Psalms Lesson 1

Introduction

Tonight we begin a new series on the Psalms and in studying this I’ve tried to look into what other series we’re involved in so that we could kind of integrate them and we wouldn’t necessarily overlap. We’re going to start Proverbs Sunday and there we will be in a similar section; both the Psalms and Proverbs are what is called the wisdom section of God’s Word. The wisdom section of the Bible is basically concentrating on man’s knowledge of his world; the prophetic portions of God’s Word are mainly concentrating on man’s knowledge of God. So when we talk about wisdom literature we’re talking about areas of everyday human life, and therefore you might say in another way these books are practical versus the other books that are more theoretical.

Therefore, when we come to Psalms we want to understand that we’re talking here about the everyday devotional life. And thus when we move through the Psalms we’re talking about the personal relationship of the believer with Jesus Christ. We will emphasize, therefore, the subjective. I want to make this note clearly heard at the beginning so that you won’t misunderstand the emphasis as we go through. It is deliberately going to emphasize the subjective. At certain times we emphasize the objective; at other times the subjective. Now is the time to emphasize the subjective part of the Christian faith, that is the details of our personal relationship with Christ, how we think, how we feel, how we react to life’s situation. All that is the subjective; by objective I would mean the historical evidences of the Christian faith, evidences that are present in some of the prophetic and historical sections of God’s Word. But you can’t hit everything all the time equally, so therefore we are going to move to the subjective.

As we move into the Psalms I thought since most of you that come Wednesday nights are more advanced students than the 11:00 o’clock nod to God crowd, therefore I thought perhaps there ought to be a little bit more interaction than is usual, and since some of you had asked that you’d like to know a little bit more how to study the Bible for yourself, I thought maybe we could combine this into the Psalm series; not that we do an extensive independent Bible study but at least I will try to show you and then give you opportunity to study these Psalms on your own, so that you can learn how to study portions of God’s Word. All of you can read God’s Word and I’m sure all of you do. But it’s another thing to really get into the structure of the Word and be able to sit down independently, with the basic tools, the concordance and the text, and come up with some good solid meat out of the Word for yourself. Now it’s not hard to do and you don’t have to be a student of the Greek and Hebrew.

To prove that, I’ve deliberately chosen one of the most difficult books to prove my point, I have chosen the book of Psalms that is poetic. Poetic books are traditionally always the hardest form to study, much harder than the straightforward narratives. And particular Hebrew poetry is the hardest kind to study because it doesn’t rhyme. You miss the point unless you read it in the Hebrew because in the Hebrew it’s all there; many times it’s alphabetized, for example Psalm 119. It’s very clear what the structure of Psalm 119 is if you know the Hebrew; there’s only one problem, people don’t know the Hebrew. So what I am going to try to do is to give you some helpful tools that you can use and pick up and get something out of the Psalms yourself because as you go through the Christian life I think you’re going to find that when the crises come in your life, the portion of God’s Word that you very frequently turn to will be the Psalms. For one thing they’re short, you don’t have to wade through forty chapters before you get the drift of what’s going on. Psalms is sometimes only ten verses long but in those ten verses you have principles that you can apply right there in your present situation. So I think that you’ll find Psalms to be very, very useful in your Christian devotional life and therefore in the whole of the Christian life.

So I’m going to try to give you some tips on studying the Psalms. Now here’s what I would like you to do; it would help if you do at least two things. First of all, if you have a notebook, if you have a loose leaf notebook so that you can slip pages in and out so that when you work on your own analysis of some of the Psalms you can slip those in, and then we’ll cover them, and then you can compare them. The other thing, and this is more important, is if you wouldn’t fight the system by trying to have your own devotional life that would be totally independent of the Psalms while we’re in the Psalms. In other words, oftentimes what happens is that we’ll be covering a series in the local church and the individual believer has a fine devotional life but while I’m in Revelation they’re in Genesis. And the problem is, therefore, since your own home study is another portion than what we’re studying you’re trying to do two things at the same time. I realize some of you have systematic programs and that’s fine, but if you can, while we’re in the Psalms, try in your own personal Bible study to concentrate on the Psalms so that you’ll have some practical experience in applying daily these methods. I hope this will help so we can tie both together because the Psalms are something that you can read and still get something out of. So I think it would be easiest for you to come with me in your devotional reading of God’s Word in the Psalms. Certainly this would be the easiest portion of all the books to try this with. As we go through the Psalms try to se if you can work in the Psalms on your own; it’ll help you in observations.

I’d like to start with an introduction to the book of Psalms and some of the principles in the book of Psalms. First, what about the title: Psalms. That’s not the title of the book in the Hebrew; in the Hebrew it Tehillim, and this Hebrew word means a praise song. So to start with, we can tell from the title of the book that the emphasis is going to be on praise, the Song of Praise, that’s what the title means in the original language. In the Greek the word Psalm that the Septuagint used to translate this title is used for a song that is played to a musical accompaniment. The book of Psalms, by definition, means musical accompaniment. And they very definitely had musicians and the Psalms and some of the headings you’ll see what the instruments are; so it names the instruments and recommends that there be played. So there’s justification for musical embellishment of the text of God’s Word. If you have musical abilities don’t be embarrassed by them, use them. The book of Psalms give you the impetus to develop your musical abilities and use it as a method of reaching our world for Christ and for ministering to believers.

For example, some of you may have a voice that you can use; now that’s a natural gift, it’s not a spiritual gift, but watch how it will work if you have a spiritual gift. Suppose you have the spiritual gift of exhortation and you have a natural ability with a good voice. Don’t you see how those two can be married together and you can use your musical talent of a good voice as a medium of exercising your gift of exhortation toward other believers. Suppose you have the gift of teaching; couple this again with a gifted voice, or perhaps with the gift of writing music. Don’t you see how you can see your spiritual gift of teaching coupled with a natural ability in music. Of course you can. So I hope as you go through the book of Psalms you’ll see that art can be combined with the Word and used very much to communicate, and the book of Psalms is one of the key points.

Now we come to the problem of what is praise, and I want to devote a significant portion of our time, so that we get everyone clear about what praise is. We all use the word but few people really understand what the Bible means by praise. Sometimes this comes because the expression “praise the Lord” is used as some sort of a Christian cliché. “Praise the Lord, praise the Lord” and this thing is repeated about 25 times, while someone is speaking he’s rudely interrupted “praise the Lord” or something like this. Frankly, I consider it to be rude to ever be interrupted by some character out in the congregation “praise the Lord” etc. There’s nothing in Scripture that warrants this and I consider it rudeness; that shows you how I differ from some Christian circles.

Nevertheless, this phrase, “praise the Lord,” is actually a command and here in Scripture you’ll see what praise the Lord means. It doesn’t mean just say “praise the Lord” twenty five times. “Praise” in the Old Testament comes from a verb that looks like this, yada, and this word doesn’t occur before 1000 BC. It’s a word that came late to the nation Israel. I think it came late because by 1000 BC you had the rise of the monarchy. And during the rise of the monarchy you had the nation settle down to an urban life and you had the rise of what we would call culture. Under David, and then under Solomon particularly, you have the whole nation patronizing the art, you had them supporting the arts; Solomon did a lot to further art from in the nation Israel and during this time David did much to further music. David did the maximum to develop music in the nation Israel. It was David, for example, who assembled at government expense an entire choir accompanied by what we would consider a modern counterpart of an orchestra, and this was a national, you might say Philharmonic Orchestra of Israel. And it was run by the priests, but David was the one that actually directed it and we’ll see a little bit how he did that. So it was under the rise of the kings that you begin to have this praise develop.

Now the thing to remember about praise is that in the Bible it is centered upon the doer of the action, not the action. This is why praise is different than “thank you.” In the English, in American culture, we say “thank you” to someone and primarily we’re thanking the person for an act that they have done for us, and the center of our attention is the act. But praise in God’s Word involves a similar situation, God acts towards me, but when I go to respond to the act I don’t say “thank you God” in the way the American would normally say it. It’s richer than just the good old American “thank you.” In the Old Testament the richness flows over beyond the act to the one who did the act, and so God is praised for what He has done, He is not just thanked. This means that when we see thanksgiving in the New Testament we have to color it by this concept, not our American use of the word. The American use of the word “thank you” can’t be used to interpret the New Testament thank you. The New Testament thank you is simply a continuation of the Old Testament thank you, and the Old Testament thank you emphasizes not just the act but the doer of the act.

I think some of the best works on this were written by C. S. Lewis book in his book, Reflections on the Psalms. C. S. Lewis did much, and by the way, here’s an example of how much you can get out of the Psalms without knowing Hebrew. I doubt that C. S. Lewis ever studied Hebrew and yet you can read his book Reflections on the Psalms and see that C. S. Lewis got a wealth of material out of the Psalms. Let me just quote from this book; C. S. Lewis has an incisive way of writing certain things and I think here he really hits the nail on the head by discussing this introduction concept, “praise.”

“What do we mean when we say that a picture is admirable. We certainly don’t mean that it is admired, for bad work is admired by thousands and good work may be ignored. The sense in which a picture deserves or demands admiration is rather this: that admiration is the correct, adequate, or appropriate response to it; that, if paid, admiration will not be thrown away, and if we do not admire it, we shall be stupid, insensible, and great losers; we shall have missed something. In a similar way to the Old Testament saint God is admirable.” So there’s one of the ideas behind praise.

Another passage: “The miserable idea that God should in any sense need, or crave for, our worship like a vain woman wanting compliments, or a vain author presenting his new book to people who have never met or heard of him, is implicitly answered by the Word in Psalm 50:12.” Let’s turn there. C. S. Lewis is addressing that isn’t it vain of God to demand that His creatures praise Him. Look at this verse: “If I were hungry,” God says, “I would not tell you; for the world is Mine, and the fullness thereof.” So C. S. Lewis says Psalm 50:12 answers the objection, is God selfish to demand our praise? No, God doesn’t need our praise, as He says here, if He was hungry He wouldn’t tell us. And in his classical way C. S. Lewis continues his commentary on this verse. He says: “Even if such an absurd deity could be conceived, he would hardly come to us, the lowest of rational creatures, to gratify his appetite. I don’t want my dog to bark approval of my books.” I thought that was a very interesting illustration of how he applied Psalm 50:12.

And then he goes on to the third quotation I’d like to read from C. S. Lewis, and that is where I think he really gets the feeling for praise. Listen to this one: “All enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise, unless shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. Just as man spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it. For example, ‘isn’t she lovely?’ ‘Wasn’t it glorious?’ ‘Don’t you think that is magnificent?’ The psalmists, in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about.” Now that’s the sense of praise, they consider it a religious duty. In other words, praise is an enthusiastic response toward God’s character. Like you would be enthusiastic about anything else, what would you do? You couldn’t wait to tell someone else about it. So praise, in God’s Word and in the Psalms is an enthusiasm, a spiritual enthusiasm for the nature and character and being of God Himself.

C. S. Lewis continues, “I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise,” and get this, “the praise not merely expresses the enjoyment, but the praise completes the enjoyment. The delight is incomplete until it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author, for example, and not be able to tell somebody how good he is.” And I think all of you can get what C. S. Lewis is driving at here, that you feel a hidden frustration if all of a sudden you come across something that you’re very enthusiastic about and then you have no outlet to explain this to anybody, or when you try to you get a blank and you feel cutoff. That’s the same kind of feeling the psalmists have, they are enthusiastic and they want us to join in their praise. So that’s what Psalms is all about.

Another point along the line of praise; this kind of praise is absent from the psalms of the other nations. Egyptian praise exists, Babylonian praise exists, but it’s of a different kind. It differs in several respects. First, in the heathen nations praise was used as kind of apple polishing for God. In other words, the heathen in their prayers would kind of try to polish God’s apple to make Him do something, and so they’d praise Him to butter Him up to do something. That is not the nature of the Psalms. Check it out for yourself if you read the Psalms. If you have a chance to get in the bookstore and you see that book, The Ancient Near East by Pritchard, it sells for $2.95 or $3.00, it’s a paperback version of the $50.00 set, by all means pick that up, it’s a resource book that you can use in your Bible study. In there you’ll see some hymns and praise songs from the nation and if you get a chance get it, because it’s good to read those and then read the book of Psalms. All you have to do is read the two and you just see the difference. It’s just as clear and black and white.

The other thing in which the praise psalms of the nations differ from the praise psalms of Israel is that the praise psalms of Israel speak of a consistent plan of God that shows up in all sorts of specific acts. The other nations will give praise occasionally to a specific act but very, very rarely; almost all the psalms are talking about a specific answer to prayer. What do you think this testifies to? What does that show about the difference in world view between the nations around Israel and Israel itself. At least you can say that Israel believes that her God was answering prayer in the here and now, her God was active. The other gods were there but you just kind of sit there and praise, praise, praise and occasionally if something drops out of the hopper then you’re in luck. But in the Bible there’s an utterly different picture here.

Now let’s go on to the book of Psalms itself. Actually when we study the book of Psalms we’re studying five books. This is not too important to understand, except that some have argued that each of these five books correspond to the first five books of the Bible. I do not find this. Let me show you how the books start and end. Psalm 1 is a psalm that is written by itself, but Psalm 1 is also a psalm to the introduction to the first book.

The second book of Psalms begins with Psalm 42; some of your Bibles will have this marked. If you’ll notice, the ending of the previous Psalm, that is the marker for the end of the first book of Psalms. Do you see the last verse of Psalm 41, how it ends, “Blessed be the LORD God of Israel from everlasting, and to everlasting. Amen, and Amen.” That is a signal that that Psalm is ending and that book is ending.

And now the Psalms start with Psalm 42 and go to Psalm 72. And if you look at the end of Psalm 72 you’ll see a break; Psalm 72 is the last Psalm of the second book. So your first book goes from Psalm 1 to 41; the second book of Psalms goes from 42 to 72. And if you look at the end of Psalm 72, the last three verses, 18-20, do you see how it ends? “Blessed be the LORD God, the God of Israel, who only does wondrous things.” You see the absolutism of their faith? Their tremendous exclusivism, in other words, our God is the only God that works; that’s what this Psalm is saying. Our God, who only is the God that “does wondrous things, [19] And blessed be His glorious name forever; and let the whole earth be filled with His glory. Amen, and Amen. [20] The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended.” So there is the second book of the Psalms ended.

The third book of the Psalms starts with Psalm 73 and continues through Psalm 89. And again at the end of 89 you’ll see that signal that terminates that book. So the third book of Psalms goes from Psalm 73 to 89 and Psalm 89 ends with verse 52, “Blessed be the LORD forevermore. Amen, and Amen.” There’s the marker that ends the third book of Psalms.

The fourth book of Psalms starts with Psalm 90 and continues to Psalm 106. And in Psalm 106 you look at the last verse and you’ll see the same signal. The fourth book going from Psalm 90 to Psalm 106, verse 48, “Blessed be the LORD God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting; and let all the people say, Amen. Praise ye the Lord.” And that is the end of the fourth book.

And then the fifth book goes from Psalm 107 to Psalm 150. Now Psalm 150 is written as a close, both to the fifth book of Psalms and a close to the entire collection. So Psalm 150 is a culminating Psalm, the whole thing is the end, is the final call of praise. You can go snow somebody and say yeah, I was reading last night in third Psalms 51 such and such. You could logically break the book of Psalms up this way because they were a five collection.

Now we want to get to a little bit of a background of Psalms. Turn to 1 Chronicles 16, here’s the historical situation of the Psalms. This is a very important text. 1 Chronicles 16 teaches us the historical context of how the Psalms came to be, and here in 1 Chronicles 16 we have the role of David. In verse 4 it says that David “appointed certain of the Levites to minister before the ark of the LORD, and to record and to thank, and praise the LORD God of Israel.” Why do you think he had the Levites recording and then thanking and praising the Lord. They were historians, they were recording the works of God in history and when they would record the works of God in history then they would write music and celebrate the works of God in history. And then in verse 5 we read the chief of the Levites was Asaph, and when you read the book of Psalms you look at the Psalm headings and you see some of the Psalm headings talk about this man, “A Psalm of Asaph.” Now Asaph was the man that was the pioneer, actually, David was the one who authorized it but Asaph was the man who actually worked up the original, started off the psalms and collecting them. Notice it says, “Asaph, the chief,” and then it lists others, and then it says they had instruments, “psalteries and with harps; but Asaph made a sound with cymbals.” We’re not sure exactly what these musical instruments looked like, but they were definitely musical instruments.

Verse 6, “… the priests with trumpets continually before the Ark of the Covenant of God. [7] Then on that day David delivered first this psalm, to thank the LORD, into the hand of Asaph and his brethren.” So verse 7 tells us that David did write psalms and that when he finished composing the psalm he would turn it over to the choir, maybe the choir would compose the music for it and David would be the one that wrote the lyrics. But verse 7 gives you the method by which the Psalms were created. Now this is very important because most liberals today deny the Davidic authorship of the Psalms. As is usual with the liberal mentality, anybody but David could have written, simply because it says David wrote the Psalms. But it says [can’t understand Hebrew word] with a Lamed of authorship, and it means that this Psalm is by David. Even some conservative commentators to this day say that that’s just a title for the Psalm. But we believe that David literally wrote these. And we justify it by the fact that historically he did right here.

In fact look at what follows, look at verse 8 -36. What you’re looking at in verse 8-36, particularly if you have a recent translation, should be in poetic form because that is a Psalm. You’re looking at a Psalm, one of the psalms that David turned over to Asaph after he finished writing it.

Verse 8, “Give thanks unto the LORD, call upon His name, make known His deeds among the people. [9] Sing unto Him, sing psalms unto Him, talk ye of all His wondrous works. [10] “Glory ye in His holy name; let the heart of them rejoice who seek the LORD.” [11, “Seek the LORD and His strength, seek His face continually. [12] Remember His marvelous works that He has done, His wonders, and the judgment of His mouth; [13] O ye seed of Israel, His servant, ye children of Jacob, His chosen ones. [14] He is the LORD our God; His judgments are in all the earth. [15] Be ye mindful always of His covenant; the word which He commanded to a thousand generation, [16] Even of the covenant which He made with Abraham, and of His oath unto Isaac. [17] And hath confirmed the same to Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant, [18] Saying, Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance. [19] When ye were but a few, even a few, and sojourners in it. [20] And when they went from nation to nation, and from one kingdom to another people, [21] He suffered no man to do them wrong; yea, He reproved kings for their sake. [22] Saying, Touch not Mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm. [23] Sing unto the LORD, all the earth; show forth from day to day His salvation. [24] Declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous works among all peoples. [25] For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; He also is to be feared above all gods. [26] For all the gods of the people are idols; but the LORD made the heavens. [27] Glory and honor are in His presence; strength and gladness are in His place.

[28] Give unto the LORD, ye kindreds of the people, give unto the LORD glory and strength. [29] Give unto the LORD the glory due unto His name; bring an offering, and come before Him; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness. [30] Fear before Him, all the earth; the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved. [31] Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; and let men say among the nations, The LORD reigneth. [32] Let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof; let the fields rejoice, and all that is therein. [33] Then shall the trees of the woods sing out at the presence of the LORD, because He comes to judge the earth. [34] Oh, give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good; for His mercy endureth forever. [35] And say ye, Save us, O God of our salvation, and gather us together, and deliver us from the nations, that we may give thanks to Thy holy name, and glory in Thy praise.”]

And then notice how it ends in verse 36, “Blessed be the LORD God of Israel forever and ever. And all the people said, Amen, and praised the LORD.” That last phrase teaches us about some of the endings in the Psalms. And it teaches us that though in the Psalms we read, “Blessed the LORD God forever and ever, Amen, and Amen,” we read those two phrases together like one person said them. Verse 36 clues us in that actually in the life of the nation these Psalms would be split up between groups of people and the Levites would recite the psalm and the people would respond. So to have a modern analogy, this would be different [tape turns, some missing]

…in the building committee of our church, one thing that I’ve made clear to the men is that if we ever do had a kind of choir or a group that would lead composed of trained people, they should not be up here singing at the people because what does that say? That says the choir is putting a performance on for the people. But if you look here at what is happening, the choir is there all right, but what is the choir doing? The choir is helping the people worship, and so you have an interaction between the choir and the congregation. So the interaction would be the choir and the congregation. And so the interaction would be the choir would sing maybe part of a song and the people would be expected to join in and sing the rest of the song; then maybe the choir would sing a verse and the people would sing a verse; then the people would sin. So use your imagination as we read the Psalms, think if we were to put this into a musical form today and you see the definite parts, there are many definite parts in the psalms, who would you assign the role of taking this section, the choir or the congregation? Who would you assign the role of, say, the introduction. Visualize this, stimulate your creativity, see what can be done with the book of Psalms. Some of you have musical ability, I really urge you to think through this, there’s a whole world of stuff here that has never even been tapped, as far as I know, in Christian circles. But the Psalms are just begging for someone to do this, to work with the music and to develop it, and this would be true congregational worship.

In verse 37, “So he left there, before the ark of the covenant of the LORD, Asaph and his brethren, to minister before the ark continually, as every day’s work required.” They sang the hymns daily. It wasn’t just on Saturday, on the Sabbath when they worshiped, it was daily that these psalms were sung. Do you see now why Paul can say in the New Testament, “Give thanks always for all things,” that wasn’t a new idea with Paul, Paul knew what was going on at the ark and he just simply borrowed the Old Testament picture, that’s all.

Now the types of psalms. I’m going to introduce one type tonight, but let me introduce the concept of psalm types. Here is a critical tool that you can use in your own Bible study. It will help you to frame your questions as you come to the text of God’s Word. Now although it’s somewhat artificial, whenever you study God’s Word you’re basically doing three things. First you’re simply looking, but you’ve got to know what to look for. So the second thing you’re doing is questioning. You’re questioning the text, what does this mean, what does this mean, why is this verse here and not down here; why are these words used and not those words. Put these questions to the test so that you’ll begin to ask yourself why is it written this way. And then finally we interpret. Now some books that deal with independent Bible study make these sound like they’re all three independent steps. Frankly, they’re not; they’re all mishmashed together actually, in the course of Bible study. But the three steps are there and learn to observe.

Now what I’m giving you is a tool to help you in the first two steps, well, to help you in all three of them, because if you can recognize, and when you come to Psalms, suppose you just want something to do someday and you sit down with the Word of God, you open to a Psalm, the first thing you should do as you look into that Psalm is ask yourself, what type of Psalm is this, because if you can catalogue it and categorize it immediately, you’ll know certain things about that Psalm, and immediately you’ll being to know, ah, now I know what to look for in this kind of a Psalm. Let’s see, is this here, is this here, is this here, or this here. Let me warn you these types are not air tight, there’s an unlimited variety here but these will help you as a guide to get started.

The Psalms are characterized in several ways. Let me give you four ways, four main breakdowns of classification. Psalms are generally classified as to whether they are individual or national. So the first breakdown is whether it’s an individual that’s crying to God for help or whether it is the entire chorus of priests that are coming to God because of the disaster of the nation. So learn to watch when you come to a Psalm, is this talking about an individual having a problem or is this talking about the whole nation having a problem. Ask yourself that question.

The second way of categorizing it is whether the Psalm emphasizes lament or whether it emphasizes praise. All Psalms have these two elements; we’re talking about a see-saw, in other words, one element will tend to over-balance the other one. So when you open a Psalm, ask yourself, is the emphasis on the lament; the lament is a description of the problem, the psalmist’s problem or the nation’s problem. So this would be the problem section. And some Psalms will dwell a long, long time on the problem, going into all the ramifications of the problem. Other Psalms pass over the problem very quickly and move to praise. So learn to watch. Now these are obviously different combinations; you can have an individual lament Psalm or you can have an individual praise song; you can have a national lament Psalm or you can have national praise song. So here immediately you’ve got four categories possible.

Now there is another breakdown that you can have, and that is by subject content. You can have what we call Messianic Psalms; can a Messianic Psalm be an individual praise Psalm? Yes, some of these categories overlap. You can have an individual lament but in the course of the individual lament, like Psalm 22, David pictures himself by the power of the Holy Spirit, as Messiah will be, so Psalm 22 is an individual lament but it’s also a Messianic Psalm. So ask yourself, does the Psalm emphasize the person of Jesus Christ; is it a fore view of Him.

Another type of Psalm is a royal Psalm, such as Psalm 2; Psalm 2 would be a royal Psalm because it emphasizes the royalty, or the king. It emphasizes what the king does, and you would guess that if David was the author of many of the Psalms, many of the Psalms would be royal and you’d be right.

Other Psalms are what we call pilgrim Psalms, and that is about travelers. Psalm 121 is a pilgrim Psalm, it’s about a person going on a trip and the precautions that you have ask on a trip. (And that’s not a drug trip, this is a physical trip.)

Finally we have two kinds of praise Psalms; these could be individual praise or national praise but there are two kinds of praise. I will use these two words as I develop this and you want to know my definitions. Here they are: one is descriptive praise, the other is declarative praise. What is the difference? Descriptive praise is describing God’s character because the memory of the event hasn’t faded but the specific event has receded in the view of the psalmist so that now what is left is the character of God. In other words, God’s character gets magnified and magnified and magnified so that the original event that led to His praise gets squashed out of sight. So in descriptive praise all the focus is on God’s character with very, very little on the specific event. In declarative praise it’s the other way around; in declarative praise the emphasis is on God’s character in the event. So descriptive praise describes God’s character for who and what He is but in declarative praise I’m praising God because of what He did just now.

That pretty well covers the Psalm types. Now Psalm growth; this is problematical. We are not going to engage in the speculations of a lot of liberal Bible scholars in this point, we don’t have to. We have the Psalms and they’ve obviously been collected; as to the method we really don’t know, except we know that probably the Psalms arose as individual Psalms. For example, in your Bible there are Psalms that are not in the book of Psalms. And I’ll just give you these as references, you can look them up and read them later. Here are three chapters in your Bible where you have a Psalm that was never collected. For example, Exodus 15; Exodus 15 is a Psalm, but it was never collected into the book of Psalms. The Psalm we read in 1 Chronicles 16, with the exception of some modifications, has been left out of the book of Psalms. Deuteronomy 32 is a Psalm which was never collected in the book of Psalms. Judges 5 is a Psalm of Deborah and that was a Psalm and that was never collected into the book of Psalms. So just because you have the book of Psalms does not mean you have all the Psalms of the Bible; there are Psalms all through the Bible. Someone even argued that Ephesians 1 is an early Psalm of the Christian church; if it is, just think of the doctrine they had in their songs. But here you have an example of Psalms that were in the text but never collected.

Now let me give you that’s in the text, apparently in the book of Psalms and it’s the same one, we have it twice in the Bible. The first time it occurs it’s 2 Samuel 22; the second time it occurs is Psalm 18, it’s the same Psalm. In other words, it was sung in history, 2 Samuel 22 reports it but that was sung then, and then somebody saw fit to put it into the book of Psalms, so it comes over into the book of Psalms as Psalm 18.

So much for how the Psalms arose; one final note on how to interpret the Psalms. The older school of conservatives believed that you had to recreate the historical situation behind every Psalm before you could interpret it. For example, Ironside in his commentaries will do this. And other very godly men would do this. Today this is not believed necessary for the simple reason the Holy Spirit doesn’t do it. The Holy Spirit doesn’t give us a definite clue as to the historical background of some of the Psalms so it’s just mere guesswork, and frankly it’s a waste of time; it’s not necessary to know the historical situation behind each and every Psalm to get the blessing out of the Psalm. If it was, the Holy Spirit would have given explicit the direction.

A second point: The Psalms superscriptions are part of the inspired text, they are not some heading put in by a later editor. Now I don’t mean the words “Psalm 15” and “Psalm 16,” but for example, Psalm 3, and you should in your translation have a note the beginning of Psalm 3 you should have the statement: “A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom, his son.” Now in the Hebrew text, in my Hebrew Bible in the office, that is verse 1; that is verse 1! Now your English translations don’t begin verse 1 until the next sentence; that’s wrong. In the Hebrew Masoretic text the first verse is the superscription. These superscriptions are very important and are to be considered as inspired.

Now one further word on the notes of interpretation, and that is the matter of translation of the Psalms. A while ago I did a spot check on the book of Psalms and I covered 18 critical points in the book of Psalms where it’s very difficult to get translation. Out of these 18 areas I derived the following score for the various translations. The ideal score would be 18 out of 18. How do I know I’m correct? Because in the Hebrew commentaries and the grammarians, and the way they treat it is well known. Now why the translations don’t do this, I don’t know. But the idea score would be 18 out of 18. The next highest translation, at the time I did not have the New ASV, but we have the old ASV and that was the highest rated; that made 16 out of 18 points, that indicates the ASV has a very high score in translation for accuracy. The next highest scoring in translation was the RSV, that got 15 out of 18. The next highest scoring translation that I tested was the Amplified, and that was 11 out of 18, not so good. Finally was the King James, that got 8 out of 18. The reason for this is that when the King James was translated, this is not textual problems, this is translation problems, the King James translation got a hang-up, and here’s the hang-up. I’ll put the LXX, that’s the Roman numeral 70; this was a Greek translation made about 100 BC and that got 5 out of 18.

Now look at this, this was a Greek translation made by Jews and it shows you they did not know how to translate Hebrew, that actually today, the modern scholar, can better translate the Hebrew text than the Jews in Christ’s time. This seems unbelievable. But it shows you something; the Psalms were not a late book like the liberals argue, for if it had been a recent book the Hebrew would have been close enough to the vernacular of the Jew so he could understand it. But the vernacular of the Psalms is so old that they had tremendous difficulty translating it into the Greek, and this argues for a very early date for the Psalms.

Now here’s what happened in the translation, a footnote for those of you who are interested in what happens with translations. The King James translators inherited a translation tradition from the Septuagint, not the text, we’re not talking about the text, we’re talking about ways of translating the text. The King James translators borrowed a tradition of translating the Hebrew a certain way and they got their ideas from the Septuagint. And it hasn’t been until the 20^th century when the translators have broken away from the Septuagintal tradition of translating the Psalms so we get a more accurate translation. Now I’m sad to report that on the lowest end, not even scoring, was the Living Psalms. This was so bad in the book of Psalms and as Dr. Waltke reviewed it in Bibliotheca Sacra January/March 1968 he said: “The cavalier manner in which this paraphrase handles the original text,” this one of his comments, “it no longer is a paraphrase but a rewriting of the Psalms to suit one’s own fancy. This reviewer cannot recommend it as a Biblical text, a work which contains bold departures from the original.” So here we have to say that although the Living Bible is nice to read as far as the narrative portions, when you get into the poetry the mud hits the fan and you’re now reading Ken Taylor’s psalms but you’re not reading the original text of the Psalms. So beware of Living Psalms; it is not reliable in this book. The best reliable translation is the New ASV or the old ASV, that’s probably the nearest thing you can get to one that’s reliable.

Now I want to introduce a particular type of Psalm, and I want to give you a little assignment to think about for next week. I want you to read Psalm 6 and I want you to locate each of these five sections in Psalm 6. Try to tie this into your devotional so it won’t be an extra activity for you to do. Try to work this in to your normal Bible reading. Read Psalm 6 and now I’m going to give you five categories to look for and see if you can find, within Psalm 6 where these are; they’re all there, you find them. Here’s what I want you to look for: Psalm 6, as well as the whole category of Psalms which we’ll be studying are called individual lament Psalms. And there is five parts to an individual lament and I’m going to teach you these five parts tonight, and then for next week you read Psalm 6 and see if you can pick out these five parts. I’ll give you some samples of what they look like.

First, the first part of an individual lament Psalm is an address; this address is to God and it’s an introductory cry for help. Distinguish this from the later petition. It is not a final petition; the main petition will generally be made later in the Psalm, not always but generally. This is an introductory remark, it’s an address to God. Put another way, it’s the faith technique operating in the middle of a crisis in the personal life of a Psalmist. The Psalmist states it as an individual and personal crisis, and he responds to God. And so the address is a call to God. Let me give you two examples of this, so you can see what one of these things look like.

Psalm 102:1-2, notice how it begins; by the way, notice the extensive superscription you have in this Psalm [“A Prayer of the Afflicted, when he is faint, and pours out his complaint before the Lord”]; it tells you a whole bunch about this Psalm. “Hear my prayer, O LORD! And let my cry for help come to Thee. [2] Hide not Thy face from me in the day when I’m in trouble,” now verse 2, for reasons which I’ll go into later, appears to go into a main petition, but the thing I want you to look for, just look at verse 1, it’s a quick statement, “Hear my prayer, O LORD! And let my cry for help come to Thee.” That is what we mean by an address.

For a better illustration turn to Psalm 142:1-2, if you want to hold the place, I’m going to flip between Psalm 142 and Psalm 102 and I’ll go through these Psalms and show you what the five things look like so then on your own you can look for them in Psalm 6 and we’ll begin next by seeing where you think they are located in Psalm 6. Psalm 142:1-2, “I cried unto the LORD with my voice; with my voice unto the LORD did I make my supplication; [2] I poured out my complaint before Him, I showed before Him my trouble.” And then he goes on, “When” and he described the situation; see, there’s a break. Those first two verses are the address. Now obviously to help you in this where is the best place to look for the address? The first verse.

Now the second part of an individual lament Psalm is the lament; this is a description of the problem. And usually you can spot it because it has the first person, the second person, and the third person involved. For example, it will say “I have” suffered this, “I have” suffered that, there’s your first person, and then there will be a second person, “Oh God, You have allowed this to happen,” “Oh God, Thou must come to my help.” So there’s your second person, and then there’ll be the third person, “mine enemies have done this to me,” “my enemies have overwhelmed me.” So you look for first, second and third person parts to the lament; it will be a description of the situation. Look at Psalm 142:3-4, there is the lament, “When my spirit” that’s the first person, “was overwhelmed within me, then Thou knowest my path,” second person, “in the way wherein I walk they,” third person, “have privately laid a snare for me. [4] I looked on my right hand, and behold, there was no man that would know me; refuge failed me, no man cared for my soul.” So verses 3-4 are the lament of Psalm 142. That is the problem, that’s the crisis the man is facing in his personal life.

If you turn to Psalm 102 you’ll see the lament section stems from verses 3-11, see in verse 3, “For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned like an heart. [4] My heart is smitten, and withered like grass, so that I forget to eat my bread,” see, he’s describing the psychosomatic problem, this crisis was so great it was affecting him psychologically and physically. Verse 6 he describes himself, “I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert. [7] I watch, and am like a sparrow alone upon the housetop.” Now notice verse 8, “Mine enemies reproach me all the day,” see it come in there, “Mine enemies reproach me all the day… [9] For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping, [10] Because of thine indignation and thy anger,” there’s the second person. So you have the first, second and third person. Verse 11, “My days are like a shadow that declines, and I am withered like grass.” End, because verse 12 begins with “But thou,” and you get a break. So the lament is the description of the problem.

Now I’m going to skip the third one and go to the fourth section. The fourth section is the petition, this is where the Psalmist phrases his prayer request to do something about the lament. The lament is a description of the problem and now he’s phrasing his request. Study these as you go through these verses; these will teach you how to pray. Look, for example, at Psalm 102:24. Now the petition is scattered in Psalm 102. Verse 2 could be considered part of the petition, and verse 24 could be considered part of the petition. For example, verse 24, “I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days;” see, he’s worried about discipline of the sin unto death; he says O my God, don’t end my life now, let me live, and so he’s concerned with the problem of God actually physically removing him from life.

But in Psalm 142 the petition is very well defined, verses 5-6, “I cried unto thee, O LORD,” see, he’s describing his petition, “I cried unto Thee, O LORD, I said, Thou art my refuge, Thou art my portion in the land of the living, [6] Attend unto my cry, for I am brought very low; deliver me from my persecutors, for they are stronger than I. [7] Bring my soul out of prison,” okay, that’s the end, it actually ends in the middle of a verse. So there’s your petition; it’s what he says to God.

Now finally the praise section, the fifth section, this will be one of two kinds. If the petition has not yet been answered you’ll find a vow to praise God; if the petition has already been answered, you’ll find a declarative praise, God is great because He has done this. The neatest kind of Psalms to read is when you get the declarative praise because you’re reading along and everything is melancholy, you get the lament and everything is bad, you get the petition and it’s still melancholy, and then suddenly bank, you get the declarative praise and it’s all over. And now he’s sitting there, praising and relaxed; there’s a complete and sudden shift right in the middle of the verse; it’s so very, very sudden. It doesn’t require much creativity to think of how the music would have been scored to indicate this tremendous shift. Psalm 22 has this shift. Psalm 22 starts out, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me,” it’s all melancholy, until suddenly, Thank you God for answering my prayer, I triumph over them, so obviously somewhere in there God answered the prayer. We still to this day do not know how these men knew God answered their prayer so quickly. We have one hint given in 1 Samuel 17 when Eli comes to Hannah; Hannah is making her prayer before the priest and as she prays for a son the priest comes up and says, Oh daughter of Israel, God has heard your prayer, and Hannah immediately goes away praising. Now that’s because the priest, under that economy, knew that God had answered there was a direct revelation type thing there.

So the praise section will be one of these two kinds, Psalm 142:7, notice what he says, “Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise Thy name.” See what he’s looking forward to; “for the righteous shall compass me about, for Thou shalt deal bountifully with me.” There’s the praise section. I want you to notice that the Psalms will balance your Christian life so you won’t just think of getting out of a jam. The Psalmists aren’t interested in just getting out of a jam; the Psalmists are interested in getting out of a jam in order that God’s character might be praised. So always notice there’s a praise section.

Finally, what we call the trust section. I’ve left this till last because the trust section often is split up and found in numerous places. The order pretty much follows: address, lament, petition and praise, but this trust section can occur any place. So your best clue to locate the trust section is look for the word “But thou,” but usually it’s a strong “but,” you’ll feel it in the text as you read it, the change, the shift in mood. All my enemies have come and taken me, but Thou O Lord are my refuge. There’s the trust section.

For example, in Psalm 142 look at verse 5, there it is: “I cried to Thee, O LORD,” see, it’s in the middle of the petition, and right in the middle of the petition he says, “Thou art my refuge, My portion in the land of the living.” Do you see air of confidence he has there? So what do we say about the trust section? It can occur any place in the Psalm; it can occur in the petition, it can occur in the lament, it can occur in between them. Sometimes the trust section becomes so very, very big that half the Psalm is a trust section, and that’s magnificent because that’s teaching the tremendous confidence these people had in God.

Let me show you the trust section in Psalm 102, verse 12, here’s a large trust section. And this teaches you also what to look for to spot it, coming up in the text. See what he’s done, he talks about his lament, all of verse 8, look at verse 9, verse 10, verse 11, do you see the thrust of those verses, it’s all lament, my problem, my crisis, here’s what I’m doing. By the way, do you notice the Psalmists were realistic. This is not some sort of the power of positive thinking, oh, I don’t have a problem Lord; no, that’s not how they answered the thing, I’ve got a problem Lord, here it is, all the gory details. And it’s all spelled out in prayer. So as an honesty before God, yea, God, I’m in a mess, here are these putrid little pieces of my mess, and they go through it in the Psalm. But immediately notice what happens here; he goes through verse 11, “My days are like a shadow,” he’s almost talking about his physical death, and then suddenly you catch the change in mood. Look at what happens in verse 12, “But thou, O LORD, shall endure forever,” I may fade out like the grass, but you’re going to endure forever, “and Thy remembrance unto all generations, [13] Thou shall arise, and have mercy upon Zion; for the time to favor her, yea, the set time, is come. [14] For Thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favor the dust thereof. [15] So the heathen shall fear the name of the LORD, and all the kings of the earth Thy glory. [16] When the LORD shall build up Zion….” Do you see air of confidence. That is the trust section of Psalm 102, it goes from verse 2 to… [tape ends abruptly].