to gain knowledge but to find relationship.

So the thing is, that the very thing that makes the psalms uncomfortable also makes them approachable, and realistic and useful.

The psalms are honest.

They are not just what we think we ought to say, they are also a collection of things we would really like to say.

In the psalms we find all the movements of the human soul.

Sadness, loneliness, joy, hope, anger, angst, rage, doubt, it almost seems irreverent!

Author Philip Yancey says this in “The Bible Jesus Read” (some of you might know him as Bob Ross

II.

THE PSALMS

“For years I avoided the book of Psalms[…]With uncanny consistency I would land on a psalm that aggravated, rather than cured, my problem.”

Instead of black and white proclamations from a prophet or a disciple, these were the raw “this is how I feel in this moment right now”, kind of prayers.

Yancey goes on to say,....

“These, however, are not pronouncements from on high, delivered with full apostolic authority, on matters of faith and practice.

They are VERY PERSONAL PRAYERS in the form of poetry, written by a VARIETY of people - peasants, kings, professional musicians, rank amateurs - in WILDLY FLUCTUATING MOODS....."

I love that!!

So we don’t come necessarily come to the psalms to gain knowledge but to find relationship.

All the thing is, that the very thing that makes the psalms uncomfortable also makes them approachable, and realistic and useful.

The psalms are honest.

They are not just what we think we ought to say, they are also a collection of things we would really like to say.

PAUSE

I’ve mentioned this before....there are psalms (MOST psalms) that we read in segments that make them unpalatable.

Right?

“Crush them, kill them, make em hurst”

How are we supposed to pry that kind of stuff!

See we love to read Psalms like , right!!??

See we love to read Psalms like , right!!??

It is so beautiful....

Psalms 139:1

it goes on this way for awhile....

Psalm 139:

And then like good cop bad cop.....there is seemingly an immediate switch that goes off.....

Here is the part that is not on your facebook posts!!!!

: 19

And that is one of many!! , , , .....

Psalm 10:

Psalm 17

, , , , , , and I don’t want to depress you but there are more, many man y more.

and I don’t want to depress you but there are more, many many more!

, , , , , and I don’t want to depress you but there are more, many man y more.

Imprecatory Psalms psalms that invoke judgment, calamity, or curses upon one's enemies or those perceived as the enemies of God.

How do we deal with these?

I want to spend the rest of the message here.

II.

PRAYING UNCOMFORTABLE PSALMS

So how do we pray these prayers!!??

Because....any conversation about concerns about the God of the OT usually find some fodder in psalms like these.

Any praying of the psalms seems to be in danger of a patchy sewing together of pieces and a careful navigation.

How can we pray through the Psalms and not over them, when they seem to call for violence?

So what I would like to do is highlight a few important things while reading/ and praying the psalms

Here are a few thoughts on reading the Psalms:

The Psalms are part of Scripture - it is part of what Paul calls God-breathed and useful

So we cannot simply ignore it, it has a purpose.