Psalms Lesson 13
Introduction to Praise Psalms
Tonight we’ll start a new section of the Psalms and before we do that I’d like to continue with the lessons that we’ve learned from the individual lament Psalms. Remember the individual lament Psalms, those we’ve covered are Psalm 6, Psalm 12, Psalm 13, Psalm 22, Psalm 26 and Psalm 28. And I’ve asked you to see what you can do with Psalm 142 by way out outlining and so forth.
We said in conclusion that there were at least two truths that we can see recur through that category of Psalms. The first truth was that God reacts to us in a personal way, a highly personal way. And we saw how this worked out, and that God was angry and the palmist were worried about God, not because He was sort of a super bomb that explodes, but rather that He was so personal that He was mad at them in particular. The second thing that was noticed was the tremendous grasp that the psalmist had on God in prayer, that they demanded things of God in the sense that if God did not answer their particular prayer request then God was defeating His own program. We have facetiously referred to that as “Jew-ing” God out of something, but that’s the only way I know of getting across that attitude, that they actually bargained with God. I think this shows that the kind of prayers that are made in the Psalms were prayers about which much thought had been given. They just didn’t spontaneously pray, they had thought about them very much. And then after having thought about it for quite some time, then they came and they prayed.
Has anyone seen any other truths out of these individual lament psalms that you’d like to mention. We mentioned two, I have two more categories of truth that I think you can spot in the individual lament Psalms. Is there anything else that has struck you as you’ve gone through these? Is there anything that you noticed as we went through those Psalms that sort of impressed you or struck you, any observations now that we are through that category. Not that those are the only individual lament Psalms, it’s just they’re the only ones we’ve dealt with.
One truth that I think we ought to notice about them is the tremendous stress on God’s righteousness and His justice. Over and over and over again we see this theme. Turn to Psalm 6:8, “Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity; for the LORD has head the voice of my weeping.” See the black and the white, the contrast? You have the emphasis on God’s righteousness. Psalm 12:7, “Thou shalt keep them,” the believers, “O LORD, Thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever.” And there is God preserving His righteousness and damning injustice. Psalm 26, the whole first 8 verses of that Psalm dealt with this problem of righteousness. “Judge me, O LORD; for I have walked in mine integrity. I have trusted also in the LORD…. Verse 4, “I have not sat with vain persons, neither will I go in with dissemblers. [5] I have hated the congregation of evildoers….” Verse 7, “That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all Thy wondrous works,” do you see the righteous standards, the righteousness, the black and the white is there. Psalm 28:3-5 the same thing, “Draw me not away with the wicked, and with the workers of iniquity, who speak peace to their neighbors, but mischief is in their hearts. [4] Give them according to their deeds,” in other words, there’s a recurrent theme, a demand for pulling down God’s judgment upon injustice and for an exultation of the righteousness.
That format is important for you when you get in prophecy. If you don’t understand this you’re going to have trouble interpreting passages in the New Testament. For example, you get some believers and they hit Matthew 24 and they think it’s the rapture because it says one shall be taken and one shall be left. And that has nothing to do with the rapture, that’s given an Old Testament and those who are left are always the righteous and those who are taken are always the wicked, so it can’t be the rapture mentioned in Matthew 24. Matthew 24 just simply flows along with the rest of the Old Testament picture in that judgment always comes down upon the wicked and it’s always the wicked that are removed.
There’s another truth that comes along with that and that is there is this petition to bring judgment down upon evildoers. On one side, the one truth I’m saying here is that there’s an emphasis on His righteousness, and the second thing is there’s an emphasis on pulling down His judgment onto evil. And it’s not just a pulling down judgment upon any evil but it’s pulling down judgment upon the evil that persecutes righteousness. It’s always an evil that’s asked for, in other words. But in the series of Psalms that I’ve shown you I didn’t show you one Psalm that we did. What one is missing? Psalm 22 was missing.
Now it’s interesting that of these four truths that we have seen in these individual lament Psalms, the one God reacts in a personal way, two, the idea of Jew-ing God in prayer, the third, the tremendous stress on His righteousness, the fourth, the pulling down of judgment upon evil, of these four truths isn’t it interesting to notice that the first two are featured in all the individual lament Psalms; the second two are featured not in Psalm 22. Why do you suppose that that Psalm seems to differ in its theology from the rest of the individual lament Psalms, in that all the rest of them are speaking of wrath and damnation and judgment upon evil, and Psalm 22 doesn’t. What did we say is unique about Psalm 22? What did we say Psalm 22 did? What did we say Psalm 22 was about? Psalm 22 pictures the work of Christ on the cross; what’s happening while Christ is bearing the sins of the world? You’re getting judgment right there; so Psalm 22 doesn’t have a petition for judgment. The One who experiences Psalm 22 is being judged for the sins of the world so he’s not praying for more judgment upon the world. So this again is an independent test.
I’m throwing this out to you because I’m afraid that some of you still think that interpreting Scripture is all subjective, you just read in there what you want to read in there. That’s not true; look at this. Psalm 6, Psalm 12, Psalm 13, Psalm 22, Psalm 26, Psalm 28, all of these speak of judgment, now that’s an objective test that you can look at the Bible, whether you believe the Bible or don’t believe the Bible, whether you agree with me or don’t agree with me, that is an objective test and it turns out when you study Psalm 22, another thing that’s very objective about it, it speaks of Christ getting His feet and His hands pierced with nails. And Psalm 22 speaks of them casting lots upon His vesture. So Psalm 22 is a complete exposition of the cross of Christ, one thousand years before it ever occurred. So in this situation, where Christ bears our sins on the cross, the theology of the Psalm has been transformed. You see what I mean? There are objective controls in Bible interpretation; you just don’t go in the Bible and read into it what you want to read in there. And if you are careful there are certain texts that will give you the right answer every single time.
All right, those are the truths that I was going to discuss; is there anything else anybody would like to throw into the discussion about the individual lament Psalms before we move to the next category of Psalm tonight. Any questions; any impressions that you received from that series. I think one thing that I derived from it was an awareness again of the fact that the psalmist life, in spite of all the individual catastrophes that might come into his life, the psalmist always had an orderly framework in which to operate. No matter how great the catastrophe was in his personal life it never was great enough to dislodge that framework. He always could come to God and argue rationally with God, even in the most excruciating situations in life the psalmist could turn around and carry on a rational conversation with God, a well-ordered conversation with God. That is something that is a mark of spiritual maturity, to be able to think rationally under pressure and not only think rationally under pressure, but do it not as a form of self-hypnosis but do it really knowing that there’s a God there that’s listening at the other end, to a rational conversation, and that God will respond to you rationally.
Tonight I’d like to move to the second category of Psalms. This is the second great category of Psalms and what we have to say will be very, very important for many, many Psalms to come. So tonight I’m going to give you the complete outline of the declarative praise category of Psalms. We are studying the different categories of Psalms; we’ve covered what is known as the individual lament Psalms. Now the individual lament deals with, obviously, an individual and a lament emphasizes a problem that individual has. That’s the theme of the individual lament Psalms.
Now our next category is going to be called an individual declarative praise Psalm. That’s the second category; again it deals with an individual, not the nation. It deals with praise, a form of praise but it deals with what we call declarative praise and I want to once again define the difference between declarative praise and descriptive praise. Declarative praise is when I tell specifically what God has done for me; that’s declarative praise. When I use descriptive praise I am generalizing about God’s character. Let me give you an illustration: declarative praise; I was sick and God healed me. That’s declarative praise. Descriptive praise is: God heals the sick. What has happened between those two statements? I have gone from the specific historic instance to a general historic truth. Declarative praise deals with specific events; descriptive praise deals with a generalization, a theological generalization about God based on a series of events.
Let’s see if we can connect these two Psalms together. You remember that in the individual lament, what was one of the five categories of an individual lament Psalm? What was one of the five categories that you think might touch on this Psalm? Praise. Remember one of the five parts of an individual lament Psalm was a praise section. Now those praise sections are the seed forms of this next category. If you visualize this in your mind, we’ve dealt with the five parts of the individual lament Psalm. It has an address, it has a lament, it has a petition, it has praise, and somewhere it has a trust section. Now that praise subsection of an individual lament Psalm is a little baby declarative praise Psalm, and what we’re studying now is an expansion of that section of the individual lament Psalm where it is expanded and become a Psalm in itself. This is important to understand because you’re going to see how the Old Testament believers lived their lives and out of this we’ll get a tremendous insight that you don’t normally get just reading the Old Testament. But you’re going to see something that’s operating in their lives; you’ve already seen part of it in the individual lament Psalm, the idea that they praised for historic revelation, etc. But here, this little section has developed and bloomed and mushroomed so that it, just by itself, becomes a declarative praise Psalm.
Now let’s look at some of those sections again in review. Psalm 6, what is the praise section of Psalm 6. This is an individual lament Psalm and in it was a praise section. Does anybody remember what the praise section was. Verses 8-10, let’s look at that. I want you to get used to looking at these baby sections and then we’re going to look at the big Psalms that come out of them. “Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity; for the LORD has heard,” past tense, “the voice of my weeping. [9] The LORD has heard my supplication; the LORD receives my prayer. [10] All my enemies will be startled and sore vexed; and they will return and be suddenly ashamed.”
Psalm 12, remember what the praise section in Psalm 12 was? [someone says something] That wouldn’t be a praise section because that’s more dealing with the lament, that’s the problem that he has. See, verses 6-7 are after the problem has been solved, then he says, “The words of the LORD are pure words, silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.” Now from the definitions I just gave you of the difference between declarative praise and descriptive praise, which one do you think is starting to predominate in Psalm 12? Descriptive, it’s generalization, verses 6 and 7, that is descriptive praise, it is generalized, it isn’t nailed to one concrete incident. It’s a general statement about God’s character.
Psalm 13, what was the praise section in Psalm 13? Verses 5-6, “But I have trusted” past tense “in Thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in Thy salvation. [6] I will sing unto the LORD, because He” future perfect tense, “shall have dealt bountifully with me.”
Where was the praise section in Psalm 22; this is a praise that Jesus Christ Himself gives. Remember how abruptly the mood of the Psalm shifts; you go into verse 22, you see up until verse 22 everything is lament, O Lord, help me, help me, help me, help me, and then suddenly in verse 22 the whole mood shifts. “I will declare Thy name unto my brethren; in the midst of the congregation will I praise Thee. [23] Ye who fear the LORD, praise Him,” and so on, it goes on, verse 24, “For he has not despised,” past tense.
Psalm 26, what was the praise section there? Verse 12, by the way, a suggestion on this, in this kind of thing my suggestion is, at least this is the way I would do it, is to have sections in your notebook devoted to these sections; don’t try to keep notes by order of the books of the Bible or you get confused. The best thing to do is just take sections of the notebook with series that we happen to be in and then when the series is over file it… not in the ash can but in some place where you can trot it out again and regurgitate and digest them again. But try to keep it by section, by book sections. In Psalm 26:12, “My foot stands in an even place; in the congregations will I bless the LORD.”
The praise section in the Psalm 28, where was the praise section here? Verses 6-8, “Blessed be the LORD, because He has heard the voice of my supplications. [7] The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted” past tense “in Him, and I was helped.” past tense “Therefore, my heart greatly rejoices, and with my song will I Praise Him. [8] The LORD is their strength, and He is the saving strength of His anointed.” By the way, do you see the two kinds of praise in verses 6-8 there? What is verse 6-7, declarative or descriptive? Declarative. What is the praise of verse 8? Descriptive. Do you see the difference. I’m taking you through this because I want you to get the feel for what we’re talking about in these categories.
Now we come to the individual declarative praise Psalm. Briefly stated, declarative praise, if you want a definition, is a thankful report of God’s words and works in history in response to personal petition. That pulls together all the elements that you pick up in declarative praise. It is a thankful report, it is not just a historical report, you know, in 1492 Columbus sailed, it’s not that kind of a detachment. It is a thankful report because He did it to me. So it’s a thankful report of what? Of God’s words and works. So essentially it’s a report of revelation. It’s a thankful report of God’s words and works in history, not some mystical thing. He didn’t crawl in the dark clouds and contemplate his navel all night. It was an objective event, observable in space/time history.
God’s words and works in history and the final thing, very important, in response to personal petition. The praise isn’t just for any deliverance, or unsolicited deliverance, the praise is because the Psalmist asked for it and received it. Now take this back, before we go any further to something. This is a tremendous lesson in spiritual life here. Remember the phrase that James says, “You have not because you ask not,” now has it ever occurred to you and it should have if you’ve done any thinking at all, why is it that God seems to hold back until we ask Him for something, when you’d think He’d just automatically go ahead and give it to us.
Why is it that He waits until we ask for it? Do you have some ideas of why God operates this way, which He does and these Psalms clearly show it, that God withholds His blessing until the believer turns and personally requests it. [someone says something] All right, what is the rationale for all works that God does in history? His glory, and what does that mean? He is going to reveal something about Himself. All right, if God waits to withhold blessing until we ask Him, that makes the revelation of His personal character that much clearer, doesn’t it. In other words, it could be argued that He’s just kind of… He’s got an IBM program, you know, clank, clank, clank, clank and computer lights flash on and off and bang, out comes the blessing. But by withholding the blessing until believers personally ask Him for it, or even withholding His deliverance at times until believers personally ask Him for it; when the answer finally comes then we know there is a personal God, He’s responding to me in a personal way. It’s not just an IBM card.
Now here are the parts to an individual declarative praise Psalm. Later on we’ll deal with national praise Psalms and that’s when the nation goes to prayer. But an individual declarative praise Psalm, has three main parts. The first part is a proclamation. Remember the individual lament Psalms start off with an address. Now a proclamation is very simple to find, it simply is a voluntative first person, in other words, “I will praise…” dot dot dot then usually some extra things are said. Let me give you examples of this. Look at Psalm 18:1, and keep in mind, for contrast purposes, what you used to get. Remember how we used to get, look at 18:1, “I will love Thee, O LORD, my strength.” Now compare that with, say Psalm 13, [“How long will Thou forget me, O LORD/ Forever? Holy Spirit long will Thou hide Thy face from me?”]do you see the difference in mood? Psalm 18, “I will love Thee, O LORD, my strength,” but the other Psalm didn’t start that way, the other Psalm started out with urgency; that’s not so this Psalm.
Turn to Psalm 30:1, another declarative praise Psalm, notice how it begins, it doesn’t begin with the address that we picked up with the individual lament Psalm category. “I will extol Thee, O LORD; for Thou hast lifted me up,” and so on. Psalm 34:1, another declarative praise Psalm, individual category, “I will bless the LORD at all times’ His praise shall continually be in my mouth.” Those are three illustrations of a proclamation. It is a proclamation by the individual that he is going to bear praise. That’s the first part, very simple, very short.
The second part to an individual declarative Psalm and that is an introductory summary. This is also very simple, it consists of basically one truth; an individual summary varies from one sentence to maybe two verses. And it means God intervened and saved. That basically is the content of the introductory summary. I’ll give you some illustrations of it. Psalm 116:1, this is the heart of praise; this introductory summary of any category we will ever study of all the Psalm types, every category, all of them, are not as important together as this one. This category IS the kernel of praise in the Bible. That’s why this category, this sub point, introductory summary, this is the kernel you can’t compress, seize, summarize, abstract praise any more than you can in these sections. This is the heart of Old Testament worship. People talk about we need more worship in the Church today; you’re going to see what real worship is. It is this in the Old Testament.
Psalm 116:1-2, the first part of Psalm 16, “I love the LORD,” there’s your proclamation, a very short statement, “I love the LORD,” and then it continues, “because He has heard my voice and my supplications. [2] Because He has inclined His ear unto me, therefore will I call upon Him as long as I live.” That is an introductory summary; notice it bears certain characteristics with the address form that we’d get with the individual lament Psalms in that it’s general. The introductory summary, being a summary, doesn’t go into the details of what God did. Notice here for example in verse 2, “He has inclined His ear unto me,” well, that doesn’t give you any details, that just tells you what God did. So the other thing to notice about introductory summary is that it will lack details generally, it will just be a simple statement, I had a problem and God solved it.
Another illustration of an introductory summary would be Psalm 138:3, here is a declarative praise Psalm, and it says in verse 3, “In the day when I cried, You answered me, and strengthened me with strength in my soul.” See, the simple statement. Do any of you see the connection here with the praise section in the individual lament Psalm category; don’t you see that this Psalm is just flowing right out of those. So that’s why we went to the individual lament Psalm types first, teaching you what those were, and we’re going to just advance one step in the worship; in the individual lament Psalm the man was in a problem, he took it to the Lord and now the Lord has done something so the declarative praise Psalm is the next phase of Old Testament worship. The first stage, the petition, second stage the praise. That is the introductory summary.
Now the third part of an individual declarative praise section we’ll just call the main section because this has sub points in it. So just visualize three main parts, the proclamation, the introductory summary, and then the main section. Now what does the main section consist of. [tape turns] … of a looking back, actually this corresponds somewhat to the lament section in that it reviews what the problem was. Then the second part is a report of deliverance. That’s the second thing, a report of God’s deliverance. You can find the report of deliverance because usually three things are stated in a report of deliverance. First you’ll see “I cried.” “He heard.” “He did.” You’ll find those three elements usually in this report of deliverance, I cried, God heard, God did.
Now the most amazing thing happens at this point in this Psalm and again I point these details out to you, not because we’re all going to be scholars in the Psalms but I throw these things to you because I want you to see what these Psalms reveal about how the Old Testament saints worshiped their God. And here in the doing, normally wouldn’t you think that what would be contained in the doing would be the physical deliverance, the physical healing, something that God did by way of deliverance. But you will find as we go through these Psalms that not only is deliverance at this point but in addition to deliverance there’ll be a statement, sometimes it says, “and He gave me a new song.” For example, turn to Psalm 40:2, now this has a peculiar structure to it so don’t worry why it’s so early in the Psalm. Notice verses 2-3, both of these verses talk about what God did. “He brought me up also out an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. [3] And He has put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God; many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD.” Now that putting “a new song in my mouth” is a key in many of these Psalms. There’ll be this “new song.” Sometimes it will be the same vocabulary.
What does this show you about how the Old Testament saint viewed the deliverance of God. What does this show, the fact that he includes not just the act of deliverance but he includes the new song too, as part of the deliverance. What does that show? [someone says something] All right, he’s learned something new but more than just learning there’s a new truth here what does this show? You’re on the right path, just take it further. He’s learned something new, he’s grateful, his whole attitude has been transformed. So don’t you see that there, when the Old Testament saint was talking about deliverance, don’t you see that he included the subjective inner mental attitude along with the objective outward circumstances. That deliverance wasn’t complete until deliverance had occurred here as well as in the external world. And that is very important to see. Now just hold onto this point because I’m going to show you a passage in Revelation that will come alive if you first see this truth.
Let me show you the truth again; the idea is that God is delivering and the deliverance is not complete until there is an inner change of attitude in the heart of the believer, a rejoicing attitude. God’s deliverance isn’t complete until the results of the external deliverance have been made [not sure of word, may be: inward]. Then he can say God has delivered… then he can say…
Now, this is why, if you’ll turn to Revelation 5:9 there’s a particular passage there that should strike your eye, more so after we’ve studied this category of Psalm. Right smack in the middle of the greatest doxological section in God’s Word, what does it say in verse 9? “And they sang a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the scroll, and to open its seals…” Why do you suppose from just what we’ve talked about so far, because Revelation is written with an Old Testament thought pattern, this is why Revelation is a mystery to a lot of preachers, because they don’t study the Old Testament. One man told me I never preach in the book of Revelation, it’s too hard. Well it is if you don’t study the Old Testament; it’s not hard if you know the Old Testament. So the “new song” is being sung when in history?
[someone says something] All right, Christ was raised and returns here; now why do you suppose a new song couldn’t have been sung earlier; if the new song represents a transformation of the inner mental attitude, why do you suppose this inner mental attitude hadn’t been transformed up until this point in this case. These saints are waiting around the throne, the elders are waiting around the throne, everybody is waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting, and then suddenly they see the scrolls torn asunder, and then they say we sing “a new song.” What has not yet happened in history until this point is reached that prevents these people from fully praising God? What feature of history is missing, and always will be missing until this happens? [someone says something] There’s no judgment on evil right now, is there. Is there a total extermination of evil? No. What are they singing about here? They’re about to see a total deliverance from evil, that’s what they’re about to see.
All they have to do is to see the movement from the throne, in other words, it’s the idea that for centuries they’ve been sitting there worshiping God, whether they had the subjective awareness of the passage of time or centuries in eternity, whether time flows this way or not we don’t know, but at least from our side looking at them we can say that at the throne room of God they have been waiting centuries, centuries upon centuries upon centuries. And Christ, as it were, sits there, and sits there, and sits there, and sits there, and there’s no judgment upon evil. And the prayers come in for judgment, during the Tribulation more prayers come in, God how long will You allow this to go on, how long, how long, how long, how long, and the prayers remain unanswered, they come up century after century after century. And then one day there’s a sudden movement in the throne room; Christ gets off His throne and takes the book of the scrolls and then they burst out with a new song because now the final act is about to be played. Now it’s all over. That’s the new song here. Now it doesn’t mean, when it says “they sang a new song,” that they brought Johann Sebastian Bach in to compose a song for the occasion. What this means is that they had an inner subjective attitude that was new. There was a transformation of attitude.
Further in the main section there’s a looking back, there’s a report of deliverance, “I cried, He heard, He did.” The third part, subsection of the main section is that there will be praise. And it will be usually in the form of a vow and sometimes it will go into descriptive. Let me throw out a question here? Why do you suppose… by the way, this vow praise will be like the introduction, “I will,” it’ll be just like the proclamation in the introduction. Now let me read you a sentence from Claus Westermann who is an expert on the form of the Psalms; he writes in his book: “Not a single one of these Psalms ends with a report of deliverance. They all end with a vow to praise.” Now doesn’t this strike you as something backwards; these Psalms start with a proclamation, “I will praise the Lord,” and then they go and the describe, introductory, summary, then they describe the deliverance, what God did, and then lo and behold at the end they go right back to the beginning, I will praise the Lord. Why? Can any of you think what’s happening here. And this is a key, again, to the flow of praise in the Psalms. Why is it that they don’t end with a report of deliverance? Why is it that they don’t stop there and they go right back and start all over again, “I will praise the Lord.” Why doesn’t the Psalm just report the acts of deliverance and leave it there? Why does the Psalm come back around again and start and end where it began?
Can any of you think of maybe a hint. How were these Psalms used? [someone says something] You’re partly right, and often times they were, of course, the Song of Miriam, Exodus 15, “I will sing to the LORD, for He has triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider has He cast into the sea.” Handel put that to music very skillfully but that’s what Miriam’s is doing, she’s singing a chorus, and actually in that case it’s going on over and over again. But in practice there’s another reason, not musical, not musical, why the Psalm terminates.
The reason why these Psalms end with this section and not this one is because the praise is supposed to continue; it’s not supposed to be a once-for-all statement. Do you see now why the Church of Jesus Christ has been commanded to have communion. Don’t you realize that when we do communion this is actually an enactment like they did at the temple in the Old Testament and that we’re commanded, Christ said “as often as you do this,” you declare it. In other words, do it over and over and over and over, don’t get tired because 19 centuries have come and gone and I still haven’t returned, you just keep on doing it, over, over, over, over, over, over again and over again. And this is the same spirit here, repetition, repetition, repetition, over and over and over and over, a rehearsing again and again of the historic words and works of God. You are never to get tired of this and if you get tired of this there’s something wrong with you spiritually. Repetition, when it’s done as unto the Lord, is never tiring because there’s always something more to learn; God is infinite.
So that section, this last section usually can be spotted by an “I will” toward the end. Let me give some examples of this; Psalm 118:15. And when I show you this I’m particularly looking at the fact that this praise in the declarative praise Psalm turn into description. Now let me run that by again. Remember in the individual lament you move through an individual lament over to declarative praise, and once in a while you’ll spot a descriptive praise. Now when you start to work with the declarative praise Psalms, then what you find is that the praise starts to move over into descriptive and in Psalm 118:15 “The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tabernacles of the righteous; the right hand of the LORD does valiantly. [16] The right hand of the LORD is exalted; the right hand of the LORD does valiantly. [17] I shall not die but live and declare the works of the LORD.” Now verses 15-16 both give descriptive, not declarative, descriptive praise.
Now, to summarize what we have said in way of introduction, these kind of Psalms are found in every civilization and every culture. Every culture basically has some declarative praise psalms. The Babylonians did, the Egyptians did, the Africans do. They do have these, but here’s the amazing thing; very few of them extend beyond one or two sentences… very few extend beyond one or two sentences. There’s not a dwelling upon God’s delivering acts as there is in Israel. And Westermann concludes: “It is not surprising that such a thing as declarative praise exists in many forms and in many places; it is astonishing, however, that this category is developed so richly and fully only in one civilization, Israel.” In other words, only Israel developed and cultivates a rehearsal with thanksgiving of the words and works of God.
Now I submit to you that is a sign of God the Holy Spirit’s working on that civilization. And I submit to you therefore that that should be true in the believer’s life, that if God the Holy Spirit worked mightily in history to transform a civilization and make it up here compared to the rest of the civilizations, in this civilization, Israel, would compare and meditate, rehearse and develop and repeat their deliverances where the other people might experience an occasional blessing and then they just let it go; there wouldn’t be this passion to remember God’s acts. Therefore, doesn’t that say that the believer, if he is filled with the Spirit, and if the Holy Spirit really is working, He’s going to do in the life of the Christian believer today what He did in the life of the Israelite nation centuries ago, and that is create a passion for a repetition of God’s delivering objective works in history.
Now that is what I find wrong with the modern charismatic movement; there is no historical memory to it. They act as though nothing ever existed before today; there is no historical memory, and for that reason, among other reasons, I do not consider that a working of the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit is working the Holy Spirit is going to [can’t understand word] these things that we see in the Old Testament also. He is going to create a historical memory and if you see that then you’re seeing a work of the Holy Spirit. If you don’t you’re seeing a lot of religious froth but you’re not seeing the work of the Holy Spirit.
I want to conclude with three sample declarative praise Psalms and show you how these work. Turn to Psalm 28:7 that we did last week. I want to show you how apparently this worked in practice. In Psalm 28:7 it says “The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped. Therefore,” notice, “my heart greatly rejoices, and with my song will I praise Him.” Now “with my song” [can’t understand word] that the psalmist made up a song; he had an act of deliverance, he actually wrote a song about what God had done and he brought the song, he wrote it, rehearsed it, or played it, maybe he had a guitar or something, but he had something that he played this song on.
Now let me give you one illustration, 1 Samuel 3:1-10, that is Hannah, remember when I exegeted that I said that that was a declarative praise song. Hannah made that song up for the three years she was nursing Samuel; between the time that that boy was born until the time he was weaned from his mother, Hannah had three years to make that song up; those ten verses. And when she turned her boy over to the priest she gave the priest the boy and then she said: and here is my song. And whether she personally sang it before the priest or whether they had professional chanters that chanted the song or not, we don’t know. But we do know this, that in the life of the nation Israel, when there had been a great act of God, there had to be a song played out before the temple.
Now let’s come to the New Testament, Luke 1; this is the magnificat of Mary and this is why Mary says what she does. Mary is not a Jewish woman whose making this up out of the clear blue. The magnificat in Luke 1 is simply but a continuation of the Old Testament custom that if God was going to do something I will praise Him with my song. And so in Luke 1:46 Mary says: now this sometimes is only read by Christians who only know the New Testament, Christians don’t know the Old Testament so they don’t get half the thing that’s said here. In Luke 1:46 Mary is doing what Hannah did; she is doing what David did, and so she says: “My soul magnifies the Lord.” What part of a declarative praise Psalm is that? It’s the proclamation, notice, why. Verse 47, “My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior,” there’s a problem with tenses here. Verse 48, there’s your introductory summary, “For He has regarded the low estate of His handmaiden, For behold, henceforth from all generations shall call me blessed.” And then it goes on to the deliverance and describes the act. So what Mary is signing here is a declarative praise Psalm of the individual.
Again this occurs in Luke 2:29 when Simeon, the aged priest, they bring the child Jesus into Simeon, and verse 28 he takes Him, and he spontaneously comes forth with this Psalm. This is what makes me think, passages like this, that this was so inbred into the mentality of the people in that day that probably most of the time they did not make these songs up on paper before, they didn’t have paper, papyri or something, but they didn’t make it up before, they probably just composed it spontaneously. They were a very creative people and it’s interesting that these people were probably illiterate and it shows you the creativity of the illiterate person in that culture. Now compare the creative illiterate of that culture with the literate in our culture and you’ll see that we haven’t come too far, because this requires quite an attitude of thought to come out and express yourself verbally, completely and musically at the same time.
Luke 2:29, verse 28, Simeon “He took Him up in his arms and blessed God and said, [29] Lord, now let Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word, [30] For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples, [32] A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people, Israel.” The content here is tightly compressed, and I could prove it if we had time tonight, a tightly compressed declarative praise Psalm that he puts forth here.
Finally, let’s turn to Psalm 30 to prepare for next week. Here’s what I’d like you to do. I’d like you to take Psalm 30 and define all the categories that we’ve talked about in this Psalm. Work Psalm 30 over; I’d like you to find where is the proclamation; find the introductory summary, remember the introductory summary will not have details; and the main section, find the looking back section, find the report of deliverance, find the praise. It’s not too hard, most of it is very straightforward in this particular Psalm.
Also for background if you will read 1 Chronicles 21 and the first part of 1 Chronicles 22; that will give you the background for when this Psalm probably occurred in history. We get this because your Psalm heading, “A Psalm and Song at the dedication of the house of David.” And that clues us that probably what’s happening here is 1 Chronicles 21.
Next week we’ll all be geniuses on Psalm 30.