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- [00:00]
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Foreign.
- [00:05]
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Hey, this is Shelby and Paul, and we are walking through the Psalms. Whether you're listening on a podcast app or you're watching on YouTube, be be sure that you hit, follow or subscribe. That way these episodes will just pop up and it'll be a daily reminder to join us in God's word. So today, Paul, we are Talking through Psalms 6 through 10, and we talked about the. As we go through the Psalms, we're to going. Going to choose one or two to focus on today. So we'd love for you to share with us what psalms we're going to be focusing on today and what we should take away from this.
- [00:37]
A
Yeah, well, before I talk about a specific psalm, there's something kind of more general about Psalms I think I want to bring up. And it's really that the Psalms communicate a lot about God's character as it relates to the very real and practical situations and emotions that we face in life. I think sometimes narrative portions of scripture occasionally can feel a little bit wooden to our current modern minds just because we may not be familiar with certain pieces of context or situations that we don't quite understand. But the Psalms often just give raw human emotion that we can straight up relate to. Pray the exact words that we see in the Psalms. And so I think there's probably most of us have felt like David does in Psalm 6. He writes, I am weary with my moaning every night. I flood my bed with tears. I drench my couch with my weeping. And obviously there's some hyperbole being used here. Obviously. I don't think that's literally how much she's crying, but that's the point. It feels as if he could drench his bed in his tears. And when the tears just don't seem to stop, the psalm can give us a response. And so in verse nine, we see the truth of God's character shine through. It says, the Lord has heard my plea. The Lord accepts my prayer. And so even though we may not understand our circumstances, we know that God is good and that in his goodness he hears us and he will not turn his ear away from us, no matter what we face.
- [02:12]
B
Yeah. And so we're going to read a lot of psalms that communicate sadness or distress. I see. I think we see both of those in this psalm here. And these are often called Psalms of Lament. We talked about that as one of the types of psalms in our last episode. So maybe can we just park here a bit and go a little bit deeper on Psalms of Lament? So we can understand them because we're going to encounter them all throughout the book of Psalms.
- [02:38]
A
Yeah, that's a really great idea, because each lament in the Psalms kind of has a general structure. They don't. They don't follow. Follow this exactly. But generally they have a begin with a prayer for deliverance and then a description of their specific problem. And sometimes those two are. Are flipped. Then there's a petition to God for help. And I know a lot of my Psalms probably just go, those three things. I'll talk to God about what's going on, I'll ask Him for help and just leave it at that. But then the laments keep going, Right. They also have an expression of trust in God and a commitment to serve Him. And so we see this structure in Psalm 6, where Psalm 69, we have an expression of trust, as I mentioned above. And David doesn't stop at telling God his honest problems. He also turns his mind back to God's character, like I mentioned, he has confidence that God will hear his prayer. And then we also get a commitment to serve God at the end of Psalm 10, where it says, David says, I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord the Most High. And so when we bring our pains and sorrows to God, I think these laments show us that we shouldn't just end at expressing them to him, although we could, and he would still hear us. There's also an invitation to reflect on God's character and how his character and his love for us actually speaks into that situation. And then to commit, to actually do something about God's character in response. And I think a really good model for this is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. He prays just before going to the cross. He says, father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. And so even in his sorrow over impending death, knowing that he was going to die, his eyes turn from his sorrow and his pain to God's sovereignty and his goodwill. And so I'd encourage any listener to just ask yourself what opportunity suffering might give to delight in God's character in a new way, in a way that you might not have thought of before, and how wonderful God is to give us words that genuinely reflect how we feel and the human experience of sin and sorrow and pain, and that he is so good in being faithful to answer our prayers.
- [05:02]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Thanks for breaking that down for us, Paul. I think we can all relate to multiple parts of that, the sorrow, but then also just this desire to place our trust in the Lord despite what we're feeling in this confidence in his character. And I love that challenge to act upon that as well. I think the takeaway for me, and this is what I love about reading a few psalms a day, is because we see this lament. But in Psalm 10, I was just struck by the fact that God is at work in the world. And so even when there are moments where we feel distressed by what's going on around us, we cannot forget that God is at work. Psalm 10, 17, 18 stood out to me the most. And at the end there, it says, you will listen carefully, doing justice for the fatherless and the oppressed so that mere humans from the earth may terrify them no more. And I was just reminded that no matter what I see happening in the world, God is at work. He's acting in mercy and justice for his people. And so that was super encouraging to me. All right, thanks for walking us through these Psalms, Paul. We're going to be back in this book tomorrow.