By Ben Cole

Audio of “The Book of Psalms: Theological Journaling” (1 hour 8 min)
  1. Intro
    1. The Psalms are theology. The Psalms are anthropology. The Psalms are expressive and poetic. The Psalms are a hymnal. The Psalms are communal. The Psalms are individual.
  2. Psalms are theological and are anthropological
    1. Study on daily life of human existence all with a view toward how God is at work and our response to life with God at the center. It’s a study of God as to who He is and how that affects how we live.
  3. The psalter also is a hymnal to be sung by God’s people together. This reality and nature of the psalms is not a side point to be left aside; it makes the book(s) come alive!!
    1. Music is one of the most powerful things in all of nature
      1. It was, and still is, a way to pass along great truths to our kids! My boys are consistently asking me to play and sing songs with them that come straight from the Bible, most from the Psalms!
    2. Psalms of ascent
      1. Written as a community song. And they were definitely sung as a community.
  4. Groupings of Psalms
    1. Five books of Psalms
      1. Purpose / reason – Torah connections
  5. Jesus is the punchline
    1. It’s so cool to just be reading along and then, boom!, you run into a passage looking toward Jesus on earth!
    2. Psalm 18 opened up the idea for me that Jesus was the punchline
      1. Ps 18:1-3 – discourse of salvation, pointing to God
      2. Ps 18:4-6 – my course is toward death, if God doesn’t save me
      3. Ps 18:7-19 – a description of the cross! Here is the punch line moment that Jesus breaks onto the scene as the Savior described in v1-3! And it was because He delighted in me! (circa “who for the joy set before Him, endured the cross…”)
      4. Ps 18:20-29 – this can only be true of us when we are covered in/by the Lord Himself
      5. Ps 18:30-45 – describes us as His followers being equipped to go out into the battle, made strong in Him
      6. Ps 18:46-50 – pure praise for the “God of my salvation”
    3. Psalm 22 is another one. I was reading through it and boom! a number of times I was struck with passages that were clearly prophetic and pointing to Jesus’ time on earth!
      1. Ps 22:1 – remez, we see Jesus here is actually referencing the passage as a whole.
    4. Others: 24:7-10, 34:20, 67:5, 69:7-9, 89:19-29, 91:11, 98:1-3, 107:29, 110:4-7, 113:5-6
    5. Perhaps simply for fun or for the sake of investigation, I wanted to see if I could just drop into the middle of a random Psalm and see Jesus as the punchline. I turned to Psalm 68
      1. Psalm 68:19-23 – salvation…deliverances…escapes from death all describe the cross of Jesus! Let alone this little line from an odd verse: “that your foot may shatter them in blood,” (v23) harkening back to the promise in Genesis that the devil will strike our heel, but Jesus will crush his head.
    6. In recounting this “Jesus as punchline” motif, I want to encourage you to look for and to see all the places where the LORD placed little markers in our readings to point to what He was doing and what He was going to do. Look to Jesus in all of Scripture!
  6. Themes in book of Psalms
    1. Put together, the themes are thus: God is good and upright, full of forever love and truth and therefore we wait in humility, trust and fear of God to live in His refuge and guidance.  It starts often, for the psalmist and for us, with a reality of who God is, then what we know of Him postures us in a position to wait on Him.
    2. Themes chocked together in one section
      1. Psalm 33:18-22 – here we see many of the book’s themes smashed together in a few verses
      2. Psalm 62:5-8 – also the same, themes smashed in together
      3. Psalm 25
    3. Fear – Psalm 34 – great space to see both truths held about fear at the same time
      1. Psalm 34:4 – seeking the LORD delivered the psalmist from all his fears (also see Psalm 23:4) and Psalm 34:10-11 – seeking the LORD teaches us to fear
        1. Psalm 111:10 and into Psalm 112
        2. Psalm 118:4-6
      2. Psalm 19:9 – David declares “the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever”
      3. AND! Psalm 128:4 – “for thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord”
        1. In discussing this topic and this passage specificaly, my wife’s response to reading this was: “it’s amazing all that is promised to the one who fears the Lord.”
        2. Psalm 25:12-14; Psalm 119:74 – a few Psalms listing the blessings of fearing God
      4. Psalm 86:11 – “unite my heart to fear your Name”
        1. With all of this truth above, this is my prayer! Oh that we would be united in Christ to fear Him together!
    4. Refuge
      1. You’ll see it everywhere; this is potentially the most pervasive of the themes in the psalms, especially from David’s psalms
      2. Psalm 91 – dwell in the shelter. Don’t just jump in and out.
      3. Psalm 57:1
      4. Psalm 71:1-6
      5. Psalm 62:8
      6. The Church; stones built up as a spiritual house
      7. Refuge in the LORD is really only a thing for two reasons: we will be attacked and need refuge AND that the LORD is the place for shelter from the attacks
    5. Hesed
      1. Definition: loyalty, joint obligation (covenant), faithfulness, goodness, graciousness, godly action, steadfast love
      2. Meaning: even richer than the definition
        1. It’s a concept, a hope and prayer, a promise, an ethos, a characteristic of YHWH that will never go away
      3. Exodus 34:7
      4. Psalm 25:10
      5. Psalm 57:3b, Psalm 57:9-11
      6. Psalm 51:1 – basis of prayer for God’s grace – “according to Your lovingkindness” (aka hesed)
      7. Psalm 18:50 – shows David’s understanding of God’s lovingkindess and God’s promise
      8. Psalm 103 – our response brackets the psalm, but the rest is of His work and His hesed
  7. Response to God
    1. Our response is true regardless of the circumstance. If we are on the mountain top or if we are under the breaking waves, we still look to God.
      1. Psalm 42:6-7
    2. Praise. Wait. Fear. Trust. Because He is our refuge, He is worthy of glory, He is full of never-ending love and full of truth.