Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction: Good Morning Redemption Church.

It is good to see you all this morning, if this is your first time with us in person or on the live stream, my name is Noah Toney, and I am the pastor here.

At Redemption Church we exist to proclaim the gospel and make disciples for the glory of God.

That is our vision statement, and it is the very heartbeat of this church.

Today is special because we are starting our Summer in the Psalms Sermon Series for the first time, if the Lord is kind and merciful to us, this will be something that we do every year until we finish preaching through all 150 Psalms.

It is only appropriate that we open up with a Psalm of Prayer:

Praise the LORD!

I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart, in the company of the upright, in the congregation.

Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them.

Full of splendor and majesty is his work, and his righteousness endures forever.

He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered; the LORD is gracious and merciful.

He provides food for those who fear him; he remembers his covenant forever.

He has shown his people the power of his works, in giving them the inheritance of the nations.

The works of his hands are faithful and just; all his precepts are trustworthy; they are established forever and ever, to be performed with faithfulness and uprightness.

He sent redemption to his people; he has commanded his covenant forever.

Holy and awesome is his name!

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding.

His praise endures forever!

Psalms 111

There is something special about the book of Psalms.

This is a self-evident truth.

We know that every book of the Bible is special because it is God’s holy word.

However, I would argue that there is something extraordinary about the Psalms.

For all of the saints of the Lord, both Old Testament saints and New Testament Christians, the book of Psalms has had special importance.

It has been loved and cherished by Jews and Christians as one of the most outstanding books of the bible.

Today's sermon will be different from most of my sermons; my goal today is not to expound upon scripture but to give you a 30,000-foot overview of the Psalter.

There has been a giant misunderstanding of the Psalms in modern Christianity.

It is my goal to challenge how you think about the psalms and show you a bigger and more coherent picture of the Psalms.

Psalms are the photobook of the real world:

Every family has a photo album.

Photo albums and scrapbooks have fallen out of fashion in the last 20 years because of the internet, but we all know what they are, and we all likely have one.

The Psalms are like an album that tells the story of God’s people as it really is.

It records the highs and the lows of life.

The Psalms sing praises from the mountains of the goodness of God, but they also lament in the deepest valleys of sorrow.

In our world, we all are familiar with photo albums that capture the highlights of each family, but what's different about the psalter is that it captures every human experience and emotion imaginable.

Imagine that there is a picture of your birth and your birth certificate.

This picture is followed by you at your fifth birthday party, and you are smiling and eating cake.

The following picture is of your awkward middle school phase.

Next is a picture of your senior prom, and you and your date are so happy and dressed up and full of joy and the vigor of life.

This picture is followed by your first heartbreak, where he or she betrayed you and broke your heart.

We all have stories like this.

Then the following picture is the death of a grandparent whom you loved.

And there is a picture of the gravestone.

Next is a picture of you moving into college, and then a picture of you falling in love, and then there is a picture of the wedding, and then the honeymoon, followed by a picture of an ultrasound.

There is pictures of the joy on your faces as you celebrate the pregnancy.

Then there is a picture of you crying when you discover you had a miscarriage.

The joy in the previous pictures has been eclipsed by deep despair and hopelessness.

This sorrow is followed by a picture of the death of a parent.

And the darkness that you thought you knew is only multiplied.

These sad pictures then take a turn and begin to return to normal, anniversaries happen, children are born, promotions at work happen, and more children are born.

Your children then grow up and leave the house, and you are empty nesters.

And so on and so forth.

The point of this extended metaphor is that what is described is exactly what the psalms are for Israel.

The Psalter is a photo book of the real-life and history of God’s people.

In the same way you can look at a single picture and learn a lot of info, you can learn so much more when you see all the other pictures that tell the story.

In the same way, the psalms can be read individually, but they have so much more meaning when you understand that they were arranged and placed in a specific order that tells a story.

The ancient Greeks had the Iliad and the Odyssey, and these two poems are epic tales that chronicle the works of kings and mighty warriors in Greek history.

These works, the Iliad and Odyssey to this day, are still part of the very fabric of Greek culture and the Greek language.

And the point of these long poems is twofold.

First, these poems teach their cultures about the ideal person.

The Odyssey follows the story of Odysseus, a warrior king who has been a significant part of the trojan war for nine years.

It tells of his treacherous journey as he is on his way home to his kingdom of Ithaca and his wife, Penelope.

As the average Greek family would read and sing this poem to their children with the hope of teaching the next generation about major Greek virtues.

You teach your boys the story of Odysseus so that they might grow up to be brave and valiant amid adversity.

You teach your children how when Odyssey’s men were in trouble; he would rise to the occasion to help his brothers and his countrymen.

The Odyssey also teaches bad character traits that must when the King makes selfish choices; the people will pay the price.

Families would sing the song of Penelope to teach their daughters about faithfulness and perseverance as she waited 20 years for her husband to return home to her.

You would sing the story of how Penelope held the family together while her husband was off to war, to teach your daughters that when the men go off to battle, the responsibility of leadership lies with the women.

In other words, the Odyssey is a poem that would teach Greeks what it looks like to be an exemplary citizen of Greece.

Second, these ancient songs recount the history of the King and his kingdom.

The Odyssey tells the history of Odysseus and his kingdom in Ithaca.

We know that the Odyssey is mythological and not true, but what makes the Psalter special is that it is true.

It recounts the true story of God and his people.

The Psalms sing the true story of God’s chosen people Israel and God’s anointed King, the messiah.

I want to be very clear that the psalms, while they can be read and understood individually, they have so much more meaning and application when you understand that the psalms were written and arranged in a way that tells a specific story about Israel and God’s plan for his people.

Arrangement:

The Psalms are arranged in 5 books.

If you like to take notes, this might be helpful.

These books are arranged in a way that tells a specific story about the people of God.

Book One- Psalms 1-41 David’s rise and reign

Book Two- Psalms 42-72 David’s reign and Messianic expectations

Book Three-Psalms 73-89 David’s line goes into exile

Book Four-Psalms 90-106 Seek the Lord in Exile

Book Five- Psalms 107-150 Songs of faithfulness and return to the Land

If the Psalms are an epic poem that sings the story of God’s chosen King and chosen people, it starts with David.

So book one begins with an introduction: Psalms 1 and 2 are the great gate to the Psalter.

They are given the overarching theme of the whole Psalter.

Psalm one is a poem about the ideal man, the perfect person.

This ideal person is blessed by God, and he is rooted in God’s word, and all the works of his hands are blessed because he is planted and rooted by God’s word.

But those who are not rooted in the word are like chaff that the wind drives away.

Psalm two picks up and tells us who this ideal person is.

He is the anointed messiah King of Israel.

And as King, he will rule and reign from Zion, and he is the sovereign ruler whom God has placed in charge of the earth; all who challenge him will be like broken pottery at his feet.

But those who trust this messiah King will always have refuge and blessing.

After the introduction in Psalms 1 and 2, we are given 40 Psalms of David.

Every Psalm in book one has a superscription.

For example, Psalm 3 is “a Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his Son.”

All the Psalms in book one deal with David’s rise to power and his reign.

These superscriptions are like titles that tell us, the reader what was happening in the life of David when he wrote this psalm.

They are like handwriting on the back of a photograph that gives us a lot more meaning, what was going on when a picture was taken.