03 Interpreting the Psalms

Speaker 1: Krisan Marotta here, welcoming you to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. Today, Bill Wilder will be speaking on how to interpret the psalms. This is the third talk in a series on understanding the psalms. For more information, please visit our website, which is wednesdayintheword.com. Thank you for listening. Speaker: Well, let's talk about Psalms and interpreting psalms. I may be preaching to the choir, but if you don't have this issue, some of the people that you'll be teaching will have this issue, which is why would we want to interpret the Psalms? I mean, it just seems a bit like, I don't know, butterfly collecting or something. You know, you have to kill what you what you're what you're enjoying, you know. It's like sticking a pin in it, you know, and and analyzing it and and looking at it, but you but you know, it's dead. It's beautiful, but it's dead because you're analyzing it and you're thinking about it instead of simply praying it or living it. Why wouldn't we just want to pick up the book of Psalms and begin praying through the Psalms instead of be trying to interpret it? It seems such like such an analytical, dry, sterile kind of activity. So, uh, how would you answer that question? Why should we interpret the Psalms? Why have an entire hour for us to sit together and, or maybe in the future for you all to sit with someone else and to do this thing called interpretation? I mean, can we could we defend this? Is it defensible? Any ideas? Yeah. And poetry exactly right. There's there's poetry, and and if you want to understand any sort of poetry, what kinds of things do you need to understand? Speaker 2: Rhythms and repetitions. Speaker: Sure, I mean it's real helpful. Just thinking of English poetry for a moment. If if we wanted to understand a sonnet, what might we need to understand? Maybe something about iambic contaminer? Something about the rhythm that someone like Shakespeare would have written in. D-dum, d-dum, dun, dum, dum, d-dum. That's a good iambic contaminator line. Might need to know something about the rhyming scheme, the fact that it's going to have 14 lines divided into eight and six or or um seven and seven or whatever. So, yeah, I mean, any sort of thing, any sort of poetry, you need to know the conventions for that. And, you know, some of that stuff we learn in high school or we learn in middle school, or we sort of grow up with and we take for granted. But if you want to really enjoy a poem, well, you've got to begin with understanding. And understanding comes from interpretation. A lot of times we do interpretation automatically, but sometimes it takes some work. Anybody who's looked at poetry knows that sometimes poetry takes work and there are rewards to be gained, but sometimes it takes some work. Other um, other ideas. Speaker 10: Greg had this morning when he said David challenged the Lord by questioning the situation, but he also used uh scripture to do that. Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 10: And boy, that was the I mean, it really I thought I was telling David when I came in, I said, boy, you got a good advertisement this morning. Speaker: Yeah, that's right, we sure did. And I loved uh in some ways, this is uh Greg Sermon's a hard act to follow. It's like I just want to say amen and go home. But um scripture can teach us the language of prayer. I could not agree more with that. This is why I do my own devotions in the morning out of the Book of Common Prayer. I need to be taught how to pray. I feel that weakness myself. And sometimes I use the handbook of prayer, which is quite often just speaking directly from the Psalms. So, yes, we need that language. And in addition to that language that the Psalm provides us, we need the theological underpinnings, the structure that's underneath the Psalms. They uh betray a certain understanding. They assume a certain understanding of God and of his people and of the way that we're meant to relate to God. And so we need to understand that. And frankly, you know as well as I do, I think that we don't really enjoy something we don't understand, or maybe I should put the other way around, that we really enjoy something once we fully understand it, or once we begin to enter into understanding. Uh you know, you if you watch a really good movie or read a really good book, sometimes you'll enjoy it. A really good poem would be a great example, more the third or fourth time around because there's just so many layers, so many things to understand. And so what we're doing today is we're simply uh trying to figure out what it means to understand these psalms, to understand God's ways with his people, and to appropriate that sort of understanding into our prayer life, into our psalm lives. So what does it mean to interpret something? And I'm not just talking about the psalms here, but in in general, if we want to understand or interpret anything, what's involved? And we may do this automatically. In fact, the vast majority of the time we do this automatically. What is interpretation all about? And this is actually one of those everything I needed to know, I learned in kindergarten kind of questions. Um, you know, think of Sesame Street. Yeah, go ahead. Speaker 7: Understanding the culture and the background at that time, historical background. Speaker: Yeah. Understanding the culture, understanding the background, there's all of those things that they would have taken for granted. I like to say I like to say a lot that um, you know, we have to sit in a class like this, or maybe get a degree, or, you know, do a lot of really heavy-duty learning just to get up to the level of an ancient Near Eastern peasant. And so, you know, you humble yourselves a little bit because all the things that they took for granted, we can't take for granted. It's just it and it's not because they're so much smarter. If they came to our world, think about how much they would have to get up to speed on. You know, going to a wedding and all the things that we take for granted. When we go to a wedding, we expect things to be done in a certain certain such way, and they wouldn't have a clue on what was going to happen. And our enjoyment of wedding comes from knowing what's supposed to happen, and then watching for the variations within that certain set way of doing things. So, yeah, sure. Um, so yeah, knowing knowing the culture, knowing the background. And some of this is related to that Sesame Street. Um I remember watching Sesame Street when I was a little kid, and they put a number of objects up on the screen, right, and they'd seen this little ditty, which is, you know, one of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn't belong. Now, what is that all about? What pedagogically, what's going on there when they do that on in Sesame Street? What are they trying to teach little kids to do that we continue to learn to do in more sophisticated ways as adults? unknown: Organism. Yeah. Speaker: Yeah. So you get a couple of objects, you know. You might get, you know, a spider and uh uh a butterfly and a caterpillar and a cocoon, and well, which of those things doesn't belong? You're like, mmm. This would be really embarrassing to this. And I'm gonna be a teacher. Yeah, the spider, because the spider's not an insect and all those other things. Would have gotten you. So the cocoon. Well, that's true. The others are kind of bugs, and this is not yet a bug. And that even teaches us that there can be different ways and overlapping ways to categorize things. Yeah, exactly. If we so, you know, that's what that's teaching is to put things you know, to put things in certain groups and to understand something by its relation to other like objects, things that are not completely like it, but that generally like it. So if we want to understand the psalms, we need to put it in this context. And also, even with respect to a particular psalm, put it in relationship to other psalms very much like it. Okay. So let's let's let's use that as sort of an intro to thinking about what are the different kinds of psalms. And this can be so dry and boring, but we won't spend too much time here. I want- I do want to talk a little bit about it to show you its value in understanding the psalms. What are the some of the different kinds of psalms? Well, we might even say different kinds of ways of praying. unknown: Laments is raising. Speaker: Okay, we just got two of the very important ones right there. There's a lament, there's lament, there's praise, there's wisdom. Absolutely. What are some of the other types of psalms? Speaker 1: Well, no, royal or kingship, what are they called? Speaker: Oh boy. Big, very big. All the kingship. I love the kingship psalms. Yeah, exactly. And you said praise, but thanks there's actually a separate category, which is uh Thanksgiving, which is uh which is related to but somewhat distinct from the praise as well. We have these different ways of grouping or categorizing the psalms so that, well, one of these things is not like the other. And a whole group of psalms, you know, this this this lament psalm is like a lot of other lament psalms and quite distinct from a royal psalm, for example. So if we're going to be teaching on a lament psalm, it kind of helps to understand what the expectations were. Someone in that day, in ancient Israel, what they would have expected when a lament was coming along. So, with that in mind, let me just pass out a few things to quickly talk about this. Here's the uh handy-dandy chart, which, you know, I went to some trouble yesterday to start developing my own chart, and then I found no one after I developed it, um, I found one on mine that was a lot better, so I just scrapped what I was doing. And uh I should have started with the online. She'll just start passing those around. These are types of psalms classifying the psalms by genre. And again, it's just sort of the, I guess I'll take one, it's just sort of the Sesame Street categories categorizing of psalms. So that when you begin to look at something, you say, okay, I know what this is, I know what to expect. I think there are a bunch over and I probably didn't divide them evenly. Yeah, if you'll just bring them back over to the side when you're there should be plenty, plenty, plenty. Let's let's let's talk about these a little bit. And and and while we're talking about it, I'm not terribly interested in just, again, doing the butterfly thing, analyzing something, and then just just leaving it there. I'd like to talk about the deeper significance. What's what's the first psalm type that's listed here? unknown: Community. Speaker: Lament. And uh, just based on our knowledge of that English word, what might that be? Real positive, will it be? Yeah. Yeah, and then and so you have community lament psalms where the community is speaking as a whole, or individual lament psalms, and this is a kind of crying out to God over some deep need, some deep aspect of suffering, um, perhaps even sin. It's God's people dealing with sin or suffering in the world. That's what I love about the Bible. The Bible is not sort of got these rose-colored glasses on, pretending like the world is better than it is. This is very much what Greg was talking about this morning. They're so real to life. I'll never forget the time I was in class in college, and I had this completely nihilistic um German professor. And he was going, and believe me, he painted the world black. Uh that was sort of his color. And he was going on talking about how evil and how bad the world was, and he knew that I was an evangelical Christian, and I was busy nodding the whole time. And he looked over in some surprise, I guess, thinking that I should have a more Pollyanna view of the world. He said, You actually agree with me that the world is as bad as it is? I said, Absolutely. And he said, Uh-oh. But you just think there's hope. I said, Yes. That's the difference. And that's the movement that you get in these lament psalms. It's a recognition that there's sin. Those would be the penitential lament psalms, and a recognition that there's suffering. That's what Greg was talking about this morning, and a belief that God can actually do something about it. These Psalms are infused with hope. Because if you're hopeless, you don't go to God and ask him to deliver you. You just assume that nothing can be done. And you mourn and you cry out and you're anguished, but you don't go to God with lament psalms. So I love the lament psalms because they really are a recognition that there is a God, and a recognition that there is sin and that there is suffering, and that you need to go to God in the midst of your sin or in the midst of your suffering. There's that great movement in the Lament Psalms, which is really basic to biblical theology. It's a movement from humiliation to exaltation. A belief that no matter how low I am now, no matter how bad things get, God can and will, if I persevere in faith, uh redeem me and exalt me. So they're very, very hopeful. The gospel is in these lament psalms. And we'll have occasion, perhaps in a minute, to look at one or two of those. Maybe one. Okay. Thanksgiving. What might Thanksgiving be? Just as a way, kind of a quick overview of these things. And how would that be different? Maybe I should sort of tie that in together with these um the hymnic psalms, which are uh more the praise. So what what is Thanksgiving? What is praise? What would be the distinction between the two if we were to make such a distinction? Speaker 12: Well, I sort of look at praise as um speaking uh maybe back to God, telling him about his character and who he is, whereas Thanksgiving, I think, more of what he's done for me, and hopefully I am thankful. Speaker: Yeah. And that's and that's precisely the distinction that's being made in this categorization. Is you thank God for what he's done for you, you praise God for who he is. And one is not better than the other. We have uh we have a God who is great, and we praise him for his goodness. Again, going back to Greg's sermon, we praise him for his goodness, we praise him for his sovereignty, uh, we praise him for his attributes, and yet we thank him for the many things that he's done for us. And and the fact that we have a God who moves into history is not just out there somewhere, you know, out in space, out in time, off twiddling, sitting around twiddling his thumbs, the twiddle-daw thing. We don't have a God who's twiddle-dying. You know, he he is great and marvelous, and we praise him for his attributes, but he is a God who's engaged. He's active, he moves into history, and so we praise him for what he's done. We praise him for what he did on behalf of Israel, we praise him for what he did on behalf of the patriarchs, we praise him for what he did in the church and and uh preeminently through Jesus Christ, and so we thank him for those things. I guess I should say we thank him for those things. And in fact, you know, Paul's condemnation of human beings in Romans 1 is pretty much because they failed to do what? In Romans 1, the condemnation of human beings is a failure to give thanks, to recognize who God is and to give thanks for what he has done for us. And so these types of psalms are really getting at what our human vocation is. We are a people who were designed to be priestly bearers of, well, thanksgiving and praise. We're meant to thank God. We're thank God for what he's done and praise him for who he is. That's what we were created to do. Um, that's our priestly vocation, and um that's where we will be most happy, is doing that. So these these psalms become vehicles of that. What about the um what haven't we done? The covenant songs. Let's let's talk briefly about the um the royal and enthronement songs. I love these kingly psalms. Um what are those about? I mean, you can kind of guess. So somebody somebody make an educated guess, or maybe you already know. Just throw it out there. Speaker 7: Establish God's position as king. Speaker: Yeah, and that that's true. True, though. A lot of them do that. Um there are some that are called the enthronement psalms that um they may be about sort of uh celebrating God's enthronement. That is true. And yet there's another dimension to these royal psalms that's very important as well, and it's not just about God, it's about the human king. So that the royal psalms become a celebration of this vice regent that God has placed in charge, this king that God has placed in charge of Israel, and that's why you get these songs of Zion. God has actually placed a human being as his representative to lead and to guide uh Israel, and there's praise for that. And we know that ultimately those kinds of psalms, oh, we'll see a lot more of this in a few minutes, are fulfilled in our Lord Jesus Christ. So they're they're extremely important. Um, temple liturgies, God has deigned to be with his people, so once again, um you come into his presence in these temple liturgies and praise him. And wisdom and Torah Psalms. Uh, let me let me kind of leave it at that. I think you can see where I'm going with this. If we want to understand any one psalm, don't be content to teach just that one psalm, or at least in your preparation. If you're going to do, you know, Psalm 12, looking up at the top in the Lament Psalms, you know, familiarize yourselves with 44 and 58 and 60 and 74 and begin to get a feel for what these Psalms are all about. And if you do that, then you'll find that there are a lot of similarities, that they they tend to do things the same kind of way. I I've um I've done a few weddings over the years, um, and uh, you know, if if if you've been to a few weddings or you've done a few weddings, you know that there's a pretty strong pattern there. I mean, people come to expect this to happen and then that to happen and then this to happen. And yet, if you've been to a lot of weddings, you also know that there's quite a lot of variation. Are they gonna do the unity candle or not? Or whatever, you know, but there's just a lot of different you and and and at every point as you're guiding a young couple into thinking about their wedding, do you have all of these options, all of these variations within the set plan. Now, you don't you don't say, sorry, this is how you're gonna do your wedding, and you just sort of line it up. I guess some pastors probably do that, but you probably shouldn't do that. There's this general pattern, there's this general movement, and it there's plenty of freedom within that to take certain things out and put other things in. Well, that's how that's how these forms or these genres work, and a wedding is simply a genre. So what I'm gonna pass out now is the results of people looking at something like a Labent psalm or a Thanksgiving psalm and saying, well, this is generally how they work. But remember, there's plenty of freedom within this form to uh to do other things. And I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this. Uh this is more for your perusal, because I have um a place I'm anxious to get. And I would encourage you, as you're working through uh any given psalm to teach it, you know, look at one of these patterns and see to what extent it, you know, follows the pattern. And remember there's plenty of freedom here. These things are not boilerplate. It's not as though, you know, that the psalmist sat down and said, Oh, I I forgot, I left out an element. It's just something that they were generally familiar with, perhaps not even consciously familiar with, and they oftentimes have a lot of these characteristics in a lament or Thanksgiving or a Hymnx Psalm. And it's helpful to know these things in order to understand them. Okay. Now, the place that I'm anxious to get to that I was telling you about, and you can you can look through that, but um there's there's another dimension to the Psalms that is extremely important, and I I want to spend a little time on this, introduce you to what I hope will be a very helpful tool for you, and then we'll spend some time actually doing a few psalms and talking about them, and that that's that's where where it really gets fun, I think. Let's go back to that Sesame Street illustration. We had um the spider, the cocoon, the caterpillar, and the butterfly. Okay. Now, which three, Kimberly, which three of those things belong together? Speaker 4: Depends on how you look at it. Speaker: Ha ha, very good. All right. Well, okay, according to my way of looking at it, it would be the cocoon and the caterpillar and the butterfly. All right. Now, I I chose those three things on purpose, uh, because there's a bit of development. It goes from a cocoon, and there's probably intermediate stages that I can't remember, and some of you will, and at some point it ends up as a caterpillar, and then Lord willing. Speaker 8: Caterpillar. Speaker: Right, yeah. Boy. Oops. And I know a lot about psalms, too. Trust me. Yeah, that's right. That's confusing things. Okay, so this is going to say. So it begins as a something before a caterpillar that ends up as a caterpillar. Then it goes into the cocoon. Yes, that's right. Rolls itself under the cocoon. And then it becomes a c a butterfly, right? Okay. Now. Speaker 2: It was a spider first. Speaker: It was a spider first. Yes. That sounds like something I would say. Okay. Now, do you fully understand a caterpillar until you understand um until you understand the cocoon and the butterfly? And I would say no. If you really want to understand something, you need to understand where it came from, and maybe even more important, you need to understand where it's going. You understand the full significance of an acorn if you if you've seen a big oak tree. So you need to understand, you understand, you understand a baby or a child if you understand how they develop and grow up into an adult. The same sort of thing is true of these psalms. We have the Psalms literally in the middle of our scripture. I mean, directly in the center of the Bible. If you open it up there, you've got the Psalms. But that's not the end of the story. They're right there in the middle of the story, and if we interpret the Psalms without any regard for the end of the story, then we don't do them justice. We don't see the way in which they are transformed and appropriated and reinterpreted and reused in beautiful new ways in the end of the story, which is the New Testament. That is, in Christ and the Church. And one thing that I want us to be very alert to, and this is not just true of the Psalms, this is an interpretive principle that's important for the entire Old Testament, is to be very alert to the way in which the Old Testament is used in the New. And I'm convinced that as if we're Christians, if we're confessing Christians, we always should see the Old Testament through self-consciously, through the lens of the New Testament. So you have to ask yourselves, well then how do we do that? If we're looking at an Old Testament passage and it has a certain place in God's story, which is not the end of that story, how then do we understand this thing that's in the middle in light of what happens at the end? And you know, if you've read a good book or a good poem or seen a good movie that's that's a that's artistically and well done, you really can't understand the middle unless you've seen the end. And then you go back and watch it again, and suddenly the middle begins to make sense. It takes on a whole new significance. And this is true of many of the Psalms. Do you realize that in the New Testament, the three books that were most often cited were. Well, can you guess? You know Psalms, otherwise I wouldn't be mentioning it. Yes, Psalms is one of the top three. Do you happen to know the other two? unknown: Isaiah. Speaker: Isaiah. And well, Daniel is extremely important. Uh you're right, that's extremely important. But actually, in terms of just number of citations, it would be Deuteronomy. But you got the D part right. So Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and the Psalms, just in terms of number of citations. So when we are studying the Psalms and trying to interpret the Psalms, it's not just because we want to understand them in their own historical context and their own culture, it's because we want to understand them as a window into what God was planning to do and indeed accomplished in our Lord Jesus Christ. So how would we go about doing that? If we've got a lament psalm, granted that we should begin by understanding it as a lament, and we could see it as incredibly hopeful that in the midst of sin and suffering, you go to God and ask for deliverance. But do you stop there? Well, no. Or you go to the New Testament. And you would know, generally speaking, that God actually did bring about that kind of deliverance in our Lord Jesus Christ. But how specifically would you do that? If you've got, I don't know, you know, Psalm 8 or Psalm 2 or Psalm 110 or any sort of psalm, lament or not, how would you do it? How would you know whether that psalm was cited in the New Testament and uh interpreted in the New Testament? Well, I'm gonna tell you. What's that? Yes, a good cross reference, but you know, uh good cross-references are hard to find. And um I have copied off. Did you know? Let's see here, let me show you this, let me show you something. David was talking about this Hebrew interlinear just a moment ago. Well, this is a um, not an interlinear, but it is a Greek-English Bible. It's got English on one side, Greek on the facing page. And the best thing about this Bible or any Greek New Testament uh is that in the back it's got the best um, well, scripture index that you can imagine. It's got all of the Old Testament books, and then every place that, every verse in those Old Testament books is cited or alluded to or echoed. Now, they don't get everything, but they get a lot of them. And this thing just goes on for page after page after page. And on Psalms alone, I mean this thing goes on, so see, let's get Psalms. Psalms, it's okay. It starts here. All of this is Psalms, all of this is Psalms, this is Psalms, this is Psalms. That's just up to 78. That is Psalms, Psalms, Psalms, Psalms to there. That's how many allusions or citations of the Psalms we have in the New Testament. That gives you some sense of how important the Psalms were for the New Testament writers. And we're still in the New Testament church. So we need to understand, yeah. Speaker 11: Did they know the Psalms better than anything else, or did they just know it all really, really well? Speaker: Well, I think they knew it all very well, but I think they prayed the Psalms day in and day out, so I think they knew the Psalms. I yeah, I would be willing to wager that they knew the Psalms even better than everything else. But generally speaking, the level of knowledge of Old Testament that is assumed in the New Testament is very high. That's why we really need not just to study the Psalms, we need to study the Old Testament more. Because you can't possibly understand the New unless you understand the Old, because the New is written in light of the Old. So, what I have done, uh and uh when I was in the study center last night, I couldn't get access, unfortunately, to the stapler. But what I have done is I have made a copy of that scripture index for each of you on the Psalms, all whatever, eight pages of it is. So let me pass this out, and I think maybe I'd better just hand it out to you. Now begin looking at and and and as as you're waiting for me to come back to it, look at this and and begin formulating your questions on what in the world does this mean, because this doesn't look like it's in English. Which in fact it isn't. But it's the best we can do, and I'll I'll sort of explain it to you, and I don't think it's um I don't think it's rocket science. What language is this company? This that's Latin. And pass that until you guys can look at it. Okay. Anyone else? Anybody have a copy? Now you notice it starts on page 785. Let me briefly explain this to you, then we'll we'll use it to our benefit here. Okay, notice it starts with Psalmy. This is all in Latin, but it's um, again, it's not rocket science, it's not terribly difficult. You'll see it starts with Psalm 1. Uh that makes sense. Psalm 1.1. So, where do we have a citation of Psalm 1, verse 1? Speaker 9: Verse 6. Speaker: Well, uh are we looking in different places? Um I see Acts 24.5. Speaker 2: Yeah, right. Speaker: Oh, that's Job. That's Job. Yeah, so look down, look, I'm sorry. Yeah, look down in Psalms. It Psalms begins in the lower um right quadrant of the page, yeah. Okay. So Psalm 1.1 would be Acts 24.5, right? Do you do you see that, okay, in Psalm 1 we have two passages in the New Testament that we would want to look at? I mean, I would certainly, before I taught Psalm 1, I would want to look at Acts 24 and Matthew 13. You see that? Now let's go down to Psalm 2. How many passages in the New Testament is Psalm 2 cited in? And you're like, I don't know if I can count that high. What's that? Um A P Apocalypse. That would be Revelation. And I'm glad you're asking because ask me that sort of thing, and then I'll tell you if I remember. Uh J would be John, A P is um Revelation, so kind of make a note of that. M T is clear Matthew. R is Romans, if you see an R. unknown: L. Speaker: L is Luke. Speaker 4: Oh, Luke. Speaker: These are all New Testament citations. Yeah. Speaker 4: Between James and James very plain. Speaker: James is James is J C. unknown: James. Speaker 1: J C. Speaker: That's Latin. Yeah, for you. Um let's see here. What else? Oh, notice down on under 2, Psalm 2, verse 11, it says 2K. Anybody guess what that is? Well, remember this is the New Testament. Speaker 2: I kicked you! Speaker: 2 Corinthians. That's 2 Corinthians. Um there's just not a better scripture index that I'm aware of, so you have to just put up with the uh the difficulties here. Flip it over to 786. And just to find another. Let's do Psalm 8. Psalm 8 is hugely important. Okay. How many passages are in are uh cited are citing Psalm 8 in the New Testament? Six. One, two, three, four, five. Is it five or six? Five. Okay. And again, there's one K. That's 1 Corinthians again. Yeah, come on. Oh, yeah, okay, yeah. All right. I think the rest of it's pretty clear. We got we got AP stands for Revelation. I don't see anything else that's uh too terribly difficult. J is John, J C is James. unknown: Yeah. Speaker 10: Let's go back to A C Matthew 21. Is that 21 verse 16 or 21 and 16? Speaker: Okay. That's another thing that's confusing here. The the comma is what we would use as a period. So it's it's it's the chapter followed by the verse. Okay. Okay, so you just need see the um the this is this was intentional. This is an intentional illustration of the importance of form. See, there are certain conventions here, and if we don't understand the conventions, then we'll get so so confused. Okay. Now think how helpful this will be when you teach a particular psalm, and of course you need to think about uh the internal unity of that psalm, and you need to think about um other psalms like it and how they would relate. You can do word studies, there's so much that we could talk about. But you should also look at the scripture index and go to the New Testament and ask yourselves, how is it used in the New Testament? And then also interpret it within that context. You know, in terms of setting context, the larger context is the biblical context. It's the larger redemptive historical or storied context of the Bible. So we don't do justice to any passage in the Old Testament if we haven't explored the extent to which it's fulfilled in Christ either explicitly or implicitly. Okay? Speaker 10: Did we say that? Speaker: That's revelation, apocalypse. Speaker 10: Oh, okay. Speaker: So just yeah, and you might want to make a little note that A P is Revelation, otherwise you'll there, because there are a lot of APs. Speaker 9: And M C is Mark. Speaker: M C is Mark. Yes. Well, the yes, the uh on the right hand side, that's the symbol for the Septuagint. And on the left hand side, I'm guessing that's some other version. Um That's Hebrew. Speaker 8: That's an H for Hebrew, I think. Speaker: Probably is. Speaker 8: Because the Hebrew numbering of the Psalms and the Septuagint number of the Assalamus is different in some Psalms. Speaker: Okay. Yeah, that's probably Hebrew and Septuagint. Yeah, thank you, David. That's probably Hebrew and Septuagint, then. Okay. And the different numbering that's there. Oh, do be alert to that, by the way. Sometimes they will have numbering that may not completely match up. If you if you if you get to a particular, you know, um, let's see here. If you, if, if, you know, if it says if you if you say say um Psalm 2 there and it says Psalm 2.7, and Psalm 2.7 doesn't seem to be in any way related to Matthew 3.17, 4.3, Luke 3.22, and so forth, just check your numbering and make sure that it's not too, you know, Psalm 2, verse 8, or verse 6. Sometimes the numbering's a little different. So just be be flexible. Be flexible. It'll get you in the right neighborhood. It's close, but not always right there. Okay. Now, all of this is just helpful background information, but it's useless if we don't actually interpret something. So let's have a look at a few poems, psalms, whoops, and um, and think about how to interpret them. Okay? So let's have a little practice here. And I know that I'm being extremely selective in my interpretive principles, but we'll focus on these things and see if it helps. I have three psalms here. The first is Psalm 43. Now, based on what we've done so far, what sort of psalm is this? And you can determine that in one of two ways. You can um sort of skim through it and begin reading it to yourself and then tell me what sort of psalm it is. Or you can look at that nice handy-dandy genre chart that I gave you and find Psalm 43 on it, and then tell me what sort of psalm it is. Speaker 8: It's an individual lament psalm, right? Speaker: Okay. Speaker 10: Vindicate me on the clue. Speaker: Yes. Uh that that might be a little bit of a clue a clue. Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people from the deceitful and unjust man, deliver me. So clearly, this is a guy who is suffering at the hands of his enemies and is praying for deliverance, so that would be a lament. And in penitential psalms, you would have this prayer for deliverance from sin. Okay. Um let me read it, or some someone read it loudly to us. Read it loudly. No, just that first no, the whole page, just the first uh Psalm Psalm 43. Read it loudly so everybody can hear you. Speaker 3: I might against ungodly people. Why have you rejected me? Why do I go about more than that? Oh God, my God, why are you cast out of my soul? And why are you turning well with me? Open God for I shall again praise in my salvation and my God. Speaker: Thank you, that was wonderful. Okay. In terms of um the general progression of thought in this lament psalm, does it does it match up with what we have in that uh genre of the psalms sheet that I gave you? What's the first thing on this Lament Psalms genre sheet that I gave you? It's uh number one is addressed to God. Okay, does it do that? Yeah. Yeah, vindicate me, O God. And deliver my cause against an ungodly people. Okay. First person address. Um, an initial plea. What's the initial plea? I just read it. Vindicate me. Yeah, vindicate me and defend my cause, precisely. Complaint. What's the complaint here? Why have you rejected me? Why do I go about mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? Love these Psalms, very honest. Again, it's not this Pollyanna view of the world. Or even for that matter, a Pollyanna view of it was what Greg Thompson was talking about, this sort of peaceful contentment. In sort of the what do you call it, the superspirituality? You see, and the boredom. You see it, and you see it all the time. This kind of, you know, that's the image that we need to project is an image of contentment, of peace. And otherwise it's unspiritual. Well, okay. How many times do we say in our prayers, why have you rejected me, oh God? Not a lot, I should imagine. All right. Complain to God. Any um claim of innocent or condemnation of a wicked enemy? I don't see the uh claim of innocence, do you? The condemnation of the wicked. Speaker 10: Was that you could say why have you rejected me as the assumption that he didn't do anything to cause the rejection. Speaker: Oh, yeah. Speaker 9: And why do I go about mourning because I guess that is fine? Speaker: Yeah, sure, exactly. So there's no, there's no sense here. This isn't a penitential salmon, I've done this, I deserve I deserve it. It's it's I've been rejected, and it seems to be your fault, not mine. So yeah. That's that's that's that's that's that's interesting. That's I think that's good. Any affirmations of trust? Moving on to the third point. Yes. Uh-huh. Um bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling, send out your light and your truth. And if you do all of this, then I will be careful to go to the temple, to the altar of God, and uh and praise you. That's right. And then um, anything else here? Petition. We've got the petition to plea for God's intervention, certainly. Send out your light and your truth. Notice that it is, it's not, again, it's not boilerplate. You see some of these elements, not necessarily in order. Um there's a kind of general movement from I'm in a bad situation because of my sin and my suffering. Lord God, please deliver me. And you may have one or more of these elements, but it's not, you know, strictly sort of going by the book here. All right. Do you have a vow of praise at the end? Yeah. Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. And before that, why are you cast out in my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him. Yeah. So this is hope. And what what I guess I should say before we move on to the New Testament, what does this tell us about um the character of God? Speaker 2: God is trustworthy. Speaker: Yeah, God is trustworthy. Um and and you you go to him, even though you think at the moment he seems to have abandoned you, you wouldn't go to him if you didn't think there was a chance that he would be a God who vindicates, a God who justifies, a God who saves and delivers his people. So you certainly have that. Is this passage found in the New Testament? And if so, where, based on your research? Where might it be found? Just one passage. I purposely chose one that wasn't a very famous passage. It's not found in one place. Where is it? Okay, someone find Mark 1434 and read it aloud to us. Okay. My soul is overwhelmed to the point of death. Who's speaking? What's the situation? What's the larger story here? unknown: Jesus. Speaker: This is Jesus and the Garden of Gethsemane. Now, why in the world is it pointing to this passage? I mean, what's the connection? Presumably there must be one, and it must be a pretty good one if they're going to have have it actually listed here. Out of all the passages in the New Testament, we've got one, and this is the one. Speaker 9: Well, here's the answer. Speaker: Yeah, what what verse in Psalm 43 is being uh apparently cited by Jesus here? Verse 5, right? So it says 43.5, and then you go, so for what is 43.5? Speaker 2: Although why are you cast down on my soul? Speaker: Why are you cast down on my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall pray again praise him my salvation and my God. And then this my soul is overwhelmed within me. Now, I don't know about you, but I would never make that connection. I wouldn't I and in fact I never have made that connection. As I was reading, as I've read through the account of the Garden of Gethsemane, I've never thought to myself, oh, Psalm 43. In fact, even when I went and looked at it this time, I was just sort of exploring some of these connections yesterday, and I thought, that seems a little tenuous. I mean, in both cases the souls are kind of down, but it seems like to me that there'd be a lot of places in Scripture you'd have sort of depressed people, and it just seemed like a pretty tenuous connection. So what I did is I went and I looked in the Greek, Greek version of the Old Testament, Greek of the New, and I discovered that a lot of the words are the same. And that when Jesus is speaking in the Garden of Gethsemane, he is speaking in language that is meant to evoke, and probably for him was an evocation of Psalm 43. Now, you know, not everybody can just go look in the Greek and see if it's the same, but the point I'm making is this you can try can trust this. If they list a connection, it's probably because there's some sort of verbal connection there. Um, an illusion, an echo, a direct quote. You'll catch it if it's a direct quote, but a lot of times in the New Testament, you don't just have direct quotes, you have illusions, or even even weaker, what we call an echo. And this isn't illusion or an echo. This is Jesus at the moment of his suffering alluding to Psalm 43. How does that help us to understand Psalm 43 better? And how does it help us to understand what was going on in the garden and the nature of Jesus' hope better? There's this kind of mutuality here. One is helping to interpret the other. How does the relationship between these two passages help us to understand both? And I'm sort of open to suggestions, but I've got a few ideas myself. Speaker 7: Well, Christ is affirming his um his righteousness here. Speaker: Yeah. And what you're doing here, you're making a move that I think a lot of the New Testament writers made. When they would, when Jesus is speaking from one part of Psalm 42, he's not just ripping that thing out of context. Jesus, my guess is that Jesus knew all of Psalm 42. From beginning to end, by heart. And probably, I'm sorry, Psalm 43, and probably Psalm 42 as well, because those two in some manuscripts actually belong together, Psalm 42 and Psalm 43. So he knew this stuff. When he alludes to one part of this, we should probably understand his statement there as a statement drawn from the entire movement of the lament. This is Jesus lamenting, or at least alluding to a lament in the Garden of Gethsemane. It's very much like, you know, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That moment up on the cross not too long after the Garden of Gethsemane, once again, it's Jesus alluding to a lament, speaking in the words of the lament. This is what Greg was talking about. He's actually praying the language of the Psalms. And if we know something about the lament, then we can, I think it's fair to conclude that Jesus would have moved from the sense of feeling abandoned by God, but also crying upon God to deliver him, and hoping, trusting, knowing that God would deliver him. So that the hope that suffuses Psalm 43 and Psalm 22, these lament psalms, why are you cast down in my soul and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him. This is Jesus' own hope. Talk about that movement from humiliation to exaltation. Jesus sums up the movement from humiliation to exaltation. He is an embodied lament psalm. Jesus is a lament psalm incarnate. He is the very movement from the low, the humbled, one who is in suffering and also in sin because he's taken the sin of the world upon himself, and then moves to the hope and the vindication and the exaltation that God provides. Now, this is very important. Not only does it help us to understand what's going through Jesus' mind, what sort of things he's doing in the Garden of Gethsemane and also on the cross, it also helps us to understand the lament psalms, and not necessarily just the ones that are found in this nice scripture index. How are the lament psalms, how are the lament psalms fulfilled in the New Testament? I think it provides the answer to that. And not just the ones that are explicitly alluded to in the New Testament, but as a genre, how are the lament psalms fulfilled in the New Testament? In Jesus. He is the embodied lament psalm. When you pray lament, you have hope that God will bring you out of your troubles, bring you out of your sin, bring you out of your suffering, because he's done it for Jesus. These lament psalms should drive us to thinking about the cross and the resurrection. And when we teach it, we should use the lament psalms to drive people to Jesus. Say, this experience of lament is something that is summed up in our Lord's life. He understands the lament. He lived the lament. If you feel yourself to be in the situation, you're not alone. And have hope. Because what God did for Jesus, He's also promised to do for you. And the specific nature of that hope by the time you get to the New Testament. If you did a word study on hope, this word that's found here, if you did a word study on that in the New Testament, more often than not, that hope is going to be virtually synonymous with the hope of resurrection. Hope of resurrection. That's the way in which God vindicates and exalts his people. Now, see what I'm trying to do here? This movement that I'm trying to do, I'm trying to help us to see all of the Psalms in light of, well, the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's the true significance of them. And when we're teaching the Psalms, when we're understanding the Psalms, make sure that you just don't stop with the middle of the Bible. Make sure that you're moving your listeners and those that you're teaching to the gospel, to Jesus. David, I think you had a comment or a question. Speaker 8: Yeah, we um we mentioned this just passing in one of the previous classes, but if one of the new none of the New Testament writers said this, but if one of the New Testament writers had said that Psalm 43 was fulfilled in Jesus, they could either mean predictive prophecy or they could mean simply fulfilling, fully filling the principles that are contained in 43. So when you get your if you get a psalm and it's fulfilled in Jesus in one of the New Testament passages, this could be the kind of principle it is. Speaker: And I and I appreciate your clarification on that, because when I say fulfill, I don't mean that all these psalms are predictive prophecies that find their exclusive fulfillment in Jesus. What I mean is this is the experience of innumerable people of God throughout the ages, including in the Old Testament. Numerous people have gone through this cycle of being humbled and trusting on God to deliver them. And that experience finds its fulfillment in Jesus, and as a result, gives us hope that it will find its fulfillment in us as well. That there indeed will be that movement from finding yourself in sin or suffering to true hope for deliverance because Jesus Himself has been vindicated and exalted. So, yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. Speaker 8: One more little piece. And if you think about it, who else was more unjustly uh oppressed than the person who took the sins of the entire world on him? And who else was more um completely uh exalted in the end? So it's it's it's fully fulfilled in what Jesus' experience is. Speaker: And part of this, and part of what uh underlies this is a conviction that the story of Jesus is meant to be our story. That when we read the story, it's not it's not something out there. He did this way back a long time ago, and that's sort of it. It was it in terms of taking care of the sin problem and paying for our sins. And yet that same pattern works itself out in our lives. We too pick up our cross, we too hum humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt you. So that movement from humiliation to exaltation is part and parcel of the Christian life. And sometimes it means actually um uh humbling yourself voluntarily. This is what um Greg was talking about today. Um real challenge, you know, instead of taking the field trips out to suffering, you know, but actually in some ways embracing that suffering in a way that's very un-American. Actually, it's very unfallen human, is what it is. Okay, let's let's look at the next one. I guess the point I would want to make with Psalm 43 is this it's um Jesus is um or or let me put the other way around, the the suffering, the sufferer in the Psalms can quite often be identified with Jesus. And you see this sufferer in the Psalms, you know, most often in these lament psalms. And uh, and I guess I want us to just be sort of, when we read a lament psalm, to be thinking ahead to the way in which that storyline finds its fulfillment in Jesus. The other storyline in the, or the other theme in the Psalms which finds its fulfillment in Jesus is um represented by this next psalm, and there are lots of lots of them like it. So you tell me, what kind of psalm is this? Psalm 2. Speaker 5: What's that? Speaker 6: Royal. Speaker: Royal and enthronement. This is one of those kingly psalms, and I mention it simply because they're so important in the New Testament. If the sufferer finds its fulfillment in Jesus, the king, the human king, spoken of in the Psalms, celebrated in the Psalms, finds its fulfillment in Jesus as well. And Psalm 2 becomes one of those main Psalms, and there are there are a number of them. Um Psalm 2, Psalm 1, 10 is very important. Psalm 8 in some different ways is very important. But let's look at Psalm 2. Who wants to read that aloud to us? Okay, yeah, thank you. Speaker 9: The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens alas, the Lord holds them in derision, and he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, As for me, I have set my king on Sion, my holy hill. I will tell of a decree. The Lord said to me, You are my son, today I have begun. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them to pieces like a fire vessel. Now, therefore, O kings, be wise. Be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the sun, lest he be angry and you perish in the way. For his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take revelation. Speaker: Okay. Now these royal psalms don't have a particular structure, um, a sect structure in the same way that the Lament Psalms and Thanksgiving and Praise Psalms often do. So that varies. What's common to them is the theme of kingship. So let's talk about the way in which kingship is developed in this particular psalm. Um what's what's the situation that's envisaged here? There's a certain situation and then a warning against those who are um find themselves in this situation. There's actually a nice storyline here. Speaker 6: So it's a warning against nations that will try to put their power and influence above uh, or try to try to claim that their power and influence doesn't come from the Lord. That he has nothing to do with it. Speaker: Yeah, and um and what are they what do they seem to be plotting in particular? Why do the nations rage and the people's plot in vain? What are they plotting to do? And this and and we know what they're plotting to do from the answer. Um well, they're they're plotting against what? Speaker 6: Against the Lord. Speaker: And against the Lord and against his anointed. And what are they plotting, verse uh verse three? unknown: Burst their bonds apart. Speaker: Yeah, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. Apparently, these are kingdoms that are under the sway of of um of the of the king, of the Judean, of Judean king, the Davidic king. So they're they're vassal kings, apparently. One might think of the king of Moab, the king of Edom, and so forth, those those nations surrounding Israel or surrounding Judah. And they're plotting to break free. We don't want to be subject to this Davidic king anymore. That's the idea. Maybe they're doing it at the moment when the kingship passes from the father to the son. Because, you know, any time you've got a transfer in power, that's when things are a little shaky, and if you're a vassal kingdom, that's the time to rebel. Should you ever find yourself in that position, that's when you want to rebel. You know, right at that transfer of power. So when JFK was shot, you know, we go on high alert because there's a transfer of power, and things are a little shaky at that point. So apparently these kingdoms are plotting and planning to overthrow the Davidic king. And the answer to that is, verse 4, well, mainly laughter. And then the Lord holds them in derision and says in his wrath, as for me, now this is God speaking, I have set my king on Zion. So that tells you something about the Davidic king. He's God's appointed representative. On Zion, that would be the hill on which the temple and the kingly palace stood. I will tell you of the decree. The Lord said to me, this apparently is the king speaking at this point, the Lord said to me, the king, You are my son, today I have begotten you. Um what in context does it mean to be God's son? Does this mean that he was um, you know, literally conceived and begotten of God? Speaker 6: Heir. Speaker: Yeah. Um yeah, if you were going to do a Rorschach test or an inkblot test, uh, kind of a verbal inkblot test, you know, in biblical terms, you know, I say son, you should say inheritance or heir. That's the idea. And by the way, when that theme is picked up in the New Testament, that's why sonship is used. It's not really a gender thing. Um, it's uh, I mean, it was culturally, but in terms of its theological significance, it's not a gender thing, it's an inheritance thing. That's why Paul will sometimes say children of God and sons and daughters of God, to make clear that he's not talking about the gender, he's talking about the inheritance. And it was, after all, in the ancient world, it was the son who got the inheritance. So this is this is a this is an inheritance thing. You are my son. That means you're my heir. Today I have begotten you. At the moment at which the king became the king, he becomes the heir of God, the adopted son of God is the idea. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession. See, there's the inheritance. I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them to pieces, and then there's a warning to the kings of the earth. So don't even think about rebelling. I know you were thinking about it, you were plotting and planning it, but it's not just, you know, the Davidic king is sitting up there waiting to be toppled. God has put it there. And so submit yourself to God's appointed heir. Now that's that's Psalm 2 in its setting. And again, I don't think this is going back to what David was saying. I don't think this is a predictive prophecy in its original setting. It's just talking about God establishing his Davidic king with authority over the nations. Now the story begins there, but it doesn't end there. So, in the time we have left, quickly look at your um uh uh scripture index and tell me where we might go for Psalm 2. Could you possibly teach Psalm 2 without reference to Yeah? Look at that. How many passages? Speaker 10: One, two, three, Hebrew. Speaker: Yeah, what are they? Ten or twelve different citations there, maybe more, maybe fifteen? There's a lot. Speaker 8: Well the ones that are in italics, are they direct quotes? Speaker: Um I think the ones that are in italics might be based, um I'd have to go look and see, but I think those might be based on um like the Septuagint or something. Uh look and see, Dave, maybe you can figure it out, but uh I think that might be based on a different version. In particular, look at um look at verse 7. How many citations to verse 7? That's the biggie, right? Verse 7 is uh um you are my son, today I have begotten you. How many? Speaker 2: Seven. Speaker: Oh, seven. Ooh. One, two, three, four, five, six. Yes, there's seven. This this passage, this psalm, is so important for our understanding of the New Testament. Where do we hear God saying, You are my son, with you I am well pleased? At his baptism. And what how might that help us? We talk about sort of signal moments in the life of Jesus. We had the Garden of Gethsemane, okay. Now we've got his baptism. Based on our knowledge of this, what did Jesus what did God mean when he said from from the cloud, You are my son? Actually, it's twice. It's at the baptism. What's the other moment that he says you are my son? Speaker 2: Transfiguration. Speaker: Transfiguration. Okay, so we've got bookends on Jesus' ministry, and on both of those bookends, right at the very beginning and right at the very end, you've got you are my son. Uh what does that mean? In light of this passage, and there are other passages like this, but just for the moment. What's he saying about Jesus? Speaker 9: He's the air? Speaker: Yeah. He is the air. Now, let me let me make something real clear here. This is where it's very helpful to do a little bit of biblical theology and to sort of look at the Old Testament backgrounds of the New Testament. There are good passages in the New Testament, John 1 not least. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Very clear from the New Testament that Jesus was God. He's the second person of the Trinity. And in the language of the creeds that we speak, even here at Trinity, like the Nicene Creed, he's the eternally begotten Son of God. That's the creedal language that we use, which is a great way of putting it. What you need to know, though, is in a place like Psalm 2, Son of God is not being used with respect to divinity. It's talking about the human kingship. That's what's going on in Psalm 2. Okay? So when God says at the baptism, at the transfiguration, you are my son, even though it is true that Jesus is divine, that's not God's point at the moment. I mean, we can all assume that, and God certainly knew it. Didn't feel the need to say it at that point, because he's talking about something else. He's talking about Psalm 2. That if you want to look at who the true human king is, now he's divine as well, because both of those come together in our creeds, right? Fully human and fully God. He's the human king and he's the divine king. We know that. But at his baptism and transfiguration, it's his human kingship that's being spoken of. And if you look at these other passages, and I would commend this to your deep, deep attention, if you look at these other passages, look, look beside verse 7. Um, Acts 13.33. Oh wow, I'm surprised I don't see. Okay. Uh Hebrews, Hebrews 1.5, there's a um, and Hebrews 5.5, especially that Acts 13.33 is, you can even underline that one. That's hugely important. There was this understanding in the early Christian church, and it should be our understanding too, that Jesus is the human king. He's the fulfillment of the Davidic kingship. And that at his baptism, God said, You're it. You're the human king. Those Davidic kings, those, those, those um sons of David in the Old Testament, they were just pointers looking forward to you and your kingship. And when he rose from the dead, he ascended and sat at the right hand of God as a human being, and he entered into his human kingship. I mean, talk about in glory. Now, he's also divine, but remember, Jesus is still a human king. If we read Psalm 2 and talk about the kings in the Old Testament and stop there and just say, you know, well, this was all about kings in the Old Testament and how God was going to keep them in power despite the attempts to rebel, you know, from the Edomites and the Moabites, then we've missed the richness of this, the biblical richness, and we've missed our own hope. Because if you look at this larger biblical theological trajectory, what you have is this notion of kingship in the Old Testament with Son of God language, fulfilled in Jesus at his baptism, when he's declared to be the human king. Finally, there's a human king worthy of the name. Even more fulfilled at his resurrection when he is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty and rules as God's human king over the world. He's also divine, but remember, he's still both. He's both human and divine. That's sort of basic to Orthodox Christian understanding. Speaker 5: What else is that? I mean, I I can understand if we're talking about the heavenly kingdom. I can understand that. That the divinity uh kings really look forward to a heavenly king. Yeah. Our Savior. I can see that, but the earthly kings, I'm not sure how it's not. Speaker: Well, um, but but think about the Lord's Prayer Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come. Thy will come. Will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So it is true that Christ's kingdom is fundamentally in heaven at the moment. That's where he is reigning. And yet the Christian hope is that his kingdom will come here, thy kingdom come. Yeah. And so what we have here is we have this movement of Christ as king and his kingdom, that's the hope of the second coming, coming to earth and establishing him as the human king over this world, new heavens, new earth, resurrected bodies. That's what it's all about. And these Psalms provide the backdrop for that. Now we could go on and on for hours about this because it's so interesting. But the point I want to make is this the lament psalms are important because they're fulfilled in Jesus and his suffering. They already point to the hope of deliverance and vindication and resurrection. But if you want to really explore the fullness of that hope, look at the royal psalms. You want hope. Because the trajectory there is it begins here in the Psalms and then finds its fulfillment in Jesus. And not just, it doesn't even end there. By the time you get to Romans 8, we are considered to be the sons of God. And that's why you can't say sons of God is divine, because we certainly are never divine. But it's the we are the sons of God, the adopted sons of God, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. And so you can see a lot more can be said about this, and you know, we can talk about sort of the fullness of this in other places, but the point I'm making is don't leave the Psalms just where they are. Always look forward to the way in which they're being fulfilled in Christ. And ultimately the way in which they're being fulfilled in us as we're conformed to the image of Christ. Does that make sense? Okay. Now, I can't possibly give you the full biblical theology on that, but maybe I can pique your interest, pique your curiosity, and encourage you to use the uh the Psalms as a kind of launching pad into the um into the New Testament fulfillment in Christ. Okay, we've got two minutes. Unfortunately, the the the third Psalm is uh two verses. So it won't take long. Um and I do want to just conclude briefly on this note. Psalm 117, this is it. Two verses. Praise the Lord all nations, extol him all peoples, for great is his steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord. And that should be the note on which we end. But where is this found in the New Testament? Speaker 9: Romans 15.11. Speaker: Romans 15.11, yes, thank you. And could someone look up Romans 15.11 and read that to us? Speaker 8: And again, praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples praise Him. Speaker: Okay, and if we have more time, we can look at Romans 15 and see that we have one of these majestic summaries of Old Testament teachings saying that look, from the very beginning, in the Old Testament, the point wasn't for the blessings to stay with Israel. Israel was always meant to be a means of God's blessings to the world. Well, you know, we do that all the time when we're in the preaching that we've been having, in this whole notion of the blessing being given to Abraham so that all the peoples might be blessed in him. It's suffused throughout the Old Testament. And here we have in Romans 15 Paul picking up a psalm, in this case, Psalm 117, and saying, look, even in the Psalms, you have exhortations to the nations to praise him. It's not just his people that are said to praise him, it's all the Gentiles. It's all the Gentiles, all the nations that are that are told to praise him. And this is seen to be a kind of indication that God's ultimate plan was always to bring all the peoples in. So you've even got this missions emphasis, if I may put it that way, in the Psalms. Now, we've just talked about the suffering aspect, the kingship aspect, and the missions aspect. There are other aspects as well. And what I'm encouraging you to do is to go out and find those things. When you study the Psalms, when you teach the Psalms, use the scripture indexed and see the variety of ways, and I've only chosen three to talk about, the variety of ways in which these Psalms find their fulfillment in Christ and in us, the church. Amen? Okay, let me pray for us. Lord, we thank you for the Psalms and we thank you for the richness, and we pray that you'll uh make us people of prayer, people who can pray in the language of the Psalms and can um can pray in the hope of the Psalms as well. Help us to be uh characterized by that same hope, but acknowledge that you are a God who is faithful and who does meet us in our sin and in our suffering and who um brings us out of that and brings us um even into the grand inheritance which our Lord Jesus Christ already enjoys as the human and reigning King. So we pray that you'll help our lives to be characterized by that hope and by that perseverance in the midst of suffering, and help us to be also a means of blessing to the nations so that all peoples can enjoy you and can live out their human vocation as those intended to praise you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Speaker 2: Amen.