USING THE PSALMS AND WRITING YOUR OWN PSALMS
Iain McKillop
LIVING THE PSALMS SESSION1
Introduction: What are the Psalms?
On this retreat we will be looking at the Psalms to explore how they might inspire our own attitude to life, faith and God, and enhance our prayer and worship. Though they come from a very different culture form ours, the Psalms can challenge our Christian discipleship and can help us question over- simplistic attitudes to faith. The Psalms are Hebrew poem-songs that remind us that everything in life can be talked over with God.
Asking around, I get the impression that many Christians have had similar experiences with the Psalms to my own. When I was a child chanted Psalms were more often part of church services than they are generally today, unless your church keeps more strictly than most to the lectionary and uses them at most services, as is still the case in monasteries and cathedrals. As a young chorister in a traditional church choir I used to find chanted Psalms difficult and boring to sing and the words of Psalms seemed distant, sometimes in obsolete language. Plainsong seemed irrelevant to contemporary music. (Plainchant isn’t how the Psalms were originally sung – we have no knowledge of how they originally sounded, though several musical historians have made guesses.) If Psalms aren’t sung well, led by trained choirs they can deflate worship. In the 70s musicians set them to contemporary tunes, as in Psalm Praise, but the words and meanings were often simplified a bit like choruses and some of the most challenging theological bits were missed out.
As I got older and my faith developed, studying the Psalms more closely I couldn’t understand why Christians still used many of these Hebrew songs.
They express pre-Christian attitudes to God which often talk of revenge, a God to be feared more than a God of love, a God who exclusively supported the people of Israel and helped them destroy their enemies, a God whose bias was toward Jews and against Gentiles, (who are most of the worldwide Christian Church. While Christ taught about the same God he transformed our understanding: God intends us to “love our enemies, pray for those who persecute us”, “worship in spirit and in truth” and “Spread Jesus’ Gospel to the ends of the earth”, showing that God embraces all and is not exclusively for the Jews. A bit of that universal love of God is in the Psalms, particularly those that call for all the world to worship God, but much of the exclusivity of God expressed in the Psalms reads like nationalistic propaganda.
Despite finding difficulties in the Psalms certain favourite Psalms spoke profoundly to me and fed me spiritually, as they may have done you: (List inside leaflet cover): Psalm 23 assuring us that we can to trust God as our caring, all-providing shepherd,
Psalm 8 of our special place the glories of God’s creation.
Psalm 150 encouraging our praise, using every technique we have.
Psalm 137 “By the rivers of Babylon” – on the experience of exile and our longing for God amid life’s frustrations.
Psalm 22 prayed by Christ on the Cross: “My God, why have you forsaken me?”, feeling distant from God, reaching for support,
Psalm 51 the great psalm of penitence, asking for God’s mercy, faithful loving-kindness and patience with us.
Psalm 122 & 133 & most of the Psalms of Ascents (120-134) on how enervating it should be to come together in corporate worship
Ps. 131 on feeling secure with God as a child on its mother’s breast.
Above all, my favourite Psalm 139 about God’s thorough knowledge of us in his intimate relationship with us.
Though there are wonderful passages in many Psalms, I still had profound
difficulties with their message: Some Psalms can be very un-Christ-like at times, calling for the utter destruction of enemies, self-justifying, celebrating brutalities and proclaiming the exclusiveness of the Jewish nation, expressing a self-centred faith. I used to wonder if the arrogance expressed in some of Psalms hadn’t
contributed to some of the ethical problems of Zionist dominance in modern Palestine.
Many of my difficulties with the Psalms altered last summer as I spent several months living in a Yorkshire monastery – the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield, saturated in the Psalms day by day. In the 5 services each day we chanted or read through the whole psalter each month. Some Psalms were read every day and became almost as familiar as the Lord’s Prayer. I had been appointed as the monastery’s Artist in Residence, so as well as following all the daily services, in the rhythm of the monastic day I took the Psalms as my theme for contemplation, studying and painting. I read Psalm Commentaries for a couple of hours each morning, painted themes from the Psalms for much of the day, meditating on their meaning as I painted, then reviewed my thoughts and what I was learning learned in a spiritual diary which I wrote up each evening. While I was there I had the fantastic opportunity of discussing the Psalm with many of the monks, visitors, among whom were several bishops and theology lecturers.
As I lived with the Psalms, words and phrases in their poetry kept speaking about situations in my life. I began to find, in reading through the Psalms daily, that while some things go over our heads or aren’t relevant, we’ll nearly always find something that relates to our situation and gives us the impetus to bring those issues to God or see life & faith in new perspectives. The Psalms were written by people genuinely bringing everything before God, honestly, in life’s daily struggle, so inevitably, even though they are ancient songs, they relate to our common human needs today.
Words keep reoccurring, triggering contemplative responses in me: ‘faithful, steadfast loving-kindness’, ‘mercy’ and ‘grace’, ‘security in God’s care’, ‘being known thoroughly’, ‘being protected by God -’ ‘under the shadow of his wings’ or ‘safe as in the cleft of a rock’, ‘being trusted by God as his watchman or steward over God’s world and God’s people’ and much more.
I find the Psalms reinforce my relationship with God and clarify my calling as a human being and as a priest. They are also useful as prayers when we aren’t feeling like praying, or don’t know what to pray. I’d like us to try this weekend to relate to God through the Psalms and see how they speak into our own situations: Read through psalms and see how they relate to you and how they might feed into your prayer-life and spiritual understanding. I’ve produced a booklet of translations of the Psalms that we will be using most in these studies.
The Psalms are not just poetry or instructions for faith. They are more like profound poetic conversations between God’s people and their Source of Life. They are incredibly honest about how the reader is feeling, which can sometimes make them uncomfortable for Christians. The Jews are more comfortable about openly blaming God for their situation, questioning God and openly expressing anger, self-righteousness and doubt than Christians feel comfortable to do. I find the Christian way of expressing our relationship to God rather more humbly,
valuable in helping us to accept what happens in life with love. But the openness and honesty of the Psalms can encourage us not to bottle up our feelings. They suggest that we should bring everything to God, opening our true selves to God, not hiding or repressing our feelings. In a way reading the Psalms can act as a sort of therapy for faith. I’m sure that writing them must have been therapeutic for several psalmists, so I’ve started writing my own psalms (an exercise some might like to try on the retreat – I’ll give guidelines tomorrow).
This attitude of laying ourselves open honestly to God in everything has really helped me over this last year, in which I’ve faced more pressures than at most times in my life: the death of several people very close to me, sorting out the healing of my throat problems, deep betrayal by two people which changed my direction in life, causing stress & serious health issues, a heart attack & subsequent heart operation, where I truly believed I was going to die and would soon face God directly. What amazes and encourages me, because it seems against my introvert nature, is that I felt spiritually strong through all those uncertainties. Emotionally I was sometimes in turmoil, particularly worrying about how my death might affect those I love, and angry at those who had caused the stress. But I felt God to be extremely close to me and I’ve known more than at any other time of my life that I can trust God. That’s strange because I’m not a person who easily trusts; I’m cerebral, questioning faith and questioning myself much of the time. I recognise that living daily with the Psalms over the last year has spoken into and strengthened my faith in new ways. So I offer the thoughts we’ll share together this weekend in the hope and prayer that the Psalms may strengthen others of you in similar ways.
JEWISH USE OF THE PSALMS
What are the Psalms?
[PASSAGES IN SQUARE BRACKETS ARE ADDITIONAL TO THE INFORMATION GIVEN IN THE TALKS -Paul talks of early Christians worshipping with “Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” (Ephesians 5:19), showing that the first churches used the Hebrew Psalms, publicly sung hymns and personal songs reflecting the inner music of the soul. That implies that different types of Early Church worship music had different characteristics. Scholars debate the varied meanings of these types of music: Hymns and spiritual songs may refer to personal responses of praise to God and musical settings of biblical or liturgical texts. We can’t be sure. Some commentators believe that “hymns” (‘humnois’ in Greek) were purely vocal music, sung by the whole company (as in Matthew 26:30; Acts 16:25), which were created distinctively for the Christian Church, with new words to praise God. A few early ‘hymns’ or spiritual songs appear to be quoted in scripture, like the poem about Christ included in Philippians 2:6-11.
“Spiritual Songs” (‘Ōdais pneumatikais’ in Greek) referred to in Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16 are more difficult to interpret. In Greek the term was applied to lyric poetry. Some think it may have used more varied and elaborate music, perhaps sung by one person only—a spiritual expression by one musician for edifying the whole congregation. Philo in a passage on Jewish sacred music(2 p. 476), wrote, “He who stands up sings a hymn composed in praise of God, either having made a new one for himself, or using an ancient one of the poets of days gone by.” The Christian counterpart of this might be these “spiritual songs.” which might also be what St. Paul alluded to in 1Corinthians 14:26, when he refers to some having a special spiritual gift of song “Singing and making melody in your heart”.—The Greek word there translated as “making melody” is the verb derived from the term “psalm” (‘psalmon’) but rather than referring to public music it seems to be about singing out an inner music in the soul.]
The most personal Ancient Hebrew Psalms were probably written by individuals to make ‘inner music or prayer to God in the soul”. That’s the impression we get of David as a musician. But the majority of the biblical Psalms were designed for public singing. In the Hebrew Bible the Book of Psalms is called ‘Tehillim’ meaning “songs of praise.” Our title “Psalms” is their Greek title in the Septuagint, the translation of Hebrew scriptures compiled in Alexandria. The Greek term ‘Psalmoi’ derived from the verb for “plucking strings with fingers”. So ‘Psalmoi’ came to mean “sacred songs sung to musical accompaniment” usually of the cithara, lyre or harp.
The Psalms became the main songs in Jewish Temple liturgy but their tradition may stretch back far before formal worship was established in Israel. The Bible’s 150 Psalms weren’t all written in one period. Their language and forms differ greatly. They record several centuries of worship and prayer. Very ancient language and themes in some Psalms imply that these may have origins far earlier than David (to whom more are attributed than he probably wrote, and Solomon (c.f. Psalm 72) to whom some others are attributed. As you’ll know from New Testament letters, a Hebrew custom was to compose writings under the name of a famous author or in their tradition, rather than the words always being by the actual person themselves. One psalm refers to Moses’s song of praise [90].
One of the most ancient Psalms may be Psalm 42, which sings of “deep calling to deep at the sounds of God’s cataracts.” It seems to represent some of the oldest theology in the Bible, when Semitic peoples believed in God as a force that tamed Chaos in creating the universe. Some like “by the rivers of Babylon” (Psalm 137) were written far later about the time of the Exile, others which talk of Temple worship, like the Psalms of Ascent 120-134 & Pss.15, 24, 68, 82, 95, 115 record later Temple liturgy. These may have been composed by musical directors for the choirs of the rebuilt temple as late as the 2nd Century. Some of those Musical Directors are named in the titles of the Psalms: Asaph (75), Sons of Korah [42], Ethan the Ezrahite [89],
The present arrangement of the Book of Psalms appears to have been settled well after the Exile for the rebuilt 2nd Temple, probably as the definitive Psalter to be used in Temple worship.
[The collection was divided into 5 books of Psalms. 5 was a symbolic number in Hebrew; it may have been intended to correlate to the 5 books of the Pentateuch:
Book 1: Psalms 1-41
Book 2: Psalms 42- 72
Book 3: Psalms 73-89
Book 4: Psalms 90-106
Book 5: Psalms 107-150]
Even before the final destruction of the Temple in 70CE the Psalms had also became the prayer book of Jewish synagogue worship, from the times Jews meet in Exile, away from the Temple. Many Jews would memorise Psalms as prayers,
as Christian monks later memorised the Psalms, before printing made Psalters for reading and song more common. Jesus probably memorised many Psalms as rabbis did, since Psalms appear to have been an important part of his prayer-life. He is recorded several times as using phrases directly from Psalms. Even on the Cross, in confusion and agony, Jesus was probably praying remembered psalms of hope when he said “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22)
and “Father into your hands I commit my spirit.” (Psalm 31) (That phrase “Father into your hands I commit my spirit” was the first psalm-prayer that Jewish children were taught to say as they went to sleep at night. So it’s so poignant to imagine Jesus saying it a few moments before he died.) In Christ’s appearance
to John on Patmos in the Book of Revelation the Psalms also seem to be quoted in God’s messages to the Early Churches.
[Today we think of the Psalms as the specific 150 sacred songs of the Hebrew Bible. These were selected from a larger group of Psalms and songs used in Hebrew worship. The Greek Septuagint version of the Psalms has 151 Psalms: the extra Psalm 151 is about David and Goliath. Some versions of the Middle Eastern ‘Peshitta’, the Syriac Churches’ Bible, contain extra Psalms 152–155. There are also a group of 18 non-canonical Psalms called the Psalms of Solomon, which only survive in Greek and Syriac, but were translations of now-lost Hebrew psalms.
Numbering
The numbering of the Psalms is slightly different in some Bibles.
Hebrew
numbering
(Masoretic)
Greek
numbering
(Septuagint or Vulgate)
1–8
1–8
9–10
9
11–113
10–112
114–115
113
116
114–115
117–146
116–145
147
146–147
148–150
148–150
Numbering of the Psalms differs—mostly by one digit, between the Hebrew (Masoretic) and Greek (Septuagint) manuscripts.
Some Jews and some Christians believe that there is power in just reciting the Psalms. Rabbi Tezmach Tzedek (Polish 1789-1866) a 19th Century leading orthodox Rabbi, wrote for example: “If one would only know the power of the verses of Tehillim, and their effect on high, one would recite them continuously. The verses of Tehillim transcend all barriers and ascend higher and higher, imploring the Master of the Universe until they achieve results in kindness and mercy.” Some Christian groups have a similar belief that the words of scripture have a particular spiritual content when spoken aloud, which derives from God’s inspiration of the writer, giving them an internal power when read. I think that it can sometimes become a little superstitious to attribute ‘power’ to the words of scripture in this way; I prefer to think of the Psalms as the sincere putting into words of believers’ true feelings in response to God. Some Presbyterian traditions like some Scottish Free Presbyterians will only use Psalms in services of worship.]
TYPES OF PSALM (See list on Page 7 of booklet) One of the most useful ways of assessing what the Psalms are about was suggested between 1926 and 1933 by the scholar Hermann Gunkel. Rather than just reading the Psalms in numerical or lectionary order, he suggested that we may understand the Psalms best by considering their context and how they reflect the beliefs and religious practices of those who wrote and used them. He suggested that there are different genres or types of Psalms, communal and personal, individual, praise or lament, penitential prayers, psalms about leadership for royal coronations, or praise & corporate prayers and songs of thanksgiving for Temple worship.
[TYPES OR GENRES OF PSALM
Lament Psalms *Psalms indicated by asterisks belong to several different genres
Community
12, 44, 58, 60, 74, 79, 80, 83, 85, 89*, 90, 94, 123, 126, 129
Individual
3, 4, 5, 7, 9-10, 13, 14, 17, 22, 25, 26, 27*, 28, 31, 36*, 39, 40:12-17, 41, 42-43, 52*, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 61, 64, 70, 71, 77, 86, 89*, 120, 139, 141, 142
Penitential
6, 32*, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143
Imprecatory (calling to God for a particular reason)
35, 69, 83, 88, 109, 137, 140
Thanksgiving (Todah) Psalms
Community
65*, 67*, 75, 107, 124, 136*
Individual
18, 21, 30, 32*, 34, 40:1-11, 66:13-20, 92, 108*, 116, 118, 138
Songs of Salvation History
8*, 105-106, 135, 136
Songs of Trust
11, 16, 23, 27*, 62, 63, 91, 121, 125, 131
Hymnic Psalms
Hymn & Doxology
8*, 19:1-6, 33, 66:1-12, 67*, 95, 100, 103, 104, 111, 113, 114, 117, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150
Liturgical Psalms (for Public Worship)
Covenant Songs
50, 78, 81, 89*, 132
Royal occasions
2, 18, 20, 21, 29, 45, 47, 72, 93, 95*, 96, 97, 98, 99, 101, 110, 144
Songs of Zion
46, 48, 76, 84, 87, 122
Temple Liturgies
15, 24, 68*, 82, 95*, 115, 134
Community Psalms
Wisdom Psalms
1*, 36*, 37, 49, 73, 112, 127, 128, 133
Poems about the Torah (the Law of God)]
1*, 19:7-14, 119
Thinking about what a Psalm might have been used for, helps us consider why it says what it does about God. The words don’t necessarily apply directly or literally to us in our particular contemporary Christian situation, though what they say about God probably speaks to our own relationship with God. Many of the communal Psalms are propagandist. They helped stir people up against enemies or made them feel secure, justifying the nation as if God’s special people cannot do wrong. If we keep this context in mind, the Psalms’ theology becomes less uncomfortable, because we realise that they aren’t definitively promoting war or vengeance in an un-Christian way; they were expressing a national attitude of superiority, rising from their understanding of their unique relationship with God. We need to be careful not to develop such arrogance as Christians who know God’s love.The humblest Psalms like Psalm 131 often read truest for Christians.
The Psalms are most relevant to us today where they are open and honest in communicating with God. This honesty may sometimes feel uncomfortable, especially where Psalms of Lament question God over calamities, seem self-righteous or vengeful, rather than promoting Christian qualities like reconciliation, love or forgiveness.
There is a lot in the Psalms about relying on God for personal forgiveness and support in times of vulnerability. Primarily the Psalms show us that it is possible to be entirely open with God; to tell him how you truly feel in any situation.
He’s big enough not to hold our ranting against us.
The Characteristics of the Psalms:
The Psalms Are POEMS
The Psalms are poetry, using Hebrew poetic structure which some translations, like the King James Bible fail to emphasise. The format of Hebrew poetry was only worked out by Bishop Robert Lowth in 1753, long after the first English translations. While western poetry is often based on rhyme and rhythm. Hebrew poetry is based on how the message in one line relates in meaning to the next line. This is often called ‘parallelism’: The first line’s meaning is expanded upon in the next line, either by making the meaning clearer, completing or contrasting the first thought with a second one. EXAMPLE:
PSALM 131
“O LORD, my heart is not arrogant,
my aspirations are not raised too high;
I do not waste my mind on mysteries far too deep to comprehend.
With God I calm and quiet my soul,
like a loved child, nursed at its mother’s breast;
like the weaned child my secure soul is tranquil within me.
O all God’s people, place your hope in the LORD;
trust his promises now and for evermore.”
The poetry is formed by parallels of sense rather than parallel sounds as we use in Western poetic rhyme. (I’ll give you a hand-out about Hebrew poetic form tomorrow). As a result Hebrew Psalms lose less of their poetic qualities in translation than when western rhyming or rhythmic poetry is translated from one language to another. As poetry in song the Psalms convey meaning memorably:
poetry often conveys truths more intensely & vividly than prose. Its words are more easily remembered. It often uses metaphors and images that are rich in their allusions to focus on an idea and stimulate contemplation, like the concept of stilling our soul with God like a child weaned at its mother’s breast. The power of the language enables us to remember lines & ideas, so we meditate on their meaning & relate them to our own experience. I found in painting Psalms that they expanded my spiritual imagination.
Memorable phrases in the Psalms include: (See inside front cover)
[Strong language and images in poetry help us recognise that the author has put time and thought into the phrasing, honing ideas to form the verses. Poetry then can become even more meaningful because we recognise that the writers felt so strongly about their subject that they turned it into poetry, sacrificing thought, effort and time to hone it. Words have been chosen for precision of expression. The Psalms show their writers’ care for their subject, spending time to express love, worship and prayer, fear, awe, penitence and regret. These poems or songs addressed primarily to God, have had delight and sacrifice expended in the composition and expression of adoration and praise etc., as well as an inner urge to communicate with God, because, as Psalm 149 expresses, their subject is worth it! So they encourage us to do the same.
Calvin urged Christians to translate the Psalms themselves into their own words.to help them better express their personal praise and worship. ]
A Psalm Is a Song
C.S. Lewis emphasised that we need to remember that the Psalms were songs, because we won’t take our theology quite as literally from songs as we might from an instruction of Moses, Jesus or Paul. If propagandist Psalms say it’s fine to ‘destroy your enemies’ we should remember Jesus’ instruction to “love your enemies” and live by that, not by what the Psalm seems to be saying. The hostile expressions in the Psalm were often intended to give confidence to Israel, just as a football chants today taunt the weaknesses of an opposing team. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the opposition is to be literally hated or destroyed, though sadly that is still how some believers have interpret them through Jewish and Christians Church history.
[The various titles of the Book of Psalms are one indication of the role of the book as a hymnal including a variety of types of psalms: hymns, laments, thanksgivings, songs of trust, meditations on wisdom, and others. Some were not specifically ‘songs of praises’, though every psalm, whatever its literary type and context, in some way extols and glorifies God.
Types of Song mentioned in the Psalms are: Sheminith [6,12,], Shiggaion [7], Maskil [42]
Different tunes or forms include: The Gittith [8], Muth Labben [9], Miktam [16], The Deer of the Dawn [22], Jeduthun [39], Alamoth [46], Mahalath [53], the Dove of the far-off Terebinths [56], Do not Destroy [57], The Lily of the Covenant [60], Lilies [69], Mahalath Leannoth [88],
Different accompaniments are indicated: flutes [5], stringed instruments[55],
Some were sung at special events: The Dedication of the Temple [30], for the Memorial Offering [38, 70], Sabbath [92], Pleading before the Lord [102]
Historical situations were celebrated: (mainly referred to in Book 2 if the Psalms [42-72], David feigning madness before Abimelech [34], penitence in response to Nathan’s accusation [51], David’s hiding in the cave from Saul [142], the Exodus and Settlement of Canaan[ ], Exile in Babylon []
The Psalms are described by Richard C. Leonard as “music without the notes”; the tunes may be lost, the lyrics &poetry are preserved. The notations that survive remind us that the musical character of the Psalms was relevant to their context. Presumably the tunes and accompaniments were appropriate to the words and mood of the celebration. Music is part of the Psalms’ culture & meaning. The original musical notes don’t survive so each culture can interpret them in its own music & its understanding of the place of song in its society & worship. In composing later music to the Psalms, many musicians have probably come to know & express the meaning of the Psalms more intimately than they may have done if the original musical had survived. Calvin suggested that each generation & culture should devise its own musical forms to express the Psalms’ meaning & enable worship & praise, as appropriate to them. Poetical forms engage our creativity & meditation, helping us relate the Psalms in our own situations. The musical character of the Psalms can further excite and enhance our creativity by enabling us to express our worship through singing, performing or hearing the Psalms, uniting more of our senses in our worship, as Psalm 149 calls us to attempt.]
A Psalm Is an Expression of Worship
Even though the term “worship” is not frequently employed in Psalms many other Hebrew words used encourage us to ‘praise’, ‘give thanks’, ‘hold God in awe’, ‘raise his glory’ & respond to God devotionally.
[The Hebrew Scriptures contains various types of spiritual books: ‘revelations about God and life’, ‘reflections on God and life’, and ‘responses’. These date different stages of Israel’s historic & spiritual development. The Pentateuch and the prophets might be called ‘revelations’ by which the People discovered what God is like. Wisdom Books like Proverbs, Job, the Book of Chronicles and some prophets could be called ’reflections’ on what has been revealed through history and human experience. The Book of Psalms has grown from people’s ‘reflections’ to become a book of “responses” to God in different ways: “thanksgiving, adoration, lament or petition”. ]
Because the Psalms date from different times in Jewish history and are by varied authors, they show a spectrum of different attitudes to God and worship. This is useful for us because we come to scripture with many different personalities,
varied experiences, and different things nourish us spiritually. The Psalms contain a wide variety of emotions, different ways of responding to circumstances and different interpretations of how God is active or seems to be inactive. The Psalmists’ emotions range from exultant praise to desperation, triumphant thanks to blame and anger, doubt and despair to trust and assurance. Some of these responses again feel uncomfortable, not how a contemporary Christian might feel comfortable to be seen as responding to God. But they are very true to our natural human emotions, inclinations or reactions. We recognise with hindsight that some of their uncomfortable verses, especially the complaints to God, weren’t necessarily based on accurate understanding of situations. Yet they are truthful reactions to the feelings and troubles encountered by God’s people living in a hard world. They are real & honest expressions how many feel & we can learn from them to be honest in our worship & open in how we talk to God.
An encouraging aspect of the poetry is that many Psalms show a progressive development in emotions: the psalmist might move from despair to hope, feelings of weakness to strength, a sense of distance from God to trusting in his closeness. Most famously there is a complete turn-around of emotions in Psalm 22, which starts “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”… but concludes “Many will come to tell of your righteousness and speak for ever of your wonders and faithfulness.” This recognition that we change and grow in our trust of God can be very encouraging for those of us who have fluctuating emotions or big questions about faith.
the Psalms Are designed for Public Worship
Modern poetry is often individualistic, expressing personal thoughts & feeling. Many psalms, like Psalm 22, may have started as similar personal or private expressions, but they were combined in the Temple Psalter primarily for public, group praise & worship, sung by choirs and groups of worshippers, not just private devotion. Though many psalms record private experiences & personal responses to God, the Book of Psalms was compiled to be used by groups. Remembering this is important in a modern world where many see faith or church attendance as private, for their own individualistic spiritual elevation, and some don’t want to be involved in a group or to become committed members of a church.
Many of us use favourite Psalms in our private devotions, as I’m encouraging us to do this weekend, but in doing so we should remember that we are reading expressions of faith designed to elevate a group’s response to God. We’re not designed to live isolated private lives: Faith is strengthened when we share spiritual experiences as a group, as I hope we’ll find this weekend.
THE PSALMS REMIND US THAT WE ARE IMPORTANT AS INDIVIDUALS TO GOD
The Psalms also help us remember that the individual is important to God. The writer of Psalm 8, looking up at the expanse of the starry universe and marvels that the God who controls all can actually be alongside and care for him in all his weakness. He realises that God cares for many others, even different races. He also reflects that God trusts us to be his stewards, exercising responsibility over Creation (Ps. 8:3-8). In Psalm 139 the psalmist examines himself intimately under God’s eyes and while recognising his sin, realises that God sees him as special, as are all of us.
The psalmists sometimes speak of details of their lives, such as the grief of David mourning his son, or confessing his sexual sin. But those personal situations are examples included in public songs, not to elevate the individual or wallow in personal feelings. They sing about experiences shared by many human beings,
from which many are intended to learn. Those psalms use individual insights & experiences to stimulate spiritual strength in all believers. [This could be a lesson for Christians giving their testimonies today: many stress personal, individualistic experiences, but the intention of testimony is to sharing things about God from which all can learn and which relate to all. This can elevate the worship of the whole congregation, rather than elevating the individual who is testifying to their experience.]
The Psalms ENCOURAGE HONESTY IN Prayer
The Psalms aren’t self-indulgent songs, they are composed prayers using poetry to ask things of God, thank and praise. They are directed to God as prayer. Psalm 72 ends: “The prayers of David, son of Jesse are ended” (Ps. 72:20), not the ‘Psalms’ of David are ended. In the Temple, Synagogue or in private devotional life the psalms weren’t for entertainment or personal artistic or emotional fulfilment; they were primarily prayers to God. When we read them we should try to concentrate on the meaning of their words in an attitude of prayers.
They encourage prayer to be honest – “in Spirit and in Truth” as Jesus encouraged in the worship of the Samaritan Woman at the Well (Jn. 4:23). Honesty can mean opening our whole selves and lives to God prayerfully, whether we feel “a worm and not a man”, terribly sinful or misjudged by others, grateful or banging our head against a brick wall, thankful or frustrated… ALL these feelings can be brought to God as prayer and chewed over with him, as the psalmists show.
The Psalms ENCOURAGE Praise
The Psalms see “Praise” as our main response to God. They often give reasons for such praise. There are differences between “thanks” and “praise”. Thanks may be private, internal, done out of a sense of duty, thanking God for something specific. Praise intends to focus on, elevate and magnify God who we are praising. It can be specific or general. Praise, like love rises from our sense of personal freedom: we are made free and respond to God out of a sense of desire to communicate, from love rather than just out of duty.
The Psalms express the importance of our Experiences to God.
We shouldn’t ever just base our theology on our limited experiences: that can really limit our spiritual understanding, but the Psalms encourage us to see our experience as important. They remind us that God is interested in our particular lives, not just generalities. He is involved with us in what we are going throughThe Psalms show how God can be met in our experiences, both when life is good and when things are not going well. Several Psalms show how Israel saw God’s hand had acted through their history, even in the worst things that happened to them.
The Psalms encourage us to be aware that God is intimately involved and interested in our lives, in our world and world affairs, good and bad. And they encourage us to worship him in all we are doing & bring the world’s needs to him.
The Psalms recognise the importance of our Emotions. It used to be said that worship and faith should not be emotional. Emotionalism can be dangerous: our faith shouldn’t depend too much on our changeable feelings, just as it shouldn’t depend on our limited experiences. But the forms of poetry and music and the careful choice of imagery and phrasing in the psalms encourage us to become emotionally involved in our worship. Christianity is truthful on an intellectual level, but it should not be so intellectualised that our emotions are neglected, otherwise faith will never satisfy the needs of our human senses. We are meant, as many of the Psalm-writers did, to worship the Lord our God with our whole being, heart, soul and mind (Deut. 6:5; Mark 12:30). I pray that using the Psalms will help us in this.
The Psalms Encourage us to Express our faith meaningfully and beautifully.
Lastly, the art poetry and music of the Psalms encourage us to work at better expressing our praise and feelings towards God in worship. They are deeply felt, carefully thought-through, and richly poetic, with care in their word-arrangement - great works of Hebrew literary art! God is proclaimed as glorious, so he deserves the best we can give in words, music, activity & our lives. The Psalms encourage us to compose our own words, music & art and to use their art to glorify God, our Source of life and hope, and our Sustainer. I pray that the beauty and meaning of the Psalms will help awaken our faith in new ways this weekend.
SESSION 2
Using the Psalms to Explore our Understanding of God
God’s power, breadth and mystery will always be beyond human understanding, but aspects of God’s nature are revealed in different ways: through our lives and experiences, through history, through nature, through philosophical thought & especially through revelation to writers of Scripture. The characteristics of God described in the Psalms are wider than almost any other book of the Bible. Jesus broadened the revelation of God’s love & opened us to God more freely than the Psalms, but these poems describe a spirituality that reaches towards the sort of God Jesus exemplified. I’ve listed some of God’s characteristics found in just the first 25 Psalms. All 150 Psalms probably include four times as many.
You’re welcome to complete the list if you’ve time! (READ PARTS OF LIST)
One aspect of this list that fascinates me, is its suggestion that none of the characteristics are contradictory. The faith of the Psalmists could cope with understanding God as loving yet hating sin, judicial and avenging yet ready to forgive, peace-giving yet battling against evil. More modern minds sometimes have difficulty in reconciling the different sides of God. How could a perfect being or a perfect force be all these supposedly contradictory things at the same time? Faith recognises that God is mystery; he is not limited, his justice, love, vengeance and peace are all working for good. God is a living force who contains and exhibits all these elements and characteristics within his nature.
The imagery used in the Psalms to describe people’s’ experiences of God is often personal, especially in the Psalms of individual rather than communal praise and lament. Psalm writers describe God as their refuge, fortress, strong tower, their pursuer when they have sinned, our steadfast-lover , our supporter when we are in need. Perhaps the most innovative language in the Psalms is when God is understood as the mother who weans us in Psalm 131:
PSALM 131 - “O LORD, my heart is not arrogant,
my aspirations are not raised too high;
I do not waste my mind on mysteries far too deep to comprehend.
With God I calm and quiet my soul,
like a loved child, nursed at its mother’s breast;
like the weaned child my secure soul is tranquil within me…”
Precisely because the Psalms are personal expressions of faith we need to be careful not to take emotionally influenced verses out of context or too literally. More noticeably than most other Biblical scripture, the Psalms are the words of fallible human beings, influenced by changing personal circumstances and emotional feelings. So if a Psalm says ‘God is distant’, that is the psalmist’s personal feeling not theological reality. The psalmists often represent God as biased on their own behalf or if they are depressed they write that God has turned his back on them, whereas Jesus taught us that God is constant and forgiving, he never forsakes those he loves and his love is universal. So we’ve got to be careful how we treat some of what Psalms say about God, ethics and theology. When the Psalms talk about hating and destroying the enemies of Israel, or dashing enemy children’s heads against rocks, this hardly fits with Jesus’ later teaching that we should love our neighbours, forgive and pray for those who persecute us. Christ taught “Do not hold someone’s sins against them” We’re meant to “Forgive as Christ forgave on the Cross: “Father forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.”
We must remember that though the image of God in Psalms is full of truths, the Psalms represent pre-Christian understanding of God. The sort of self-justification and vindictiveness that they sometimes express, may account for some of the self-justifying violent behaviour of Israel towards enemies through history & today.
We would not recognise that as the ethics taught by Christ.
Some of the theology of the Psalms seems almost Christian – The ideas of redemption, salvation and future life read as closer to the New Testament than any other Hebrew scripture. But when they talk of heaven, salvation and life after death the Psalmists meant something rather different from the Christian concepts. Some verses like Psalm 22 may seem to point prophetically towards Christ, but the Psalms do not present Christ’s representation of God loving all, forgiving through the redeeming work of Christ’s Cross, and they don’t give the Christian understanding of life after death.
God as seen in some Psalms is an avenger, who loves his People and breaks their enemies. God takes revenge on sin through several generations. God is exclusive in his support of his People. God is represented in human imagery which can confuse some into thinking of God as a limited physical, too-human-likes being:
a shepherd, a mother, with eyes, hands and feet, living somewhere above in heaven, whereas we know that God must be much bigger and more immaterial – a creative, invisible, wise, personal force who inhabits everywhere. He is described in the Psalms as having a human character: he sulks, is angry, he turns his back on sinners & reeks vengeance. Some of the more vengeful Psalms seem to describe God as the avenger that Jews wanted him to be rather than as Jesus revealed.
Psalms describe God as caring for his particular people, not in the same way for the whole world. He is asked to regard his people as righteous and all others as sinners. His actions against his enemies seem vengeful not loving & healing. If you take your understanding of God primarily from the Psalms you would get a distorted vision of him as Christ represented him.
So don’t rely on the Psalms for your theology and faith: These are nationalistic songs, designed for public propaganda. It would be rather like taking our understanding of God from ‘Rule Britannia’ or ‘Jerusalem’. Most call for justice and vindication for Israel as God’s people. But, as you read them they DO have wonderful truths to say about God.
Yet though the Psalmists are often biased one-sided in what they are proclaiming, one of the supreme characteristics of the Psalms from which we can learn, is to be honest to God about the way we are feeling and how we understand him to be.
Many psalms see God as a God of vengeance to others & a God who will forgive us. We must be careful not to hold such double standards ourselves, (Christians have too often thought that way in the past.) Instead we can hold this huge idea of the God who cares for us & acts lovingly others & all he has made, at the same time.
The nature of God revealed in the Psalms is possibly even more full and detailed than Christ revealed in the teaching of the Gospels. Jesus revealed a greater, more universal picture of God as our Father and showed the loving, healing, inclusive aspects of God.
The God represented in the Psalms can be equally loving, full of grace and forgiveness as in the description of God as mother in Psalm 131. God is creator and sustainer. What we recognise of God through Christ is that the qualities of God are relevant to the entire world, not just a single race. God wants to extend his love and message to all on earth, not just the Jews; all are included in his love, justice, guardianship, security & grace. All are offered his gift of salvation.
The characteristics of God on our list relate to all and our mission is to offer to all the promises and trust we hold onto for ourselves.
The Description of God’s majesty in Psalm 147 is for all:
“Praise the LORD! How good it is to radiate by singing praises to our God;
for he is full of grace and blessing, and deserves our song of praise!
The LORD builds up his People; he gathers back outcasts and the rejected.
He heals those whose hearts have been shattered, and binds up their wounds.
He set out the number of the stars; and knows the special nature of each.
Our Lord is infinite, his reach abounds in power; measureless is his knowledge.
The LORD lifts up the humble & downtrodden, abases the wicked in the dust.
Sing to the LORD with thankful hearts; pluck melody to God on strings.
He stretches clouds across the heavens, preparing rain for earth’s growth, providing the grass on hillsides, all animals’ food, all fledglings’ needs.
His delight is not in those with the strength of horses, nor the speed of athletes
but the LORD finds pleasure in those who respect and revere him,
who regard his power with awe and trust his steadfast love.
Praise the LORD, O his Kingdom! Praise your God, O his People!
For he strengthens your security; he blesses families with protection.
He can bring peace within your borders; he satisfies you with finest provisions.
He sends out his command throughout the earth; his word runs swiftly.
He spreads snow as thickly as wool, scatters frost like ashes.
To him hail is merely as hurled crumbs. Who can withstand his chill?
He sends out his word and melts ice, breathes wind and waters flow.
He opens his word to leaders, teaches his peoples the way to abundant life.
He deals uniquely with the People on whom he has chosen to rest his love;
many have not been blessed with our insight into his ways & truth.
So Praise our LORD!”
The description of God’s provision and care in Psalm 23 is much stronger understanding of God than we usually feel when we sing the gentle Crimond or read the King James Translation:
PSALM 23
“The LORD - my Shepherd!
How can I lack anything! He lavishly supplies!
You bring me to secure rest in lush green pastures;
you guide me towards tranquil waters
where my soul can be refreshed and healed in safety and find peace.
You lead me in righteous paths
for this is what your covenant promises
and how your name is glorified.
Although I may walk through the darkest valley,
overshadowed by the threat of death
I will fear no harm or evil;
for your presence is with me;
your rod of authority, your guiding staff
provide my goad, my comfort and security.
You prepare a lavish spread for me in the face of my greatest fears;
You have anointed me for your service and for blessing
drenching my head with precious oil;
my cup overflows.
I can be assured that goodness and loving-mercy
shall accompany me all the days of my life,
and I will live in the presence of the Holy LORD my whole life,
here and beyond, for all eternity.”
A wonderful book “A Rabbi Reads the Psalms” by Jonathan Margolith opened my eyes to how strong the imagery of God is in the Psalm, which I’ve tried to include in my translation and also in my painting of the Good Shepherd. Remember CS. Lewis writing of Aslan: “this lion is no pussy!” Aslan is rather like the strength of God that many Psalms suggest:
God is seen in the Psalms as all-seeing:
PSALM 139
O LORD, you have searched me: You know what lurks in the deepest recesses of my life. You know when I sit and when I rise;
you discern what’s on my mind from any distance. You scrutinise my path,
my lying down, my thoughts at night; you sift through all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know my motives entirely.
You encompass me, behind, beside, in front; you lay your protecting hand on me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me to put into words;
so high, so unreachable that I cannot grasp it.
Where might I hide from your spirit or where could I flee from your presence?
If I ascend high as heaven, there you are; if I rest in the grave, see, you are there!
If I took flight at sunrise, if I settle as distant as the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand will certainly be there to guide me,
and the strength of your right arm shall hold me upright and secure.
If I say, "Surely the darkness shall hide me,
and the light around me become opaque as night,"
even deepest darkness is not dark to you; for night to you is bright as day.
Whether we are in darkness or light makes no difference to your scrutiny.
For it was you who formed my inmost parts;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am breathtakingly and wonderfully made.
Your works are awe-inspiring; my soul has learned that fully and truly.
The bones of my frame were not hidden from you, when I was being formed
in secret, intricately interwoven through the deep mysteries of your creation.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance while still in embryo.
In your book of wonders were written all the days fashioned ahead for me,
when none of them as yet existed.
To you, Eternal One, our potential, our present and future are as one.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
Should I try to count them - they outnumber the grains of sand!
If I ever come to an end - I will find myself still with you.
O that you would halt the work, the spread and influence of the wicked, O God,
and that those who shed blood would turn away -
those who invoke your name maliciously,
and raise themselves against you, futily scheming evil!
Do I not oppose those who oppose you O LORD
and reject those who rise up against you? Put an end to the abusers’ hate;
they have spoiled themselves; for now they’re counted as our foes,
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and understand the deepest intertwinings of my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me
and lead me instead in ways of everlasting life!
If we’re going in wrong directions this psalm is uncomfortable. But if we’re letting God direct our lives this all-seeing nature of God can be comforting. God’s all seeing, inescapable powers could be frightening, but the psalm is emphasising that that God is totally trustworthy because God is saying: “Wherever you go
I am with you!”, whatever you are involved in I am watching to protect and support you.”
The term “Yahweh” recurs in many psalms, translated LORD with capital letters in many translations. It means as I’m sure you know, “I am what I am”. God is as he is – that includes all the characteristics on our list, But the word also implies that the God in whom we trust and who we serve and worship is MUCH MORE
than any have yet discovered; MUCH MORE than described in any of the Psalms, because God is beyond our understanding! It’s in this God’s presence that we rest and trust this weekend. There’s much more that we could say about God in the Psalms, but we’ve opened a lot for a first evening. So rather than talking more, lets allow ourselves to radiate in the light of the truths that the Psalms open about God.
Let’s open our thoughts and lives to God AS HE IS, even greater than he’s even described in scripture.
He holds all these characteristics in his nature without contradiction, and is a perfect being. That means:
He loves perfectly;
He governs the creation perfectly;
His justice is perfect;
He deals with our sin perfectly;
His relation to us is perfect.
When Christ calls us to work at being “perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect” he is calling for us to emulate and follow
what we know of God in OUR lives.
As we wait for compline, let’s meditate quietly on some of the aspects of God on our list and in the psalms we’ve read together, and contemplate that this is the God who made us, loves us, and has called us to follow him and act like him. AMEN
SESSION 3
Using the Psalms to Explore Ourselves Psalms of Life’s Experiences, Human Failings. Longing for Truth and Justice & Recognising our Value to God.
PSALM 102
“Attend O LORD to my prayer! Let my pleas rise especially to you!
Do not hide your presence from me at this point of anguish in my life.
Lean your ear towards me; answer speedily, respond to my entreaty.
For my days disperse as smoke, my bones burn like sticks in a furnace.
My stricken heart withers without hope, like grass scorched by sun;
I am too feeble and wasted to remember even to eat my meals.
My groans echo loudly, for my flesh is a drum stretched over my bones.
I stalk the black wilderness as a scavenger, a small owl lost in barren waste.
I lie awake, restless; feel lonely as an abandoned nestling on a rooftop.
All day my enemies taunt; my name’s become a curse to liars & abusers.
My bread tastes like ashes; my drink is diluted by my tears
because I feel your indignant anger and your disappointment with me;
Have you raised me to just throw me aside?
My days stretch before me, dark & empty as shadow, promising no relief;
I shrivel as dried-out straw. But you, O Lord, remain, enthroned forever;
the memory of your name and nature must last for all generations.
Rise up with compassion towards your people’s place of worship,
for it is time for your blessing to return and be lavished upon us;
a revival of your praise is long overdue.
Your servants care about your stones & heritage, even cherish the dust.
Surrounding nations will be awed by the name of the LORD,
all the kings of earth will revere your glory,
for when the LORD rebuilds his Kingdom
his presence and holy nature will be glorified.
He will heed the prayers of the destitute and not despise their pleas.
Let this be recorded for generations yet to come,
so that multitudes as yet unborn will praise the LORD:
For from his holy dimension he observed, from Heaven watched Earth,
to heed the groans of prisoners and free those condemned to die;
to proclaim his name and character on Earth, for praise in the Eternal City whenever peoples gather and kingdoms join to worship the LORD.
He has broken my strength midcourse, shortened my days.
"My God," I ask, "do not remove me at this mid-point of my life,
for you live on through all our generations."
Long ago you laid the earth’s foundations
and crafted the heavens with your hands.
They may perish, but you endure. All will wear out like garments;
you watch our lives, changed like clothing, worn through, rotting away.
But you remain the same; your years never end.
You will settle your servants’ successors in a place of peace;
their offspring shall be established, secure in your presence.”
It has been said of the Psalms that all human life is there:
Grieving / Dancing with joy
Feeling betrayed by those close to you/feeling you have betrayed others/
feeling unity with others in society and in worship
Afraid of death / rejoicing at new life and the promise of salvation
Loneliness / group expressions of Joy and thanksgiving
Feeling religiously ecstatic / feeling an unvalued worm
Depression where God feels distant or having deserted us / exhilaration at feeling close to God and blessed.
Blaming God for circumstances / thanking God that he is involved in everything.
The Psalms show the complexity and vulnerability of human life. They show how we are tossed around in different emotions so we cannot always trust ourselves & cannot trust our perceptions of God, but if we are as honest about our feelings of wanting truth, justice etc. as the Psalms are, we can turn our thoughts to prayer
as the Psalms do, for the truth to emerge and be revealed.
Israel saw self-justification and vengeance as admirable qualities. Christians often feel guilty about vengeful or selfish feelings. We suspect that God who is perfect couldn’t accept us for such failings in our character, because Christ asked us to aim to “be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect” Self-centredness isn’t right But the Psalms show that God listens to failing people and still values his relationship with them. He made us, he knows us thoroughly, so he knows how our minds work and knows how to deal with us. Our relationship with God should be honest about who we are. Living in the presence of God who has revealed aspects of truth about God’s nature and being.
The Psalms show a wide spectrum of human nature:
Self-centredness, Self-doubt
Longing for revenge against others / longing for forgiveness of oneself and friends
Greed for power / disdain at the false use of power by others
Jealousy of what others have / pride in what you have
Elation / Despondency
Heights of worship / Inability to get yourself into a frame of mind in which one can worship
Feeling closeness to God / Feeling distant from God
or that he is deliberately not hearing you
It’s not just enemies who the Psalmists rails against:
The poets recognise their own failures & regularly see themselves as nothing in God’s sight, especially in Psalms of personal & communal penitence. Many Psalms express human weakness:
Ps. 22:6 “I am a worm and no man”
Ps.39:4 "Show me, LORD, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is.”
Ps. 78:39 “He remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return.”
Ps. 136:23 “He remembered us in our low estate, while His love endures forever.”
The Psalms also recognise that we deflate our value in our own eyes, or put others down to raise our power over them:
Ps. 22:6 “To You they cried out and were delivered; In You they trusted and were not disappointed. But I am a reproach among men and despised by the people. All who see me sneer at me…”
Ps. 31:11 “Because of all my enemies, I am the utter contempt of my neighbours and an object of dread to my closest friends-- those who see me on the street flee from me.”
Ps. 69:19 “You know how I am scorned, disgraced and shamed.”
Ps. 109:25 “I am an object of scorn to my accusers; when they see me, they shake their heads.”
Yet even in this sad state Psalmists remain true to God:
Ps. 119:141 “Though I am lowly and despised, I do not forget your precepts.”
This is important for us when we’re feeling bad about ourselves or when others are treating us badly: God is constant, he is there to be held onto for support,
He helps us retain a sense of self-value in times of trouble, as I have discovered over this last difficult year. Faith is holding on in trust to God’s love, knowing he values us.
In singing about different emotions and divergent ideas about the value and lack of value of human beings the Psalm writers are recognising the that we truly have value in the sight of God. Our value is recognised in many Psalms:
8:4-5 In the expanse of the universe “What are human beings that you care for them?.. Yet you made us little lower than heavenly beings; You crown us with glory & cloak us with honour”
READ PSALM 8
O LORD, our Sovereign and our Support,
how majestic are all aspects of your Being,
how vast your signature,
displayed throughout the whole of your Creation!
Your glory is reflected in the heavens.
The voices of babes and nurslings you have nurtured,
so they grow to build a strong foundation,
forming a choir of praise
to challenge any who oppose your ways,
to silence the adversary and any vengeful enemy.
When I contemplate your universe, crafted by your creative power,
the moon and stars whose circuits you have formed and regulate;
I wonder: what are human beings
that you bother to consider us,
mortals that your lavish care and thought on us?
Yet you have formed us to share almost the status of heavenly beings,
crowned us with glory, enrobed us with a cloak of honour.
You have entrusted us with stewardship over the works of your hands,
given us responsibility for all that you have made:
all sheep and herds of cattle,
all living things, domestic and wild, every beast of the field,
the birds in the skies, and the creatures of the seas,
all that traverse their courses across the oceans.
O LORD, our Sovereign and our Support,
how majestic are all aspects of your Being,
how vast your signature,
displayed throughout the whole of your Creation!
Psalm 139:13-16 reinforces this:
“For it was you who formed my inmost parts;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am breathtakingly and wonderfully made.
Your works are awe-inspiring; my soul has learned that fully and truly.
The bones of my frame were not hidden from you, when I was being formed
in secret, intricately interwoven through the deep mysteries of your creation.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance while still in embryo.
In your book of wonders were written all the days fashioned ahead for me,
when none of them as yet existed.”
Our value is in being ourselves: allowing ourselves to be the people God made us to be, not what we have made ourselves to be or what others would like us to be. It’s hard to accept sometimes, especially when we feel ill, weak or disheartened,
but the Psalmist is saying that God knew what he was doing when he formed us as we are.
As Christians we can hold onto these assurances for ourselves, and our mission is to show others that they are of similar eternal value and that God loves them as they are.
These are really important concepts for life in our modern world. The commercial & political world flourishes by making many dissatisfied with themselves. The most beautiful woman or fit man can feel self-doubt and develop a bad personal image because the world is constantly telling us that we’re not good enough as we are and should be buying products to make us feel better about ourselves, from cosmetics or health products to fashion and supermarket shopping, or working harder for our business to be better or more productive than other workers. Psalm 139 disproves that we should be dissatisfied with ourselves saying that God knew what he was doing when he formed us right from the womb onward. He loves us as we are; we don’t need to be like anyone else. But we do need to work at fighting our tendency to sin
PSALM 51: 1-5
“Have mercy on me, O God, in harmony with your faithful love;
keep true to your overwhelming compassion, erase all my offences.
Wash me thoroughly from every fault in my unrighteous life,
cleanse and form me; purify me from all my sins and imperfection.
For I know my sinfulness;
my failures and mistakes are constantly before my eyes.
Against you, you solely, am I responsible for my sins,
since what you perceive as evil I have so often done.
So you are justified in your censure,
your words are true in judging me.
I was born with the influence of sin and guilt upon my life,
inclined to be a sinner from the moment my mother conceived me.
You desire truth to infuse even our most inward selves;
so teach me knowledge of your ways, reach your wisdom into my deepest soul.
Even purge me with flails of hyssop, if that will restore me to purity;
scrub me to cleanse me whiter than snow.
May I again hear joy and know inner happiness;
let the bones that you have allowed to be crushed by failure rejoice in life.”
Psalm 147 shows that God admires different qualities from most of us. It’s a great encouragement for any who might regard themselves as physical whimps: “God’s delight is not in those with the strength of horses, nor the speed of athletes,
but the LORD finds pleasure in those who respect and revere him, who treat his power with awe and trust his steadfast love.”
PSALM 147
“Praise the LORD! How good it is to radiate by singing praises to our God;
for he is full of grace and blessing, and deserves our song of praise!
The LORD builds up his People; he gathers back outcasts and the rejected.
He heals those whose hearts have been shattered, and binds up their wounds.
He set out the number of the stars; and knows the special nature of each.
Our Lord is infinite, his reach abounds in power; measureless is his knowledge.
The LORD lifts up the humble & downtrodden, abases the wicked in the dust.
Sing to the LORD with thankful hearts; pluck melody to God on strings.
He stretches clouds across the heavens, preparing rain for earth’s growth, providing the grass on hillsides, all animals’ food, all fledglings’ needs.
His delight is not in those with the strength of horses, nor the speed of athletes
but the LORD finds pleasure in those who respect and revere him,
who regard his power with awe and trust his steadfast love.
Praise the LORD, O his Kingdom! Praise your God, O his People!
For he strengthens your security; he blesses families with protection.
He can bring peace within your borders; he satisfies you with finest provisions.
He sends out his command throughout the earth; his word runs swiftly.
He spreads snow as thickly as wool, scatters frost like ashes.
To him hail is merely as hurled crumbs. Who can withstand his chill?
He sends out his word and melts ice, breathes wind and waters flow.
He opens his word to leaders, teaches his peoples the way to abundant life.
He deals uniquely with the People on whom he has chosen to rest his love;
many have not been blessed with our insight into his ways & truth.
So Praise our LORD!”
The business, political and commercial world often regards people as dispensable. We are cogs in the machine, of value if we are supporting an organisation, voting for the power of the politician, buying products, contributing to the economy.
If we stop supporting, become old or ill, question the institution’s values, we become valueless to some, we can be discarded, like patients sometimes feel on hospital; waiting lists. How different is the affirming nature of the love of God!
We all recognise that we have frailties. They can help us see our value in perspective so that we don’t over-exalt ourselves:
Ps. 103:13 -17
“Just as a father has compassion on his children,
so the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him.
For he himself knows our frame; he is mindful that we are but dust.
As for human beings, their days are like grass;
as a flower of the field, so they flourish; the wind passes over us and we are gone and our place knows us no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord
rests from everlasting to everlasting on those who respect him with awe,
and his righteousness extends to our children’s children…”
Seeing ourselves in true perspective as the Psalms help us to do, is a feature of wisdom. Wisdom, in the Hebrew Bible is built up by accumulating many truthful sayings. We see this in the lists of wise epithets of the Books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Wisdom about human beings in the Bible holds in balance our height of value in God’s sight, God’s intention for us, and a recognition of our weakness by comparison to eternal powers, our fickle natures and our tendency to sin.
Psalm 139 could be called a Psalm of wisdom, because it sees details about us in true perspective.
(PSALM 139?)
O LORD, you have searched me: You know what lurks in the deepest recesses of my life. You know when I sit and when I rise;
you discern what’s on my mind from any distance. You scrutinise my path,
my lying down, my thoughts at night; you sift through all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know my motives entirely.
You encompass me, behind, beside, in front; you lay your protecting hand on me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me to put into words;
so high, so unreachable that I cannot grasp it.
Where might I hide from your spirit or where could I flee from your presence?
If I ascend high as heaven, there you are; if I rest in the grave, see, you are there!
If I took flight at sunrise, if I settle as distant as the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand will certainly be there to guide me,
and the strength of your right arm shall hold me upright and secure.
If I say, "Surely the darkness shall hide me,
and the light around me become opaque as night,"
even deepest darkness is not dark to you; for night to you is bright as day.
Whether we are in darkness or light makes no difference to your scrutiny.
For it was you who formed my inmost parts;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am breathtakingly and wonderfully made.
Your works are awe-inspiring; my soul has learned that fully and truly.
The bones of my frame were not hidden from you, when I was being formed
in secret, intricately interwoven through the deep mysteries of your creation.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance while still in embryo.
In your book of wonders were written all the days fashioned ahead for me,
when none of them as yet existed.
To you, Eternal One, our potential, our present and future are as one.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
Should I try to count them - they outnumber the grains of sand!
If I ever come to an end - I will find myself still with you.
O that you would halt the work, the spread and influence of the wicked, O God,
and that those who shed blood would turn away -
those who invoke your name maliciously,
and raise themselves against you, futily scheming evil!
Do I not oppose those who oppose you O LORD
and reject those who rise up against you? Put an end to the abusers’ hate;
they have spoiled themselves; for now they’re counted as our foes,
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and understand the deepest intertwinings of my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me
and lead me instead in ways of everlasting life!
PENITENTIAL PSALMS
The Psalms that recognise our value in a most balanced way are often also those that most express human penitence : Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143.
These call us to see ourselves in perspective. We aren’t just worms as Psalm 22 recognised; we are cared for by God who doesn’t just treat us as miserable sinners. He recognises our value and wants to raise us up.
What I’d like to suggest we do now and in part of this afternoon is take time to consider our true selves and our lives in the light of all we know about God through Christ, and honestly write down our thoughts, in the best ways we can, about how we feel about ourselves in relationship with God. Don’t feel embarrassed, it’s between you and God, your Source of Life. If you’re going on a walk this afternoon, take a piece of paper or a small notebook with you so you can keep writing down thoughts as you walk.
I’ve written some guidelines about how the Psalms were written, how parallelism works, etc. in case you’d like to try to write your own psalm. Don’t use them unless you’d find them useful. It’s more important that you feel that you are laying yourself open to the God who knows you thoroughly and loves you as you are. OK, you’ve probably got as many failings as I have (in fact, I bet I’ve got more!) Like the Psalms you can lift those failings to God and ask him to show you how to deal with them with love
You MIGHT prefer to just be quiet and talk to God, (that is always valuable) but I WOULD recommend that you try to put your feelings about your relationship with God and his valuing of you down on paper rather than just praying quietly. Often writing something down helps us work through thoughts. That’s what I think some psalmists were doing when you find them moving from despair to hope,
or from a feeling of isolation to a sense of trust in God. They seem to have been writing down poetry as a process of working out what they were thinking and what they truly believed. (Perhaps they were working it out , so that when they proclaimed it, their praise would be honest and truthful.) I suspect that by writing, you will probably find that you come to different and more full conclusions to thoughts than you would if you just thought about them.
SESSION 4
Using the Psalms to Explore Problems: Psalms of Inner Worship: Learning to Trust God in an Uncertain World
Though I don’t know you well, I suspect that for many of you, as for me life hasn’t always been easy! You may have reflected on some of the issues in your life in response to the last session. The Psalms are realistic. They recognise that life is a struggle. Though they place trust in God, the poems don’t indulge in the simplistic idea that if God is on our side we’ll have an easy life. You might find that occasionally in some churches’ teaching, but it’s not in the Bible. Even the reassuring Psalm 23 recognises that we all live under the shadow or threat of death and suffering.
But the Psalmists also reassure us, from personal experience and from history in this difficult life we can trust God and God provides for us. The recognition that life has many problems is understandable since the Psalms were written in a society where people died in childbirth, simple illnesses were fatal, nations & tribes were regularly at war, communities and their leaders were unstable. People were confused and had different ideas about the sort of God or gods in which they believed. They needed protection and needed a God who was on their side, who would protect them. It’s understandable that the Psalms, from different writers and different periods in Israel’s history, show very different, sometimes confused emotions & ideas about God, believed in his vengeance against enemies but were afraid of him themselves. They didn’t have the stable understanding of God’s constancy and love about which Christ’s teaching and salvation assures us.
Life isn’t too different today: our world is unstable politically, ethically, peace is under threat from war and terrorism. As recent electioneering shows few trust today’s leaders; many are cynical about life, society, business and politics.
The Psalms and the Wisdom Books of the Bible reflect our state. A common message in the psalms is that the world isn’t good towards God’s people. The first three Psalms recognise this. Psalm 2 says that the powers of the world are working against the right ways that God has set out for people to live by.
PSALM 2
“Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together,
against the LORD and his anointed, saying,
3 "Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast their cords from us."
4 He who sits in the heavens laughs; the LORD has them in derision.
5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury…
9 You shall break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." 10 Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth.
11 Serve the LORD with fear, with trembling
12 kiss his feet, or he will be angry, and you will perish in the way;
for his wrath is quickly kindled. Happy are all who take refuge in him.”
Righteous life is a struggle. Life isn’t easy, even within the Church. I discovered this to my cost, when I was abused last year by two Christians for saying that we should try to live as Christ would.
Psalm 133 talks about the blessing that people of faith feel when they live and worship together in unity. That’s the ideal Church, living & working like a loving family, or unified like the body about which St Paul wrote in 1 Cor.12:12-31, where all organs work in harmony & all gifts are valued equally, affirmed & nurtured. Yet neither human life nor the contemporary Church are ideal. Evil works within a Christian body as it does in the world. Trying hard to live the righteous life isn’t a smooth path.
Above all the message of the Psalms is that God can STILL be trusted. Trust in God is at the heart of our needs in the 21stC Church. When so many critics question whether our faith is true. Some Christians, especially Evangelicals, Calvinists and Roman Catholics often talk of the primacy of getting our theology right, as though we are saved by the soundness of what we believe. Others talk about getting our practice right, loving with Christ’s love, caring and sharing. But ultimately our relationship with God is based on trust.
Faith is about trust in a God we cannot see. We ask people to love and worship God, but actually you can’t easily learn to love someone who you haven’t learned to trust.
Love and trust grow at together, encouraging each other’s growth when we are in a sincere relationship with God. Over and over in the Psalms the writers talk about trusting God. In the psalms that recount the history of God’s leading his people in Egypt, the Exodus, the Babylonian captivity, through wars and political struggles with neighbouring nations. The emphasis is always on God bringing his people through the struggle.
Some of the Psalms speak about specific situations where God has guided his people in times of struggle.
They are meant to reassure us that his faithfulness in the past guarantees his continued faithfulness to us:
The Historical situations mentioned are often those where people have been in trouble:
Psalms 105 & 106 relate the way God protected his people through the time of Abraham, then in Egypt, the Exodus and the settlement of Canaan.
Psalm 34, an acrostic, remembers David feigning madness to protect himself from his enemies, asking deliverance from trouble,
Psalm 51 was written to encourage penitence, relating our guilt for sin to David’s penitence after Nathan’s accused him over his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba & murder of her husband.
Psalm 142 was composed about David’s insecurity, hiding in the cave while fleeing from the abuse of Saul.
Several Psalms refer to the needs of the penitent & harrowed, pleading before the Lord:
PSALM 102
“Attend O LORD to my prayer! Let my pleas rise especially to you!
Do not hide your presence from me at this point of anguish in my life.
Lean your ear towards me; answer speedily, respond to my entreaty.
For my days disperse as smoke, my bones burn like sticks in a furnace.
My stricken heart withers without hope, like grass scorched by sun;
I am too feeble and wasted to remember even to eat my meals.
My groans echo loudly, for my flesh is a drum stretched over my bones.
I stalk the black wilderness as a scavenger, a small owl lost in barren waste.
I lie awake, restless; feel lonely as an abandoned nestling on a rooftop.
All day my enemies taunt; my name’s become a curse to liars & abusers.
My bread tastes like ashes; my drink is diluted by my tears
because I feel your indignant anger and your disappointment with me;
Have you raised me to just throw me aside?
My days stretch before me, dark & empty as shadow, promising no relief;
I shrivel as dried-out straw. But you, O Lord, remain, enthroned forever;
the memory of your name and nature must last for all generations.
Rise up with compassion towards your people’s place of worship,
for it is time for your blessing to return and be lavished upon us;
a revival of your praise is long overdue.
Your servants care about your stones & heritage, even cherish the dust.
Surrounding nations will be awed by the name of the LORD,
all the kings of earth will revere your glory,
for when the LORD rebuilds his Kingdom
his presence and holy nature will be glorified.
He will heed the prayers of the destitute and not despise their pleas.
Let this be recorded for generations yet to come,
so that multitudes as yet unborn will praise the LORD:
For from his holy dimension he observed, from Heaven watched Earth,
to heed the groans of prisoners and free those condemned to die;
to proclaim his name and character on Earth, for praise in the Eternal City
whenever peoples gather and kingdoms join to worship the LORD.
He has broken my strength midcourse, shortened my days.
"My God," I ask, "do not remove me at this mid-point of my life,
for you live on through all our generations."
Long ago you laid the earth’s foundations
and crafted the heavens with your hands.
They may perish, but you endure. All will wear out like garments;
you watch our lives, changed like clothing, worn through, rotting away.
But you remain the same; your years never end.
You will settle your servants’ successors in a place of peace;
their offspring shall be established, secure in your presence.”
Several of the Lament Psalms talk about God’s silence or feeling that he is distant. Yet their argument usually works round, as this psalm does, to accepting God’s love & forgiveness, or praising God, recognising at last that he can be trusted.
In Psalm 22, (one of the psalms prayed by Christ on the Cross,) the singer starts by thinking God has forsaken him and isn’t listening to his needs. In Psalm 66: 18 the Psalmist recognises that sin in his heart would have divided him from God,
but God’s mercy reaches into him:
“16 Come and hear, all you who fear God,
and I will tell what he has done for me.
17 I cried aloud to him,
and he was extolled with my tongue.
18 If I had cherished iniquity in my heart,
the Lord would not have listened.
19 But truly God has listened;
he has given heed to the words of my prayer.
20 Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer
or removed his steadfast love from me.”
That is the experience in Psalm 4 & many Penitential Psalms: Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143.
Most of the psalms of penitence turn to inner worship, because they recognise that God is faithful to his covenant promises, even if we aren’t. I said earlier in these talks that one dangers in the Psalms is that they represent fluctuating feelings
about the writers’ relationships with God, so their theology if you take verses out of context, isn’t always reliable. But to counter that we should also recognise that an important feature of the personal experiences expressed in the Psalms is often that they move forward and change. The writer feels exposed or vulnerable before they realise that God cares for them.
The Psalms were designed for public worship. Lament Psalms are designed to demonstrate that when someone struggles with negative experiences in life, in their relationship with God or with personal sin, life can be improved by God.
The arguments of the poems develop, so that people work through their problems to find they can proclaim that God’s forgiveness, love and restoration are available to them and to others
PSALM 130:2-4 explains the love of God in a guilty world:
“Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. If You, LORD, should keep a record of our sins, O Lord, who could stand?
But with You there is forgiveness,
That You may be revered and that we might serve you.
I wait, my whole being waits, & in God’s word & promise
I put my hope. I wait for the Lord, more than the watchmen
wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.
Put your hope in the Lord for with the Lord is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption from all our sins.”
The idea of waiting is important: “ I waited patiently for the Lord!” recurs in Scripture. Psalm 40:1 and Psalm 37:7are possibly the most relevant passages.
People don’t like waiting for anything in our fast-moving world where many want instant solutions. Life isn’t like that. Waiting isn’t necessarily passive, or negative, often we need time for solutions to work through: Psalm 123:2 talks of our relationship to God as a servant actively waiting and watching the master for whatever the master is doing and to look out for the smallest signs of what God wants his servant to do.
“I lift my eyes to you, to you enthroned in heaven.
As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,
as a slave girl watches the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the Lord our God till he shows us mercy”
Such ideas of servitude to God and reliance on doing a master’s
will aren’t so attractive these days, where people like to be masters, and not like to see themselves as subservient or weak in any way.
Many of us and many in the world want God to be what they want him to be, to do for them what they want him to do,
to be there for their good, but not to make demands,
or expect that they change their lifestyles.
The demand for personal freedom makes many not want to obey orders, let alone be seen as “servants”, watching out to obey the master’s smallest whim. But the two aren’t mutually exclusive. We are made free by keeping to the precepts or rules that God, the Source of our Life built into creation. That is the way to fruitful, happy life, as Psalm 1 and 119 state.
Obeying God’s rule for life sets us free to more fully fulfil us: Psalm 119:42ff talks about this:
“So I will keep Your law continually, Forever and ever.
And I will walk at liberty, For I seek your precepts.
I will also speak of Your testimonies before kings
and shall not be ashamed.…”
Freedom doesn’t come to human beings by doing whatever we want in life. Freedom comes from living as we are designed and intended, within the perimeters encompassed by our understanding of God “whom to serve is perfect freedom” as St Augustine wrote.
[ SOURCE: Prayer of St Augustine (354-430)
“O thou, who art the light of the minds that know thee, the life of the souls that love thee, and the strength of the wills that serve thee; help us so to know thee that we may truly love thee; so to love thee that we may fully serve thee, whom to serve is perfect freedom.”
Watch, dear Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight, and let your angels protect those who sleep. Tend the sick. Refresh the weary. Sustain the dying. Calm the suffering. Pity the distressed. We ask this for the sake of your love.
Lord Jesus, our Saviour, let us come to you.
Our hearts are cold; Lord, warm them with your selfless love.
Our hearts are sinful; cleanse them with your precious blood.
Our hearts are weak; strengthen them with our joyous Spirit.
Our hearts are empty; fill them with your divine presence.
Lord Jesus, our hearts are yours; possess them always and only for yourself.]
Freedom comes when we are obeying the laws of God. Psalm 119 is about this. It’s a strange Psalm – so long that it is hard to read at one reading. It’s an acrostic. Its 8 successive verses start with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The whole point of the Psalm is that from whatever angle you look at life & God’s commands, or the responsibilities with which God has entrusted human beings, the same conclusion is true: God’s word and intentions are true and obeying them will fulfil us. Just as Psalm 1 about the laws of God is the start of the Book of Psalms, Psalm 119 is thought to have originally been the last of an old section of the Psalter. It’s an acrostic love song to the word and will of God, like the 1950s song “ A - you’re adorable, B - you’re so beautiful, C – you’ve the cutest little smile.”
The main message of this long Psalm, which few ever get through in one reading, is that amid all we do in human life and all the struggles we endure. God’s care for human beings can be trusted and that if we follow his ways, we’ll find fulfilment in our way through the labyrinth of life, whatever life throws at us.
PSALM 119 1-16
אALEPH
Happy are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the LORD.
2 Happy are those who keep his decrees, who seek him with their whole heart,
3 who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways.
4 You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently.
5 O that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes!
6 Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments.
7 I will praise you with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous ordinances.
8 I will observe your statutes; do not utterly forsake me.
בBETH
9 How can young people keep their way pure?By guarding it according to your word.
10 With my whole heart I seek you; do not let me stray from your commandments.
11 I treasure your word in my heart, so that I may not sin against you.
12 Blessed are you, O LORD; teach me your statutes.
13 With my lips I declare all the ordinances of your mouth.
14 I delight in the way of your decrees as much as in all riches.
15 I will meditate on your precepts, and fix my eyes on your ways.
16 I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word.
The Psalms show realistic ways of being able to trust God and hold onto him in whatever circumstances life throws at us. Christians and the Psalms agree that we can trust and love God. But Christians diverge from the Psalmists somewhat in how we encourage people to deal with problems and issues of life. Psalm 119 starts by encouraging us to: “keep our ways pure” and “blameless”, by keeping to God’s rules for life and faith. As St Paul showed in Romans, if we interpret this too legalistically, faith can lead to rules that restrict the freedom which God has given us. Christ interpreted the ways of purity and blamelessness more broadly and freely than did most Jews. We shouldn’t be Pharisaic, imposing too many rules, nor should we go to the liberal extreme of neglecting truth and justice. We need to deal with life’s problems and difficulties with love and truth, as Christ would, not with retribution, vindictiveness or self-centredness, as some Psalms express. This is where Christ’s message of love, forgiveness and peace, through God’s love for all, takes priority over maintaining the need to right injustices.
The teaching of many Hebrew Scriptures largely emphasised God avenging his People. Jesus’ teaching on God’s grace towards others as well as ourselves IS partly present in some Psalms, but that is where they are commenting generally
about God’s generosity to the whole world (what Calvin calls “common grace”. It is far harder to humbly follow Christ’s loving way through difficult situations than to vindictively attribute blame to others, fight for vengeance and justice, to fight your enemies, asking God to rain down destruction on them, and to justify your-self as self-righteous. Christ’s teaching, said St. Paul, was “a more excellent way”: Christ emphasised that we should learn to love, forgive, and work at the way of mercy, peace and grace. Jesus asked us to act towards others as God in his perfection acts towards the world and towards us. That often means pulling back our wish to be avenged, waiting and trusting for God’s justice to come about,
where we would instinctively want to be more proactive . It requires that we reflect, contemplate and wait, rather than acting hastily, not insisting on being avenged or obtaining shallow justice, by acting too hastily to solve injustice.
The Psalms’ word “waiting on God is important. Often things resolve themselves by praying and waiting for God to reveal HIS way through a situation. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t act where we see wrong happening. We just need to make sure that we are acting wisely, for the good of all, as God does. If possible we should try to remain at peace, resting in God’s love and trusting in his power. The concept of waiting for God to act is in the Psalms’ theology. They recognise our dependency on God. But we should not give in to instinctive, natural human desires to avenge, which several Psalms attribute to God.
Many people act according to what they want, rather than listening patiently for what God wants. Christ opened to us the loving, forgiving, peace-bringing, healing nature of God, while some Psalms lay more emphasis on God’s judgement & judicial strength. Both characteristics are true and work together. Perhaps struggling with how we reconcile the content of the Psalms might help people consider God’s way of dealing with problems with greater awe care & trust.
In Closing Read Psalm 23
SESSION 5 Using the Psalms to Praise
Psalms of Thanksgiving and Praise: How might we and our churches praise ‘with our whole being’?
So many of the Psalms talk of praise or worship of God in various ways. One section of the Psalms from 113 to 118 is known as the Hallel Psalms, because they all start with the call ‘Halleluiah’ – that is: ‘Praise the Lord’ but the call to Praise the Lord recurs throughout the psalter and the last 5 Psalms all rise to the call. Remember that the name of the Book of Psalms in Hebrew is ‘Tehillim’-‘Songs of Praises’. Thought to our mind some may not feel like ‘praise’, they are praise in bringing everything to God. The very last verse of the book sings out the message: “Let everything that has breath Praise the Lord!”
The last three psalms show how all-embracing that praise should be through all creation:
PSALM 148
Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD throughout the universe!
Praise him from Heaven: praise him all his angels; all spiritual powers!
Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all brilliant stars and galaxies!
Praise him, you farthest, most exalted heavens, all forces at work in the cosmos!
Let all praise the name of the Lord, for at his command all were formed.
He established them eternally; he regulates their laws and movements.
Praise the Lord from Earth: you sea creatures and all wonders of the deep;
fire and hail, snow and frost; even winds and storm fulfil his command!
Mountains and all hills, fruitful plants, all great trees and cedars!
All creatures, wild and domesticated, insect life and flying birds!
Monarchs and all their peoples, rulers and all leaders of the earth!
Young men and women alike, old and young united together!
Let them praise the name of the LORD; let his power alone be exalted;
his glory is far above all other majesty in Heaven or Earth.
His energy supports his people. Praise is reflected in all who are faithful to him.
His heart is for all his people & all who remain close to him. Praise the Lord!
The great canticle the Benedicite Omnium Opera seems to have been an expansion based on this Psalm in the Apocrypha – The Song of the Three, which appears after Daniel in the Roman Bible.
The idea of praise is that our whole being and all creation are caught up in a response to God, recognising as much as we are able of all that he is and all that he has done. “Let my whole being praise the Lord” is an interesting phrase in the Psalms. It reminds me of the Great Commandment that Jesus reminded his followers was to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and all your mind” Matthew 22:37 (Deut.6:5)
What do you think of when you think of praising God:
PSALM 34
“I will extol the Lord at all times;
his praise shall continually be on my lips.
2 My soul glorifies the Lord;
let the humble/afflicted hear and be glad.
3 O glorify the Lord with me,
and let us exalt his name together.”
Praise is an attitude of mind. I’ve often been amazed by the positive character of people who are seriously ill, disabled or to whom terrible events have happened.
They are sometimes still able to praise and be incredibly positive about the place of God in their lives. Often this happens when they aren’t focusing on themselves and their problems; instead they are focused on God. Like true love, true praise is selfless. Praise focuses on the one we are praising not on ourselves.
I often used to feel sad when I went to services where people came away saying “I didn’t get anything from the worship. Praise and worship aren’t about fulfilling or satisfying ourselves but being focused on pleasing God who we are praising,
being true to our Source of Life, by recognising his worth. Worship is, after all derived from the ancient word “worthship”/ ‘declaring or recognising the true worth of someone or something’. But good worship also often leaves us feeling enervated in ourselves.
God is not just our Source, but also the source of our praise: it is the movement of his Spirit inside us which inspires our faith and enables us to praise worthily.
Selflessness of praise isn’t always present in the Psalms, because as we’ve seen, the Psalms are also often very self-centred. That’s one aspect of the realism of the spirituality in the Psalms. They are very human; they claim to be focusing on God
but show the self-preoccupation of the writers and the nation. In all of us there is a pull between what St. Paul called ‘the good we want to do and the selfishness we don’t want to do, but keep on doing’, the pull between the flesh and the Spirit.
The Psalms don’t try to hide this. They recognise that it is part of the human condition. But they are always coming back to the desire to be righteous and to give God the right place in our lives.
Psalms like 97 talk about destroying false idols and false images of God and restoring true worship. In a way all of us need to refine how we see God so that we are worshiping the truth rather than the sort of image of God that we have constructed for ourselves: The beginning & end of Psalm 139 talk partly about this, asking God to search us and scrutinise our spiritual internal lives and see if there is any falseness in us or in the image of the God we worship: “O Lord you have searched me… you scrutinise my path… See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the path of everlasting Life.” The centre of the psalm: “Where can I run from your Spirit. If I hide in darkness you are there, if I fly to the ends of the earth you are there also” is calling for us to have a relationship with God that is in Spirit and in Truth, wherever we are.
There is much in scripture about praising “in Spirit and in Truth” – The covenant with Abraham and Moses called for it, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Malachi are among the prophets who called for it. When Jesus’ talked with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:21-24, he told her that the day will come when people won’t need to go to the Temple or a holy place to worship but will be able to praise worthily wherever they are.
With the coming of the Spirit that day has come. In heaven the sense of being in the presence of the truth will be even more apparent – Remember in Revelation it says there is no need of a Temple in heaven because the presence of God, (the dwelling of god/the shekinah of God) is heaven’s temple (Rev.21:22). The Psalms praise God because they recognise that we are in the true presence of God here and now. For the Jews, God was known to be with them because the Temple was in their midst. That’s why Psalm 102 pleas not just for personal restoration but for God to revive his Temple, the heart of worship, to restore wholeness. For us, after Christ, we recognise that God can be found everywhere, and is especially known when we join in worship:
PSALM 133:
A Song of Ascents as David’s People climb the steps to the Temple
“Experience this! What goodness and pleasure
when all God’s family
live together in harmonious unity!
It is precious as fragrant anointing-oil
poured over the head,
running down the beard,
blessing the heads of all as specially as great High Priest Aaron.
Feel it flowing over the collar of our robes, ordaining us for service!
It soaks us with blessing, as dew drenches rocks on sacred mountains
and showers from Temple-slopes wherever God is present among us.
Here, with him in worship, the LORD promises to pour his blessing,
offering a covenant of life for evermore.”
I was discussing the Psalms a couple of months ago with a Jewish friend who emphasised the sense of ‘shekinah’ in the Psalms.I previously thought ‘shekinah’ meant the radiant glory present where God dwells. But she emphasised shekinah differently. The emphasis of the term in Hebrew isn’t on the glory. Shekinah is literally a dwelling, a settlement, the place where God lives. So the emphasis of the Tabernacle and the Temple were that God lives among his people. The emphasis on God’s glory in the Psalms is that God lives with his people. The Psalms, ‘Tehillim’/ ‘praises’ recognise that God’s presence is found alive in the praises of his people: Psalm 22:3 literally says “God lives or is enthroned in the praises of his people” We are reassured of God’s presence with us & in us in corporate praise as well as in our private relationship with God.
Sometimes we don’t feel like praising. Things may be wrong in our lives or in the lives of others. The Psalms encourage us to be honest about these and not worry about them. God is as present with us when we don’t feel him as when we feel on a spiritual ‘high’. Even when we feel distant or frustrated in our faith, we can usually find things to praise or thanks God for. Several Psalms like Pss 33 & 138 ask us to develop thankful hearts. Amid hard situations if we, in some way, try to moving into an attitude of praise or recognition of God’s loving presence with us, this can sometimes calm us, change our perspective or focus us away from concentrating on the problem; it may even be part of our healing.
Praise, like the Psalms themselves can be therapeutic. The Psalms don’t just bewail the situation of the writer, ‘letting it all hang out’; they place our situation in eternal perspective. As I’ve already mentioned, in many Psalms we see a movement in the thoughts of the Psalm writer from a situation of despair and worry through consideration of wider issues, seeing their situation in a different spiritual perspective, and ending in a situation of praise. Psalm 4 is a good example.
PSALM 4:
“Answer me when I call, O God of my right!
You gave me room when I was in distress.
Be gracious to me, and hear my prayer.
2 How long, you people, shall my honour suffer shame?
How long will you love vain words & seek after lies? Selah/ REFLECT
3 But know that the LORD has set apart the faithful for himself;
the LORD hears when I call to him.
4 When you are disturbed, do not sin;
ponder it on your beds, and be silent. Selah/ REFLECT
5 Offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the LORD.
6 There are many who say,
"O that we might see some good!
Let the light of your face shine on us, O LORD!"
7 You have put gladness in my heart
more than when their grain and wine abound.
8 I will both lie down and sleep in peace;
for you alone, O LORD, make me lie down in safety.”
That psalm moves from distress through a sense of isolation in remaining faithful to God, then the Psalmist recognises the greatness of who God is and how he loves and cares for us, and ends on a note of security: “In peace I will lie down in sleep, for you alone make me dwell safely”.
Psalm 7 has a similar movement. The Psalmist starts with a sense of deep personal guilt, recognising he deserves God’s vengeance and moves to a sense of refuge in God’s forgiveness and protection, then ends:
“I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness,
I will sing praises in the name of the Lord most high”.
Psalmists often return to the NAME of God as something which we can rely upon as much as his presence with us. The name, as you probably know, was seen as encompassing everything about a person. ‘Trusting in God’s name’, meant: trusting everything about his power, everything about God’s character, everything he had promised in his covenants with his people, everything that God had done in history to care for them. (That is why Psalms often refer to significant situations in the past where God has shown his power and character in the way he has dealt with his people (Psalm 135 about God’s faithfulness in Israel’s escape from Egypt, Psalm 132 about God’s faithfulness in establishing Jerusalem under David & making the Temple a place for his special dwelling. Trusting in God’s name is not just about looking at what he has done in the past but also trusting in everything that God will achieve for us in future, because God has sworn by his name and ‘established a covenant in his name’. All the future promise, hope and certainty that we have is assured by God promising by his name: promising something because it is in accordance with all aspects of his nature. When we trust in God’s name or praise his name, we are trusting and praising for everything on that list of characteristics of God which we looked at on the first evening, and trusting in everything about God which the Psalms contain. This is emphasised many times in the Psalms:
Psalm 50:5,105:10; 111:9; 25; 89; 138; 132
Psalm 8 Begins with praise of God’s name :
“O LORD, our Sovereign and our Support,
how majestic is your name,
(all aspects of your Being), displayed throughout creation”
In Psalm 51 the despairing penitent is assured of God’s mercy, because grace and forgiveness are part of God’s name and nature:
“Have mercy on me, O God,
in harmony with your faithful love;
keep true to your overwhelming compassion,
erase all my offences. “
The Psalms often encourage us not just to think about ourselves and our local situation, but as well as looking to God, they have a universal outlook. They sing about the world, the heavens, both the visible or invisible creation of God. Psalm 98 talks not just about the praise in Jerusalem, but the mountains, rivers and seas joining in and clapping their hands.
Psalm 148, which we read earlier, sets our praise amid the praise of the whole of creation. We are all seen as being caught up in a huge celebration of our creator together. Following that Psalm 149 calls for us to put everything into our praise, not be lacklustre. For true worship,
‘in Spirit and in Truth’, our words, action, music, thoughts should be focused on God. Worship, as we said in the first talk, should try to be beautiful, worthy of all the beauty and care that God has put in Creation, because he deserves it. The art poetry and music, & especially the meaning of the Psalms, which we’ve explored through these studies, encourage us to, ourselves, work at better expressing our praise and feelings towards God in worship.
God is proclaimed in the Psalms as glorious. Living among us, it is as if our monarch has come to stay in our lives and in our home and community. That’s why Psalm 149 recognises that God deserves the best we can give in words, music, actions and our lives and activities. Before we move to a service of worship we’ll finish these studies by reading together Psalm 149 which encourages us to grow in praise and become ever more expressive and true in our worship:
PSALM 149
Hallelujah! Praise God! Sing praise to our great Lord!
Compose new songs, worthy to sing God’s worth.
Where all his faithful gather, join in praise.
O people, rejoice in your Creator; help all generations enjoy their King!
Let your praise be physical, in dance,
melodious tune and voice, rhythm and strings,
for our Lord God enjoys his people’s praise.
He promises success to humble lives.
You faithful, raise his glory through your praise,
sing out for joy in times of rest and peace;
open your lungs to God in the highest praise that all can give!
May praise fetter the evil leader’s power and manacle his follower,
for God decreed justice: Let it be brought to fruit in our Kingdom!
This is how God’s glory is made visible in our world,
how his faithful people feel their recompense for all life’s struggles!
Hallelujah! Praise God! Sing praise to our great Lord!
IDEAS FOR WRITING YOUR OWN PSALM – Iain McKillop
Don’t be intimidated by the idea of writing your own psalms. You won’t be breaking scriptural tradition because psalms are ways of expressing faith in truthful, personal & poetic ways. The psalm is a communication between yourself & God. Whether it is intended for public or private use, every psalm is firstly the writer’s personal communication with their Source of Life, so it needs to be honest & true to your feelings & experiences. Remember when writing that you are not aiming to persuade others of your spirituality, your words are speaking honestly to God.
GUIDELINES:
I am praising God because……….
I am thanking God because……….
I am asking God to help me with this problem that is troubling me……….
I am asking God to forgive a sin, failing or weakness……….
I am asking God to hear or do something important……….
I am frustrated with myself, others, the world or the Church because...........
Testimony of aspects of your life & faith (e.g. Psalm 46).
Confession of sins, weaknesses & failings (e.g. Psalm 51).
Lament (e.g. Psalm 13).
Trust & finding comfort (e.g. Psalm 131).
PROCESS (some of these might be useful. Don’t try to include all, perhaps just one would be enough!):
POETIC FORMS IN THE BIBLICAL PSALM:
As you advance in writing psalms you might like to develop your technique by emulating the techniques of the Hebrew Psalmists. The biblical psalms are more complex in their poetic forms than our current translations often suggest. We do not need to emulate these, but might learn from this tradition to express our own thoughts to God.
How many rise up against me!!”
But a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”
2. Tell how God makes a difference or how people’s choices & decisions might help in a practical situation.
3. Praise & thank God for specific or general things.
2. Mention a complaint or problem
3. Have a turning point, where the writer recognizes that despite all that has been mentioned he/she/we will, nevertheless….(trust God, act in love, resolve to do something, etc.)
4. Ask or call out for help
5. Respond with praise, trust or hope.
2. Give reasons for praise - recount changes that have happened & difference God has brought about.
3. Perhaps encourage others to praise God with deeper appreciation that has grown out of experience.
Iain McKillop
LIVING THE PSALMS SESSION1
Introduction: What are the Psalms?
On this retreat we will be looking at the Psalms to explore how they might inspire our own attitude to life, faith and God, and enhance our prayer and worship. Though they come from a very different culture form ours, the Psalms can challenge our Christian discipleship and can help us question over- simplistic attitudes to faith. The Psalms are Hebrew poem-songs that remind us that everything in life can be talked over with God.
Asking around, I get the impression that many Christians have had similar experiences with the Psalms to my own. When I was a child chanted Psalms were more often part of church services than they are generally today, unless your church keeps more strictly than most to the lectionary and uses them at most services, as is still the case in monasteries and cathedrals. As a young chorister in a traditional church choir I used to find chanted Psalms difficult and boring to sing and the words of Psalms seemed distant, sometimes in obsolete language. Plainsong seemed irrelevant to contemporary music. (Plainchant isn’t how the Psalms were originally sung – we have no knowledge of how they originally sounded, though several musical historians have made guesses.) If Psalms aren’t sung well, led by trained choirs they can deflate worship. In the 70s musicians set them to contemporary tunes, as in Psalm Praise, but the words and meanings were often simplified a bit like choruses and some of the most challenging theological bits were missed out.
As I got older and my faith developed, studying the Psalms more closely I couldn’t understand why Christians still used many of these Hebrew songs.
They express pre-Christian attitudes to God which often talk of revenge, a God to be feared more than a God of love, a God who exclusively supported the people of Israel and helped them destroy their enemies, a God whose bias was toward Jews and against Gentiles, (who are most of the worldwide Christian Church. While Christ taught about the same God he transformed our understanding: God intends us to “love our enemies, pray for those who persecute us”, “worship in spirit and in truth” and “Spread Jesus’ Gospel to the ends of the earth”, showing that God embraces all and is not exclusively for the Jews. A bit of that universal love of God is in the Psalms, particularly those that call for all the world to worship God, but much of the exclusivity of God expressed in the Psalms reads like nationalistic propaganda.
Despite finding difficulties in the Psalms certain favourite Psalms spoke profoundly to me and fed me spiritually, as they may have done you: (List inside leaflet cover): Psalm 23 assuring us that we can to trust God as our caring, all-providing shepherd,
Psalm 8 of our special place the glories of God’s creation.
Psalm 150 encouraging our praise, using every technique we have.
Psalm 137 “By the rivers of Babylon” – on the experience of exile and our longing for God amid life’s frustrations.
Psalm 22 prayed by Christ on the Cross: “My God, why have you forsaken me?”, feeling distant from God, reaching for support,
Psalm 51 the great psalm of penitence, asking for God’s mercy, faithful loving-kindness and patience with us.
Psalm 122 & 133 & most of the Psalms of Ascents (120-134) on how enervating it should be to come together in corporate worship
Ps. 131 on feeling secure with God as a child on its mother’s breast.
Above all, my favourite Psalm 139 about God’s thorough knowledge of us in his intimate relationship with us.
Though there are wonderful passages in many Psalms, I still had profound
difficulties with their message: Some Psalms can be very un-Christ-like at times, calling for the utter destruction of enemies, self-justifying, celebrating brutalities and proclaiming the exclusiveness of the Jewish nation, expressing a self-centred faith. I used to wonder if the arrogance expressed in some of Psalms hadn’t
contributed to some of the ethical problems of Zionist dominance in modern Palestine.
Many of my difficulties with the Psalms altered last summer as I spent several months living in a Yorkshire monastery – the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield, saturated in the Psalms day by day. In the 5 services each day we chanted or read through the whole psalter each month. Some Psalms were read every day and became almost as familiar as the Lord’s Prayer. I had been appointed as the monastery’s Artist in Residence, so as well as following all the daily services, in the rhythm of the monastic day I took the Psalms as my theme for contemplation, studying and painting. I read Psalm Commentaries for a couple of hours each morning, painted themes from the Psalms for much of the day, meditating on their meaning as I painted, then reviewed my thoughts and what I was learning learned in a spiritual diary which I wrote up each evening. While I was there I had the fantastic opportunity of discussing the Psalm with many of the monks, visitors, among whom were several bishops and theology lecturers.
As I lived with the Psalms, words and phrases in their poetry kept speaking about situations in my life. I began to find, in reading through the Psalms daily, that while some things go over our heads or aren’t relevant, we’ll nearly always find something that relates to our situation and gives us the impetus to bring those issues to God or see life & faith in new perspectives. The Psalms were written by people genuinely bringing everything before God, honestly, in life’s daily struggle, so inevitably, even though they are ancient songs, they relate to our common human needs today.
Words keep reoccurring, triggering contemplative responses in me: ‘faithful, steadfast loving-kindness’, ‘mercy’ and ‘grace’, ‘security in God’s care’, ‘being known thoroughly’, ‘being protected by God -’ ‘under the shadow of his wings’ or ‘safe as in the cleft of a rock’, ‘being trusted by God as his watchman or steward over God’s world and God’s people’ and much more.
I find the Psalms reinforce my relationship with God and clarify my calling as a human being and as a priest. They are also useful as prayers when we aren’t feeling like praying, or don’t know what to pray. I’d like us to try this weekend to relate to God through the Psalms and see how they speak into our own situations: Read through psalms and see how they relate to you and how they might feed into your prayer-life and spiritual understanding. I’ve produced a booklet of translations of the Psalms that we will be using most in these studies.
The Psalms are not just poetry or instructions for faith. They are more like profound poetic conversations between God’s people and their Source of Life. They are incredibly honest about how the reader is feeling, which can sometimes make them uncomfortable for Christians. The Jews are more comfortable about openly blaming God for their situation, questioning God and openly expressing anger, self-righteousness and doubt than Christians feel comfortable to do. I find the Christian way of expressing our relationship to God rather more humbly,
valuable in helping us to accept what happens in life with love. But the openness and honesty of the Psalms can encourage us not to bottle up our feelings. They suggest that we should bring everything to God, opening our true selves to God, not hiding or repressing our feelings. In a way reading the Psalms can act as a sort of therapy for faith. I’m sure that writing them must have been therapeutic for several psalmists, so I’ve started writing my own psalms (an exercise some might like to try on the retreat – I’ll give guidelines tomorrow).
This attitude of laying ourselves open honestly to God in everything has really helped me over this last year, in which I’ve faced more pressures than at most times in my life: the death of several people very close to me, sorting out the healing of my throat problems, deep betrayal by two people which changed my direction in life, causing stress & serious health issues, a heart attack & subsequent heart operation, where I truly believed I was going to die and would soon face God directly. What amazes and encourages me, because it seems against my introvert nature, is that I felt spiritually strong through all those uncertainties. Emotionally I was sometimes in turmoil, particularly worrying about how my death might affect those I love, and angry at those who had caused the stress. But I felt God to be extremely close to me and I’ve known more than at any other time of my life that I can trust God. That’s strange because I’m not a person who easily trusts; I’m cerebral, questioning faith and questioning myself much of the time. I recognise that living daily with the Psalms over the last year has spoken into and strengthened my faith in new ways. So I offer the thoughts we’ll share together this weekend in the hope and prayer that the Psalms may strengthen others of you in similar ways.
JEWISH USE OF THE PSALMS
What are the Psalms?
[PASSAGES IN SQUARE BRACKETS ARE ADDITIONAL TO THE INFORMATION GIVEN IN THE TALKS -Paul talks of early Christians worshipping with “Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” (Ephesians 5:19), showing that the first churches used the Hebrew Psalms, publicly sung hymns and personal songs reflecting the inner music of the soul. That implies that different types of Early Church worship music had different characteristics. Scholars debate the varied meanings of these types of music: Hymns and spiritual songs may refer to personal responses of praise to God and musical settings of biblical or liturgical texts. We can’t be sure. Some commentators believe that “hymns” (‘humnois’ in Greek) were purely vocal music, sung by the whole company (as in Matthew 26:30; Acts 16:25), which were created distinctively for the Christian Church, with new words to praise God. A few early ‘hymns’ or spiritual songs appear to be quoted in scripture, like the poem about Christ included in Philippians 2:6-11.
“Spiritual Songs” (‘Ōdais pneumatikais’ in Greek) referred to in Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16 are more difficult to interpret. In Greek the term was applied to lyric poetry. Some think it may have used more varied and elaborate music, perhaps sung by one person only—a spiritual expression by one musician for edifying the whole congregation. Philo in a passage on Jewish sacred music(2 p. 476), wrote, “He who stands up sings a hymn composed in praise of God, either having made a new one for himself, or using an ancient one of the poets of days gone by.” The Christian counterpart of this might be these “spiritual songs.” which might also be what St. Paul alluded to in 1Corinthians 14:26, when he refers to some having a special spiritual gift of song “Singing and making melody in your heart”.—The Greek word there translated as “making melody” is the verb derived from the term “psalm” (‘psalmon’) but rather than referring to public music it seems to be about singing out an inner music in the soul.]
The most personal Ancient Hebrew Psalms were probably written by individuals to make ‘inner music or prayer to God in the soul”. That’s the impression we get of David as a musician. But the majority of the biblical Psalms were designed for public singing. In the Hebrew Bible the Book of Psalms is called ‘Tehillim’ meaning “songs of praise.” Our title “Psalms” is their Greek title in the Septuagint, the translation of Hebrew scriptures compiled in Alexandria. The Greek term ‘Psalmoi’ derived from the verb for “plucking strings with fingers”. So ‘Psalmoi’ came to mean “sacred songs sung to musical accompaniment” usually of the cithara, lyre or harp.
The Psalms became the main songs in Jewish Temple liturgy but their tradition may stretch back far before formal worship was established in Israel. The Bible’s 150 Psalms weren’t all written in one period. Their language and forms differ greatly. They record several centuries of worship and prayer. Very ancient language and themes in some Psalms imply that these may have origins far earlier than David (to whom more are attributed than he probably wrote, and Solomon (c.f. Psalm 72) to whom some others are attributed. As you’ll know from New Testament letters, a Hebrew custom was to compose writings under the name of a famous author or in their tradition, rather than the words always being by the actual person themselves. One psalm refers to Moses’s song of praise [90].
One of the most ancient Psalms may be Psalm 42, which sings of “deep calling to deep at the sounds of God’s cataracts.” It seems to represent some of the oldest theology in the Bible, when Semitic peoples believed in God as a force that tamed Chaos in creating the universe. Some like “by the rivers of Babylon” (Psalm 137) were written far later about the time of the Exile, others which talk of Temple worship, like the Psalms of Ascent 120-134 & Pss.15, 24, 68, 82, 95, 115 record later Temple liturgy. These may have been composed by musical directors for the choirs of the rebuilt temple as late as the 2nd Century. Some of those Musical Directors are named in the titles of the Psalms: Asaph (75), Sons of Korah [42], Ethan the Ezrahite [89],
The present arrangement of the Book of Psalms appears to have been settled well after the Exile for the rebuilt 2nd Temple, probably as the definitive Psalter to be used in Temple worship.
[The collection was divided into 5 books of Psalms. 5 was a symbolic number in Hebrew; it may have been intended to correlate to the 5 books of the Pentateuch:
Book 1: Psalms 1-41
Book 2: Psalms 42- 72
Book 3: Psalms 73-89
Book 4: Psalms 90-106
Book 5: Psalms 107-150]
Even before the final destruction of the Temple in 70CE the Psalms had also became the prayer book of Jewish synagogue worship, from the times Jews meet in Exile, away from the Temple. Many Jews would memorise Psalms as prayers,
as Christian monks later memorised the Psalms, before printing made Psalters for reading and song more common. Jesus probably memorised many Psalms as rabbis did, since Psalms appear to have been an important part of his prayer-life. He is recorded several times as using phrases directly from Psalms. Even on the Cross, in confusion and agony, Jesus was probably praying remembered psalms of hope when he said “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22)
and “Father into your hands I commit my spirit.” (Psalm 31) (That phrase “Father into your hands I commit my spirit” was the first psalm-prayer that Jewish children were taught to say as they went to sleep at night. So it’s so poignant to imagine Jesus saying it a few moments before he died.) In Christ’s appearance
to John on Patmos in the Book of Revelation the Psalms also seem to be quoted in God’s messages to the Early Churches.
[Today we think of the Psalms as the specific 150 sacred songs of the Hebrew Bible. These were selected from a larger group of Psalms and songs used in Hebrew worship. The Greek Septuagint version of the Psalms has 151 Psalms: the extra Psalm 151 is about David and Goliath. Some versions of the Middle Eastern ‘Peshitta’, the Syriac Churches’ Bible, contain extra Psalms 152–155. There are also a group of 18 non-canonical Psalms called the Psalms of Solomon, which only survive in Greek and Syriac, but were translations of now-lost Hebrew psalms.
Numbering
The numbering of the Psalms is slightly different in some Bibles.
Hebrew
numbering
(Masoretic)
Greek
numbering
(Septuagint or Vulgate)
1–8
1–8
9–10
9
11–113
10–112
114–115
113
116
114–115
117–146
116–145
147
146–147
148–150
148–150
Numbering of the Psalms differs—mostly by one digit, between the Hebrew (Masoretic) and Greek (Septuagint) manuscripts.
- Protestant translations (Lutheran, Anglican, Calvinist) use the Hebrew numbering but other Christian traditions have variations:
- Catholic official liturgical texts follow the Greek numbering
- Catholic modern translations often use the Hebrew numbering (noting the Greek number)
- Eastern Orthodox translations use the Greek numbering
Some Jews and some Christians believe that there is power in just reciting the Psalms. Rabbi Tezmach Tzedek (Polish 1789-1866) a 19th Century leading orthodox Rabbi, wrote for example: “If one would only know the power of the verses of Tehillim, and their effect on high, one would recite them continuously. The verses of Tehillim transcend all barriers and ascend higher and higher, imploring the Master of the Universe until they achieve results in kindness and mercy.” Some Christian groups have a similar belief that the words of scripture have a particular spiritual content when spoken aloud, which derives from God’s inspiration of the writer, giving them an internal power when read. I think that it can sometimes become a little superstitious to attribute ‘power’ to the words of scripture in this way; I prefer to think of the Psalms as the sincere putting into words of believers’ true feelings in response to God. Some Presbyterian traditions like some Scottish Free Presbyterians will only use Psalms in services of worship.]
TYPES OF PSALM (See list on Page 7 of booklet) One of the most useful ways of assessing what the Psalms are about was suggested between 1926 and 1933 by the scholar Hermann Gunkel. Rather than just reading the Psalms in numerical or lectionary order, he suggested that we may understand the Psalms best by considering their context and how they reflect the beliefs and religious practices of those who wrote and used them. He suggested that there are different genres or types of Psalms, communal and personal, individual, praise or lament, penitential prayers, psalms about leadership for royal coronations, or praise & corporate prayers and songs of thanksgiving for Temple worship.
[TYPES OR GENRES OF PSALM
Lament Psalms *Psalms indicated by asterisks belong to several different genres
Community
12, 44, 58, 60, 74, 79, 80, 83, 85, 89*, 90, 94, 123, 126, 129
Individual
3, 4, 5, 7, 9-10, 13, 14, 17, 22, 25, 26, 27*, 28, 31, 36*, 39, 40:12-17, 41, 42-43, 52*, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 61, 64, 70, 71, 77, 86, 89*, 120, 139, 141, 142
Penitential
6, 32*, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143
Imprecatory (calling to God for a particular reason)
35, 69, 83, 88, 109, 137, 140
Thanksgiving (Todah) Psalms
Community
65*, 67*, 75, 107, 124, 136*
Individual
18, 21, 30, 32*, 34, 40:1-11, 66:13-20, 92, 108*, 116, 118, 138
Songs of Salvation History
8*, 105-106, 135, 136
Songs of Trust
11, 16, 23, 27*, 62, 63, 91, 121, 125, 131
Hymnic Psalms
Hymn & Doxology
8*, 19:1-6, 33, 66:1-12, 67*, 95, 100, 103, 104, 111, 113, 114, 117, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150
Liturgical Psalms (for Public Worship)
Covenant Songs
50, 78, 81, 89*, 132
Royal occasions
2, 18, 20, 21, 29, 45, 47, 72, 93, 95*, 96, 97, 98, 99, 101, 110, 144
Songs of Zion
46, 48, 76, 84, 87, 122
Temple Liturgies
15, 24, 68*, 82, 95*, 115, 134
Community Psalms
Wisdom Psalms
1*, 36*, 37, 49, 73, 112, 127, 128, 133
Poems about the Torah (the Law of God)]
1*, 19:7-14, 119
Thinking about what a Psalm might have been used for, helps us consider why it says what it does about God. The words don’t necessarily apply directly or literally to us in our particular contemporary Christian situation, though what they say about God probably speaks to our own relationship with God. Many of the communal Psalms are propagandist. They helped stir people up against enemies or made them feel secure, justifying the nation as if God’s special people cannot do wrong. If we keep this context in mind, the Psalms’ theology becomes less uncomfortable, because we realise that they aren’t definitively promoting war or vengeance in an un-Christian way; they were expressing a national attitude of superiority, rising from their understanding of their unique relationship with God. We need to be careful not to develop such arrogance as Christians who know God’s love.The humblest Psalms like Psalm 131 often read truest for Christians.
The Psalms are most relevant to us today where they are open and honest in communicating with God. This honesty may sometimes feel uncomfortable, especially where Psalms of Lament question God over calamities, seem self-righteous or vengeful, rather than promoting Christian qualities like reconciliation, love or forgiveness.
There is a lot in the Psalms about relying on God for personal forgiveness and support in times of vulnerability. Primarily the Psalms show us that it is possible to be entirely open with God; to tell him how you truly feel in any situation.
He’s big enough not to hold our ranting against us.
The Characteristics of the Psalms:
The Psalms Are POEMS
The Psalms are poetry, using Hebrew poetic structure which some translations, like the King James Bible fail to emphasise. The format of Hebrew poetry was only worked out by Bishop Robert Lowth in 1753, long after the first English translations. While western poetry is often based on rhyme and rhythm. Hebrew poetry is based on how the message in one line relates in meaning to the next line. This is often called ‘parallelism’: The first line’s meaning is expanded upon in the next line, either by making the meaning clearer, completing or contrasting the first thought with a second one. EXAMPLE:
PSALM 131
“O LORD, my heart is not arrogant,
my aspirations are not raised too high;
I do not waste my mind on mysteries far too deep to comprehend.
With God I calm and quiet my soul,
like a loved child, nursed at its mother’s breast;
like the weaned child my secure soul is tranquil within me.
O all God’s people, place your hope in the LORD;
trust his promises now and for evermore.”
The poetry is formed by parallels of sense rather than parallel sounds as we use in Western poetic rhyme. (I’ll give you a hand-out about Hebrew poetic form tomorrow). As a result Hebrew Psalms lose less of their poetic qualities in translation than when western rhyming or rhythmic poetry is translated from one language to another. As poetry in song the Psalms convey meaning memorably:
poetry often conveys truths more intensely & vividly than prose. Its words are more easily remembered. It often uses metaphors and images that are rich in their allusions to focus on an idea and stimulate contemplation, like the concept of stilling our soul with God like a child weaned at its mother’s breast. The power of the language enables us to remember lines & ideas, so we meditate on their meaning & relate them to our own experience. I found in painting Psalms that they expanded my spiritual imagination.
Memorable phrases in the Psalms include: (See inside front cover)
- “When I consider the heavens, the works of your fingers…who am I that you should think of me?” [Psalm 8:4]
- “I am a worm and no man” [Psalm 22:6]
- “I find refuge under the shelter of your wings” [Psalm 91:4]
- “You made us little lower than heavenly beings” [Psalm 8:3-5]
- “The Lord is my steadfast love and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer” [Psalm 144:2]
- ”You have set me upon a rock that is higher than I” [Ps. 61:2]
- “My youth is renewed like the eagles” [Psalm 103:5]
[Strong language and images in poetry help us recognise that the author has put time and thought into the phrasing, honing ideas to form the verses. Poetry then can become even more meaningful because we recognise that the writers felt so strongly about their subject that they turned it into poetry, sacrificing thought, effort and time to hone it. Words have been chosen for precision of expression. The Psalms show their writers’ care for their subject, spending time to express love, worship and prayer, fear, awe, penitence and regret. These poems or songs addressed primarily to God, have had delight and sacrifice expended in the composition and expression of adoration and praise etc., as well as an inner urge to communicate with God, because, as Psalm 149 expresses, their subject is worth it! So they encourage us to do the same.
Calvin urged Christians to translate the Psalms themselves into their own words.to help them better express their personal praise and worship. ]
A Psalm Is a Song
C.S. Lewis emphasised that we need to remember that the Psalms were songs, because we won’t take our theology quite as literally from songs as we might from an instruction of Moses, Jesus or Paul. If propagandist Psalms say it’s fine to ‘destroy your enemies’ we should remember Jesus’ instruction to “love your enemies” and live by that, not by what the Psalm seems to be saying. The hostile expressions in the Psalm were often intended to give confidence to Israel, just as a football chants today taunt the weaknesses of an opposing team. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the opposition is to be literally hated or destroyed, though sadly that is still how some believers have interpret them through Jewish and Christians Church history.
[The various titles of the Book of Psalms are one indication of the role of the book as a hymnal including a variety of types of psalms: hymns, laments, thanksgivings, songs of trust, meditations on wisdom, and others. Some were not specifically ‘songs of praises’, though every psalm, whatever its literary type and context, in some way extols and glorifies God.
Types of Song mentioned in the Psalms are: Sheminith [6,12,], Shiggaion [7], Maskil [42]
Different tunes or forms include: The Gittith [8], Muth Labben [9], Miktam [16], The Deer of the Dawn [22], Jeduthun [39], Alamoth [46], Mahalath [53], the Dove of the far-off Terebinths [56], Do not Destroy [57], The Lily of the Covenant [60], Lilies [69], Mahalath Leannoth [88],
Different accompaniments are indicated: flutes [5], stringed instruments[55],
Some were sung at special events: The Dedication of the Temple [30], for the Memorial Offering [38, 70], Sabbath [92], Pleading before the Lord [102]
Historical situations were celebrated: (mainly referred to in Book 2 if the Psalms [42-72], David feigning madness before Abimelech [34], penitence in response to Nathan’s accusation [51], David’s hiding in the cave from Saul [142], the Exodus and Settlement of Canaan[ ], Exile in Babylon []
The Psalms are described by Richard C. Leonard as “music without the notes”; the tunes may be lost, the lyrics &poetry are preserved. The notations that survive remind us that the musical character of the Psalms was relevant to their context. Presumably the tunes and accompaniments were appropriate to the words and mood of the celebration. Music is part of the Psalms’ culture & meaning. The original musical notes don’t survive so each culture can interpret them in its own music & its understanding of the place of song in its society & worship. In composing later music to the Psalms, many musicians have probably come to know & express the meaning of the Psalms more intimately than they may have done if the original musical had survived. Calvin suggested that each generation & culture should devise its own musical forms to express the Psalms’ meaning & enable worship & praise, as appropriate to them. Poetical forms engage our creativity & meditation, helping us relate the Psalms in our own situations. The musical character of the Psalms can further excite and enhance our creativity by enabling us to express our worship through singing, performing or hearing the Psalms, uniting more of our senses in our worship, as Psalm 149 calls us to attempt.]
A Psalm Is an Expression of Worship
Even though the term “worship” is not frequently employed in Psalms many other Hebrew words used encourage us to ‘praise’, ‘give thanks’, ‘hold God in awe’, ‘raise his glory’ & respond to God devotionally.
[The Hebrew Scriptures contains various types of spiritual books: ‘revelations about God and life’, ‘reflections on God and life’, and ‘responses’. These date different stages of Israel’s historic & spiritual development. The Pentateuch and the prophets might be called ‘revelations’ by which the People discovered what God is like. Wisdom Books like Proverbs, Job, the Book of Chronicles and some prophets could be called ’reflections’ on what has been revealed through history and human experience. The Book of Psalms has grown from people’s ‘reflections’ to become a book of “responses” to God in different ways: “thanksgiving, adoration, lament or petition”. ]
Because the Psalms date from different times in Jewish history and are by varied authors, they show a spectrum of different attitudes to God and worship. This is useful for us because we come to scripture with many different personalities,
varied experiences, and different things nourish us spiritually. The Psalms contain a wide variety of emotions, different ways of responding to circumstances and different interpretations of how God is active or seems to be inactive. The Psalmists’ emotions range from exultant praise to desperation, triumphant thanks to blame and anger, doubt and despair to trust and assurance. Some of these responses again feel uncomfortable, not how a contemporary Christian might feel comfortable to be seen as responding to God. But they are very true to our natural human emotions, inclinations or reactions. We recognise with hindsight that some of their uncomfortable verses, especially the complaints to God, weren’t necessarily based on accurate understanding of situations. Yet they are truthful reactions to the feelings and troubles encountered by God’s people living in a hard world. They are real & honest expressions how many feel & we can learn from them to be honest in our worship & open in how we talk to God.
An encouraging aspect of the poetry is that many Psalms show a progressive development in emotions: the psalmist might move from despair to hope, feelings of weakness to strength, a sense of distance from God to trusting in his closeness. Most famously there is a complete turn-around of emotions in Psalm 22, which starts “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”… but concludes “Many will come to tell of your righteousness and speak for ever of your wonders and faithfulness.” This recognition that we change and grow in our trust of God can be very encouraging for those of us who have fluctuating emotions or big questions about faith.
the Psalms Are designed for Public Worship
Modern poetry is often individualistic, expressing personal thoughts & feeling. Many psalms, like Psalm 22, may have started as similar personal or private expressions, but they were combined in the Temple Psalter primarily for public, group praise & worship, sung by choirs and groups of worshippers, not just private devotion. Though many psalms record private experiences & personal responses to God, the Book of Psalms was compiled to be used by groups. Remembering this is important in a modern world where many see faith or church attendance as private, for their own individualistic spiritual elevation, and some don’t want to be involved in a group or to become committed members of a church.
Many of us use favourite Psalms in our private devotions, as I’m encouraging us to do this weekend, but in doing so we should remember that we are reading expressions of faith designed to elevate a group’s response to God. We’re not designed to live isolated private lives: Faith is strengthened when we share spiritual experiences as a group, as I hope we’ll find this weekend.
THE PSALMS REMIND US THAT WE ARE IMPORTANT AS INDIVIDUALS TO GOD
The Psalms also help us remember that the individual is important to God. The writer of Psalm 8, looking up at the expanse of the starry universe and marvels that the God who controls all can actually be alongside and care for him in all his weakness. He realises that God cares for many others, even different races. He also reflects that God trusts us to be his stewards, exercising responsibility over Creation (Ps. 8:3-8). In Psalm 139 the psalmist examines himself intimately under God’s eyes and while recognising his sin, realises that God sees him as special, as are all of us.
The psalmists sometimes speak of details of their lives, such as the grief of David mourning his son, or confessing his sexual sin. But those personal situations are examples included in public songs, not to elevate the individual or wallow in personal feelings. They sing about experiences shared by many human beings,
from which many are intended to learn. Those psalms use individual insights & experiences to stimulate spiritual strength in all believers. [This could be a lesson for Christians giving their testimonies today: many stress personal, individualistic experiences, but the intention of testimony is to sharing things about God from which all can learn and which relate to all. This can elevate the worship of the whole congregation, rather than elevating the individual who is testifying to their experience.]
The Psalms ENCOURAGE HONESTY IN Prayer
The Psalms aren’t self-indulgent songs, they are composed prayers using poetry to ask things of God, thank and praise. They are directed to God as prayer. Psalm 72 ends: “The prayers of David, son of Jesse are ended” (Ps. 72:20), not the ‘Psalms’ of David are ended. In the Temple, Synagogue or in private devotional life the psalms weren’t for entertainment or personal artistic or emotional fulfilment; they were primarily prayers to God. When we read them we should try to concentrate on the meaning of their words in an attitude of prayers.
They encourage prayer to be honest – “in Spirit and in Truth” as Jesus encouraged in the worship of the Samaritan Woman at the Well (Jn. 4:23). Honesty can mean opening our whole selves and lives to God prayerfully, whether we feel “a worm and not a man”, terribly sinful or misjudged by others, grateful or banging our head against a brick wall, thankful or frustrated… ALL these feelings can be brought to God as prayer and chewed over with him, as the psalmists show.
The Psalms ENCOURAGE Praise
The Psalms see “Praise” as our main response to God. They often give reasons for such praise. There are differences between “thanks” and “praise”. Thanks may be private, internal, done out of a sense of duty, thanking God for something specific. Praise intends to focus on, elevate and magnify God who we are praising. It can be specific or general. Praise, like love rises from our sense of personal freedom: we are made free and respond to God out of a sense of desire to communicate, from love rather than just out of duty.
The Psalms express the importance of our Experiences to God.
We shouldn’t ever just base our theology on our limited experiences: that can really limit our spiritual understanding, but the Psalms encourage us to see our experience as important. They remind us that God is interested in our particular lives, not just generalities. He is involved with us in what we are going throughThe Psalms show how God can be met in our experiences, both when life is good and when things are not going well. Several Psalms show how Israel saw God’s hand had acted through their history, even in the worst things that happened to them.
The Psalms encourage us to be aware that God is intimately involved and interested in our lives, in our world and world affairs, good and bad. And they encourage us to worship him in all we are doing & bring the world’s needs to him.
The Psalms recognise the importance of our Emotions. It used to be said that worship and faith should not be emotional. Emotionalism can be dangerous: our faith shouldn’t depend too much on our changeable feelings, just as it shouldn’t depend on our limited experiences. But the forms of poetry and music and the careful choice of imagery and phrasing in the psalms encourage us to become emotionally involved in our worship. Christianity is truthful on an intellectual level, but it should not be so intellectualised that our emotions are neglected, otherwise faith will never satisfy the needs of our human senses. We are meant, as many of the Psalm-writers did, to worship the Lord our God with our whole being, heart, soul and mind (Deut. 6:5; Mark 12:30). I pray that using the Psalms will help us in this.
The Psalms Encourage us to Express our faith meaningfully and beautifully.
Lastly, the art poetry and music of the Psalms encourage us to work at better expressing our praise and feelings towards God in worship. They are deeply felt, carefully thought-through, and richly poetic, with care in their word-arrangement - great works of Hebrew literary art! God is proclaimed as glorious, so he deserves the best we can give in words, music, activity & our lives. The Psalms encourage us to compose our own words, music & art and to use their art to glorify God, our Source of life and hope, and our Sustainer. I pray that the beauty and meaning of the Psalms will help awaken our faith in new ways this weekend.
SESSION 2
Using the Psalms to Explore our Understanding of God
God’s power, breadth and mystery will always be beyond human understanding, but aspects of God’s nature are revealed in different ways: through our lives and experiences, through history, through nature, through philosophical thought & especially through revelation to writers of Scripture. The characteristics of God described in the Psalms are wider than almost any other book of the Bible. Jesus broadened the revelation of God’s love & opened us to God more freely than the Psalms, but these poems describe a spirituality that reaches towards the sort of God Jesus exemplified. I’ve listed some of God’s characteristics found in just the first 25 Psalms. All 150 Psalms probably include four times as many.
You’re welcome to complete the list if you’ve time! (READ PARTS OF LIST)
One aspect of this list that fascinates me, is its suggestion that none of the characteristics are contradictory. The faith of the Psalmists could cope with understanding God as loving yet hating sin, judicial and avenging yet ready to forgive, peace-giving yet battling against evil. More modern minds sometimes have difficulty in reconciling the different sides of God. How could a perfect being or a perfect force be all these supposedly contradictory things at the same time? Faith recognises that God is mystery; he is not limited, his justice, love, vengeance and peace are all working for good. God is a living force who contains and exhibits all these elements and characteristics within his nature.
The imagery used in the Psalms to describe people’s’ experiences of God is often personal, especially in the Psalms of individual rather than communal praise and lament. Psalm writers describe God as their refuge, fortress, strong tower, their pursuer when they have sinned, our steadfast-lover , our supporter when we are in need. Perhaps the most innovative language in the Psalms is when God is understood as the mother who weans us in Psalm 131:
PSALM 131 - “O LORD, my heart is not arrogant,
my aspirations are not raised too high;
I do not waste my mind on mysteries far too deep to comprehend.
With God I calm and quiet my soul,
like a loved child, nursed at its mother’s breast;
like the weaned child my secure soul is tranquil within me…”
Precisely because the Psalms are personal expressions of faith we need to be careful not to take emotionally influenced verses out of context or too literally. More noticeably than most other Biblical scripture, the Psalms are the words of fallible human beings, influenced by changing personal circumstances and emotional feelings. So if a Psalm says ‘God is distant’, that is the psalmist’s personal feeling not theological reality. The psalmists often represent God as biased on their own behalf or if they are depressed they write that God has turned his back on them, whereas Jesus taught us that God is constant and forgiving, he never forsakes those he loves and his love is universal. So we’ve got to be careful how we treat some of what Psalms say about God, ethics and theology. When the Psalms talk about hating and destroying the enemies of Israel, or dashing enemy children’s heads against rocks, this hardly fits with Jesus’ later teaching that we should love our neighbours, forgive and pray for those who persecute us. Christ taught “Do not hold someone’s sins against them” We’re meant to “Forgive as Christ forgave on the Cross: “Father forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.”
We must remember that though the image of God in Psalms is full of truths, the Psalms represent pre-Christian understanding of God. The sort of self-justification and vindictiveness that they sometimes express, may account for some of the self-justifying violent behaviour of Israel towards enemies through history & today.
We would not recognise that as the ethics taught by Christ.
Some of the theology of the Psalms seems almost Christian – The ideas of redemption, salvation and future life read as closer to the New Testament than any other Hebrew scripture. But when they talk of heaven, salvation and life after death the Psalmists meant something rather different from the Christian concepts. Some verses like Psalm 22 may seem to point prophetically towards Christ, but the Psalms do not present Christ’s representation of God loving all, forgiving through the redeeming work of Christ’s Cross, and they don’t give the Christian understanding of life after death.
God as seen in some Psalms is an avenger, who loves his People and breaks their enemies. God takes revenge on sin through several generations. God is exclusive in his support of his People. God is represented in human imagery which can confuse some into thinking of God as a limited physical, too-human-likes being:
a shepherd, a mother, with eyes, hands and feet, living somewhere above in heaven, whereas we know that God must be much bigger and more immaterial – a creative, invisible, wise, personal force who inhabits everywhere. He is described in the Psalms as having a human character: he sulks, is angry, he turns his back on sinners & reeks vengeance. Some of the more vengeful Psalms seem to describe God as the avenger that Jews wanted him to be rather than as Jesus revealed.
Psalms describe God as caring for his particular people, not in the same way for the whole world. He is asked to regard his people as righteous and all others as sinners. His actions against his enemies seem vengeful not loving & healing. If you take your understanding of God primarily from the Psalms you would get a distorted vision of him as Christ represented him.
So don’t rely on the Psalms for your theology and faith: These are nationalistic songs, designed for public propaganda. It would be rather like taking our understanding of God from ‘Rule Britannia’ or ‘Jerusalem’. Most call for justice and vindication for Israel as God’s people. But, as you read them they DO have wonderful truths to say about God.
Yet though the Psalmists are often biased one-sided in what they are proclaiming, one of the supreme characteristics of the Psalms from which we can learn, is to be honest to God about the way we are feeling and how we understand him to be.
Many psalms see God as a God of vengeance to others & a God who will forgive us. We must be careful not to hold such double standards ourselves, (Christians have too often thought that way in the past.) Instead we can hold this huge idea of the God who cares for us & acts lovingly others & all he has made, at the same time.
The nature of God revealed in the Psalms is possibly even more full and detailed than Christ revealed in the teaching of the Gospels. Jesus revealed a greater, more universal picture of God as our Father and showed the loving, healing, inclusive aspects of God.
The God represented in the Psalms can be equally loving, full of grace and forgiveness as in the description of God as mother in Psalm 131. God is creator and sustainer. What we recognise of God through Christ is that the qualities of God are relevant to the entire world, not just a single race. God wants to extend his love and message to all on earth, not just the Jews; all are included in his love, justice, guardianship, security & grace. All are offered his gift of salvation.
The characteristics of God on our list relate to all and our mission is to offer to all the promises and trust we hold onto for ourselves.
The Description of God’s majesty in Psalm 147 is for all:
“Praise the LORD! How good it is to radiate by singing praises to our God;
for he is full of grace and blessing, and deserves our song of praise!
The LORD builds up his People; he gathers back outcasts and the rejected.
He heals those whose hearts have been shattered, and binds up their wounds.
He set out the number of the stars; and knows the special nature of each.
Our Lord is infinite, his reach abounds in power; measureless is his knowledge.
The LORD lifts up the humble & downtrodden, abases the wicked in the dust.
Sing to the LORD with thankful hearts; pluck melody to God on strings.
He stretches clouds across the heavens, preparing rain for earth’s growth, providing the grass on hillsides, all animals’ food, all fledglings’ needs.
His delight is not in those with the strength of horses, nor the speed of athletes
but the LORD finds pleasure in those who respect and revere him,
who regard his power with awe and trust his steadfast love.
Praise the LORD, O his Kingdom! Praise your God, O his People!
For he strengthens your security; he blesses families with protection.
He can bring peace within your borders; he satisfies you with finest provisions.
He sends out his command throughout the earth; his word runs swiftly.
He spreads snow as thickly as wool, scatters frost like ashes.
To him hail is merely as hurled crumbs. Who can withstand his chill?
He sends out his word and melts ice, breathes wind and waters flow.
He opens his word to leaders, teaches his peoples the way to abundant life.
He deals uniquely with the People on whom he has chosen to rest his love;
many have not been blessed with our insight into his ways & truth.
So Praise our LORD!”
The description of God’s provision and care in Psalm 23 is much stronger understanding of God than we usually feel when we sing the gentle Crimond or read the King James Translation:
PSALM 23
“The LORD - my Shepherd!
How can I lack anything! He lavishly supplies!
You bring me to secure rest in lush green pastures;
you guide me towards tranquil waters
where my soul can be refreshed and healed in safety and find peace.
You lead me in righteous paths
for this is what your covenant promises
and how your name is glorified.
Although I may walk through the darkest valley,
overshadowed by the threat of death
I will fear no harm or evil;
for your presence is with me;
your rod of authority, your guiding staff
provide my goad, my comfort and security.
You prepare a lavish spread for me in the face of my greatest fears;
You have anointed me for your service and for blessing
drenching my head with precious oil;
my cup overflows.
I can be assured that goodness and loving-mercy
shall accompany me all the days of my life,
and I will live in the presence of the Holy LORD my whole life,
here and beyond, for all eternity.”
A wonderful book “A Rabbi Reads the Psalms” by Jonathan Margolith opened my eyes to how strong the imagery of God is in the Psalm, which I’ve tried to include in my translation and also in my painting of the Good Shepherd. Remember CS. Lewis writing of Aslan: “this lion is no pussy!” Aslan is rather like the strength of God that many Psalms suggest:
God is seen in the Psalms as all-seeing:
PSALM 139
O LORD, you have searched me: You know what lurks in the deepest recesses of my life. You know when I sit and when I rise;
you discern what’s on my mind from any distance. You scrutinise my path,
my lying down, my thoughts at night; you sift through all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know my motives entirely.
You encompass me, behind, beside, in front; you lay your protecting hand on me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me to put into words;
so high, so unreachable that I cannot grasp it.
Where might I hide from your spirit or where could I flee from your presence?
If I ascend high as heaven, there you are; if I rest in the grave, see, you are there!
If I took flight at sunrise, if I settle as distant as the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand will certainly be there to guide me,
and the strength of your right arm shall hold me upright and secure.
If I say, "Surely the darkness shall hide me,
and the light around me become opaque as night,"
even deepest darkness is not dark to you; for night to you is bright as day.
Whether we are in darkness or light makes no difference to your scrutiny.
For it was you who formed my inmost parts;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am breathtakingly and wonderfully made.
Your works are awe-inspiring; my soul has learned that fully and truly.
The bones of my frame were not hidden from you, when I was being formed
in secret, intricately interwoven through the deep mysteries of your creation.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance while still in embryo.
In your book of wonders were written all the days fashioned ahead for me,
when none of them as yet existed.
To you, Eternal One, our potential, our present and future are as one.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
Should I try to count them - they outnumber the grains of sand!
If I ever come to an end - I will find myself still with you.
O that you would halt the work, the spread and influence of the wicked, O God,
and that those who shed blood would turn away -
those who invoke your name maliciously,
and raise themselves against you, futily scheming evil!
Do I not oppose those who oppose you O LORD
and reject those who rise up against you? Put an end to the abusers’ hate;
they have spoiled themselves; for now they’re counted as our foes,
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and understand the deepest intertwinings of my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me
and lead me instead in ways of everlasting life!
If we’re going in wrong directions this psalm is uncomfortable. But if we’re letting God direct our lives this all-seeing nature of God can be comforting. God’s all seeing, inescapable powers could be frightening, but the psalm is emphasising that that God is totally trustworthy because God is saying: “Wherever you go
I am with you!”, whatever you are involved in I am watching to protect and support you.”
The term “Yahweh” recurs in many psalms, translated LORD with capital letters in many translations. It means as I’m sure you know, “I am what I am”. God is as he is – that includes all the characteristics on our list, But the word also implies that the God in whom we trust and who we serve and worship is MUCH MORE
than any have yet discovered; MUCH MORE than described in any of the Psalms, because God is beyond our understanding! It’s in this God’s presence that we rest and trust this weekend. There’s much more that we could say about God in the Psalms, but we’ve opened a lot for a first evening. So rather than talking more, lets allow ourselves to radiate in the light of the truths that the Psalms open about God.
Let’s open our thoughts and lives to God AS HE IS, even greater than he’s even described in scripture.
He holds all these characteristics in his nature without contradiction, and is a perfect being. That means:
He loves perfectly;
He governs the creation perfectly;
His justice is perfect;
He deals with our sin perfectly;
His relation to us is perfect.
When Christ calls us to work at being “perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect” he is calling for us to emulate and follow
what we know of God in OUR lives.
As we wait for compline, let’s meditate quietly on some of the aspects of God on our list and in the psalms we’ve read together, and contemplate that this is the God who made us, loves us, and has called us to follow him and act like him. AMEN
SESSION 3
Using the Psalms to Explore Ourselves Psalms of Life’s Experiences, Human Failings. Longing for Truth and Justice & Recognising our Value to God.
PSALM 102
“Attend O LORD to my prayer! Let my pleas rise especially to you!
Do not hide your presence from me at this point of anguish in my life.
Lean your ear towards me; answer speedily, respond to my entreaty.
For my days disperse as smoke, my bones burn like sticks in a furnace.
My stricken heart withers without hope, like grass scorched by sun;
I am too feeble and wasted to remember even to eat my meals.
My groans echo loudly, for my flesh is a drum stretched over my bones.
I stalk the black wilderness as a scavenger, a small owl lost in barren waste.
I lie awake, restless; feel lonely as an abandoned nestling on a rooftop.
All day my enemies taunt; my name’s become a curse to liars & abusers.
My bread tastes like ashes; my drink is diluted by my tears
because I feel your indignant anger and your disappointment with me;
Have you raised me to just throw me aside?
My days stretch before me, dark & empty as shadow, promising no relief;
I shrivel as dried-out straw. But you, O Lord, remain, enthroned forever;
the memory of your name and nature must last for all generations.
Rise up with compassion towards your people’s place of worship,
for it is time for your blessing to return and be lavished upon us;
a revival of your praise is long overdue.
Your servants care about your stones & heritage, even cherish the dust.
Surrounding nations will be awed by the name of the LORD,
all the kings of earth will revere your glory,
for when the LORD rebuilds his Kingdom
his presence and holy nature will be glorified.
He will heed the prayers of the destitute and not despise their pleas.
Let this be recorded for generations yet to come,
so that multitudes as yet unborn will praise the LORD:
For from his holy dimension he observed, from Heaven watched Earth,
to heed the groans of prisoners and free those condemned to die;
to proclaim his name and character on Earth, for praise in the Eternal City whenever peoples gather and kingdoms join to worship the LORD.
He has broken my strength midcourse, shortened my days.
"My God," I ask, "do not remove me at this mid-point of my life,
for you live on through all our generations."
Long ago you laid the earth’s foundations
and crafted the heavens with your hands.
They may perish, but you endure. All will wear out like garments;
you watch our lives, changed like clothing, worn through, rotting away.
But you remain the same; your years never end.
You will settle your servants’ successors in a place of peace;
their offspring shall be established, secure in your presence.”
It has been said of the Psalms that all human life is there:
Grieving / Dancing with joy
Feeling betrayed by those close to you/feeling you have betrayed others/
feeling unity with others in society and in worship
Afraid of death / rejoicing at new life and the promise of salvation
Loneliness / group expressions of Joy and thanksgiving
Feeling religiously ecstatic / feeling an unvalued worm
Depression where God feels distant or having deserted us / exhilaration at feeling close to God and blessed.
Blaming God for circumstances / thanking God that he is involved in everything.
The Psalms show the complexity and vulnerability of human life. They show how we are tossed around in different emotions so we cannot always trust ourselves & cannot trust our perceptions of God, but if we are as honest about our feelings of wanting truth, justice etc. as the Psalms are, we can turn our thoughts to prayer
as the Psalms do, for the truth to emerge and be revealed.
Israel saw self-justification and vengeance as admirable qualities. Christians often feel guilty about vengeful or selfish feelings. We suspect that God who is perfect couldn’t accept us for such failings in our character, because Christ asked us to aim to “be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect” Self-centredness isn’t right But the Psalms show that God listens to failing people and still values his relationship with them. He made us, he knows us thoroughly, so he knows how our minds work and knows how to deal with us. Our relationship with God should be honest about who we are. Living in the presence of God who has revealed aspects of truth about God’s nature and being.
The Psalms show a wide spectrum of human nature:
Self-centredness, Self-doubt
Longing for revenge against others / longing for forgiveness of oneself and friends
Greed for power / disdain at the false use of power by others
Jealousy of what others have / pride in what you have
Elation / Despondency
Heights of worship / Inability to get yourself into a frame of mind in which one can worship
Feeling closeness to God / Feeling distant from God
or that he is deliberately not hearing you
It’s not just enemies who the Psalmists rails against:
The poets recognise their own failures & regularly see themselves as nothing in God’s sight, especially in Psalms of personal & communal penitence. Many Psalms express human weakness:
Ps. 22:6 “I am a worm and no man”
Ps.39:4 "Show me, LORD, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is.”
Ps. 78:39 “He remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return.”
Ps. 136:23 “He remembered us in our low estate, while His love endures forever.”
The Psalms also recognise that we deflate our value in our own eyes, or put others down to raise our power over them:
Ps. 22:6 “To You they cried out and were delivered; In You they trusted and were not disappointed. But I am a reproach among men and despised by the people. All who see me sneer at me…”
Ps. 31:11 “Because of all my enemies, I am the utter contempt of my neighbours and an object of dread to my closest friends-- those who see me on the street flee from me.”
Ps. 69:19 “You know how I am scorned, disgraced and shamed.”
Ps. 109:25 “I am an object of scorn to my accusers; when they see me, they shake their heads.”
Yet even in this sad state Psalmists remain true to God:
Ps. 119:141 “Though I am lowly and despised, I do not forget your precepts.”
This is important for us when we’re feeling bad about ourselves or when others are treating us badly: God is constant, he is there to be held onto for support,
He helps us retain a sense of self-value in times of trouble, as I have discovered over this last difficult year. Faith is holding on in trust to God’s love, knowing he values us.
In singing about different emotions and divergent ideas about the value and lack of value of human beings the Psalm writers are recognising the that we truly have value in the sight of God. Our value is recognised in many Psalms:
8:4-5 In the expanse of the universe “What are human beings that you care for them?.. Yet you made us little lower than heavenly beings; You crown us with glory & cloak us with honour”
READ PSALM 8
O LORD, our Sovereign and our Support,
how majestic are all aspects of your Being,
how vast your signature,
displayed throughout the whole of your Creation!
Your glory is reflected in the heavens.
The voices of babes and nurslings you have nurtured,
so they grow to build a strong foundation,
forming a choir of praise
to challenge any who oppose your ways,
to silence the adversary and any vengeful enemy.
When I contemplate your universe, crafted by your creative power,
the moon and stars whose circuits you have formed and regulate;
I wonder: what are human beings
that you bother to consider us,
mortals that your lavish care and thought on us?
Yet you have formed us to share almost the status of heavenly beings,
crowned us with glory, enrobed us with a cloak of honour.
You have entrusted us with stewardship over the works of your hands,
given us responsibility for all that you have made:
all sheep and herds of cattle,
all living things, domestic and wild, every beast of the field,
the birds in the skies, and the creatures of the seas,
all that traverse their courses across the oceans.
O LORD, our Sovereign and our Support,
how majestic are all aspects of your Being,
how vast your signature,
displayed throughout the whole of your Creation!
Psalm 139:13-16 reinforces this:
“For it was you who formed my inmost parts;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am breathtakingly and wonderfully made.
Your works are awe-inspiring; my soul has learned that fully and truly.
The bones of my frame were not hidden from you, when I was being formed
in secret, intricately interwoven through the deep mysteries of your creation.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance while still in embryo.
In your book of wonders were written all the days fashioned ahead for me,
when none of them as yet existed.”
Our value is in being ourselves: allowing ourselves to be the people God made us to be, not what we have made ourselves to be or what others would like us to be. It’s hard to accept sometimes, especially when we feel ill, weak or disheartened,
but the Psalmist is saying that God knew what he was doing when he formed us as we are.
As Christians we can hold onto these assurances for ourselves, and our mission is to show others that they are of similar eternal value and that God loves them as they are.
These are really important concepts for life in our modern world. The commercial & political world flourishes by making many dissatisfied with themselves. The most beautiful woman or fit man can feel self-doubt and develop a bad personal image because the world is constantly telling us that we’re not good enough as we are and should be buying products to make us feel better about ourselves, from cosmetics or health products to fashion and supermarket shopping, or working harder for our business to be better or more productive than other workers. Psalm 139 disproves that we should be dissatisfied with ourselves saying that God knew what he was doing when he formed us right from the womb onward. He loves us as we are; we don’t need to be like anyone else. But we do need to work at fighting our tendency to sin
PSALM 51: 1-5
“Have mercy on me, O God, in harmony with your faithful love;
keep true to your overwhelming compassion, erase all my offences.
Wash me thoroughly from every fault in my unrighteous life,
cleanse and form me; purify me from all my sins and imperfection.
For I know my sinfulness;
my failures and mistakes are constantly before my eyes.
Against you, you solely, am I responsible for my sins,
since what you perceive as evil I have so often done.
So you are justified in your censure,
your words are true in judging me.
I was born with the influence of sin and guilt upon my life,
inclined to be a sinner from the moment my mother conceived me.
You desire truth to infuse even our most inward selves;
so teach me knowledge of your ways, reach your wisdom into my deepest soul.
Even purge me with flails of hyssop, if that will restore me to purity;
scrub me to cleanse me whiter than snow.
May I again hear joy and know inner happiness;
let the bones that you have allowed to be crushed by failure rejoice in life.”
Psalm 147 shows that God admires different qualities from most of us. It’s a great encouragement for any who might regard themselves as physical whimps: “God’s delight is not in those with the strength of horses, nor the speed of athletes,
but the LORD finds pleasure in those who respect and revere him, who treat his power with awe and trust his steadfast love.”
PSALM 147
“Praise the LORD! How good it is to radiate by singing praises to our God;
for he is full of grace and blessing, and deserves our song of praise!
The LORD builds up his People; he gathers back outcasts and the rejected.
He heals those whose hearts have been shattered, and binds up their wounds.
He set out the number of the stars; and knows the special nature of each.
Our Lord is infinite, his reach abounds in power; measureless is his knowledge.
The LORD lifts up the humble & downtrodden, abases the wicked in the dust.
Sing to the LORD with thankful hearts; pluck melody to God on strings.
He stretches clouds across the heavens, preparing rain for earth’s growth, providing the grass on hillsides, all animals’ food, all fledglings’ needs.
His delight is not in those with the strength of horses, nor the speed of athletes
but the LORD finds pleasure in those who respect and revere him,
who regard his power with awe and trust his steadfast love.
Praise the LORD, O his Kingdom! Praise your God, O his People!
For he strengthens your security; he blesses families with protection.
He can bring peace within your borders; he satisfies you with finest provisions.
He sends out his command throughout the earth; his word runs swiftly.
He spreads snow as thickly as wool, scatters frost like ashes.
To him hail is merely as hurled crumbs. Who can withstand his chill?
He sends out his word and melts ice, breathes wind and waters flow.
He opens his word to leaders, teaches his peoples the way to abundant life.
He deals uniquely with the People on whom he has chosen to rest his love;
many have not been blessed with our insight into his ways & truth.
So Praise our LORD!”
The business, political and commercial world often regards people as dispensable. We are cogs in the machine, of value if we are supporting an organisation, voting for the power of the politician, buying products, contributing to the economy.
If we stop supporting, become old or ill, question the institution’s values, we become valueless to some, we can be discarded, like patients sometimes feel on hospital; waiting lists. How different is the affirming nature of the love of God!
We all recognise that we have frailties. They can help us see our value in perspective so that we don’t over-exalt ourselves:
Ps. 103:13 -17
“Just as a father has compassion on his children,
so the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him.
For he himself knows our frame; he is mindful that we are but dust.
As for human beings, their days are like grass;
as a flower of the field, so they flourish; the wind passes over us and we are gone and our place knows us no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord
rests from everlasting to everlasting on those who respect him with awe,
and his righteousness extends to our children’s children…”
Seeing ourselves in true perspective as the Psalms help us to do, is a feature of wisdom. Wisdom, in the Hebrew Bible is built up by accumulating many truthful sayings. We see this in the lists of wise epithets of the Books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Wisdom about human beings in the Bible holds in balance our height of value in God’s sight, God’s intention for us, and a recognition of our weakness by comparison to eternal powers, our fickle natures and our tendency to sin.
Psalm 139 could be called a Psalm of wisdom, because it sees details about us in true perspective.
(PSALM 139?)
O LORD, you have searched me: You know what lurks in the deepest recesses of my life. You know when I sit and when I rise;
you discern what’s on my mind from any distance. You scrutinise my path,
my lying down, my thoughts at night; you sift through all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know my motives entirely.
You encompass me, behind, beside, in front; you lay your protecting hand on me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me to put into words;
so high, so unreachable that I cannot grasp it.
Where might I hide from your spirit or where could I flee from your presence?
If I ascend high as heaven, there you are; if I rest in the grave, see, you are there!
If I took flight at sunrise, if I settle as distant as the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand will certainly be there to guide me,
and the strength of your right arm shall hold me upright and secure.
If I say, "Surely the darkness shall hide me,
and the light around me become opaque as night,"
even deepest darkness is not dark to you; for night to you is bright as day.
Whether we are in darkness or light makes no difference to your scrutiny.
For it was you who formed my inmost parts;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am breathtakingly and wonderfully made.
Your works are awe-inspiring; my soul has learned that fully and truly.
The bones of my frame were not hidden from you, when I was being formed
in secret, intricately interwoven through the deep mysteries of your creation.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance while still in embryo.
In your book of wonders were written all the days fashioned ahead for me,
when none of them as yet existed.
To you, Eternal One, our potential, our present and future are as one.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
Should I try to count them - they outnumber the grains of sand!
If I ever come to an end - I will find myself still with you.
O that you would halt the work, the spread and influence of the wicked, O God,
and that those who shed blood would turn away -
those who invoke your name maliciously,
and raise themselves against you, futily scheming evil!
Do I not oppose those who oppose you O LORD
and reject those who rise up against you? Put an end to the abusers’ hate;
they have spoiled themselves; for now they’re counted as our foes,
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and understand the deepest intertwinings of my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me
and lead me instead in ways of everlasting life!
PENITENTIAL PSALMS
The Psalms that recognise our value in a most balanced way are often also those that most express human penitence : Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143.
These call us to see ourselves in perspective. We aren’t just worms as Psalm 22 recognised; we are cared for by God who doesn’t just treat us as miserable sinners. He recognises our value and wants to raise us up.
What I’d like to suggest we do now and in part of this afternoon is take time to consider our true selves and our lives in the light of all we know about God through Christ, and honestly write down our thoughts, in the best ways we can, about how we feel about ourselves in relationship with God. Don’t feel embarrassed, it’s between you and God, your Source of Life. If you’re going on a walk this afternoon, take a piece of paper or a small notebook with you so you can keep writing down thoughts as you walk.
I’ve written some guidelines about how the Psalms were written, how parallelism works, etc. in case you’d like to try to write your own psalm. Don’t use them unless you’d find them useful. It’s more important that you feel that you are laying yourself open to the God who knows you thoroughly and loves you as you are. OK, you’ve probably got as many failings as I have (in fact, I bet I’ve got more!) Like the Psalms you can lift those failings to God and ask him to show you how to deal with them with love
You MIGHT prefer to just be quiet and talk to God, (that is always valuable) but I WOULD recommend that you try to put your feelings about your relationship with God and his valuing of you down on paper rather than just praying quietly. Often writing something down helps us work through thoughts. That’s what I think some psalmists were doing when you find them moving from despair to hope,
or from a feeling of isolation to a sense of trust in God. They seem to have been writing down poetry as a process of working out what they were thinking and what they truly believed. (Perhaps they were working it out , so that when they proclaimed it, their praise would be honest and truthful.) I suspect that by writing, you will probably find that you come to different and more full conclusions to thoughts than you would if you just thought about them.
SESSION 4
Using the Psalms to Explore Problems: Psalms of Inner Worship: Learning to Trust God in an Uncertain World
Though I don’t know you well, I suspect that for many of you, as for me life hasn’t always been easy! You may have reflected on some of the issues in your life in response to the last session. The Psalms are realistic. They recognise that life is a struggle. Though they place trust in God, the poems don’t indulge in the simplistic idea that if God is on our side we’ll have an easy life. You might find that occasionally in some churches’ teaching, but it’s not in the Bible. Even the reassuring Psalm 23 recognises that we all live under the shadow or threat of death and suffering.
But the Psalmists also reassure us, from personal experience and from history in this difficult life we can trust God and God provides for us. The recognition that life has many problems is understandable since the Psalms were written in a society where people died in childbirth, simple illnesses were fatal, nations & tribes were regularly at war, communities and their leaders were unstable. People were confused and had different ideas about the sort of God or gods in which they believed. They needed protection and needed a God who was on their side, who would protect them. It’s understandable that the Psalms, from different writers and different periods in Israel’s history, show very different, sometimes confused emotions & ideas about God, believed in his vengeance against enemies but were afraid of him themselves. They didn’t have the stable understanding of God’s constancy and love about which Christ’s teaching and salvation assures us.
Life isn’t too different today: our world is unstable politically, ethically, peace is under threat from war and terrorism. As recent electioneering shows few trust today’s leaders; many are cynical about life, society, business and politics.
The Psalms and the Wisdom Books of the Bible reflect our state. A common message in the psalms is that the world isn’t good towards God’s people. The first three Psalms recognise this. Psalm 2 says that the powers of the world are working against the right ways that God has set out for people to live by.
PSALM 2
“Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together,
against the LORD and his anointed, saying,
3 "Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast their cords from us."
4 He who sits in the heavens laughs; the LORD has them in derision.
5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury…
9 You shall break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." 10 Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth.
11 Serve the LORD with fear, with trembling
12 kiss his feet, or he will be angry, and you will perish in the way;
for his wrath is quickly kindled. Happy are all who take refuge in him.”
Righteous life is a struggle. Life isn’t easy, even within the Church. I discovered this to my cost, when I was abused last year by two Christians for saying that we should try to live as Christ would.
Psalm 133 talks about the blessing that people of faith feel when they live and worship together in unity. That’s the ideal Church, living & working like a loving family, or unified like the body about which St Paul wrote in 1 Cor.12:12-31, where all organs work in harmony & all gifts are valued equally, affirmed & nurtured. Yet neither human life nor the contemporary Church are ideal. Evil works within a Christian body as it does in the world. Trying hard to live the righteous life isn’t a smooth path.
Above all the message of the Psalms is that God can STILL be trusted. Trust in God is at the heart of our needs in the 21stC Church. When so many critics question whether our faith is true. Some Christians, especially Evangelicals, Calvinists and Roman Catholics often talk of the primacy of getting our theology right, as though we are saved by the soundness of what we believe. Others talk about getting our practice right, loving with Christ’s love, caring and sharing. But ultimately our relationship with God is based on trust.
Faith is about trust in a God we cannot see. We ask people to love and worship God, but actually you can’t easily learn to love someone who you haven’t learned to trust.
Love and trust grow at together, encouraging each other’s growth when we are in a sincere relationship with God. Over and over in the Psalms the writers talk about trusting God. In the psalms that recount the history of God’s leading his people in Egypt, the Exodus, the Babylonian captivity, through wars and political struggles with neighbouring nations. The emphasis is always on God bringing his people through the struggle.
Some of the Psalms speak about specific situations where God has guided his people in times of struggle.
They are meant to reassure us that his faithfulness in the past guarantees his continued faithfulness to us:
The Historical situations mentioned are often those where people have been in trouble:
Psalms 105 & 106 relate the way God protected his people through the time of Abraham, then in Egypt, the Exodus and the settlement of Canaan.
Psalm 34, an acrostic, remembers David feigning madness to protect himself from his enemies, asking deliverance from trouble,
Psalm 51 was written to encourage penitence, relating our guilt for sin to David’s penitence after Nathan’s accused him over his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba & murder of her husband.
Psalm 142 was composed about David’s insecurity, hiding in the cave while fleeing from the abuse of Saul.
Several Psalms refer to the needs of the penitent & harrowed, pleading before the Lord:
PSALM 102
“Attend O LORD to my prayer! Let my pleas rise especially to you!
Do not hide your presence from me at this point of anguish in my life.
Lean your ear towards me; answer speedily, respond to my entreaty.
For my days disperse as smoke, my bones burn like sticks in a furnace.
My stricken heart withers without hope, like grass scorched by sun;
I am too feeble and wasted to remember even to eat my meals.
My groans echo loudly, for my flesh is a drum stretched over my bones.
I stalk the black wilderness as a scavenger, a small owl lost in barren waste.
I lie awake, restless; feel lonely as an abandoned nestling on a rooftop.
All day my enemies taunt; my name’s become a curse to liars & abusers.
My bread tastes like ashes; my drink is diluted by my tears
because I feel your indignant anger and your disappointment with me;
Have you raised me to just throw me aside?
My days stretch before me, dark & empty as shadow, promising no relief;
I shrivel as dried-out straw. But you, O Lord, remain, enthroned forever;
the memory of your name and nature must last for all generations.
Rise up with compassion towards your people’s place of worship,
for it is time for your blessing to return and be lavished upon us;
a revival of your praise is long overdue.
Your servants care about your stones & heritage, even cherish the dust.
Surrounding nations will be awed by the name of the LORD,
all the kings of earth will revere your glory,
for when the LORD rebuilds his Kingdom
his presence and holy nature will be glorified.
He will heed the prayers of the destitute and not despise their pleas.
Let this be recorded for generations yet to come,
so that multitudes as yet unborn will praise the LORD:
For from his holy dimension he observed, from Heaven watched Earth,
to heed the groans of prisoners and free those condemned to die;
to proclaim his name and character on Earth, for praise in the Eternal City
whenever peoples gather and kingdoms join to worship the LORD.
He has broken my strength midcourse, shortened my days.
"My God," I ask, "do not remove me at this mid-point of my life,
for you live on through all our generations."
Long ago you laid the earth’s foundations
and crafted the heavens with your hands.
They may perish, but you endure. All will wear out like garments;
you watch our lives, changed like clothing, worn through, rotting away.
But you remain the same; your years never end.
You will settle your servants’ successors in a place of peace;
their offspring shall be established, secure in your presence.”
Several of the Lament Psalms talk about God’s silence or feeling that he is distant. Yet their argument usually works round, as this psalm does, to accepting God’s love & forgiveness, or praising God, recognising at last that he can be trusted.
In Psalm 22, (one of the psalms prayed by Christ on the Cross,) the singer starts by thinking God has forsaken him and isn’t listening to his needs. In Psalm 66: 18 the Psalmist recognises that sin in his heart would have divided him from God,
but God’s mercy reaches into him:
“16 Come and hear, all you who fear God,
and I will tell what he has done for me.
17 I cried aloud to him,
and he was extolled with my tongue.
18 If I had cherished iniquity in my heart,
the Lord would not have listened.
19 But truly God has listened;
he has given heed to the words of my prayer.
20 Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer
or removed his steadfast love from me.”
That is the experience in Psalm 4 & many Penitential Psalms: Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143.
Most of the psalms of penitence turn to inner worship, because they recognise that God is faithful to his covenant promises, even if we aren’t. I said earlier in these talks that one dangers in the Psalms is that they represent fluctuating feelings
about the writers’ relationships with God, so their theology if you take verses out of context, isn’t always reliable. But to counter that we should also recognise that an important feature of the personal experiences expressed in the Psalms is often that they move forward and change. The writer feels exposed or vulnerable before they realise that God cares for them.
The Psalms were designed for public worship. Lament Psalms are designed to demonstrate that when someone struggles with negative experiences in life, in their relationship with God or with personal sin, life can be improved by God.
The arguments of the poems develop, so that people work through their problems to find they can proclaim that God’s forgiveness, love and restoration are available to them and to others
PSALM 130:2-4 explains the love of God in a guilty world:
“Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. If You, LORD, should keep a record of our sins, O Lord, who could stand?
But with You there is forgiveness,
That You may be revered and that we might serve you.
I wait, my whole being waits, & in God’s word & promise
I put my hope. I wait for the Lord, more than the watchmen
wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.
Put your hope in the Lord for with the Lord is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption from all our sins.”
The idea of waiting is important: “ I waited patiently for the Lord!” recurs in Scripture. Psalm 40:1 and Psalm 37:7are possibly the most relevant passages.
People don’t like waiting for anything in our fast-moving world where many want instant solutions. Life isn’t like that. Waiting isn’t necessarily passive, or negative, often we need time for solutions to work through: Psalm 123:2 talks of our relationship to God as a servant actively waiting and watching the master for whatever the master is doing and to look out for the smallest signs of what God wants his servant to do.
“I lift my eyes to you, to you enthroned in heaven.
As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,
as a slave girl watches the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the Lord our God till he shows us mercy”
Such ideas of servitude to God and reliance on doing a master’s
will aren’t so attractive these days, where people like to be masters, and not like to see themselves as subservient or weak in any way.
Many of us and many in the world want God to be what they want him to be, to do for them what they want him to do,
to be there for their good, but not to make demands,
or expect that they change their lifestyles.
The demand for personal freedom makes many not want to obey orders, let alone be seen as “servants”, watching out to obey the master’s smallest whim. But the two aren’t mutually exclusive. We are made free by keeping to the precepts or rules that God, the Source of our Life built into creation. That is the way to fruitful, happy life, as Psalm 1 and 119 state.
Obeying God’s rule for life sets us free to more fully fulfil us: Psalm 119:42ff talks about this:
“So I will keep Your law continually, Forever and ever.
And I will walk at liberty, For I seek your precepts.
I will also speak of Your testimonies before kings
and shall not be ashamed.…”
Freedom doesn’t come to human beings by doing whatever we want in life. Freedom comes from living as we are designed and intended, within the perimeters encompassed by our understanding of God “whom to serve is perfect freedom” as St Augustine wrote.
[ SOURCE: Prayer of St Augustine (354-430)
“O thou, who art the light of the minds that know thee, the life of the souls that love thee, and the strength of the wills that serve thee; help us so to know thee that we may truly love thee; so to love thee that we may fully serve thee, whom to serve is perfect freedom.”
Watch, dear Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight, and let your angels protect those who sleep. Tend the sick. Refresh the weary. Sustain the dying. Calm the suffering. Pity the distressed. We ask this for the sake of your love.
Lord Jesus, our Saviour, let us come to you.
Our hearts are cold; Lord, warm them with your selfless love.
Our hearts are sinful; cleanse them with your precious blood.
Our hearts are weak; strengthen them with our joyous Spirit.
Our hearts are empty; fill them with your divine presence.
Lord Jesus, our hearts are yours; possess them always and only for yourself.]
Freedom comes when we are obeying the laws of God. Psalm 119 is about this. It’s a strange Psalm – so long that it is hard to read at one reading. It’s an acrostic. Its 8 successive verses start with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The whole point of the Psalm is that from whatever angle you look at life & God’s commands, or the responsibilities with which God has entrusted human beings, the same conclusion is true: God’s word and intentions are true and obeying them will fulfil us. Just as Psalm 1 about the laws of God is the start of the Book of Psalms, Psalm 119 is thought to have originally been the last of an old section of the Psalter. It’s an acrostic love song to the word and will of God, like the 1950s song “ A - you’re adorable, B - you’re so beautiful, C – you’ve the cutest little smile.”
The main message of this long Psalm, which few ever get through in one reading, is that amid all we do in human life and all the struggles we endure. God’s care for human beings can be trusted and that if we follow his ways, we’ll find fulfilment in our way through the labyrinth of life, whatever life throws at us.
PSALM 119 1-16
אALEPH
Happy are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the LORD.
2 Happy are those who keep his decrees, who seek him with their whole heart,
3 who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways.
4 You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently.
5 O that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes!
6 Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments.
7 I will praise you with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous ordinances.
8 I will observe your statutes; do not utterly forsake me.
בBETH
9 How can young people keep their way pure?By guarding it according to your word.
10 With my whole heart I seek you; do not let me stray from your commandments.
11 I treasure your word in my heart, so that I may not sin against you.
12 Blessed are you, O LORD; teach me your statutes.
13 With my lips I declare all the ordinances of your mouth.
14 I delight in the way of your decrees as much as in all riches.
15 I will meditate on your precepts, and fix my eyes on your ways.
16 I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word.
The Psalms show realistic ways of being able to trust God and hold onto him in whatever circumstances life throws at us. Christians and the Psalms agree that we can trust and love God. But Christians diverge from the Psalmists somewhat in how we encourage people to deal with problems and issues of life. Psalm 119 starts by encouraging us to: “keep our ways pure” and “blameless”, by keeping to God’s rules for life and faith. As St Paul showed in Romans, if we interpret this too legalistically, faith can lead to rules that restrict the freedom which God has given us. Christ interpreted the ways of purity and blamelessness more broadly and freely than did most Jews. We shouldn’t be Pharisaic, imposing too many rules, nor should we go to the liberal extreme of neglecting truth and justice. We need to deal with life’s problems and difficulties with love and truth, as Christ would, not with retribution, vindictiveness or self-centredness, as some Psalms express. This is where Christ’s message of love, forgiveness and peace, through God’s love for all, takes priority over maintaining the need to right injustices.
The teaching of many Hebrew Scriptures largely emphasised God avenging his People. Jesus’ teaching on God’s grace towards others as well as ourselves IS partly present in some Psalms, but that is where they are commenting generally
about God’s generosity to the whole world (what Calvin calls “common grace”. It is far harder to humbly follow Christ’s loving way through difficult situations than to vindictively attribute blame to others, fight for vengeance and justice, to fight your enemies, asking God to rain down destruction on them, and to justify your-self as self-righteous. Christ’s teaching, said St. Paul, was “a more excellent way”: Christ emphasised that we should learn to love, forgive, and work at the way of mercy, peace and grace. Jesus asked us to act towards others as God in his perfection acts towards the world and towards us. That often means pulling back our wish to be avenged, waiting and trusting for God’s justice to come about,
where we would instinctively want to be more proactive . It requires that we reflect, contemplate and wait, rather than acting hastily, not insisting on being avenged or obtaining shallow justice, by acting too hastily to solve injustice.
The Psalms’ word “waiting on God is important. Often things resolve themselves by praying and waiting for God to reveal HIS way through a situation. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t act where we see wrong happening. We just need to make sure that we are acting wisely, for the good of all, as God does. If possible we should try to remain at peace, resting in God’s love and trusting in his power. The concept of waiting for God to act is in the Psalms’ theology. They recognise our dependency on God. But we should not give in to instinctive, natural human desires to avenge, which several Psalms attribute to God.
Many people act according to what they want, rather than listening patiently for what God wants. Christ opened to us the loving, forgiving, peace-bringing, healing nature of God, while some Psalms lay more emphasis on God’s judgement & judicial strength. Both characteristics are true and work together. Perhaps struggling with how we reconcile the content of the Psalms might help people consider God’s way of dealing with problems with greater awe care & trust.
In Closing Read Psalm 23
SESSION 5 Using the Psalms to Praise
Psalms of Thanksgiving and Praise: How might we and our churches praise ‘with our whole being’?
So many of the Psalms talk of praise or worship of God in various ways. One section of the Psalms from 113 to 118 is known as the Hallel Psalms, because they all start with the call ‘Halleluiah’ – that is: ‘Praise the Lord’ but the call to Praise the Lord recurs throughout the psalter and the last 5 Psalms all rise to the call. Remember that the name of the Book of Psalms in Hebrew is ‘Tehillim’-‘Songs of Praises’. Thought to our mind some may not feel like ‘praise’, they are praise in bringing everything to God. The very last verse of the book sings out the message: “Let everything that has breath Praise the Lord!”
The last three psalms show how all-embracing that praise should be through all creation:
PSALM 148
Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD throughout the universe!
Praise him from Heaven: praise him all his angels; all spiritual powers!
Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all brilliant stars and galaxies!
Praise him, you farthest, most exalted heavens, all forces at work in the cosmos!
Let all praise the name of the Lord, for at his command all were formed.
He established them eternally; he regulates their laws and movements.
Praise the Lord from Earth: you sea creatures and all wonders of the deep;
fire and hail, snow and frost; even winds and storm fulfil his command!
Mountains and all hills, fruitful plants, all great trees and cedars!
All creatures, wild and domesticated, insect life and flying birds!
Monarchs and all their peoples, rulers and all leaders of the earth!
Young men and women alike, old and young united together!
Let them praise the name of the LORD; let his power alone be exalted;
his glory is far above all other majesty in Heaven or Earth.
His energy supports his people. Praise is reflected in all who are faithful to him.
His heart is for all his people & all who remain close to him. Praise the Lord!
The great canticle the Benedicite Omnium Opera seems to have been an expansion based on this Psalm in the Apocrypha – The Song of the Three, which appears after Daniel in the Roman Bible.
The idea of praise is that our whole being and all creation are caught up in a response to God, recognising as much as we are able of all that he is and all that he has done. “Let my whole being praise the Lord” is an interesting phrase in the Psalms. It reminds me of the Great Commandment that Jesus reminded his followers was to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and all your mind” Matthew 22:37 (Deut.6:5)
What do you think of when you think of praising God:
- Valuing who God is
- Recognising what God has done
- Openly and internally expressing our feelings towards God
- Thanking God for big universal things as well as small individual things
- Lifting God up on our praises (“The Lord is enthroned upon the praises of his people” Ps 22)
- Openly loving God
- Living in an attitude of gratitude and recognition.
- Expressively praising God in words music and in our activities.
- Actively living according to our beliefs, thus acknowledging God’s pre-eminence in our lives.
PSALM 34
“I will extol the Lord at all times;
his praise shall continually be on my lips.
2 My soul glorifies the Lord;
let the humble/afflicted hear and be glad.
3 O glorify the Lord with me,
and let us exalt his name together.”
Praise is an attitude of mind. I’ve often been amazed by the positive character of people who are seriously ill, disabled or to whom terrible events have happened.
They are sometimes still able to praise and be incredibly positive about the place of God in their lives. Often this happens when they aren’t focusing on themselves and their problems; instead they are focused on God. Like true love, true praise is selfless. Praise focuses on the one we are praising not on ourselves.
I often used to feel sad when I went to services where people came away saying “I didn’t get anything from the worship. Praise and worship aren’t about fulfilling or satisfying ourselves but being focused on pleasing God who we are praising,
being true to our Source of Life, by recognising his worth. Worship is, after all derived from the ancient word “worthship”/ ‘declaring or recognising the true worth of someone or something’. But good worship also often leaves us feeling enervated in ourselves.
God is not just our Source, but also the source of our praise: it is the movement of his Spirit inside us which inspires our faith and enables us to praise worthily.
Selflessness of praise isn’t always present in the Psalms, because as we’ve seen, the Psalms are also often very self-centred. That’s one aspect of the realism of the spirituality in the Psalms. They are very human; they claim to be focusing on God
but show the self-preoccupation of the writers and the nation. In all of us there is a pull between what St. Paul called ‘the good we want to do and the selfishness we don’t want to do, but keep on doing’, the pull between the flesh and the Spirit.
The Psalms don’t try to hide this. They recognise that it is part of the human condition. But they are always coming back to the desire to be righteous and to give God the right place in our lives.
Psalms like 97 talk about destroying false idols and false images of God and restoring true worship. In a way all of us need to refine how we see God so that we are worshiping the truth rather than the sort of image of God that we have constructed for ourselves: The beginning & end of Psalm 139 talk partly about this, asking God to search us and scrutinise our spiritual internal lives and see if there is any falseness in us or in the image of the God we worship: “O Lord you have searched me… you scrutinise my path… See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the path of everlasting Life.” The centre of the psalm: “Where can I run from your Spirit. If I hide in darkness you are there, if I fly to the ends of the earth you are there also” is calling for us to have a relationship with God that is in Spirit and in Truth, wherever we are.
There is much in scripture about praising “in Spirit and in Truth” – The covenant with Abraham and Moses called for it, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Malachi are among the prophets who called for it. When Jesus’ talked with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:21-24, he told her that the day will come when people won’t need to go to the Temple or a holy place to worship but will be able to praise worthily wherever they are.
With the coming of the Spirit that day has come. In heaven the sense of being in the presence of the truth will be even more apparent – Remember in Revelation it says there is no need of a Temple in heaven because the presence of God, (the dwelling of god/the shekinah of God) is heaven’s temple (Rev.21:22). The Psalms praise God because they recognise that we are in the true presence of God here and now. For the Jews, God was known to be with them because the Temple was in their midst. That’s why Psalm 102 pleas not just for personal restoration but for God to revive his Temple, the heart of worship, to restore wholeness. For us, after Christ, we recognise that God can be found everywhere, and is especially known when we join in worship:
PSALM 133:
A Song of Ascents as David’s People climb the steps to the Temple
“Experience this! What goodness and pleasure
when all God’s family
live together in harmonious unity!
It is precious as fragrant anointing-oil
poured over the head,
running down the beard,
blessing the heads of all as specially as great High Priest Aaron.
Feel it flowing over the collar of our robes, ordaining us for service!
It soaks us with blessing, as dew drenches rocks on sacred mountains
and showers from Temple-slopes wherever God is present among us.
Here, with him in worship, the LORD promises to pour his blessing,
offering a covenant of life for evermore.”
I was discussing the Psalms a couple of months ago with a Jewish friend who emphasised the sense of ‘shekinah’ in the Psalms.I previously thought ‘shekinah’ meant the radiant glory present where God dwells. But she emphasised shekinah differently. The emphasis of the term in Hebrew isn’t on the glory. Shekinah is literally a dwelling, a settlement, the place where God lives. So the emphasis of the Tabernacle and the Temple were that God lives among his people. The emphasis on God’s glory in the Psalms is that God lives with his people. The Psalms, ‘Tehillim’/ ‘praises’ recognise that God’s presence is found alive in the praises of his people: Psalm 22:3 literally says “God lives or is enthroned in the praises of his people” We are reassured of God’s presence with us & in us in corporate praise as well as in our private relationship with God.
Sometimes we don’t feel like praising. Things may be wrong in our lives or in the lives of others. The Psalms encourage us to be honest about these and not worry about them. God is as present with us when we don’t feel him as when we feel on a spiritual ‘high’. Even when we feel distant or frustrated in our faith, we can usually find things to praise or thanks God for. Several Psalms like Pss 33 & 138 ask us to develop thankful hearts. Amid hard situations if we, in some way, try to moving into an attitude of praise or recognition of God’s loving presence with us, this can sometimes calm us, change our perspective or focus us away from concentrating on the problem; it may even be part of our healing.
Praise, like the Psalms themselves can be therapeutic. The Psalms don’t just bewail the situation of the writer, ‘letting it all hang out’; they place our situation in eternal perspective. As I’ve already mentioned, in many Psalms we see a movement in the thoughts of the Psalm writer from a situation of despair and worry through consideration of wider issues, seeing their situation in a different spiritual perspective, and ending in a situation of praise. Psalm 4 is a good example.
PSALM 4:
“Answer me when I call, O God of my right!
You gave me room when I was in distress.
Be gracious to me, and hear my prayer.
2 How long, you people, shall my honour suffer shame?
How long will you love vain words & seek after lies? Selah/ REFLECT
3 But know that the LORD has set apart the faithful for himself;
the LORD hears when I call to him.
4 When you are disturbed, do not sin;
ponder it on your beds, and be silent. Selah/ REFLECT
5 Offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the LORD.
6 There are many who say,
"O that we might see some good!
Let the light of your face shine on us, O LORD!"
7 You have put gladness in my heart
more than when their grain and wine abound.
8 I will both lie down and sleep in peace;
for you alone, O LORD, make me lie down in safety.”
That psalm moves from distress through a sense of isolation in remaining faithful to God, then the Psalmist recognises the greatness of who God is and how he loves and cares for us, and ends on a note of security: “In peace I will lie down in sleep, for you alone make me dwell safely”.
Psalm 7 has a similar movement. The Psalmist starts with a sense of deep personal guilt, recognising he deserves God’s vengeance and moves to a sense of refuge in God’s forgiveness and protection, then ends:
“I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness,
I will sing praises in the name of the Lord most high”.
Psalmists often return to the NAME of God as something which we can rely upon as much as his presence with us. The name, as you probably know, was seen as encompassing everything about a person. ‘Trusting in God’s name’, meant: trusting everything about his power, everything about God’s character, everything he had promised in his covenants with his people, everything that God had done in history to care for them. (That is why Psalms often refer to significant situations in the past where God has shown his power and character in the way he has dealt with his people (Psalm 135 about God’s faithfulness in Israel’s escape from Egypt, Psalm 132 about God’s faithfulness in establishing Jerusalem under David & making the Temple a place for his special dwelling. Trusting in God’s name is not just about looking at what he has done in the past but also trusting in everything that God will achieve for us in future, because God has sworn by his name and ‘established a covenant in his name’. All the future promise, hope and certainty that we have is assured by God promising by his name: promising something because it is in accordance with all aspects of his nature. When we trust in God’s name or praise his name, we are trusting and praising for everything on that list of characteristics of God which we looked at on the first evening, and trusting in everything about God which the Psalms contain. This is emphasised many times in the Psalms:
Psalm 50:5,105:10; 111:9; 25; 89; 138; 132
Psalm 8 Begins with praise of God’s name :
“O LORD, our Sovereign and our Support,
how majestic is your name,
(all aspects of your Being), displayed throughout creation”
In Psalm 51 the despairing penitent is assured of God’s mercy, because grace and forgiveness are part of God’s name and nature:
“Have mercy on me, O God,
in harmony with your faithful love;
keep true to your overwhelming compassion,
erase all my offences. “
The Psalms often encourage us not just to think about ourselves and our local situation, but as well as looking to God, they have a universal outlook. They sing about the world, the heavens, both the visible or invisible creation of God. Psalm 98 talks not just about the praise in Jerusalem, but the mountains, rivers and seas joining in and clapping their hands.
Psalm 148, which we read earlier, sets our praise amid the praise of the whole of creation. We are all seen as being caught up in a huge celebration of our creator together. Following that Psalm 149 calls for us to put everything into our praise, not be lacklustre. For true worship,
‘in Spirit and in Truth’, our words, action, music, thoughts should be focused on God. Worship, as we said in the first talk, should try to be beautiful, worthy of all the beauty and care that God has put in Creation, because he deserves it. The art poetry and music, & especially the meaning of the Psalms, which we’ve explored through these studies, encourage us to, ourselves, work at better expressing our praise and feelings towards God in worship.
God is proclaimed in the Psalms as glorious. Living among us, it is as if our monarch has come to stay in our lives and in our home and community. That’s why Psalm 149 recognises that God deserves the best we can give in words, music, actions and our lives and activities. Before we move to a service of worship we’ll finish these studies by reading together Psalm 149 which encourages us to grow in praise and become ever more expressive and true in our worship:
PSALM 149
Hallelujah! Praise God! Sing praise to our great Lord!
Compose new songs, worthy to sing God’s worth.
Where all his faithful gather, join in praise.
O people, rejoice in your Creator; help all generations enjoy their King!
Let your praise be physical, in dance,
melodious tune and voice, rhythm and strings,
for our Lord God enjoys his people’s praise.
He promises success to humble lives.
You faithful, raise his glory through your praise,
sing out for joy in times of rest and peace;
open your lungs to God in the highest praise that all can give!
May praise fetter the evil leader’s power and manacle his follower,
for God decreed justice: Let it be brought to fruit in our Kingdom!
This is how God’s glory is made visible in our world,
how his faithful people feel their recompense for all life’s struggles!
Hallelujah! Praise God! Sing praise to our great Lord!
IDEAS FOR WRITING YOUR OWN PSALM – Iain McKillop
Don’t be intimidated by the idea of writing your own psalms. You won’t be breaking scriptural tradition because psalms are ways of expressing faith in truthful, personal & poetic ways. The psalm is a communication between yourself & God. Whether it is intended for public or private use, every psalm is firstly the writer’s personal communication with their Source of Life, so it needs to be honest & true to your feelings & experiences. Remember when writing that you are not aiming to persuade others of your spirituality, your words are speaking honestly to God.
GUIDELINES:
- Make it personal & true to your own experience & thoughts.
- Take one theme; don’t try to speak about too much. Psalms don’t need to be long or complicated. As your thoughts on this theme develop through writing, thinking & praying you should find enough to express.
- Think about why you want to write:
I am praising God because……….
I am thanking God because……….
I am asking God to help me with this problem that is troubling me……….
I am asking God to forgive a sin, failing or weakness……….
I am asking God to hear or do something important……….
I am frustrated with myself, others, the world or the Church because...........
- Follow the direction in which your thoughts take you & express how they develop as sincerely as you can.
- You are writing to God, not for others.
- Write reflectively: use the process of writing to think & sort through your experiences & understanding. This will probably mean that your thoughts at the start of your writing may modify as the work progresses.
- Be honest. Psalms are not simplistic statements of faith. Some of the Psalms in the Bible feel uncomfortable because they acknowledge that our lives & psychology are complex; with wide ranges of emotions, responses & needs. The diversity of the Psalms reflects true human experiences.
- Many psalms speak to, or cry out to God, shout praise, confess sins, make testimony, or express the state of our faith. Several others make complaints about life & experience, asking God why they have been allowed to happen.
- Major themes in the Biblical Psalms, which you might consider including are:
Testimony of aspects of your life & faith (e.g. Psalm 46).
Confession of sins, weaknesses & failings (e.g. Psalm 51).
Lament (e.g. Psalm 13).
Trust & finding comfort (e.g. Psalm 131).
- Some even argue with God about the frustrations & inequalities in life. But they usually do so from the point of believing that truth can be found somewhere in situations in which we find ourselves & trust in God is possible: Most famously Ps.22 “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” ends declaring enormous trust in God.
- Try to write from the standpoint of faith in which you can feel some trust in God & truth, no matter how small you feel your faith to be. God is part of us & understands where we are coming from.
- Write with candor & honesty. God is strong & caring about us enough to take our doubts & frustrations; the Psalms recognise that we can openly express pain & struggle to God without superstitiously fearing retribution.
- Don’t hide your true feelings & emotions; true faith is more than what we believe in; it comes from real lives & the thoughts of complex minds.
- Try to write as a New Testament Christian: The Saviour Christ has come, salvation is promised as certain; we’re not in the same spiritual position as the Hebrew psalmists who were looking to an uncertain future, because they had a less secure ideas of salvation & a less personal trust in God than Jesus taught.
- Write your own Psalm. You’re not trying to emulate the biblical psalms; you are communicating your living, personal relationship with God.
- Perhaps, if you are stuck for inspiration read one of the Psalms in the Bible, of a type that relates to your theme & see whether it can inspire you with ideas. Sometimes just one verse or image may spark of ideas, sometimes the whole or part of the Psalm. Consider reading the Psalms in different versions as different styles & translations may give varied ideas.
- If you don’t feel so inspired to be completely original, take an existing Biblical Psalm & translate it into your own words & experience.
- Consider telling about your life & how God, as Father, Son & Holy Spirit, is involved with you.
- Don’t worry whether it could be set to music, or scans like traditional poetry. This is to be in your own style.
- Remember the point of writing a personal psalm isn’t to create a poetic or musical masterpiece, or to make something which your church can sing, or to impress others. Psalms help you give voice to your own personal feelings, life-experiences & the place of faith in you. Faith isn’t about understanding God, who is a mystery, as is the logical reasoning behind much life. Faith doesn’t have all the answers; it’s about how we deal with uncertainties of life, as well as exploring what we believe in, what gives us joy & pain, & what we can trust.
- Your psalm is your personal testimony. Its validity depends on the truth expressed within it, not how skillfully you write, compose, or even how much it inspires others.
PROCESS (some of these might be useful. Don’t try to include all, perhaps just one would be enough!):
- Don’t start to write immediately. Spend time praying, opening yourself up to God. Ask God’s Spirit to awaken you spiritually. Perhaps read a biblical Psalm, to inspire you as you create your own
- Meditate on what is weighing on your mind or what is important to you. What is making you happy/sad; what are you passionate about? What is welling up in you that you want to express or talk to God about?
- Pick a theme that is personal to you, on which to focus your psalm. A psalm can be about any life experience, good or bad. Hymns usually focus on praise & are meant for corporate celebration. Psalms became the corporate worship of Israel & some were designed specifically for this, but most psalms express personal thoughts about God.
- Think about the aspects of God’s character that speak to your situation (e.g. trustworthiness, love, bringer of peace healing or justice, care, sharer of covenant promises with you, protector, supporter).
- What relates to the theme that you can turn into thanks or praise to God? What are you thankful for in the situation? How have you noticed that God has been involved?
- What do you want to express to God in terms of your fears, doubts, questions, longings, hopes, needs?
- What do you want to say about God in this situation?
- How can you describe the God in whom you believe & trust? What metaphors describe this?
- Recall a time or times when God has helped you in the past.
- What do you want to say about your experience, your present feelings, emotions or situation?
- State your understanding of who God is & how God helps you.
- Resolve to let God work through your thoughts as you write.
- Praise God for some of God’s qualities or for what you feel God has done for you or others.
- Ask God to help in something.
- Thank God, in trust, for divine intervention.
- Ask God to forgive your sins or those of others.
- Worship God as our God mentioning aspects of the divine character & nature that you’ve particularly noticed.
- Tell God anything else that is important to you.
- Recall a time when you asked God for help & you feel that God responded. How did you feel?
- Relate how you were sad or in pain (physically or emotionally), perhaps you feel God raised you out of it.
- What did God do? How do you feel that your faith in God has helped ? How long did you suffer?
- Praise for aspects of God’s character. Consider colourful descriptive adjectives - ‘awe-inspiring’, ‘deep’, ‘gracious’, ‘mighty’, ‘perfect’ etc. Perhaps search a thesaurus for meaningful words or make up your own.
- Tell God what you've learned & how you've grown under divine guidance.
- Keep you psalm in a journal or retrievable place, where you may return to it if you want to express similar sentiments again in prayer, or if you want to amend words, phrases or ideas.
POETIC FORMS IN THE BIBLICAL PSALM:
As you advance in writing psalms you might like to develop your technique by emulating the techniques of the Hebrew Psalmists. The biblical psalms are more complex in their poetic forms than our current translations often suggest. We do not need to emulate these, but might learn from this tradition to express our own thoughts to God.
- Don’t be too generalised. Try to personalize your psalm using terms like "me" or “we”.
- Consider using figurative speech, include metaphors & similes, as psalmists used, to help make faith tangible & vivid, e.g. "God is a strong tower”. We don’t ‘see’ God, so be honest in your metaphors. The Psalms in the Bible are full of images & metaphors for God or our situations. God is described as shepherd, parent, avenger, fortress; opposition is described as fierce bulls, armies etc. Maybe you can find your own imagery.
- Don’t try to imply a relationship with God that is not real to you.
- Consider trying to write with poetic feeling, not just in prose. It doesn’t need to rhyme. Unlike Western poetic forms, ancient Hebrew poetry doesn’t use rhyme or metre. It uses a lot of imagery & several forms of wordplay. Write in western poetic style if you want, but obvious rhyming might distract from the realism of what you are saying. Free-form writing may help you express yourself more truthfully. You can always try to make later drafts more poetic.
- Are there ways that you might use the Hebrew poetic styles to give emphasis to your thoughts?:
- PARALLELISM:
- Synonymous parallelism builds up an argument by using two lines which have nearly the same meaning, to emphasise a point: e.g. Psalm 3:1 –
How many rise up against me!!”
- B. Antithetical poetry in the Psalms & Proverbs gives emphasis by using successive lines which refer to different imagery, related to the same theme. As in Prov.17:22 –
But a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”
- C. Synthetic poetry uses a long series of successive lines & varied images to build a feeling or understanding systematically as Ps. 139:1-6 or Joel 1:1-20.
- ACROSTIC FORM: Psalms 9,10, 25, 34, 37, 111, 112, 119, 145 start verses with successive Hebrew letters [in our alphabet from A to Z.] Perhaps try to list your own feelings about God, faith & life in a similar arrangement.
- EMOTIONAL CONTENT: Hebrew Psalms are in 3 main emotional types:
- A. Psalms of Orientation like Psalm 1, 8 & 145 written when life & faith are happy, settled, reliable & you feel confident & trusting. These often:
2. Tell how God makes a difference or how people’s choices & decisions might help in a practical situation.
3. Praise & thank God for specific or general things.
- B. Psalms of Disorientation e.g. Ps. 13, 32 & 88 - written when life doesn’t make sense, things have gone wrong, feelings of failure, uncertainty or suffering. These may lament, complain or even protest. Their form may:
2. Mention a complaint or problem
3. Have a turning point, where the writer recognizes that despite all that has been mentioned he/she/we will, nevertheless….(trust God, act in love, resolve to do something, etc.)
4. Ask or call out for help
5. Respond with praise, trust or hope.
- C. Psalms of Re-orientation e.g. Ps. 23, 30 &103 – Written after a hard time in life when the writer or society have come through to find some form of resolution, a sense of hope or recognised new possibilities. These may express a renewed confidence or recognition of how grace or God’s love & care have been involved in the situation. They look forward, rather than back to the past. In form they may:
2. Give reasons for praise - recount changes that have happened & difference God has brought about.
3. Perhaps encourage others to praise God with deeper appreciation that has grown out of experience.
- SUMMARISING OR FOCUSING THE MESSAGE: Titles are unnecessary if meaning comes over sincerely. On completing the main writing, does your psalm suggest a title or concluding lines which might help to clarify its focus for readers? Something creative, which focuses the mind might help your writing communicate faith.