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Journey Through the Psalms We Have Not Spent Much Time Looking at Context

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Journey Through the Psalms We Have Not Spent Much Time Looking at Context Part II A Study by Arlene Bergen with Justine Lofgren & Deonne McCausland 1 Table of Contents Week Four: God is Good Page 3 Day One: Taste and See (Psalm 34) Page 3 Day Two: Delight Yourself (Psalm 37) Page 6 Day Three: The Meek (Psalm 37) Page 8 Day Four: The Measure of my Days (Psalm 39) Page 11 Day Five: I am a Sojourner (Psalm 39) Page 13 DIGGING DEEPER: FEAR OF THE LORD Justine Lofgren Page 17 Week Five: A Refuge for the Broken Page 21 Day One: Be Still (Psalm 46) Page 21 Day Two: God Himself is Judge (Psalm 50) Page 25 Day Three: God Himself is Judge (Psalm 50) Page 27 Day Four: Create In Me a Clean Heart (Psalm 51) Page 30 Day Five: Restore to Me the Joy of Salvation (Psalm 51) Page 33 CALL TO PRAYER: Deonne McCausland Page 36 Week Six: That My People Would Listen Page 38 Day One: Is God My Comfort? (Psalm 73) Page 39 Day Two: Is God My Map? (Psalm 74) Page 41 Day Three: Has God Forgotten? (Psalm 77) Page 44 Day Four: Will God Restore? (Psalm 80) Page 47 Day Five: That My People Would Listen! (Psalm 81) Page 50 DIGGING DEEPER: COVENANT GOD Justine Lofgren Page 54 2 Week Four: God is Good I have a confession to make. I do not like working out. At all. I know it is good for me and so I force myself to do it with some regularity, but I don’t enjoy it. And I don’t do it in community, because I am a terrible person while I’m doing it. I mutter awful things about the leader under my breath. With every perky, “Isn’t this fun? . You go girls, you’re rocking this! . Doesn’t this feel good?” I have a far less cute response. I don’t trust the leader because how can I trust someone who is cheerfully shouting lies at me?! My response to working out reveals my rebellious heart. I want what I want and not what someone tells me I should want. And what I really want, is for what I want to be what I’m allowed to want and encouraged to want. (Could you follow that?) We know God is who we should want. Do we want to want Him? Our journey this week takes us along this path. a WORD to the wise In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes though refined by fire – may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 1 Peter 1:6-7 Day One: Taste and See (Psalm 34) Eating is something we do on a daily basis because we need to. Honestly though, when we live in a society where food is plentiful, our reasons for eating often go beyond need. We eat because it brings us pleasure, it brings us together, and it brings us back – the sense of taste is a powerful tool when it comes to memory. Our sense of taste is sharpest at birth and naturally declines as we age, but beyond the dullness that comes with age, there are actual taste disorders which can create serious health issues. Our sense of taste is an important early warning system which allows us to detect spoiled or harmful ingredients. Loss of taste can lead to potentially dangerous habits like adding too much sugar or salt to food to compensate, or eating too much or too little because no real satisfaction is received. Loss of taste can even lead to depression.1 1 Nidcd.nih.gov, http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/taste-disorders, last updated January 5, 2014 3 The title of our Psalm today asks us to taste and see that the LORD is good. It doesn’t say, hey, if you’re into sweet, you’ll like Him. If a salty treat is what you crave, He’s your guy. It just says, taste and see. He is good, no matter your taste preferences. We will be coming at our psalm today through the backdoor, metaphorically speaking. 1. Based on what you read above regarding taste disorders, what dangers lurk with a spiritual taste disorder? 2. Read through Psalm 34. The psalm begins with exuberant declarations of praise and invitations for the reader to join in the praise. Then in verse 11 the tone changes. It’s sort of like a charismatic speaker jumping all over the stage enthusiastically, before grabbing the mic, narrowing his eyes, and saying, ‘Now listen up. Everything is riding on this. I will teach you the fear of the LORD.’ 3. Verse 12 is a rhetorical question – put it in your own words. 4. In response to the rhetorical question raised in verse 12, what does David say should be done in verses 13-14? 5. Verse 15 and 16 raise a sobering contrast – what is it? 6. This contrast is repeated for emphasis in verses 19 -21 and it is also expanded for greater understanding. What is being contrasted in these verses? There are echoes of Psalm 1 all over Psalm 34:11-22 because they are both of the wisdom genre. The genre that shows us there are two ways, two paths with two very different destinations. Psalm 34:16 tells us the face of the LORD is against those who do evil. Martin Luther writes, “This is a terrible word. If we believed it to be true . who would doubt that we would go about far more carefully?”2 We assume far too quickly that those the Psalms refer to as wicked or evil are people doing terrible things. The big things like murder. This is not the case at all. We saw in Psalm 1 that the righteous are those who delight in the Lord and His instruction. Who are planted in streams of living water. People who do not have a taste disorder and who crave Him. The word of warning that is implicit in Psalm 34 is 2 Luther, from First Lectures, 1:161, as quoted by John Goldingay, in Baker Commentary on the Old Testament: Psalms 1-41 (Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2006), 484. 4 that if you do not crave the taste of God, you are headed for serious trouble. Your taste disorder should trigger a warning. 7. Read Psalm 34:18 – who do you think the broken-hearted are, those who are crushed in spirit? Read Psalm 51:16-17 for further understanding. Is your heart broken over sin? Do you mourn over misplaced tastes and cravings? If so, that is a good place to be. God has a word for people like this. 8. Read Isaiah 61:1-3 and then turn to Luke 4:16-21. What is God saying to the broken-hearted and crushed in spirit? 9. The final verse of Psalm 34 is a definitive conclusion. What two statements are made? The word ‘redeem’ comes from the Latin word ‘redimere’ which means to buy back. The word condemned comes from the same verb that is used in the first phrase of Psalm 5:10 – “Make them bear their guilt.” 10. With an expanded understanding of these two terms, re-write Psalm 34:22 in your own words. 11. Write down Romans 8:1. a. Do you live with this reality in mind? 5 My friends, this is the ultimate goodness of the Lord that we are invited to taste. He bought us back by paying the penalty we owed for sin. We who take refuge in Him do not bear our guilt. But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who love your salvation say continually, “Great is the LORD!” Psalm 40:16 Talking to God: Read Psalm 34:1-9 and turn it back to God in prayer. Day Two: Delight Yourself in the LORD (Psalm 37) In our journey through the Psalms we have not spent much time looking at context. When studying the Bible, we need to be aware of the elements of context: who did God choose to reveal a particular message to and what are the particulars of the place, time, and people receiving the original words. We also need to be aware of the style a particular passage of Scripture is written in. When we read a verse like one that appears in our psalm today, “The wicked draw the sword and bend their bows to bring down the poor and needy, to slay those whose way is upright; their sword shall enter their own heart, and their bows shall be broken.” (Ps 37:14) and correctly read it as poetry, we realize this is not a statement of fact, it is symbolic, a metaphor, a picture intended to reveal a deeper truth. The book of Psalms is unique in that much of the context surrounding it is ambiguous. Intentionally so. The words of the Psalms are cries of the heart that resonate with people in any time and in many different situations. For that reason, we have not spent a great deal of time establishing contextual links at the beginning of each psalm of study. Today’s psalm is a little different. We have travelled through a number of psalms in the last few weeks and have come across many psalms (in fact most) where rather than encountering the wicked being blown away like chaff and the righteous flourishing like fruitful trees as per the pattern set out in Psalm 1, we have instead seen the wicked prospering and the righteous threatened.
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