Loading summary
Transcript11 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hey, this is a year in the Bible with daily grace. I am here with Paul. Hey, Paul.
- [00:10]
B
Hi.
- [00:11]
A
And we're starting a brand new book today, which we're super, super excited for. Yes, it is the Book of Psalms. Hopefully the book of Psalms is familiar to you, but we also want to add some context. Hopefully you learned something new and you're encouraged in your prayer life. I think that's a big hope we have for the Book of Psalms and whatever you take away from these episodes. We'd love for you to leave us a comment, leave us a review, let us know. That helps us know how these episodes are impacting you and it's just personally really encouraging to us as well. Okay, Paul, how are you feeling about entering the Book of Psalms?
- [00:47]
B
Yeah, really good. I love the Psalms personally myself. They give me words to talk to God in any season of my life, like you talked about. I think they just really enrich my prayer life especially. Um, and I'm also excited for the Psalms just because they are quoted all over the Bible. And so doing a year long Bible reading plan like this, you'll probably pick up some other places where you say, hey, I think I've seen that before. And it's probably in the Psalms. And so if you have a Bible with cross references especially you're going to see a bunch of them in the Psalms, which is pretty cool.
- [01:17]
A
Yes, that is so cool. And we'll be sure to point some of those out as we go through this book. Okay, what do we need to know about the Book of Psalms as a whole? And this is a long book. We're going to be in it for about a month here. So what would be good for us to know as we start our month long journey through this book?
- [01:34]
B
Yeah, so that's a great question. Psalms are basically just songs of worship for the nation of Israel. And so they're written in a particular context for Israel to sing in a communal context. Right. I love the way that C.S. lewis describes them. He says what will be said, however, is that the Psalms are poems and poems intended to be sung, not doctrinal treatises, treatises, nor even sermons. And I think his assessment there is. Right. They're essentially sung poems. And so poetry is something that appears all throughout the Old Testament. But the Psalms especially are very artistic and have lots of literary features in them. And there's even some things that are kind of lost in translation literally between the Hebrew and the English. But most English versions try their best to pull out some of that artistic language there. And so you'll see a lot of literary devices like alliteration, parallelism, similes, metaphors, hyperbole. And so because of that, the Psalms are not necessarily meant to be read, like, super literally, like he said, they're not necessarily doctrinal statements, although they do reveal things about God and about us. And oftentimes those metaphors and hyperbole and all those literary devices can actually point us to certain truths about God that straightforward language could not. And so one other thing to say about the Psalms is that scholars have categorized them in certain ways. There's lots of different types of Psalms, and these categories I'm about to give are not exhaustive, but the most basic types are praise, lament, thanksgiving, royalty, and wisdom. And we'll talk more about them as they arise. But just as a summary, Praise psalms are essentially songs of adoration given to God. Lament psalms, they recognize the suffering and sorrow of the author before God and ask for his aid. Psalms of thanksgiving give gratitude to God for his work, mercy, and love. Psalms of royalty speak about God's relationship with Israel's king. And then psalms of wisdom juxtapose wickedness and righteousness, kind of like the Book of Proverbs does. And so there's subcategories in there for each of those as well. But that can kind of help you to get your head in the right frame of reference when you're getting into a Psalm of. Okay, what kind of Psalm is this?
- [03:46]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Anything else we should know about Psalms before we talk about today's few chapters that we're going to go through?
- [03:54]
B
Yeah, so one more thing I'll mention is it's essentially a book that's just 150 separate songs. But in the book, there's actually a division of five books as well. And that's one thing that's kind of not super obvious in the text. Your Bible might have a heading where it'll say book two, book three, book one, that sort of thing. And each of those books has a psalm that is thought to sort of introduce that book. And then at the very beginning, and then the final psalm of each book kind of closes the book as a doxology. So that's something that you can kind of just notice there in the text. It doesn't necessarily influence the content all that much, but something that the people who put the book of Psalms together thought would be helpful for the readers.
- [04:37]
A
Yeah, exactly. Okay. That gives us a lot of just helpful overview of information we can keep in mind as we're reading this Book. But today we're talking specific, specifically through Psalms 1 through 5. And, you know, we're gonna cover five Psalms a day throughout this month. So how we're gonna structure these episodes is we're gonna choose one or two psalms to focus on, and we'll kind of break those down in the episode. And we wish we could get to all five, but that would be a lot to cover in just a few minutes today. So, Paul, today, what psalm or psalms do you wanna focus on?
- [05:10]
B
Yeah, well, today I wanna talk about Psalm 1. And the reason for that is because not only is it kind of an introduction to book one of the Psalms, it's also seemingly an introduction to the whole Psalter. That's the word for kind of the collection of the Psalms, the book of Psalms, Psalter. And so it opens with this comparison of the righteous and the wicked. And it's some really beautiful imagery that's used here. And like I said, this is something psalms will do a lot. They use literary devices. And so I guess pulling out knowledge from high school English might help you when you're reading the Psalms. But verse three, specifically, it describes the righteous man as someone that's like a tree planted by streams of water that yields fruit in its season, and its lead does not wither in all that he does. He prospers. And further, he is one who delights in the law of the Lord. And so that image of just a tree planted by streams of water, it really captivates me. I kind of imagine just sitting on a bank, a babbling brook and a big tree with lots of leaves and branches branching out, shade, sun hitting the leaves, shade casting down over me, very peaceful. And it's just an image of steadiness, I think, is the word that comes to mind. And, you know, not every moment in a righteous person's life will look like this, but it shows the steadiness that comes from a life lived with Christ specifically. And so my takeaway, I think, from this Psalm is that the righteous person, he yields fruit in its season, the righteous tree yields fruit in its season. We're not necessarily meant to be outputting 247 fruit constantly, right? There are moments when we are meant to take up nutrients as well, like a tree would, and be poured into as well. And so a life lived with Christ doesn't necessarily always mean service to others. Sometimes it means being served as well. And so I think that image of that tree just sticks with me.
- [07:12]
A
Yeah, it sure does. Whenever I read that, I just think of the word nourished to me, that tree being right beside the water, it has just constant access to one of the vital things that it needs. And we know also the tree is flourishing, so it must have the sun it needs. And so, yeah, I think of just being nourished. And it is such a comforting image. I love returning to Psalm 1. It's a favorite of mine I'm going to pull from Psalm 4 for my takeaway. The heading in my Bible for that psalm says a night prayer. And who doesn't need a prayer to pray at the end of the day when you are exhausted? Maybe you're thinking back over your day and you aren't pleased with how it went for one way or another. Maybe it's something you've said or done that you wished you didn't said, say or do. Maybe it's something that's happened to you that's distressing or troubling. But I love verse 8 in this Psalm. It says, I will both lie down and sleep in peace for you alone. Lord, make me live in safety. And so it's this reminder at the end of the day that no matter what has happened that day or what may come tomorrow, that the Lord is our protector and our safety in all things. And I find that to be a very comforting psalm to pray at night. So I think that's going to be my takeaway from these psalms. I'm so excited to spend the next month in this book, so we will continue tomorrow with Psalms 6 through 10.