TEACH US TO PRAY AN INTRODUCTION TO PSALMS

Transcription

1 TEACH US TO PRAY AN INTRODUCTION TO PSALMS MAIN IDEA Psalms is one of the wisdom books of the bible. In order to get the most out of our study, it is important to understand its genre. I. THEIR HISTORY In studying literature, it s important to understand the historical context, language, author, and background of the book. A. AUTHORSHIP B. DATE C. OUTSIDE SOURCES D. STRUCTURE E. SUPERSCRIPTS AND POSTSCRIPTS II. THEIR GENRE The psalms belong to the category of wisdom literature and are written in Hebrew poetry. A. THE NATURE OF HEBREW POETRY B. TYPES OF PARALLELISM 1. AFFIRMING 2. OPPOSING 3. ADVANCING 4. CLIMACTIC B. TOOLS OF THE HEBREW POET C. WORD PAIRS 1. MERISM 2. CHIASM 3. INCLUSIO 4. REPEATED REFRAINS 5. ACROSTIC D. TYPES OF PSALMS 1. PRAISE 2. LAMENT 3. THANKSGIVING 4. ROYAL 5. LITURGICAL 6. YHWH MALAK 7. WISDOM III. THEIR USE The psalms have been called the prayer book of the bible. A. PRAYER 1. PUBLIC WORSHIP 2. PRIVATE WORSHIP B. LECTIO DIVINA

2 Teach Us to Pray An Introduction to Psalms This morning, we are going to start a study through the book of Psalms. As you know, it is my custom to preach through entire books of the Bible from the first verse of that Book straight through to the very last verse. It took us more than a year to preach through some books. The book of Psalms has 150 chapters. If we are able to preach through a chapter per week; it should take us about 3 ½ years to complete our study. I wouldn t particularly mind that since the book of Psalms is considered to be the prayer book of the Bible. One of the ways Christians grow to maturity is to develop a rich prayer life. The primary way an ordinary church grows to be a dynamic church is when it is able to become a praying church. One of my goals in studying through the Psalms is that they become part of us and that we develop rich prayer lives; as individuals and corporately as a church. People have tried to understand prayer throughout church history. They have discussed methods, techniques, and even the proper posture for prayer. One day a group of pastors were discussing which posture for prayer led to the most powerful prayer. Some said sitting was the most powerful position for prayer because sitting was a position of classic meditation. Some argued that standing was the most powerful because it put us in a position that demonstrates our readiness to hear and obey God. Others argued that lying face down on the floor was the most powerful because it demonstrated humility. An electrician happened to be working in the room as the discussion went on. He didn t know if it would be okay for him to speak but he finally got up the nerve to speak. He said, I can tell you what the most powerful position for prayer is. The pastors, who were overly impressed by their own education and status, rolled their eyes but asked the electrician to explain. One day, he said, I was working on electric lines and my foot slipped from the pole. I found myself upside down hanging over some live electric lines. Believe me, that s the most powerful position for prayer. Although the church often uses Psalms as formal prayers and uses it regularly in the worship service; we must remember that the Psalms are expressions of how we are to live out our faith in the context of everyday situations. The main idea of this morning s sermon is this. PSALMS IS ONE OF THE WISDOM BOOKS OF THE BIBLE. IN ORDER TO GET THE MOST OUT OF OUR STUDY, IT IS IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND ITS GENRE. I know this sermon may be a little difficult to follow and may be a little boring; not to say that every Sunday is not a little boring. In order for us to get the full benefit of our study through the Psalms, it will be helpful to understand how they are put together. It s like this. If you were to go to the symphony and hear Mozart played; you may find it beautiful, and a pleasant experience. However, if you had studied and played pieces by Mozart, you would enjoy that experience a thousand times more because you would understand all the little nuances and movements. Page 2

3 I. THEIR HISTORY Our first order of business is to understand their history. IN STUDYING LITERATURE, IT S IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT, LANGUAGE, AUTHOR, AND BACKGROUND OF THE BOOK. The authorship of the Psalms has been debated for thousands of years. Many religious communities believed that King David wrote all of the Psalms. When some of the superscripts or verses say something like, A Psalm of Asaph, what is meant by that is that Asaph gathered these particular Psalms of David and added them to the collection. Most scholars today attribute the authorship of these Psalms to different authors. It seems as if the consensus is that David wrote 73 Psalms, Asaph wrote 12, the Sons of Korah wrote 12, and then several others wrote Psalms like King Solomon, Moses, and various others. So these Psalms were written by people from all walks of life. Because of the wide variety of authors, it seems that we can t simply pin down a particular date. If Moses indeed authored a Psalm, we know his date to be around 1500 bc. King David lives around 1000 bc, and we know that many Psalms seem to be written during the Babylonian captivity which ended approximately around 500 bc. That covers a period of about 1,000 years. It also seems that they were collected and complied during the next couple of hundred years. It appears that they were functioning as a unity 200 or 300 years bc. That s interesting because they are written down during some very high points in Israel s history and during some of its lowest points in history; from when Israel and King David seemed to rule powerfully in the world to being carried away as slaves to Babylon. Let s also not forget that most of our lives are lived somewhere in the mundane; between the highs and the lows of life. We need to practice holy living in the course of our everyday, work-a-day lives. We have a lot of outside sources that help us translate and understand the Psalms. As we look at ancient literature, we often look to the geographic location. We have examples of wisdom literature from the following cultures; Canaanite, Egyptian, Babylonian, Phoenician, and other Middle Eastern cultures. We also have several ancient texts of the Psalms. We have three basic ancient texts; the Masoretic text, the Septuagint, and the Qumran texts. The Masoretic texts are Hebrew text with vowels, pronunciation marks, and organizational divisions of the texts. The original Hebrew was written in all consonants all run together with no vowels, pronunciation marks, or divisions. The Masoretes added these. The Septuagint was the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures. It was probably the most popular version used during the time of Jesus. Finally, we have fragments of the Psalms from the Qumran community. The community was known as the Essenes. They were separatists who lived in the caves surrounding the Dead Sea. We have their texts largely as a result of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Even with all these resources, some of the Psalms made no sense. It was difficult to translate the text. Based on these other sources, scholars emended the texts so they made sense. In the early to middle 20th century a large group of texts were found in northern modern day Syria dating back thousands of years. In fact many were contemporaries of the Psalms. The archeological site is known as Ugarit. These texts provided us with a lot of linguistic and cultural tools to make sense of the Psalms as they came to us without making emendations to the texts. In the 1960 s, a Roman Catholic priest and Bible scholar did a lot of work on the Psalms introducing the insights gained Page 3

4 from the Ugaritic texts. His name is Mitchell Dahood and I will be using his work extensively through our studies. Many of the Psalms are easy to translate; others more difficult. But we have a lot of tools to help us today. The structure is pretty simple. Traditionally the Psalms have been broken into 5 divisions. They are each called books. Some say that they were broken down into 5 books so they would match the Torah. The Torah is the first 5 books of our Bible; also known as The Law of Moses. Book I contains Psalm 1-41 and the main theme is Blessed is the man. It primarily uses the divine Name YHWH in referring to God. Also of David is used a lot in the superscripts referring to David s authorship. Book II contains Psalm Its common theme is For the leader; a Maskil. Maskil seems to refer to a type of godly wisdom. This section prefers the Name Elohim for God. 6 Psalms are connected with the sons of Korah, 18 with David, and 1 with Asaph. Book III starts at Psalm 73 and runs through Psalm 89. The common theme is A Psalm of Asaph. The numbers of Asaph s Psalms are Korah has 4 Psalms; and Again the Elohim material seems to dominate this section. Book IV goes from Psalm Its title is A prayer of Moses. There is a great deal of material here that celebrates YHWH s Kingship. Book V is titled Let the Redeemed of the Lord say. It covers Psalms It contains the Hallelujah Psalms and worship Psalms. Before we leave this section we have to discuss superscripts and postscripts. You will see there appears to be a line of text before verse 1 in some of the Psalms. They have to do with authorship, the context of the Psalm, or special instructions for performance. You will also see Selah peppered throughout the Psalms. We will discuss these as we study through individual Psalms. I just want to point out that there is disagreement among scholars as to whether these belong to the original texts or whether they were added at later dates. There are good arguments on both sides. It could go either way. This has been a whirlwind tour through the history of the Psalms. I know it s difficult to stick with this, especially in a sermon. However, IN STUDYING LITERATURE, IT S IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT, LANGUAGE, AUTHOR, AND BACKGROUND OF THE BOOK. II. THEIR GENRE The next task we have is to understand the literary genre of the Psalms. THE PSALMS BELONG TO THE CATEGORY OF WISDOM LITERATURE AND ARE WRITTEN IN HEBREW POETRY. Our Old Testament has a group of books put together and they are known as the wisdom books. They are Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. Large portions of the prophets are also written in Hebrew poetry. The nature of Hebrew poetry has similarities to ours but is much different. It is similar in the fact that it attempts to describe truths that are hard to express in simple narrative conversation. Poetry tries to capture us emotionally and profoundly. To be sure poetry engages the intellect but its goal is to touch us at a deep level. However that s about where the similarities end. A large part of Hebrew poetry attempts to take religious laws and put them into everyday situations. For example the law says, Thou shall not commit adultery. Wisdom literature would say, You mess with another man s wife; you are going to get a good beat down. Page 4

5 The major characteristics of our poetry have to do with rhyme, rhythm, and meter. In other words, our poetry has a beat and tries to rhyme words. It also has a particular timing. For example listen to the popular children s poem Hickory, Dickory, Dock. I am going to use verse 2: Hickory dickory dock, The mouse ran up the clock. The clock struck two, The mouse said boo. Hickory dickory dock. You see, it has a sing song rhythm and it has a metered beat. Further, the words dock and clock rhyme as do two and boo. Hebrew poetry is much different. It is often hard to detect these but we know that some were sung to music. The main characteristic in Hebrew poetry is parallelism. Parallelism is the relationship between lines and strophes. A strophe is a word used in poetry to describe something like paragraphs in narrative writing. The Hebrew writers used some of the techniques we use like Metaphor, simile, personification, and onomatopoeia; but the poetry is found in the parallelism. Let s go over some of the types of parallelism used in the Psalms. I learned the names differently but I like the new names for the categories. First, there is Affirming Parallelism. This is where the second line is a restatement of the first line. In other words, they agree positively. And example would be like Psalm 89:21: 21 My hand will sustain him; surely my arm will strengthen him. Psalms 89:21 / Today s New International Version Did you see how that worked? My hand in line one agrees with my arm in line two. Sustain him is reinforced by strengthen him in line two. That is known as Affirming Parallelism. The next form of parallelism is known as Opposing Parallelism. This is exactly the opposite. The second line is related to the first line negatively. It negates the first line. An example of this would be Proverbs 10:1: 1 Wise children bring joy to their father, but foolish children bring grief to their mother. Proverbs 10:1 / Today s New International Version Here, obviously we have wise children compared to foolish children. Wise children bring joy, foolish children bring grief. This is Opposing Parallelism. The next type is referred to as Advancing Parallelism. In this type, line two builds on the thought expressed in line one. It advances the thought. Oftentimes this can go through two, three, or more lines. Watch how the thought progresses in Psalm 86:16: Page 5

6 Page 6 16 Turn to me and have mercy on me; show your strength in behalf of your servant and save the son of a woman who served you before me. Psalms 86:16 / Today s New International Version We start with the simple plea of someone to God for mercy. In line two, the thoughts are expanded. The author describes himself as a servant of God and the mercy is further defined to mean deliverance from some sort of trouble. The servant goes on to describe himself as a simple human being. But in the last line, he describes his lineage as one of faith. That s Advancing Parallelism. There are many variations of each type of parallelism but I will describe one more. It is called Climactic Parallelism. This type often repeats and expands concepts and it builds to a climax. Let s look at Psalm 29:1-2: 1 Ascribe to the Lord, you heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. 2 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness. Psalm 29:1-2 / Today s New International Version The author builds on the command Ascribe to the Lord. He addresses this to heavenly beings so by moving from the greater to the lesser, we are required to do the same. He then commands us to ascribe glory and strength to God, then moves on to glory that is indicated in His Name. Finally worshiping God in the splendor of His holiness is the climax to this section. That s why this type is referred to as Climactic Parallelism. Those are the basic types of parallelism. The Hebrew poet also likes to use linguistic tools. The one you will notice most commonly is word pairs. These are words that normally appear together. Sometimes they are opposites like wisdom and folly, righteous and wicked, wise and foolish. Other times they can be complimentary like grace and mercy, glory and majesty. Building on these word pairs, comes a tool called Merism. It is a tool that takes word pairs and uses them to include everything in between. For example when the poet says, heaven and earth, it refers to everything that exists in the spiritual and physical realm. When he says, east to west, that means everything that exists in space and time. The same goes for time when he uses, night and day. The next technique is called a Chiasm. This is where the author reverses the order of lines one and two. A good example of this is found in Psalm 90:3: 3 You turn people back to dust, saying, Return to dust, you mortals. Psalms 90:3 / Today s New International Version

7 In line one, people comes first, dust comes second. In line two dust comes first, mortals come second. Chiasm is simply reversing the order. Inclusio is a technique that repeats a line at the beginning and ending of a section. If we were to look at Psalm 8, we would see that verses 1 and 9 bookend the passage with, O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your Name in all the earth. There is a technique called Repeated Refrains. This is where a particular phrase is repeated throughout the Psalm. For example, in Psalm 118 the phrase, His love endures forever, is repeated after every assertion. Sometimes one of these catchphrases will be used to connect Psalms. For example, Psalm 42 and 43 are connected by the phrase, Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? used in verses 5 and 11 in chapter 42 and in verse 5 of chapter 43. Finally, there is a technique called Acrostic. The Hebrew poet will start every verse with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. There are 9 Psalms that use this technique. At this time, it would be appropriate to discuss the types of Psalms we will encounter. I m only going to summarize these quickly. We have to keep in mind that the poets wanted to describe the variety of human experience lived in a relationship with God. The first type is Praise. These contain appeals to the self and others to praise God for Who He is and for what He has done. Lament is the next type. This particular type address times of sorrow, repentance, suffering, and experiencing God as distant and far off. It can also describe a time when the poet experienced God as standing against him. By the way, Lamentations is also considered to be a Hebrew poetic book. It is placed after the book of Jeremiah. Thanksgiving Psalms usually described a time when God delivered them from enemies, treachery, oppression, sufferings, and threats of all kinds, including sin. Royal Psalms had to do with things that related to the king, his politics, social, and religious duties. A lot of these end up referring to Jesus as the Messiah. Liturgical Psalms were used in the context of worship; especially during holy days and religious festivals. YHWH Malak Psalms proclaim God as King of Israel and indeed the King of the heavens and earth. Finally there is the Wisdom or Torah Psalms. They describe the wisdom and benefits given to people who follow God. It also describes the folly and consequences that people who reject God will suffer. As you have seen, there are a lot of clever tools used by the Hebrew poets. THE PSALMS BELONG TO THE CATEGORY OF WISDOM LITERATURE AND ARE WRITTEN IN HEBREW POETRY. III. THEIR USE Page 7

8 It is important to me that our study through the Psalms becomes practical. Their use throughout church history has taken center stage in worship. THE PSALMS HAVE BEEN CALLED THE PRAYER BOOK OF THE BIBLE. They have been and remain a major source of prayer. They play a prominent role in public worship. In Christian high churches such as Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, Episcopal, and many others, a Psalm is read aloud during every worship service. Oftentimes, Psalms are used in responsive readings in these churches. At funerals, Psalm 23 is almost always quoted or referred to in some way. In churches like ours, we often sing the Psalms without ever knowing it. When we sing, As the deer panteth for the water so my soul longeth after Thee, we are singing Psalm 42. When we sing, O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your Name in all of the earth, we are actually singing Psalm 8. Our Christian hymns, songs, and responsive readings draw heavily from the Psalms. The Psalms have always, and will continue to have a prominent place in public worship. However, the Psalms have for a long time been a source of deep private worship. In Judaism, the Psalms were read aloud in public gatherings. However, when they were conquered and carried to captivity in Babylon, they were not permitted to worship in public. They started to pray the Psalms in their private worship and prayer time. If you follow the lectionary for private devotions, you know that there is a Psalm that is to be read throughout the week along with other readings. Think about this. When we are extremely excited or depressed, it seems that only music can express our feelings. We sing love songs, songs of betrayal, songs of betrayal, and songs of happiness. Poetry expresses the deep longings of our souls. The Psalms are meant to be read silently, read aloud, studied, memorized, and rich for meditation. They are a way to be in relationship with God. Therefore, I am going to try to do prayer exercises with us during the worship service as we study through the Psalms. One of the most common ways to pray is Lectio Divina. Here is how we will practice it: We will quiet ourselves, take a few deep breaths, and close our eyes. I will read a Psalm or a portion of a Psalm two times slowly. A word or phrase will capture your heart and mind during the reading. You will sit with that word or phrase, asking God why this is important and how He wants to minister to you through it. We will sit in silence for 5 minutes. You will respond to God at the end of that time with the appropriate form of worship. (Remember we said that worship is our response to God. It could take the form of repentance, thanksgiving, obedience, commitment to a type of action, etc.) I will close the service in prayer. THE PSALMS HAVE BEEN CALLED THE PRAYER BOOK OF THE BIBLE. I hope I have given you a brief introduction to the book of Psalms that will enable you to understand them and use them. Page 8

9 The point is this. PSALMS IS ONE OF THE WISDOM BOOKS OF THE BIBLE. IN ORDER TO GET THE MOST OUT OF OUR STUDY, IT IS IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND ITS GENRE. My goal for us is that we become powerful prayers and that our church becomes a praying church. Lectio Divina Proverbs 1:2-7(NLT) Page 9