Happy July everyone! Hopefully this month will be filled with sparklers, cookouts, great weather, and fun for all!
As has become my habit, in July I like to take a break from my usual Sunday preaching which follows the lectionary (a set of texts set down for every day of the year) and instead focus on one topic or idea.
For this year, I was inspired by our recent Adult Sunday School class on the Book of Psalms. Multiple folks remarked, “You know…you never hear the Psalms preached on…” I thought to myself: Challenge accepted!
Admittedly, the Psalms, which we utilize each week in worship as our Call to Worship, are not always the easiest verses from which to draw a teaching. Sometimes they’re very limited in their scope or they’re focusing on an event or series of events which requires a deep set of unpacking to understand. Other times, they seem deeply personal so as not to reflect a word that is useful for an entire community which also makes them more difficult to utilize in preaching.
But I like a good challenge, so we’re going to give it a go.
First, a quick background on the Psalms.
The Book of Psalms is actually a collection of five books of psalms. They run in
this order:
Book 1 (Psalms 1–41)
Book 2 (Psalms 42–72)
Book 3 (Psalms 73–89)
Book 4 (Psalms 90–106)
Book 5 (Psalms 107–150)
This collection was created, scholars believe, to parallel another famous and important set of biblical books: The Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). We have 150 in our collection as Protestant Christians but scholars are quite sure there were originally something like a few thousand of these floating around. It appears than many of our current psalms were actually multiple different psalms but together over time by editing. And there are references in other books of the Bible to psalms that we simply don’t have any longer in full form. So, why 150? No one rightly knows.
The psalms were not written by any one person (David and Solomon are both given a lot of credit but there’s not a lot of evidence to say they wrote that many if any of the psalms). They were not written at any one specific time or place. It’s understood that the psalms were most likely written over a period of about 500 years. We can find psalms that appear to be tied fairly closely to an event (ex. a new king in Israel or the Babylonian Exile). They appear to have been written over a long period of time by many different people and reflect the thoughts, beliefs, and practices of the community of Israel over this divergent period.
The psalms also don’t have one singular purpose. Although they’re all poetry and could then technically all be sung, they don’t all appear to have been used as part of a corporate hymnal, at least not at first. Many of the psalms were probably used in the Temple in Jerusalem at special days, festivals, or seasons. While others appear to have had a more personal and local use. The title of the book “Psalms” comes from the Greek word, “psalmoi” which simply means hymns.
The psalms, however, show us the breadth and depth of the human community over different times, in different situations, and reflect the emotions, hopes, dreams, prayers, songs, and worship of people over a long time. They are a perfect companion to the life of faith because they beautifully articulate the human experience.
For our “Journey with the Psalms” we’re going to focus on just four “theme” areas that are common in the psalms. Depending on who you ask, there are six or eight or even ten different themes for the psalms.
For us, we’ll consider the following:
July 7: Praise God-Psalm 8 and Psalm 100 | Worship Video – “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow”
July 14: Wisdom from God-Psalm 15 and Psalm 36 | Worship Video – “Be Wise…Trust God”
July 21: Lament to God-Psalm 42 and Psalm 137 | Worship Video – “It’s Ok to Yell at God”
July 28: God is King-Psalm 29 and Psalm 46 | Worship Video – “It’s Good that God is King”
By handling these particular themes, we’ll be exposed to a variety of styles, emotions, ideas, concepts, and words we can use to worship God, grow in our relationship to God, and reflect on our own condition and faith journey.
I hope you’ll be able to join our Journey with the Psalms this month!