01 How to Study the Psalms

Speaker 1: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta. Today, David John Marotta will be speaking on how to understand the Psalms. This is the first talk in a series of five. For handouts related to today's talk, please visit the website at wednesdayintheword.com slash understanding psalms. That's wednesdayintheword.com slash understanding psalms. We're so glad you joined us. Speaker: This is Learning to Teach the Psalms. This is the first of five weeks. And let's open in prayer. God, we thank you so much for being a God who has spoken to us. And we pray that you would bless our study of the Psalms, that you would meet us in your word, and that you would richly use your word to make us more the men and women of God that we should be. In Jesus' name. Amen. Let me just sort of tell you how this is going to work. This is five quick weeks on studying the Psalms. You probably will have at the end of that whole thing more questions than you have answers. And the first of the weeks is just an introduction to the Psalms. We're going to talk a little bit about Hebrew poetry, a little bit about how you go about studying the Psalms when you're not just sitting listening to someone, but you're actually trying to put together a lesson plan that you might use somewhere. And it's my hope that if we have enough people who are trained in studying the Psalms, there's 150 Psalms. So that's a lot of teaching that you can do. And the Psalms are sort of a staple, I think, in the Christian diet. You probably know Martin Luther, you know, Romans was sort of where he he really completely understood the salvation, the Reformed theology, salvation by faith. What you may not know is that before he did Romans, he did the Psalms, and it was actually his study in the Psalms that he began to understand Reform theology. And through his study in the Psalms, he said, Where can I, what book in the Bible can I go to more fully understand this Reformed theology that's that I think is there, this idea that we're saved by faith, not by works, that we're all of these kind of uh ideas. And so he studied Romans after studying the Psalms, but it was actually a study in the Psalms that brought about the Reformation. So there's a lot of great stuff in the Psalms, and we'll talk about that in uh in future weeks. Um this week we're gonna talk about, if you have the handout, learning to teach the Psalms. This week we're gonna talk about an introduction to the Psalms. We're gonna talk a lot about Hebrew poetry, what that means, how you read this thing. I mean, very few of us study poetry. So, how do you study this thing called the Psalms, which is all written in Hebrew poetry and what does that look like? Next week, David Turner's gonna come in. He's been teaching a series in the Psalms in one of the other teaching fellowships. Um, and he's going to talk about living the Psalms and how you do application in the Psalms, how you sort of make that a part of your life. And then uh Bill Wilder is going to come in and do some more in-depth on understanding the Psalms interpretation. Um he's gonna sort of take some of Hebrew poetry and then how do you understand the Psalms, how do you figure out what the Psalms are meaning in a little bit deeper level? Um then I'm gonna talk about theology and presuppositions, and that is of all the many things, once you've you've gotten your psalm that you're gonna study, of all the many things that you could say, what things should you say that will make a good teaching, that will make a good theology, if you will? How do you pick and choose from the content of what you've been studying and make a talk that's edifying to people and that uh that will really land home in people's lives? And to do that, it's really it's really two ends of interpretation. The first is the presuppositions you start with, and the last is the uh application of theology that you end up deciding to teach. So we'll talk about that in in uh in at that week. And then Ed Scully's gonna come back and talk about presentation, and that is now that you've got your content together, um, how do you get that content across in the most meaningful and powerful way that will actually change people's lives? So, five quick weeks on studying the Psalms and how to do that. This is more to sort of just get some basics out there. Then by the end of those five weeks, the goal is to have picked a psalm or two, or some number. So it depends on how many, how ambitious you feel, um, to pick a psalm and to study that psalm during the summer. We're going to try to, by the end of the five weeks, not only have our psalm picked, which is your assignment for today, if you will, just to go read in the Psalms this week and to come back with three or four ideas of what psalm you might want to study for this coming year. And then, second, um, to have a partner to work with. When we changed in the children's ministry from uh one teacher to a team, uh the teaching got better because now you had a team of people that were holding people accountable rather than just one person who's talking to the kids and can kind of goof around and blow the lesson off for the week. Now you've got a whole group of people who are there and know whether or not you've blown the lesson off, basically. And that just that that alone improved the teaching. And I taught under both methods, and I will tell you, under the one method, um, you know, when you've got three people in the room and you don't know how many people you're gonna have and the class sizes are small, and you've got kids that you know and stuff like that, it's less likely that you're gonna spend the time meaningfully than if you've got a team of people that are all trying to work and hold each other accountable for making this the most meaningful experience. So just that alone, just by having someone that you're partnered with, and that every couple of weeks you get together and and phone call or have lunch together or something like that and say, hey, you know, what's going on with your Psalm? What have you learned? Share your stuff. Because I found when I when I learn something, the way to sort of solidify it is to sort of share my thoughts with someone else, what's going on, what I've learned, what's what's happening there. And that that provides um a lot of the dialogue, if you will. I'm trying to figure out what this means, and here's some things, and I and just in talking to someone, you know, sometimes you solve a problem just by explaining it to someone, then you, oh, I see what I'm supposed to do, and you go on and do that. So we'll try to get um uh a partner that you can study with and and sort of ask questions with on a, you know, once a month, once, twice a month, something like that basis. And then a mentor if you'd like to have somebody who's good at interpretation and has taught before and things like that, someone that you can go to and ask questions of. We may have a couple of get-togethers in the summer just to sort of get together and share what's going on and how the study's going. So that's the process for the summer. And um, let me just sort of digress for a minute and tell you some ideas for how you can sort of live with your psalm. Um I've I've studied a few things intensely where you take it on, and six months later, you're done studying it. And I've only taken a few passages that way, and every time I do that, it's a very, very rich experience because if you live with a passage for a while, you find out it's touching all areas of your life, and you sort of get to know the psalm or the passage or the scripture. And there's a lot of different ways you can live with it. Um let me just sort of give you some ideas that are helpful that you can do all summer. One is I have the Bible on tape. How many people have have a version of the Bible on tape or something like that? So one of the things that you can do is I can take that little section of the Bible on tape and I record it as an MP3 file and I loop it on my computer while I'm working. So after you've listened to your psalm 50 times, it's like you've memorized it and you haven't even tried. And then if you have it in a couple of different versions, and if you don't know MP3, and I do everything on computer, just take a tape recorder and record your psalm in the New American Standard, and then right afterwards record it in the NIV, and then record it in the English standard version, and then record it in the King James, and now you've got four of them right in a row. So you can play four of them, and then you can record and then rewind and play four of them. So you can do that when you're driving in the car, you can do that when you're working at your computer, you can do that, you know, when you just have some background noise on. And um, so I find that helpful because that sort of makes me familiar with every single piece of the psalm in a way that's, you know, sometimes I'm there working and I I don't, I can be listening to anything. I can be listening to music, I can be listening to words. And I'm very good at tuning stuff out, so when I need to tune it out, I'm heads down. And then when I stop tuning it out, I say, hey, look, my psalm is playing. You know, it's it's sort of, you kind of come up from that. Another way, if you're more visually oriented, is you can print out your entire psalm in really big font. And then you can cut the verses up and you can put the verses around your house. So one's on the refrigerator, and one is on the mirror, you know, when you're shaving in the morning, and one is, you know, one is across from where you sit sometimes, and you put them up around your house, and then when you think of verse four, you'll think, yes, verse four, I'm eating. You know, verse three, that was when I went to get the food out of the refrigerator to eat, you know, and and you'll you'll have this visual picture of your psalm all around your house. So that's sort of another idea of the way in which you can do that. So there's a lot of different ways. You can make a screensaver. Um, I were you get a graphics program or something, put a background up there that has your verse on it. There's a lot of different ways that you can rotate around for all the verses in your psalm on the back of your computer. So there's a lot of different ways that you can sort of live with your psalm, and I think that helps because that sort of is, I don't know about you, but I'm an impermeable substance when it comes to God's word, and it has to seep in really slowly. So that osmosis requires a certain amount of time. And for me, it requires calendar time, not just intense time. So for me, it's not, oh, I could study eight hours, and that's worth eight hours of thinking about my psalm. For me, it's um I need eight days for it to sink in, and it doesn't have to be very long each day, but it sort of has to be that sort of constant reminder. And so I find that sort of approach helpful. So during the summer, we're going to sort of let the psalms sink in, and some of it will be formal study. We'll read commentaries on it on our psalm and stuff like that. And we've got a number of books that are good, psalms commentaries, and things like that that we can sort of recommend. And there's also a number of resources that are online that you can get to. Um so the summer will be that study, and then by the end of the summer, you should be ready to package your psalm together into a talk, and you'll package the psalm together into a talk, and then my hope is that during the fall we will meet again and we'll just listen to each other's psalms. So it's a nice friendly environment here, and we can each take a turn teaching one of our psalms during the fall, and then that will mean we're all ready, we'll have practiced for whatever we want to do, say, in January going forward. So you'll be ready to sort of teach. And you'll get feedback from the group on, well, this was really good, and this was really good, and and you could add this, and that would make it even better. And so hopefully by then we'll we'll know our psalm well enough, and then we'll work on the presentation part um during the fall to make that even better. So, yeah. Speaker 4: Not everybody is some of women just want to be small people. Speaker: Which is great. Which is great. Yeah, and and let me let me sort of mention that. Some of you are here because um because you thought it would be fun. It reminds me of Rick in Casablanca. I was I came to Casablanca for the waters, you know, but it was a desert. I was mistaken. You know, um so so some of you are here because you thought it would be fun, and that's great. I would still challenge you, go ahead, pick a psalm. You know, you may never teach it anywhere. Um I find that when you study with the idea of teaching, the study is richer. And that's just that's just the way I think we are. And if the minute you're learning something in your psalm this summer, the next time you meet someone who would be sympathetic to Christianity, you share what you learned with them. Hey, I've just been studying the psalm, and I learned I learned in verse 4, this means that, and I applied it in my life this way. If you do that enough times, studying to teach will sort of become a habit. And we're all called to be teachers of some regard. Not everyone's called to stand up front necessarily in a formal teaching style, but we're all called to be sharing um what the faith is all about with other people. So as we grow in maturity, we grow in sharing our sharing what the faith means and uh and what we've we've learned about God. So that's the process, the full-blown processes, and you can you can you you can do that process as deeply as you want. You can pick ten Psalms and be, you know, and and be all summer studying them, and you'll have a pick ten psalms, right. And you'll have a whole. Um for those of you who are who are working in in Wednesday in the Word, um this is a very good book on on um the Psalms by Walter Kaiser. And this could this has got, I think it's a group study guide. Yeah, this is a group study guide. Does this have the one that's two Psalms for each one? Speaker 4: I can't remember. Speaker: I can't remember either. Yes, it is. So this is twelve weeks, and most of the weeks there's many of the weeks there's two psalms, and sometimes there's one psalm. So maybe you guys want to meet afterwards and take a look at this, and and maybe you could all pick you could all pick Psalms from this, and that would be a great way. You'd already have a study guide that goes with it. Um at the bottom, there's under resources, there's books. The first one is How to Read the Psalms by Tremper Longman. This is really great. And if that's on your handout. Um the website under resources, the very first website is a subsection of my website. It's kind of a long URL, but it's Ministry Psalms. The index.html will come up automatically. Um, and this has a ton of stuff on it. It's going to have the recordings every week. Should we close that? It's going to have the recordings every week of these talks. So if you miss a talk, um, there are some people who are trying to attend this series without attending it at all because they can't come at this hour. And so they're just going to come via tape, and they will join us that way, and they'll listen to it. And uh, hello for all of you listening on the tape. And they will um they will get there. So all the recordings will be here if you want to re-listen to one. Drew Trotter and I just finished teaching a series in the Psalms in this teaching fellowship, Young Marrieds and More, for the winter term. All of Drew's and my talks are recorded on there on the Psalms. So if you want to hear one of the talks on the Psalms that either Drew or I did, all those recordings are out there with our handouts. Um these books are all listed out there with a single click, so you can go to Amazon.com and the uh idea of full disclosure, if you do that, I get 5% of everything you spend because I'm an Amazon associate. So I put them all out there with my associate links. Um, that's right, I'll get 50 cents on every book or something crazy like that. Um if you may want to get them from the um the splintered light down here, they'd be glad to, I'm sure they've got this book as well, and that would be a better use of your money. Um on Fruit Far of Books, uh How to Read the Psalms by Trumper Longman, Christ Centered Preaching by Brian Chapel, and The Cry of the Soul by Dan B. Allender. Speaker 4: Um Christ-Centered Preaching, I think, is out of print. Is it? And I have a PDF of the relevant chapters. Speaker: Okay. Speaker 4: So we'll put that on the website. Speaker: Great. Speaker 4: I think it's out of print now. Speaker: Okay. Good. Speaker 4: I think it's being it's like in between editions, you know, and you it's uh Right. Speaker: Um under resources, there's also a link there that's it's a link on the website, but it's a link to a forum where you can discuss the psalms. This is a forum we run that's specifically just for this class discussing the psalms. So if you want to put your psalm out there and put out things you're learning, then we could post together. For those of you who are geeks, if you're not a geek, don't worry about it. So some of us live on our computers and we only have virtual friends. Um if you have if you have real friends, if you have real friends that you can discuss the psalm with over lunch, that's that's infinitely better. But some of us, some of us don't have that. Okay. Any questions on just the the process of what we're going through? Okay, great. Um next we're going to go through this contemplation of the Psalms, and I I just wanted to sort of run through um some of the process. First of all, the book of the Psalms, there's 150 different Psalms, but they're broken into five books, which were the five sort of scrolls of the Psalms. They had to break up, they had to break up the um, we'll pass that around. They had to break up the Psalms in some way, and this is the way they broke up the book of the Psalms. The first book is is the longest. And some people have said that these five Psalms, five Book of the Psalms, roughly correspond to the content of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. So there's some link with those. And you'll find out that the themes within them are somewhat true. Um they somewhat link that way. And you will find the five different collections of the Psalms end up being five different kinds of Psalms for the most part. It's not a hard and fast rule. Um the other hand, if you look at, for example, Psalm uh, I think it's Psalm 107. It's one of the Psalms. I think it's 107. They've suggested that it links to 106 and 105 or something like that. So sometimes there's a set of Psalms that will break over the book, and it doesn't look like the books mean a whole lot. So that's one sort of way that you can break down the Psalms. And it would be a good idea for any collection of teachings of the Psalms to include Psalms from each of the five books, because they are a little bit different. The authors of the books, um, David is by far the most common author, and it will often say a psalm of David, and that can mean many things. It can mean a psalm of David, in other words, he's the author. It can also mean a psalm for David, so it's just for him, written for him, or it can mean a psalm in the style of David, or a psalm attributed to David, or so sometimes you'll get a psalm of David, it's not necessarily written by David, and you have to kind of be careful about that. Although, I will tell you that a lot of the Psalms are clearly written by David, and you can tell from the content that David wrote them, because they're about parts of his life. So Solomon writes Psalm. Moses even has at least one in there, probably two. Psalm 90 is written by Moses. Psalm 91 is probably also written by Moses. It's very definitely in the same style. And Psalm 90 is a very powerful Psalm when you read it. Um the Psalms purpose, the Psalms have a number of purposes and uses in the Christian life. And one of them is that the Psalms are written for to, I think, to help us relate to God, both uh emotionally and honestly. And an act of faith is going to God in any emotion that you happen to find yourself. So if you find yourself angry about life's circumstances, family members are sick, marriages aren't working, kids are rebellious, you know, all the death and destruction that comes because we live in a fallen world because of our sin and because of others' people's sin, and you find yourself angry at God because he's the author of this entire world, and he's the author and has made all this terrible stuff allowed, all this terrible stuff to happen because of the fall, which of course is his fault too, because he could change us anytime he wanted and he could make everything right. When you find yourself in that situation, there's really only a couple of responses. You can dig deep down into yourself to find the strength to go on and to live your life as best you can under your own strength. You can turn to other idols or you can turn to God. If you turn to God, sometimes the response is to shake your fist and yell at the sky because you're just so angry with God. That is an act of faith. Because of all the other things you could do in that situation, that is the most faithful thing to do. You recognize God's sovereign, you recognize the world isn't the way you want, and you're shaking your fist at God because he's the only one who can change it. That's faith. So those open and honest expressions of faith are found in the Psalms. And I think the Psalms give us a methodology for coming, taking wherever we're at, and coming closer to God by the end of the Psalm. So when you're reading the Psalms, if the Psalm starts out with some verse and then it goes straight into these wailing against God, how could you do this? Watch where the progression goes. Because if the progression ends up in a better place than verse 2, then that's a psalm of faith. And every psalm is like that. Every psalm where you'll say, My goodness, this person, how could they even be a believer? It starts in a bad place and it gets better by the end of the psalm. There's some recognition of God's sovereignty and his goodness at the same time. So that's one of the things that y'all see in the Psalms, is they give you a blueprint. And so I find when I'm troubled in life, Psalms and Proverbs are the two places that I can go, and they'll give me a blueprint to find my way back to God. They'll give me that roadmap to find my way back to God. So the Psalms are very in places, they're very emotional. In the sense that they're very, I'm in the midst of whatever I'm in, and I'm feeling very strongly about it. It expresses it all in very poetic language. At times, the person's words seem blasphemous, but they're bringing them to God. And that's an act of faith. Now, granted, it's not as much an act of faith as, you know, Lord, you know, not my will, yours be done. You know, so it's not quite Jesus in the garden. It's not quite that pure, but we're not quite that pure. So it gives us a better blueprint, I think, of where we end up and how we bring that to God. So relating honestly toward God, it's also evoking an emotion. You'll find there are places in the Psalms where poetic language is used. And I did some study in another section of Hebrew poetry in the Bible, and that's the Song of Songs. And in the Song of Songs, um, very explicit, sexually explicit things are talked about in very beautiful poetic language. And there's a problem with trying to teach the Song of Songs because quite often teaching is taking these metaphors and things and unfolding their meaning and stating them clinically of what's going on in the Song of Songs. And they're put in poetic language because it's not polite to talk about those things in a clinical style in mixed company. So, but it is okay to talk about it in poetic language, and so Song of Songs talks about things, and not only is it teaching about sexuality and what biblical and godly sexuality means, it's teaching how to talk about sexuality in a style that is not offensive, but is in fact very beautiful. So you'll find there are some places in the Psalms where, and in any Hebrew poetry, where sometimes unfolding the meaning is not necessarily the best way to teach it. Because to unfold the meaning is to be too blunt, too crude, too something. And so you'll have to work around how to how to unfold the poetry of the psalm in a way that fits with the content. So you'll have to talk to talk about it poetically, and that's a challenge in itself for some of the Psalms. Now, it's not as difficult to unfold the meaning in the Psalms because you can say what it means easier than you can in the Song of Songs, but there are some sections of the Psalms which that will be difficult, where what it's talking about is poetic language. Another purpose of the Psalm is to make us participants in the story. Y'all find in the Psalms quite often it is you are the one who brought us out of Egypt. You are the one who parted the Red Sea for us. And as you read the Psalm, somehow you become a participant in the story. You're telling God, you are the one who brought me out of Egypt. Well, none of us were in Egypt. But we become Israel when we read the Psalms. And we are we are, above all, um Christians are very bizarre people because we actually think that we are the same people who came up out of Egypt. And we believe that we're the same people for whom God parted the Red Sea because we are the people of faith. We are the people who are trusting in Him for His righteousness. We are the people for whom the Messiah was promised. And if you think about that, that's a very bizarre, if you will, from the world's point of view, that's a very bizarre perspective. So my daughter was recently, they did a series on um in her English class, and it was all on biblical stories and things like that, and they had to read certain stories. And she was kind of amazed. She said, they're handling it because it was the Bible's literature. It said they're handling it as though it's only literature. And as though as though this is not something for whom Christians are participants in the story, and this is meaningful in a very different way. And it was just sort of interesting to her because she's been so inculcated in the style of, you know, down in the Sunday school program, we built the walls of Nehemiah. It's not, you know, it's not just that, it's not just that uh that that that we we study this stuff, it's that we actually consider ourselves participants in the whole thing, and and we're the ones who came up out of the Red Sea, and we're the ones who who went on um Paul's journeys of of um of missionary work. So um so they make us participants in the story, and I think that's part of the Psalms genius. It's one of the reasons why people keep coming back to the Psalms, is because it it gives us a way of relating to God in the way in which He has related with people of faith in the past, and we're connected with that. Uh another one, notice there's two number ones and only one number three. Umother one is that it's uh it's a guide to worship. I don't know if you've ever heard um um Greg talk about uh the uh the way in which the worship service is designed, but it's designed very much around the way in which the psalms are designed. And so if you just take a psalm, it can be a guide to worship. It starts out in a bad place, there's a confession piece about you know what what I'm like, and it very much shows you that sort of blueprint of a worship service. Many of the psalms do this. Taken as a whole, you'll see almost you'll see the normal blueprint of a psalm is to sort of have that style of worship to it. And so they they give us a guide for how we should approach God. Um I mentioned a couple of the ways that you can sort of live with your psalm. Another way you can live with your psalm is to pray it. You can pray a verse and then you can pray everything about that verse that's going on in your life. Then you can pray another verse and you can pray everything that's going on in your life that way. And you don't have to go through your whole psalm. You can just pick three verses and just pray those three verses. And then later on you can pray a different three verses. So that's a way, and it sort of gives you this blueprint for how you go about approaching God. And it gives you a uh a way of doing that. So it's it can be a guide to worship. And then another of one of the purposes of the Psalms is just to recognize the importance of reflection and meditation. There's a reason why we have you studying your psalm all summer, and that is because I I mentioned this before, but but studying the Psalms requires calendar time for it to sink in, not just intensity. And so it requires that sort of meditation and that reflection. Um I told this in the very first class that we did for Young Marrieds and Moore, but Krissan and I had an opportunity of meeting one of the probably the most strangest men I've we've ever met. And we were driving along in Palo Alto, and uh this guy came up, and he was dressed in a very old-fashioned suit. He looked like a leprechaun, is sort of the way I would describe it. You know how leprechauns sort of have this like 1800 style suit and stuff? He was dressed in that, he had a hat on? Speaker 2: I don't remember. Speaker: I don't remember. But he looked just like that. And he was holding in his hands a pot with a dead poinsetta in it. He was asking directions to this place, and we didn't quite know where it was. I was trying to direct him. It was on El Camino in California, which runs for hundreds of miles, and I thought it might be down. He said, I think I know where it is. Um could you just drive me there? And he hops in the back seat. And he's sitting in the middle of the back seat, and he's now go down here and turn here, and then he starts telling us stories. And for about 15 minutes he just told us stories, and every now and then we'd drop in another question that would get him going again. And he told a story about how he was living in uh a monastery and had taken a vow of silence. And there they were, working in the fields, and he was working alongside Brother John, and they were working their little piece of the field, and Brother John turned to him and said, breaking his vow of silence, Isn't God our father? And he was working there in the field, and and and he turned to Brother John, breaking his vow of silence. Over a year he had a vow of silence. And he said, Yes. And then Brother John was there, and he said, Well, then that would make Christ our brother, wouldn't it? And the next day, he left the monastery and went out to do what God has called him to do. Now, I have no idea to this day exactly what that story means. But I can but I can tell you, I've thought about it every now and then, about what that could possibly mean. And I think there was a time and an era in which contemplating verses of scripture over long periods of time of what they meant was more important than sort of the fast-paced information cycle we have today. And so if you have a verse that's up on your refrigerator and you live with it for six months, you'll ultimately you'll find that it applies to more than you thought it did, and it has more meaning than you thought it did. And it's if it's God's word, it has that kind of that kind of impact and power. I've always tried to pick Psalms. Speaker 4: Tell the end of the story. Speaker: Oh, I should. You're right. Um so we finally, uh he told, I don't know, 15 minutes, he told several stories that are all equally weird about kissing the Barney Stone and going to Ireland, and and he was he was a character. So we finally get to the place. He said, No, here it is, oh, right here. And we pull up and we drop him off. And there's a florist shop, and in the window are just many, many, many dead poinsettas. I don't know. Was it was this the special initiation, you know, to get into the Knights Templar Society? The guy was the closest to an angel. I mean, if angels walk among us, I I think we we'd met one because he was just that he was just that strange. Very old-fashioned style of of talking, very old-fashioned style of thinking. You know, I mean just you don't hear anyone talk like that or think like that today. And uh just definitely was was a man who was either touched by God or just touched. I'm I'm not quite sure. So but uh but I think there's some there's something I mean there's there's something to s to studying and thinking about God's word that way that I think will will make you touch too. Um and we're called to be that. We're we're called to be people who are just bizarrely different. I mean, I I've we I've uh we've always apologized to our kids for having warped them as badly as we have by teaching them, you know, basically what Christianity means and what the gospel is, and they don't fit in in our culture and society in the slightest. Um we say, you know, that's that's just you know, it's because of your parents, and and uh and you have to make the choice of whether you want to continue to live this way or just let it be a warped childhood. You know, and and that's that's your choice. Um the importance of reflection and meditation, I think, is something that really can't be overstated. So it requires that sort of that sort of time to live with it. And then I just put down a quote here the Psalms take us from wherever we are and move us closer to God. Although they contain deep doctrinal truths, they're intended to move us intuitively. They are not always easy to follow logically, as they do not yield their deepest meanings at first glance. So I will tell you, my experience when I'm studying a passage is I find a passage I like and I think I know it, and then I get to a point where I realize I don't know this, and I don't know that, and I don't know this. And usually down here, I feel like I don't even know what my psalm's talking about anymore, or my passage. And then slowly it begins to build back up until I know it better than I thought I did originally. It just overwhelms that. But there's that initial thing for me where it goes down and I feel like I know less and less. I have more and more questions about the text than I have answers. I'm not quite sure what it what it all means. And so when you hit that bottom, that's when you need the encouragement of, no, stick to it. It requires more calendar time sometimes as much as it requires as much as it requires study time. It just requires, you know, just going back to it and just kind of picking at it a little bit to get to put it back into your mind as a reminder. And then for me, you know, when I'm into a passage, it sort of like overwhelms my day sometimes. I go to bed at night and I'm still thinking about it. And I wake up in the morning, I'm still thinking about it. It's one of those sort of problems that that that um that lasts for a long time. Okay, Hebrew poetry. So Hebrew poetry is all done in what are called parallelisms. This is up at the top of the next column. And we're used to a number of different kinds of poetry, uh, none of which are Hebrew poetry. So we're used to a meter and a rhyme. The Hebrew poetry does have a meter, but the meter is only in Hebrew, so you're not going to find that meter in the English translations very much. Sometimes that meter will come through in a verse, and sometimes to translate a word that has one syllable, our English word has three syllables, and you lose the meter entirely. So there is a meter to it, but the meter is not the most important piece. The most important piece is the rhyming not of sounds, but of ideas. So that's called parallelism, and every verse, every two verses will rhyme, usually it's every two, but sometimes it's three or four, but every two verses will rhyme usually an idea. Turn, if you will, with me to Psalm 1. It's a great psalm to look at that. I'm going to read from the Numeric and Standard. By the way, you don't know Hebrew, or if you do, congratulations. Um, learning Hebrew is easier than being righteous. So, and learning Hebrew helps you a little bit, but not a lot. It's better for you to have four or five English translations than to know a little bit of Hebrew. So if you get four or five English translations, you'll usually get the work of two dozen scholars who worked on those four or five English translations. You'll get their best thoughts of how to translate it, how to understand it. If there's a choice and you have four or five different translations, chances are if there's a choice between two, one of the translations pick one of the two and the others picked all the other. Pick the other one. So you'll get the choices that are there for translation just by looking at a number of different uh English versions. Also, you can get around a lot of the Hebrew by simply picking up a good commentary that talks about some of the Hebrew words. So as soon as you pick your psalm, let me know what psalm you've picked. And again, you can pick a psalm and never study it. I mean, you can pick a psalm and never study it. You can just tell me about it and and and then I will give you information on it, and then it's up to you what you do with it. So, so for example, if you pick Psalm 1, I would go find the commentaries that, and I'd Xerox the pages of Psalm 1, and I'd give them to you for four or five different commentaries, and then you'd have four or five different sort of approaches to the word studies and things like that. Anyway, back to uh Hebrew poetry. In Hebrew, Hebrew poetry has certain um it has certain technical terms with it. Parallelism is the rhyming of two ideas, and a single line in Hebrew poetry is called a stick. So you're it's called the rhyming of sticks. So, and then the different kinds of the rhyming of ideas have different names to them. So parallelism is the big umbrella because you have two sticks that run together, and then the kind of rhyme is one of the following that I've listed here: synonymous, antithetical, stepper, climatic, and chiastic. Let's just take a look at Psalm 1. How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, and then walk in the counsel of the wicked is rhymed with, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers. So this is there's that first line, if you will, how blessed is the man who, and then there's three lines that rhyme. You see that? A synonymous rhyme is when they're saying the same thing in more than one way. So, for example, verse 2, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. You can see that those are really the same idea. Not quite. Because on the one, he's meditating, that's the second one, and on the first one it's his delight. So on the first one, it's his delight, and on the second one, he meditates. That shows something, and you have to figure out what the something is that it shows. So, although parallelism is often broken down into the four things I have here, there's more than four. There's any two ways you can put two ideas together. So, for example, you might have Alpha and Omega, and those two are put together, and they're meant to show bookends. If it's all the way from the Alpha to the Omega, then it's everything. It's all the way to the Tarshus and to Babylon. Well, Tarshus is in the Far East, and Babylon is in the far west, and that's the known world. So you will find God in Tarshus, you will find him in Babylon. It means you will find him from one end to the other, and it's meant as sort of bookends to represent the two extremes out of which, you know, God is in the world. So any two ways that two ideas can be put together, that's what parallelism can be. So don't get caught up in these four. These are just four examples of the way in which it works. So my uh my son is my son Brennan is going to film school and he's always watching films, and he told me an interesting story. They did a study, they had a picture of a man's face watching something. And then they did a cut and they put um uh a dead bird. And they said, what does it look like the man, what emotion looks like to the man's face? And they said something like sadness or something like that. Then they put the exact same cut of the man's face and they put a child playing, and they said, he looks happy. Well, it's this exact same man's face, but what you put with it changes its meaning and the way you interpret it. And Hebrew poetry is exactly like that. So if you find your poem says a stick, and then it has another line, and then later on that first stick is listed again with a different second line, it could mean something complete, even though it's the exact same words, it could mean something different in the second instance than it means in the first instance. Simply by what it's paralleled with, it changes its meaning. So parallelism is very much, you have to understand how do the two relate. And this is the point at which I'm often down here in my understanding, because it's to me, I I think I understand it, and then I start asking the questions, well, how do those two put together? And what exactly is it? And there's five things it could mean. There's five reasons why he could have put those two together. Which one did he really have in mind? What's really going on there? Which one fits best with the flow of the psalm? Do you follow me? And you start thinking about things like that, and that's where you start getting deeper into an understanding of why verses might get put together and what's the whole theology behind it and what's going on. So, synonymous is when you have um is when you have two things and they're roughly saying the same thing. But let's just take the first verse again. Walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers. Is there any movement there? This is class participation. Yeah, what's the movement? Speaker 3: Walk, stand, and sit. Speaker: Yeah, walk, stand, and sit. What's what how would you describe that change, that progression? Speaker 3: Well, you're first you're getting there, then you're anticipating, and then you're relaxing into it. Speaker: Yes. Yeah. So one, you might say the last one's more entrenched. That's where you're settling. So and there is a progression here, and I think it very much is in the psalmist's mind, walk, stand, sit. Speaker 4: You've also got wicked sinners and scoffers. Speaker: Yes. Now that would require a word study. You'd have to figure out what is the difference between wicked, sinners, and scoffers. Which one is worse on the scale of badness? Well, it turns out if you read Proverbs, you know which one is worse by the usage. Scoffers is the worse. Scoffers are the ones who are actively hostile toward God and making fun of him. And now that fits in the progression, doesn't it? If you're going to sit in the seat of scoffers, you are entrenched. So now you've got a progression that's going on there. So do you see how Hebrew poetry works? You you've got you've got things in mind. It turns out the term wicked is really more foolish than anything. It's really naive about righteousness and goodness. And sinner is a little bit harsher. So you've got a progression there. Even though, in our in our vocabulary, wicked sort of sounds worse than sinner. In Hebrew, that's not true. That's not the progression. So this is where a little bit of Hebrew helps, but a little bit. It doesn't have to be a lot. And any commentary you read on Psalm 1, it's going to talk about wicked sinners and scoffers and make mention of that. So you'll kind of get that idea. So that's the kind of thing you're looking for as you're reading through the Psalms. And again, you may want to read through your Psalm for a few months and then go look at commentaries just to try to live with it for a while. Because you'll find out commentaries sometimes are wrong. You'll get two commentaries that'll disagree with each other. And one of them is probably right and one's wrong. And if you've lived with your psalm a while, then you'll be able to judge. No, I've seen the flow. I think this one fits better. You'll be able to pick and choose from the best commentaries, the things you really want to look at. Sometimes that progression is called a step or climatic parallelism, meaning that it goes somewhere or it progresses somewhere. And y'all see. Examples of that. Yeah. Yeah. Um antithetical. Antithetical is where it says something positive one way, and then it says something negative the other way. So it might be if I have one in verse one. Yeah, verse six. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. So here's the positive, here's the negative. They're antithetical. They're intended to be the exact opposite of one another. And sometimes just the fact that you know they're intended to be opposite changes their meaning. Because you think to yourself, well, my goodness, if if the second line is the opposite of the first, that's amazing because I wouldn't have thought the second line was so bad. But if it's the opposite of the first one, it's horrible. And suddenly that changes your theology because now you know now you know that the the the the second one is harsher, and that's really his point, is this is bad. Just taking elements, for example, just taking elements of another religion into our religion completely negates our religion. You know, that's a that could be a very harsh statement said that way. You know, you know, if if the the righteous shall stand in the day of judgment, but those who take something small from another religion will will not. You know, and all of a sudden you've got you've got a very harsh statement for something that seems very minor. Chiastic is from the Greek the Greek letter chi, and it basically means that the rhyming is in the first line it's written AB, and in the second line it's written B A. And so if you connect up the two things that are parallel, it forms an X, which is the Greek letter chi. That's why it's called chiastic. So an example of that. I don't have an example of that. Sorry. Oh, here it is. It's uh Psalms 7, verse 16. Now, this is a case where you may not recognize it in your version. If you have the uh English Standard Version, that's right, I've got it. His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his skull, his violence descends. So you can see in this version, mischief is first and head is last in the first verse, and skull is first, and violence is last in the second verse. So it's a crisscross. Now, the New American Standard and the NIV all translate them so that they look more parallel than chiastic. But in the Hebrew, they're chiastic, and so the English Standard Version has caught that and tried to do that in the translation. Even though it's a little bit stilted to do that, they've tried to preserve that sort of that sort of crisscross rhyming so it's more obvious. So again, that's one of the problems with when you're trying to translate poetry in any language, is you sometimes miss really cute play words, play on words or meter or things like that because they're trying to get the translation right. So you'll see chiastic. You'll also see the rhyming sometimes of verses. You'll see, you know, a lot of the Psalms, for example, if they have an even number of verses, look for some kind of pattern. Most of the Psalms have an even number of verses, and you may find it goes one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. And sometimes there'll be a conclusion on the end, and sometimes there'll be a summary in the beginning. And sometimes there'll be a summary, and then it'll go one, two, three, four, four, three, two, one. And this will be the pattern. So, and then sometimes you'll see any combinations of these. So the authors of the Psalms were very creative, and they put words and language together like any creative author does, and you'll see all different kinds of patterns listed in there. And so you're looking for patterns. Because most of the time they're there. Uh sometimes they're not, sometimes they'll just be a set of verses and they'll be big sections, and it's telling more of a story. It looks more like narrative than poetry. And you'll get some that look very much like narrative. They're just going through. Even when they look like narrative, um, they still will have some sort of pattern to them. So we looked at a section, the the talk is on the uh internet, I think it was Psalm 107, which was recounting how God saved various people in Israel, but each one had a pattern to it. And each section had a pattern, and that pattern was important because that told you sort of the structure of each piece and how it fit into the overall theme. Where they had some need and God solved it, they had something they lacked in their life because of their sin or their um their uh humanity, their their their finiteness, and God solved that. Okay. Questions so far just about rhyming schemes? Yeah. Speaker 3: This is called a chiasm, too, isn't it, when the verses are symmetrical? Speaker: Like this? Yeah. It can be, because it's sort of crisscrossing the one for the last one and and two to the inner one. Yeah, it could be. So the important thing to know is not all the different names necessarily for the parallelisms. The important thing to know is that Hebrew poetry is done in parallelisms, and then any any way that you can, I mean any way that two ideas can be put together, you could make up a name for it. So, and so the scholars have made up lots of names because that's what they get paid for. Um but you, what's important is just to understand that their two verses are in parallel, and how are those two ideas related? So it's not it's not really critical to try to figure out one of these. Sort of, I think every rhyme has its own unique flavor to it. A little bit more about the types of psalms. Actually, no, let's go back to parallelism. Um, structure is very important. And so we'll we'll see there's uh some psalms that will have a definite structure to them, and then all of a sudden at one point they'll break the structure. And they're breaking the structure on purpose because it draws attention to that. So again, my son's in film, he finished making a film, and you know, films always have music going over it, and he's got this one scene where music sort of takes your emotion and gives you something to do with it, gives you how to feel about it. There's this one scene that's very powerful because, partly because it's the most powerful scene in the movie, and partly because he takes all the music off, and at that point there's just there's just no music. And that's very powerful because all of a sudden that's it just feels more intense because the music is not there. So anytime there's a structure to something, and you break that structure, you draw emphasis to whatever you've broken the structure of. And so you'll find that a psalmist quite often will have one section where they want you to think differently about it, and they break the structure. Let me just read you a limerick. Limericks have a s a structure, we all know what the structure is. There once was a bard from Japan whose limericks never would scan. When folks told him so, he said, Yes, I know. It's because I always try to get as many syllables into the last line as I possibly can. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker: Now clearly, that's funny. If you didn't know a limerick, it wouldn't be funny. So, let me read you another one. This is these are just funny. A very sad rhymer was Jenny. Her limericks were not worth a penny. In form, they were sound, but quite often she found that whenever she tried to write any, she always wrote one line too many. So again, those are funny because they they break the pattern of limericks, and you'll find that in the Psalms, they'll break the pattern quite often on purpose. We'll look at one today in which you will find they they break it. And they break it on purpose to draw emphasis to something at the end. So structure is important, understanding what the structure is. Um you'll find there's a great um there's a great analysis of, we all know the um the prodigal son. And in the prodigal son, the sun goes away and things happen to him, and then the sun is restored and they comes back. But you'll notice in the structure, when you line up all the things that happen and all the things that come back, there's one piece that's missing. And it's never, it's never, it's left unfinished in Jesus' parable, and that is the response of the older brother. That's left at the end on purpose, and it's left because he doesn't, because Jesus is challenging the Pharisees, how will you respond to sinners? And he leaves it done wrong on purpose. There's another one in the um the story of Elisha with the um the uh widow's oil. Do you know the story I'm talking about? Where um the the husband was uh uh a priest to to Yahweh and he dies, and they have debts, and they only have a little bit of oil, and the oil gets multiplied, and the debts are able to be paid off, but there's something missing. The husband's still dead. So God does not restore everything in this life. There are some things that are only restored in the life to come. And I think that's a piece because God doesn't want us to have a happy life, he wants us to have faith. And he may give us, he may give us miraculous signs in this life, but there are some things that are left to the life to come. And what's greater, to have healed the husband in the first place or to raise someone from the dead. There are greater works that God has in store, and he does the greater work of raising him from the dead later, and he doesn't do the simple work of not having him die in the first place. So quite often you'll see structure in stories, Ethan, that are intended for you to ask the question, well, what about the last one? What happened to that? And so you'll see those in the structure as well. Okay, I've listed here a bunch of the different types of psalms. Um let me just sort of say a little bit about um number six, in precatory psalms, sometimes called vengeance psalms. There's a um in the Psalm series we just did in Young Marriott's and more, we did one of the so-called vengeance psalms. I think it's Psalms 109. Uh and if you go there and and you listen to that talk, you'll find out it wasn't a vengeance psalm. We just thought it was a vengeance psalm. Um and the middle section that sounds like a vengeance psalm is actually a quote of the author's enemies against him. It's not what the author is saying about his enemies. And so there's a case where I picked that psalm up, and that was one of the Psalms I lived with for a while in studying, and I picked it up because it's quoted that it's a fulfillment when Judas betrays Jesus. It's clearly written by David about an experience of David, and it sounds like David is both calling down vengeance on his enemies and saying, Well, it's good God that that I'm not vengeful. All at the same time. It sounds like all of those. And when you read it, you think this is really bizarre. I don't know what to do with this, because I think it's Peter who says it's a f it's it was fulfilled by Judas, and it was clearly about David and what is it? So it's all those things mixed in together. So I studied that, and that was one where I did not understand it in the slightest uh for a long period of time, and then began to understand what it was all about. So that's an interesting case of vengeance psalms. If you happen to pick a vengeance psalm, be very careful. That I've heard Psalm 109 taught as a vengeance psalm, and I think you get the wrong teaching out of it. In fact, I think it's it's the exact opposite of what it sounds like it's teaching. There's another psalm out there that has Blessed is he who dashes your little ones against the rocks. You're probably familiar with that. I've done a little bit of study on that. In fact, that might be the psalm that I pick this time, um, because it's a very difficult psalm, and I don't think that's a vengeance psalm either. Because that phrase, dashing your little ones against the rocks, is found in Isaiah as the time in which the restoration from the captivity will be fulfilled. And so I don't think they're saying is blessed is the one who dashes your little ones against the rocks as much as blessed will it be when God finally restores Israel and fulfills his promise, which is very different. You know, it's sort of like saying, you know, blessed will be the time when Armageddon comes and Christ returns and millions of people die. That is going to be a blessed time. It's also going to be a time when millions of people die. And those two happen to go side by side hand in hand. But that will be the day in which God finally overthrows his enemies and establishes his kingdom. And that's a good day. So you can get something like that where something is quoted. I don't think the psalmist is just making that language up. He's quoting Isaiah. And he's quoting Isaiah with Isaiah in mind, and I don't think it's necessarily meant vengeful. I think it's meant justice. And it's meant restoration of Israel, and there's things like that. So when you get something like that that you don't understand, sometimes you hold it lightly until you do understand it. And you're just thinking, well, you know, I'm willing to follow God even if he does like to dash little ones against the rock, but that just doesn't sound like my God. It doesn't sound like the God I'm used to, and so I'm going to try to understand this better and a little bit differently. To be honest, I haven't found a psalm that I thought is a vengeance psalm, so I'm a little bit confused as to whether or not something I've found some psalms where people were angry, but they didn't end up in the full scope of the psalm as being vengeance psalms. They ended up in a much better place, the fact that God is sovereign and God is the one we wail against. God's the one we shake our fist at, because he's the one who's sovereign, not our um our struggles, not against flesh and blood. Okay. Um what we're going to do next is we're going to take a look at um a couple of psalms and just how we might study them. How much time do we have? We have almost no time? And we're supposed to end at 12? Speaker 4: No. Speaker: 1215? 1215. Okay. 15 minutes. That'll be great. Okay. This is a piece of Psalm 119. This is the new international version. You might want to get a uh thanks. You might want to get a Bible out if you want to sort of tag along in your version. Pardon me? I'm not sure. Yeah. Okay. And I want I want you to just tell me, first of all, can does anyone see a big structure to this psalm? Just let me read through it. Teach me, O Lord, to follow your decrees, then I will keep them to the end. Give me understanding, and I will keep your law, and obey it with all my heart. Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight. Turn my heart toward your statutes, and not toward selfish gain. Turn my eyes away from worthless things. Preserve my life according to your word. Fulfill your promises to your servant, so that you may be feared. Take away the disgrace I dread, for your laws are good. How I long for your precepts, preserve my life in your righteousness. What do you notice? Speaker 3: Well, Thomas is asking God for a lot of give, direct, to my heart. Speaker: So I'm just going to mark this up. So teach me. That one's no good. So you've got teach me, give me, direct me, turn my heart, turn my eyes, fulfill your promise, take away the disgrace. Okay. Why is that? Speaker 3: Okay. And then I will. Then he'll respond. Speaker: Why is verse 40, why is it on the second stick in verse 40? Speaker 3: Oh, that's it. Speaker: Isn't that bizarre? I mean, he's he's he set up for the first seven verses, he set up a pattern, and then in verse 8, he breaks the pattern. Pardon me? Speaker 2: He wants to emphasize. Speaker: There's something about verse 40 that he clearly wants to emphasize. This is this is clearly the um the punchline. I don't know what to say. It's different. And so there's clearly something. So one of the questions is why is verse 40 special? You know, you sort of have to do that. Um what about the progression? Why why is teach me first, give me understanding second, direct me third? What's the progression there? Speaker 3: You have to be willing to be taught to start with. Okay. And open to God's teaching. Speaker: Right. So first God teaches us? Then what how would you say in verse 2 in your own words? The the verse 34? Speaker 3: The Holy Spirit helps us to understand. Speaker: Yeah. It's one thing to be taught, it's another thing to actually be given understanding. So that's a second step. 35? Yeah, live it out. Isn't this amazing? I mean, we read this the first time and we think, boy, this is boring. Every verse is saying the same thing. And then you start thinking about the progression. And you start thinking about it in your own life. God can teach us, but then we have to be given understanding, and then we have to be directed to live it out. We have to be directed to apply it into our lives. And verse 36? Yeah. We have to have a heart change. And verse 37? Speaker 3: Interests change. Speaker: Yes, when our heart changes, our interests change. Isn't this amazing? I love, I mean, I love Psalm 119 because every single section of Psalm 119 is like this. Is when you actually start to sit down and think about why are the verses in the order they're in and what's going on here. By the way, Psalm 119 is wonderful. You could all pick a section of Psalm 119, and we could teach Psalm 119 all year long, and it would be really great. Psalm 119, every section all begins with the same letter. So if you start in verse 1, they all begin with the letter aleph, and it goes alef, and then the next section all begins, every line begins with the letter bait, alef, bait, gimmel, dolet. And just like Dr. Seuss, you know, int any alligator, A, A, A. It's just, it's, it's, everything is written like that, and you can remember it because you know what the first letter is, and it gets you going on each verse. This happens to be in the middle section when we get down to hay. Um also, every section is about something different. So we're not going to go over it today, but there's one that I really like, and that is. Yeah, it's um it's the section that begins in verse 25, Daleth, and it begins, My soul cleaves to the dust. Revive me according to your word. And this this particular section is all about how God's revival, not man's revival, but what how God's revival comes about. And every time that I'm feeling like I'm in the dirt, in the dust, and I'm feeling like I'm in the pits, um, I go back to this section and I read through this, because this is a section about what to do when your soul cleaves to the dust. So there's um there's each section, the very first line gives you the theme of what's going on in the verse. So what's going on here? Speaker 3: Prayer for growth? Speaker: Yeah, this is a prayer for growth. This is a prayer for how how how am I going, how am I going, how is God going to teach me his decrees? What is the method that he's going to go through for doing that? And if you think about it, it's really going to cover, you know, just as we've seen the first few, it's really going to cover all the areas of our life. God doesn't just give us head knowledge. Otherwise, we'd stop in verse 34. Somehow it's got to keep applying into our lives. It's got to filter down into our actions, our attitudes, our hearts, what we see. Okay, so verse 37, turn my eyes. Then verse 38. Speaker 4: That's interesting. It's kind of a change. Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 4: Because now it's instead of something to me, it's something to fulfill your. Speaker: Yes. Speaker 4: And take away it's again a little bit of because it's again directing God to do something. Speaker: Yeah, verse verse 38 is something you'd have to spend some time thinking about. Why is that in there? Fulfill your promise. Which promise? Fulfill your promise to your servant that you may be feared. Verse 39 makes more sense in the progression because if you've changed in your heart and you've changed in the things you're looking at and the things you're focused on, then that takes away your disgrace because you're not caught up in sin as much. It begins to actually renew your life and change it. And then verse 40? Speaker 4: So that must be the final goal that now we want to know his precepts. Speaker: Yes. Yes. Now we can say how I long for your precepts. Preserve my life in your righteousness, because God has been at work changing us through his word. Um meet down into our life. Speaker 3: 38 is also interesting because you're asking him to do something so that we may fear him. Speaker: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. 38 is one I'd probably put on the refrigerator. And I I try to figure out what are those two verses talking about. And does anyone have a different translation? This is the NIV? Speaker 3: I do, but I don't know. But establish your word to your servant who is devoted to fearing you. Speaker: Okay. So that has Establish your word? Speaker 3: Yes. Establish your word to your servant who is devoted to fearing you. Speaker 4: The English version of English standard says confirm to your servant your promise that you may be feared. Speaker 2: Yep. Speaker 3: So that I may be an all of you God, maybe the same. Speaker: Yeah, the NSB, establish your word to your servant as that which produces fear. Speaker 3: This is the new King James. Speaker: So again, there's clearly a verse that you'd want to spend some time on, and maybe you'd want to try to figure out what the second part of all the verses mean to try to figure out how fear is put in. So sometimes you can go through as we've done teach me, give me, direct me. Then you can also go through sometimes and just read the second verses. Then I will keep them to the end, and obey it with all my heart, for there I find delight, and not towards selfish gain. Preserve my life according to your word, so that you may be feared, for your laws are good. And then the last verse. So sometimes you can go through and just read the second verses and try to figure out if there's a progression in them, if they're heading somewhere, if they're doing something. Okay. So do you get the idea of sort of the way in which you, as you read the Psalms, you're asking questions of the Psalms and trying to figure out this would be a great one to pray through. It's got everything in it. It's got um it's got asking God for what really matters. You know, I think sometimes our prayers are asking God for the things that don't really matter. The Psalms sort of help us ask God for things that really matter. It's got confession in it, it's got um it's got the good news of the gospel that He's you can also read this theologically and say, who's in charge? Who's sovereign here? Who's sovereign even over the process of our coming to more and more righteousness? Who's sovereign over the changes in our lives? Speaker 3: So it's got willingness to obey in it, too. Speaker: Yeah, willingness to obey, right? Him changing our hearts. Good. Questions or comments? Okay. I want to leave just a little bit of time at the end for for some of you to get together and take a look at what Psalms you might want to study and and to talk over. Speaker 4: So it's almost fun. Speaker: Yeah, so I won't go through any more. Let me close this in prayer. Lord, thank you so much for being a God who has spoken in his word. We thank you for the Psalms, for their clear and beautiful doctrine, and for the way in which they aim at our hearts. We pray that our studies of the Psalms might not just be an academic exercise, but instead might actually result in changes in our lives, make us more the people that you want us to be, make us more the men and women of God, men and women of your word, and men and women whose eyes are uh aware of what you're doing in the world, that we might be a part of it. Just thank you for our time today. In Jesus' name. Amen.