The Book of Psalms. It's a collection of
150 ancient Hebrew poems, songs, and prayers that come from all different
periods in Israel's history. Many of these poems are connected with King
David-- 73, actually. And he was known as a poet and a harp player. But there are many
different authors behind these poems. There's the poems of Asaph, or from the
sons of Korah, and some from other worship leaders in the temple. Even Solomon and
Moses have their own poems and nearly one third of these are anonymous. Now many of these poems came to be used
by the choirs that sang in Israel's temple. But the Book of Psalms is actually
not a hymn book. At some point in the period after Israel's exile to Babylon,
these ancient poems were gathered together and intentionally arranged into
the Book of Psalms before us. And it has a very unique design and message that
you're not gonna notice unless you read it from beginning to end. Now to see how the
Book of Psalms is designed, it's actually most helpful to start at the end. The book
concludes with five poems of praise to the God of Israel and each one begins
and ends with the word "hallelujah," which is Hebrew for a command to tell a group
of people to praise "Yah," which is short for the divine name Yahweh. Now
that's a really nice five-part arrangement and it looks like someone's
giving us a conclusion here to the book. So it invites the question, "does the book
have any other signs of intentional design?" If you pay attention to the headings
of the poems, you'll notice that at five places your Bible translators have the
heading "book one," "book two," "book three," "four," and "five" at various points and that
these divide the book into five large sections. Now the reason for this is that
the final poem in each of those sections have a very similar ending that looks
like an editorial addition. It reads something like, "May the LORD, the God of
Israel, be blessed forever and ever, amen and amen." So the book has a conclusion,
it has an internal organization into five main parts and so the natural place
to go from here is now the beginning-- to look for an introduction. And what do we
find? Psalm 1 and 2, which stand outside of Book One because
most of the poems in Book One are linked to David except Psalms 1 and 2, which
are anonymous. Psalm 1 celebrates how blessed the
person is who meditates on the Torah, prayerfully reading it day and night and
then obeying it. Now the word "Torah," it simply means "teaching" and more specifically it
came to refer to the five books of Moses that begin the Old Testament. And here
actually, the word seems to be used with both meanings in mind, which explains why it
has five main parts. The Book of Psalms is being offered as a new Torah that
will teach God's people the lifelong practice of prayer as they strive to
obey God's commands given in the first Torah. Psalm 2 is a poetic reflection on
God's promise to King David from 2nd Samuel chapter 7 that one day a
Messianic King would come and establish God's kingdom over the world, defeat evil
and rebellion among the nations. Now Psalm 2 concludes by saying that all of those
who take refuge in the Messianic King will be blessed, precisely the word used
to open Psalm 1. And so together these two poems tell us that the Book of
Psalms is designed to be the prayer book of God's people as they strive to be
faithful to the commands of the Torah as they hope and wait for the future
Messianic Kingdom. Now with these two themes introduced, we can start to see
how the smaller books have been designed as well around these two ideas. So for
example, Book One has, right at the center, a collection of poems, Psalms 15 through 24,
that opens and closes with a call to covenant faithfulness. And then, in Psalms 16 to18, we find a depiction of David as a model of this kind of
faithfulness. So he calls out to God to deliver him and God elevates him as King.
Now in the corresponding set of poems Psalms 20-23, the David of the past has
become an image of the Messianic King of the future, who will also call out to God,
he will be delivered, and then given a kingdom over the nations. And then right
at the center of this collection is a poem, Psalm 19, dedicated to praising God for
the Torah. So here we go: the two themes from Psalm 1 and 2 are bound together tightly here. Book Two opens with two poems that
are united in their hope for a future return to the temple in Zion and this
is the image closely associated with the hope of the Messianic Kingdom. Then
Book Two closes with a poem that depicts the future reign of the
Messianic King over all of the nations. This poem's really amazing because it
echoes all these other passages from the prophets about the Messianic Kingdom
and it concludes by saying that this king's reign will bring about the fulfillment
of God's ancient promise to Abraham to bring God's blessing to all of the
nation's. Book Three also concludes with a poem reflecting on God's promise to
David, but this time in light of Israel's exile. So the poet remembers how God said
he would never abandon the line of David but now he's looking at Israel's
rebellion in its result and destruction and exile and the downfall of the line of
David. And so the poet ends by asking God to never forget his promise to David.
Book Four is designed to respond to this crisis of exile. So the opening poem
returns us back to Israel's roots with a prayer of Moses and he does what he did
on Mount Sinai after the Golden Calf incident, which is to call upon God to
show mercy. The center of Book Four is dominated by a group of poems that
announced that the LORD, the God of Israel, reigns as the true king of the
world and all creation-- trees, mountains, rivers-- are all summoned to celebrate
that future day when God will bring his justice and kingdom over all the world.
Book Five opens with a series of poems that affirmed that God hears the cries of
his people and will one day send the future king to defeat evil and bring
God's kingdom.This book also contains two larger collections, one called the
"hallel", the other called "the songs of ascent." Each one of these collections
concludes with a poem about the future Messianic Kingdom. And these two
collections together, they sustain the hope for a future exodus-like act of God
to redeem his people. And then, right between them is Psalm 119. It's the longest
poem in the book. It's an alphabet poem, each line begins with a new letter of the
Hebrew alphabet, and it explores the wonder and the gift of the Torah as God's Word to his
people. So here we go. The themes from Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 and Torah and
Messiah combined all together here in Book Five. Which brings us all the way
back to that five-poem conclusion. In the center poem, Psalm 148, all creation is
summoned to praise the God of Israel because he has "raised up a horn
for his people." Now the horn here, is a metaphor of a bull's horn raised in
victory. And this image echoes back to the same image used in
Hannah's song, 1Samuel chapter 2, but also to the earlier Psalm 132. The horn is a symbol for the future Messianic King and his victory
over evil. It's a fitting conclusion to this amazing book. Now here's one more thing
that you are likely going to miss if you don't read this book in order. There's lots of different kinds of poems
in the book of Psalms but they all basically fall into two big categories--
either poems of lament or poems of praise. Poems of lament expressed pain,
confusion, and anger about how horrible the world is and how horrible things are
happening to the poet and so these poems draw attention to what's wrong in the
world and they ask God to do something about it. There's a lot of these in the
book, which tells us something important-- that lament is an appropriate response to
the evil that we see in our world. But what you'll notice is that lament poems
predominate earlier in the book, in books 1 through 3. Pay attention because you'll see
praise poems occasionally too. Praise poems are poems of joy and celebration
and they draw attention to what's good in the world. They retell stories of what
God has done in our lives and thank God for it. In Books Four and Five you'll
notice that praise poems come to outnumber lament poems and it all culminates
in that five-part hallelujah conclusion. So this shift from lament to praise, this
is profound, and it tells us something about the nature of prayer. As we hoped
for the Messianic Kingdom, as the book teaches us to do, this will create
tension for us as we look out on the tragic state of our world and of our
lives. And so the psalms teach us not to ignore the pain of our lives but at the
same time, Biblical faith is forward-looking--
looking to the promise of God's future Messianic Kingdom. And so Torah and
Messiah, lament and praise, faith and hope. That's what the Book of Psalms is
all about.
