Two Basic Questions

Introduction and Personal Context

0:01 Before we turn to the word of God, I do want to say on behalf of my wife and myself that we are grateful for the kind invitation of Pastor Lutz and his people that my wife should accompany me at their expense. And we had anticipated coming to this conference together, but several weeks ago her mother lost the fourth husband that she has seen to the grave, or the fourth husband that she has lost by death. And the pressure of the Fifth Commandment was upon our own consciences, and we felt that it was right that she should go and spend time with her mother.

0:45 But she desires that I... I convey to many of you who have already inquired about her and her well-being, her expressions of gratitude for your concern and love.

0:57 And if God should bring to remembrance her time with her mother, that God would give her opportunities to bear witness to the truth of the gospel. Her mother is a living example of the tragedy of decisionism. She was decisioned many years ago and assured that all was well. But there have been no signs whatsoever of spiritual life for decades, and yet she is, at this time, utterly indifferent to the gospel.

1:27 And so we would covet your prayers as God would bring that matter to remembrance.

1:34 Now, as Pastor Lutz has already indicated, I come as a man under authority. The subject matter was not imposed upon me without my consent. But as we talked about the conference, it was suggested...

1:47 And I felt, if nothing else, benefit would come to my own soul in having to think through, in some kind of an orderly and structured way, this subject of the use of the Psalms in cultivating our communion with God. It has been a part of my own ordinary, normal devotional exercises for at least two decades, possibly even longer, to read through the Psalms. To read through, as part of my own devotional life, in a consecutive manner, the book of Psalms. And I have found that exercise to be tremendously helpful, but I don't know that I ever paused and asked the question,

2:32 why has it been so helpful? And why has it been that, though I have changed other dimensions of devotional exercises to keep them fresh, that I find myself coming back, again and again and again to this use of the Psalms in seeking communion with the living God. And by way of establishing our subject on a passage in the Psalms, I want to read with very little comment in your hearing from Psalm 73, if you would turn there with me please,

The Believer's Supreme Desire: God Alone

3:09 Psalm 73, this Psalm of Asaph, in which, as many of you know, he is struggling with what appears to be the inequity of God's dealings with the sons of men. He looks about him and he sees the wicked who have no thought of serving God and pleasing God, and yet they seem to have nothing but ease and blessing, if I may put that in quotation marks, in their life experience, and they go down to their graves apparently in peace. They are laid out in their coffins and their friends come and speak of their good life.

3:52 They comment on how peaceful they look as they lie there in their coffins, and yet beholding the experience of the righteous, he sees them afflicted and troubled and often with tremendous pangs even. In their death, and it's only when he goes into the sanctuary of God and contemplates the ultimate end of the righteous and the wicked that things begin to come into focus and his spiritual equilibrium is once again brought back to him, and as one of the results

4:31 of that reflection upon these things in the presence of God, Asaph the psalmist exclaims in verse 7, Verses 25 and 26, Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee. My heart and my flesh fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Whom have I in heaven but thee?

5:10 And there is none upon earth that I desire besides or as a rival to thee. My flesh and my heart fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Every child of God speaking in a manner consistent with what he really is and with what he takes, every child of God speaking in a manner consistent with what he really is and with what he truly desires, as a new creature in Christ, can take these words of Asaph in Psalms 73, 25, and 26 and

5:55 make them the accurate echo of the deepest longings of his own heart. God Himself, God manifested in Jesus Christ, God known and loved as revealed in his newhead, God's real human body, and his spirit of soul in his own flesh and life, ch瞍any or not as is, Inieu I 살아 in Gaeth eh na ne happy. Das Verses Ciulii A, Abции erste posum etêmes noridur, as esquired, von Awaari alcohol, rationalization, the introduction to D sumus Muteri nern. And God itself, He sees us and us cannot be provided without all the Aufwand.

6:06 D Wiew we. S. Blau Wosweg. Escher es and loved as revealed in the gospel is indeed the supreme portion and the ultimate desire of the child of God both in this life and in the life to come.

6:28 The real Christian reflecting on the fundamental disposition of his heart can sing as the expression of his heart in this life, Faith, Jesus, thou joy of loving hearts, thou fount of life, thou light of men, from the best bliss that earth imparts, we turn unfilled to thee again. But further, the true Christian can say as he anticipates even the life to come, all earth's flowing pleasures were a witness

7:09 to see heaven itself without thee, dark as night would be.

7:20 The eternal life received through the mediatorial grace and power of the Lord Jesus is precisely the life which he describes in John 17 and verse 3 where we have the record of his words, this is life eternal, that they, they may know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Now these things being true, the nurturing, the cultivation of communion with God is a matter of deepest concern and of paramount interest to the true child of God.

The Unique Function of the Psalms

8:04 And while the word of God written is designed to contribute to the cultivation of communion with God, in all of its parts, the thrust of these three messages on the subject of cultivating communion with God from the Psalms is based upon the conviction that God has assigned to the spirit-breathed content of the book of Psalms if not a unique and unusual and a distinct function, and I strongly, struggled in my preparation. Unique means one of a kind. Now we use it in a more broad sense.

8:49 And so I'm going to stick with the term unique, but I don't mean it in its most technical sense, but the Psalms are given to us by God to perform a unique function in the nurturing of our communion with God. For example, as God has assigned to the letter, to the Romans, a unique function, not an exclusive function, but a unique function in presenting to us an orderly, logically developed and comprehensive statement of the gospel, as God has assigned to the epistle to the Galatians

9:32 a unique function in defending and vindicating the standing or falling article of the church, namely, justification, by faith alone, apart from the works of the law, as God has assigned to the book of Proverbs a unique function in setting forth the practical perspectives of life and character as they ought to be framed in the fear of God, set forth in those sententious sayings called the Proverbs. So in that sense, I'm asserting,

10:11 that God has given to the Psalms a unique place in this whole concern of cultivating our communion with God. And in this initial study tonight, I want to ask and answer two questions, with about two-thirds of the time being taken up with the first question, and the remaining third with the last. And the two questions are these. Why are the Psalms uniquely helpful in cultivating our communion with God?

10:50 And then secondly, what are the prerequisites for a profitable use of the Psalms in cultivating our communion with God? Question number one. Why are the Psalms uniquely helpful in cultivating our communion? And my answer is ranged under three statements.

Reason 1: Dominant Nature of Content and Form (Poetry and Direct Address)

11:16 First, the Psalms are uniquely helpful in cultivating our communion with God because of the dominant nature of the content and form of the Psalms. The moment we open our Bibles in any of the more modern translations, we are struck from the very way the type is set, that we are in the midst not of ordinary prose, we are not in the midst of the things we find in the Epistles and in Chronicles and in Exodus, but that we are in the midst of poetry.

11:56 And though in the midst of that poetry it is evident that some Psalms are Psalms of teaching, commonly called didactic Psalms, that find parallels in many other portions of the Word, except that they are in poetic structure. Psalm 1, Psalm 14, Psalm 49. And while there are other Psalms that are obviously prophetic in a concentrated way, Psalm 2, Psalm 110 and others, and other Psalms that are the recounting of the historical events in the life of God's ancient people, Psalm 78, the Psalm alluded to this morning,

12:41 Psalm 137, when we read through the entire Psalter we come to the conviction that the dominant nature and content and form of the Psalms is to be found in this. The vast majority of the Psalms are the poetic effusions of the hearts of the various human authors, as they find themselves in the varied circumstances of life in the will and providence of God.

13:20 Whether writing as individuals or on behalf of the people of God in their corporate experience, the Psalms capture the fruit of their contemplations of the goodness and of the mercy of God, their remembrance of the past mighty works of God, they capture their trials and struggles as they seek to serve and honor God in the face, many times, of a host of enemies. The Psalms capture their confessions of sin and failure, the expression of their fears and hopes and aspirations,

14:00 their cries for help in darkness and in despair and in the face of opposition, and at times they capture, much to the disturbance of many, their crying out to God for the vindication of his own righteous judgment upon wickedness and the advancement of his own purposes, which of necessity must leave in its trail the destruction of all of the enemies of himself and of his kingdom. And further, much of the content and form is, that of direct address to God.

14:44 And this is one of the reasons why they are uniquely suitable for the cultivation of our communion with God. If I may use a rather crude way of illustrating it, by the superintendence of the Holy Spirit, Moses, as one of the great penmen of the Old Testament, stands before us, with a small library. And in his library there are primarily several books of history, starting with creation, following on through the patriarchs, and then the exodus of the people of God,

15:27 and then several books of ordinances and statutes, to regulate the life of the people of God, under the Old Covenant. So Moses comes before us with his little library, dominant with history and with legislation and ordinances. If we think of the prophets, they stand before us with a bullhorn and with a telescope. And with the bullhorn they are lifting up their voices like a trumpet.

16:06 They are calling out to God's covenant people, calling them back to covenant fidelity, calling them back from their waywardness. God said, I have sent unto you my servants the prophets, rising early, and all the day long through my prophets I have stretched out my hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people. But then there are times when the prophets take the telescope and they peer into the future. And they are given to record that which God will do, either in the more immediate future, in the judgment of specific nations,

16:48 in the judgments upon his own covenant people, in aspects of the coming of Messiah. So here is Moses standing before us with his little library. The prophets standing before us with their bullhorn and with their telescope. But when we come to the Psalms we are handed a box.

17:10 And when we open the box, you know what we find in the box? We find a bunch of cassettes and a stethoscope. And you know what the cassettes record? They record what was spoken in the bugged prayer closet of Moses, of David, of Asaph, Haman, the sons of Korah, and other human authors.

17:46 God has given us, as it were, the tapes of the bugged prayer closets of these various men who became his penmen to give us that portion of the word of God. We are privileged to do what would be unconscionable were we to do it without the permission of another. It would be unconscionable for you to go and put your ear to the place where someone has sought privacy to pour out his heart to the living God in obedience to the Lord Jesus who said, when you pray, enter into your closet and shut the door.

18:29 Not only shut the door that you may be shut out from distracting influences, but that you might be shut in with that kind of intimacy where you will say things that you want no human ear to hear. Well, God has in his own condescending grace, God has himself bugged the prayer closet of Moses and of David and of Asaph and the other authors and he has transcribed what is on those tapes and we find it in the book of Psalms. And then he gives us a stethoscope in which we are allowed to place the round end that picks up the heartbeat.

19:13 We are allowed to place that on the heart of the various human authors and to place the ear pieces in our ears and to hear the heartbeat of these various men of God at times caught up in the exuberance of praise, at times crushed with despair, at times contemplative and reflective, other times filled with the struggles of their own souls and their own circumstances. And you see, it is because the Psalms are the most dense portion in all of Scripture

19:52 in which we have the tapes and the stethoscope, it makes them uniquely suitable for the cultivation of our own communion with God. For though you may, in public situations and properly so, pray, O Lord, we thank you, we confess our sins. And may I say to any of you men who lead in prayer in your various prayer meetings, don't pray your private prayers when you're the mouthpiece of the congregation. When I'm in a prayer meeting and a man says, and Lord, I pray, I pray, I want to stop and say, hey, buster, I'm here.

20:37 Be my mouthpiece. Pray we. So that when you're done, I can affirm the amen that you have expressed the yearnings of my heart. That's a little aside.

20:51 That's a freebie thrown in. But you see, when you go into your closet, you don't say, now, Lord, we come to you. No, you say, O my Father, I come this morning, O God, in the name of your Son. Lord, you know me altogether.

21:08 You have searched me and known me. Lord, you know my down city. In my uprising, you understand my thought afar off. You don't come and say, O God, thou art the omniscient one, and we all acknowledge that.

21:23 No, no. There is an element of intimacy that warrants the first person. And it's because the bulk of the Psalms comes to us in content and form in this way, that the Psalms are uniquely suitable for the cultivation of our communion with the living God. Our hearts are full.

21:52 We long to express our gratitude to God. We instinctively then turn to Psalm 103, and there we find a marvelous conduit for our own praise-filled heart as we pray back to God in the language of the Psalmist, making digressions wherever we desire to make them, to amplify upon the various strands of praise. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless His holy name, and we may stop to say, O God, help me now to have all of the faculties of my redeemed humanity wholly engaged, every part of me in gear,

22:35 to be poured out in praise to you. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits. O God, bring to remembrance benefits for which you ought to be praised, but through carelessness I've long forgotten. O Spirit of God, bring them to remembrance.

22:55 Who forgives all thine iniquities? And you begin to bless God for the forgiveness of your sins, and you rehearse not to bring back any vicarious enjoyment of them, but to have your repentance renewed and deepened, the sins that long since have been pardoned. You see, it is that element of the tape recording and the stethoscope that when we turn to the Psalms makes them uniquely suitable for the cultivation of our personal communion with the living God. But not only are the Psalms uniquely helpful in cultivating our communion with God because of,

Reason 2: Varied and Comprehensive Conditions of Heart and Life Reflected

23:39 point one, the dominant nature of their content in form, but secondly, because of the varied and comprehensive conditions of heart and life reflected in the Psalms. Because of the varied and comprehensive conditions of heart and life reflected in the Psalms. You see, the life of a child of God, is not monochromatic. It is not all of one color.

24:17 The life of a child of God is not all the bright yellow of exuberance and felt joy and delight. Neither is the life of the child of God all the dark, murky, dismal purple all the time. And as the light that God has created passes through the prism and breaks up into the full spectrum of color, so the grace of God operative in the heart of the child of God breaks up into the full spectrum all of the colors and hues

25:00 of valid Christian experience. And therefore, the Psalms are uniquely suitable in the cultivation of communion with God because they reflect in this varied and comprehensive way these different colors in the spectrum of Christian experience. We have, as I've already alluded, in Psalm 103 and in the latter part of the Psalter, Psalm 145 to 150, what we could call legitimately the ecstasy of whole-souled praise when the bells are ringing

25:44 and the trumpets are blowing and the cymbals are clashing in the soul. On the other hand, there are Psalms such as Psalm 42 and Psalm 88 where there is the honest expression of the agony of the sense of desertion by God or distance from God. And then there is what I know not what else to call but the sweet pain of yearning after God. Psalm 63, O God, Thou art my God, earnestly will I seek Thee.

26:23 The Psalmist speaks of his heart and of his flesh crying out for the living God. And then there are Psalms where there is the chastened disposition of renewed repentance. Psalm 51, Psalm 32, the plaintive cry of an old man, remember not against me the sins of my youth. Now on this very point, that is, the unique contribution of the Psalms to our communion with God, because of this varied and comprehensive condition of heart and life reflected in the Psalms, I can do no better than to read a section from John Calvin in the author's preface

27:08 to his commentaries on the Psalms. Now those of you who have read Calvin at all know that with his godliness there was genuine modesty. He didn't speak a lot about himself. And I was frankly shocked when I read this section at how much Calvin says about himself in terms of God's dealings with him making him a competent expositor of the Psalms.

27:35 And it's in the midst of doing that that he writes as follows, The varied and resplendent riches which are contained in this treasury, referring to the Psalter, it is no easy matter to express in words, so much so, that I well know that whatever I shall be able to say will be far from approaching the excellence of the subject. But as it is better to give to my readers some taste, however small, of the wonderful advantage they will derive from the study of this book, than to be entirely silent on the point, I may be permitted briefly to avert to a matter the greatness of which does not admit

28:19 of being fully unfolded. Calvin with his large heart and massive astute mind says I am standing before something that is much bigger than I. I cannot begin to do the subject justice. And what is that subject?

28:36 He goes on to tell us, I have been accustomed to call this book, the Psalter, the book of Psalms, I think not inappropriately an anatomy of all parts of the soul. For there is not an emotion of which anyone can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror, or rather the Holy Spirit is here drawn to the life all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions

29:20 with which the minds of men are oft agitated. The other parts of scripture contain the commandments which God enjoined His servants to announce to us. But here the prophets themselves seeing they are exhibited to us as speaking to God, the matter of direct address, and laying open all their inmost thoughts and affections, call, or rather draw each one of us to the examination of himself in particular in order that none of the many infirmities to which we are subject and the many vices with which we abound may remain concealed.

30:02 It is certainly a rare and singular advantage when all lurking places are discovered and the heart is broken, brought into the light, purged from its most baneful infection, namely hypocrisy. Well you see Calvin recognized this principle and in the light of it affirmed what I am seeking to set before you as the second great advantage in the use of the Psalms in cultivating our communion with God. But then the Psalms are uniquely helpful in this cultivation of our communion with God not only because of the dominant nature

Reason 3: Unusual Combination of Factors (Revelation, Circumstances, Experience)

30:46 of their substance and form, the varied and comprehensive conditions of heart and life which they reflect, but thirdly, because of the unusual combination of factors woven into the substance of the Psalms. Because of the unusual combination of factors woven into the substance of the Psalms. As I was wrestling with the question that I alluded to some moments ago, Lord, why is it that I keep coming back to this consecutive reading through the Psalms to nurture my own communion with you? Why when other elements of my devotional life

31:30 grow stale and I must leave them for a time and pick up something else, why does this seem to be almost the unalterable, unchangeable baseline element whatever else may change? And I knew there was another factor that was not included in these first two headings that I've laid before you and as I wrestled and wrestled and read and wrestled and read some more, someone presented me a couple of years ago a book that I had only dabbled in very briefly because it's a massive work and I had no immediate pressure to read it by Professor Van Groningen and the work is called Messianic Revelation in the Old Covenant.

32:14 And so I took out the book and read the section on the Psalms and then the bells began to go off and the lights began to flash when I came across this section in Van Groningen's preface and overview of the Psalms as they relate to the Messiah. And what I want to do is just read several paragraphs of Van Groningen and I ask you to bear with me and then I'll break it down into more ordinary parlance, more, I trust, understandable English. What Van Groningen sets before us is this.

32:59 He states, The place and role of the Psalms in the revelation of Yahweh in the Old Testament times continues to be discussed. Too often views are espoused that are contrary to the biblical witness and the actual historical and literary context of the Psalms. And then he gives some examples. Then here's the point that he made that I found so helpful.

33:25 The poets who wrote the Psalms had at least three basic characteristics. First, they had the revelation that Yahweh had given previously. They had the historical and legal materials which included the records of Yahweh's covenanting activities with his people. The poets knew of Yahweh's promises, warnings, judgments, deliverances, and blessings on which they had laid hold and to which they clung firmly.

33:59 They had Moses with his library. In some cases they had the prophets with their bullhorn and their telescope. Those who wrote the Psalms, the human penmen of the Psalms, had the previous revelations of God as their possession. Secondly, they had their immediate historical circumstances.

34:25 Some of these are referred to in the titles of the Psalms. The poets were aware that Yahweh was the sovereign Lord of the historical process that he was providentially in control of all natural, national, international, and social forces. The poets correlated Yahweh's past verbal revelation and his revelation in past and present events. They had this conviction rooted in the documents in which God had already spoken to his people that their God was the Lord of history.

35:04 And therefore their present circumstances were not brought about by chance, but all were under the rubric of the sovereign hand and will of God. The third characteristic was their own experience or that of their people. The actual involvement of the poet in the historical process caused either fear and terror or faith and confidence. This involvement with its variety of emotional experiences led the poet to give expression to his experiences and his reactions to the historical circumstances and his awareness of Yahweh's revelation in the past and present.

35:49 And his confidence that Yahweh was indeed present as in the past and would be in the future motivated him to express himself poetically. Further, whenever sin loomed large before the poet and the results of sin weighed heavily on him, he was moved to give expression to his fears, his longings, his reaching and crying out to Yahweh. Now what is Van Groningen setting before us? More simply stated, he is saying this, that when we pick up the Psalms, we are picking up those compositions which came out of the heart

36:32 of men who had the previously revealed scriptures. They had part of the Bible. And they had those parts of the Bible in which the great works of God in creation and in the redemption of His people out of Egypt, their settlement in the land, His taking them to Himself as His unique people among all the peoples of the earth, the revelation of His mind in will for their life together and their walk before them. They had those portions of what we would say are the Word of God, that portion of the Bible.

37:16 They had the conviction that this God was the present Lord of all reality. Their present circumstances, as we were reminded this morning, as Daniel reflects upon this, though people would have looked upon the conquest of Judah as just another notch in the rifle of Babylonian conquest, Daniel sees that it's the hand of God fulfilling the word of the prophets that if they did not repent, they would go into captivity. And so the Psalmist write with that conviction, God is the present Lord of their circumstances and it is their present circumstances which drive them either

38:01 to praise, to reflection, to repentance, to aspiration and the full spectrum of heart experience to which we have already alluded. And this gives an unusual combination of components in the Psalms that makes them uniquely suitable for the cultivation of communion with God. Let me illustrate how these things come together in a Psalm such as Psalm 44. Psalm 44.

Illustration: Psalm 44 as a Synthesis of Factors

38:35 Here in the 44th Psalm, notice how the Psalmist begins. We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us what work you did in their days, in days of old. You drove out the nations with your hand, but you planted them. You afflicted the peoples, but you spread them abroad.

39:08 For they did not get the land in possession by their own sword, neither did their own arms save them, but your right hand in your arm and the light of your countenance because you were favorable to them. You see what he is doing? He is drawing upon the past record of God's dealings with his people interpreted theologically, interpreted in terms of the works of God. Now he says, You are my king, O God.

39:37 You are not simply their king. You are not the great I was and the great I shall be. You are the great I am. You are Yahweh.

39:49 You are my king. Therefore, command deliverance for Jacob. And then there is this confession of faith. Through you we will push down our adversaries.

40:02 Through your name will we tread them under that rise up against us. For I will not trust in my bow, neither shall my sword save me. You see what he has said? We have learned from our fathers of their great deliverance.

40:15 It wasn't their cleverness. It wasn't their innate power. It was your intervention. Now you are my God.

40:23 And in the midst of our situation, we will not trust in our bow, in our swords, but we trust in you, the living God. And therefore, through your name will we tread them under that rise up against us. For I will not trust in my bow, neither shall my sword save me. But you have saved us from our adversaries and have put them to shame that hate us.

40:46 In God have we made our boast all the day long and will give thanks unto your name forever. But now there is a present reality. Look at it. But now, here is facing the real situation.

41:00 But now, in the now, in the present moment, you have cast us off. You've brought us to dishonor. You don't go forth with our host. You've made us to turn back from the adversary.

41:16 And they that hate us take spoil for themselves. You have made us like sheep appointed for food and scattered us among the nations. You sell your people for nothing and you haven't even increased your wealth by their price. You make us a reproach to our neighbors, a scoffing and a derision to them that are round about us.

41:35 You have made us a byword among the nations, a shaking of the head among the people. All the day long is my dishonor before me and the shame of my face has covered me. For the voice of him that reproaches and blasphemes by reason of the enemy and the avenger, he faces reality. He looks it straight in the eye and says, God, in spite of your past dealings and my understanding that it was your work that established our fathers and the confession of my confidence in your might, the reality is we're a defeated people.

42:13 Your name is being reproached because of our present state. And then it leads to an honest acknowledgement of the searching of heart that had gone on. All this has come upon us, yet we have not forgotten you. Neither have we dealt falsely in your covenant.

42:30 Our heart is not turned back. Neither have our steps declined from your way. Lord, whatever the cause of this is, it is not that we have been willful, wanton covenant breakers as some of our fathers in days gone by. Lord, this is not true of us.

42:47 Then he says, acknowledging that no man knows the depths of his own heart, if we have forgotten the name of our God or spread forth our hands to a strange God, will not God search this out? For he knows the secrets of the heart. Yea, for your sake we are killed all the day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

43:11 Very interesting, isn't it? That's the very text Paul picks up and deposits right in the middle of Romans 8. That great chapter of assurance and conquest for the people of God. The very text he picks up and says is normative for God's people.

43:29 In terms that we heard this morning, the people of God living in the Babylon of this world. Our soul is bowed down to the dust. Our body cleaves to the earth. Rise up for our help and redeem us for thy loving kindness sake.

43:46 Do you see how those elements are woven together? And in the heart of the child of God with its affinity for the word of God and with its sensitivity to the fact that God is the Lord of history and has been the God of his people in all generations to pick up the pouring out of the hearts of men in which these elements come together cannot help but have a unique place in the cultivation of our communion with the living God. We find similar emphases in Psalm 105, 107 and therefore as a Christian grows

44:31 and with his growth there is a growing knowledge of God breathed scripture all of which is profitable and with a deepening consciousness that God is the living God and the Lord of his own circumstances and a growing awareness that nothing comes into his life by accident but whatever his present pressures and distresses may be they are ordered of God what is more suitable to such a person than documents in which those three elements are constantly woven together throughout the very fabric of words that are addressed to the living God. And that I say it is this

Prerequisite 1: Saving Knowledge of God

45:14 unusual combination of factors which makes the Psalms uniquely helpful in the cultivation of our communion with God. Now then let me move to question number two in the time that remains. What are the personal prerequisites for a profitable use of the Psalms in cultivating our communion with God? And for some of you kids the big word prerequisite just means something required ahead of time.

45:52 Before you can write letters the prerequisite is that you know your alphabet and have learned how to spell. Alright? A prerequisite is something required before. Well if we are to profit in communing with God by means of the Psalms what are the prerequisites?

46:14 I lay before you three. First, you must you must have a saving knowledge of God based on a believing response to the Gospel. You will never find the Psalms profitable in fostering communion with God until you have a saving knowledge of God based on a believing response to the Gospel. First Corinthians 2.14

46:48 tells us that the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness unto him neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. And there's a vital principle here. Though natural men, unconverted people can find a kind of intellectual satisfaction and fascination in the more objective doctrinal aspects of Scripture. John Bunyan understood this principle when he set before us the incident of Talkative.

47:22 You remember they met this character Talkative? Christian and his companion? And Talkative was ready to talk about anything in the realm of theology even regeneration. He said, oh yes, talk is profitable.

47:34 We can talk about justification and regeneration. We can speak of doctrinal realities. And Christian's companion is quite impressed with him until he has said I mean Christian is quite impressed until his companion says to him, look, go talk to him about the power of things. See if these things are set up in his heart, in his home, and in his conversation that is his pattern of life.

48:04 And so as he begins to interact with him he's not satisfied with mere talk. He begins to press in the area of internal experience. Well you see the Psalms for the most part are in that sense experiential. They have to do with this vast and varied stuff of the heart's communion with God.

48:31 But by nature the scripture says there is none righteous, no not one. There is none that understands. There's none that seeks after God. They are all gone aside.

48:46 They are together become unprofitable. Can you imagine someone who has no heart to seek after God opening up Psalm 63? Oh God, thou art my God. Earnestly will I seek thee.

49:03 He looks upon that and says I don't have a crew of what that's talking about. And that's true. It is not until the gospel has come to us not in word only but in power and in the Holy Spirit and we have with the Thessalonians turned to God from our idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for his Son out of the heavens even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. It is only when we've come to know God through the one mediator who said I am the way, the truth, the life.

49:44 No man comes to the Father but by me. It is only when we have come to a saving knowledge of God based on a believing response to the gospel that we will begin to be at home in the Psalms to state it in the very language of the Psalter until in obedience to the call of Psalm 2 and verse 12 kiss the Son. Until we have fallen before him with the kiss of faith and the kiss of submission the kiss of casting ourselves upon him is our only hope of life and salvation

50:28 until we have obeyed the directive of Psalm 2. We will never know the blessedness of Psalm 1, 1 to 3. Blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the wicked nor stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of scoffers but his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law doth he meditate day and night until you've kissed the Son. You will never be found in Psalm 1, 1 to 3 or to state it differently until your eyes have been opened to see the glory of God in the face of the forsaken one of Psalm 22.

51:08 Until the cry of dereliction that our Lord uttered in the words of that Psalm when he hung upon the cross and cried out Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani my God, my God why have you forsaken me? Why have you forsaken me? Until you see in that cry your sin your estrangement your rebellion and in that cry your only hope until the cry of dereliction of Psalm 22 becomes the open door of hope for you. You'll never know the blessedness of saying in Psalm 23

51:50 the Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not lack anything. You cannot know him as your Shepherd until you've known him as your sin-bearing substitute. You must have a saving knowledge of God based on a believing response to the Gospel.

Prerequisite 2: Conviction of God's Acceptance of Stark Honesty

52:12 Could it be for some of you this is why the Psalms have really been pretty much a forgotten and deliberately overlooked portion of the Word of God? I ask could it be if someone is opening up the sheer logic and the beauty of some of the facets of the attributes of God and the ways of God there is an element of intellectual satisfaction that may excite you. But when you open the Psalms and you find someone speaking of a sense of desertion and the hiding of God's face you don't have a clue of what that means

52:55 and you never will until you come to a saving acquaintance with this God through a believing response to the Gospel. But then secondly and I believe this is crucial for many of us the second prerequisite for a profitable use of the Psalms in cultivating communion with God is this you must be convinced that God is neither shocked nor made uncomfortable by stark honesty in your dealings with Him. You must be convinced that God is neither shocked nor made uncomfortable

53:39 by your stark honesty in your dealings with Him. In the New Testament we have this gracious invitation Hebrews 4 in verse 16 Let us draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace. And that word translated boldness paresia it means with openness frankness unfettered pouring forth the Old Testament counterpart would be God's injunction pour out your heart before Him at all times you people and if it wouldn't make a mess on the platform to illustrate it

54:22 what do I do if I pour out the contents of this glass? I don't reach in and just spritz a few little drops here or there or dribble I just turn it upside down and whatever's in there and gravity takes hold of it ends up on the floor until the glass is empty God says pour out your heart don't have a grid of over scrupulous fastidiousness that somehow you're going to say something that will shock God or something that may irritate God by your honesty you see you'll never never feel at home in the Psalms until you're convinced that God is neither shocked nor made uncomfortable by stark honesty

55:05 in your dealings with Him for example look at Psalm 10 why do you stand afar off oh God? why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? I mean that's a pretty rotten accusation to make of God isn't it? God you're standing afar off when you're most needed and you're playing hide and seek in an emergency Lord it's not enough that you're around in days of sunshine but Lord these are dark days clouds above thunderclaps lightning

55:50 and you seem to have hidden yourself Lord why do you hide yourself? why do you stand afar off? and God the Holy Ghost has recorded this without rebukes God has left this there are times when from our perspective it seems as though God has hidden Himself He seems to stand afar off look at Psalm 13 across the page how long oh Lord will you forget me forever? this is Psalm of David the same David who said from the time you knit me together in my mother's womb your hand has been upon me

56:33 all my days have been marked out when I contemplate this thought it's too high for me this same man was in a situation where he felt he was forgotten by God oh how long oh Lord will you forget me forever? how long will you hide your face from me? how long shall I take counsel in my soul having sorrow in my heart all the day long? how long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

57:02 you see there is a stark honesty and frankness in the dealings of the Psalmist with God the Psalm with which we began tonight Psalm 73 the entire Psalm reflects that honesty he talks about he said I almost had it I almost slid all the way down into cynicism and irreparable despair he said I was like a beast before you my thinking was so skewed God but you rescued me you brought everything back into perspective and he concludes with the statement

57:47 it's good for me to draw near to God I have made the Lord God my refuge that I may tell of all your works and all the way through the Psalms there is this element my soul cleaves to the dust I ask you are you really convinced that when you come into the place where it's just the ear of God in your heart in your mouth that God is not nervous God is not uncomfortable and God is not shocked when you pour out your heart before him am I saying that we should be irreverent? no

58:31 keep your mouth when you go to the house of God am I saying that we should treat God as though he were our equal or our inferior? not at all but what I am saying is if God has given us the Psalms with this unique purpose that they should be the crucible of the cultivation of our communion with him then surely this element that is throughout the Psalms of this frank this stark honest pouring forth of the heart must become the dominant complexion of our dealings with our God and when we are liberated

59:16 from a false fastidiousness we will find ourselves very much at home in the book of Psalms but then thirdly and finally as a prerequisite for a profitable use of the Psalms in cultivating communion with God not only must you have a saving knowledge of God based on a believing response to the Gospel be convinced that God is neither shocked nor made uncountable by stark honesty in your dealings with him but thirdly you must recognize that God's own dealings with you will be the key to the gradual unlocking of the meaning of many of the Psalms

Prerequisite 3: God's Dealings Unlock Meaning

60:01 recognize that God's own dealings with you will be the key to the gradual unlocking of the meaning of many of the Psalms here I will simply paraphrase what Calvin said in his preface to the readers he said the bottom line as to why I feel I am at least in some measure competent to write a commentary on the Psalms is that God has brought me and my experience through so many things that have parallels in the experiences of the various human authors of the Psalms that I feel a stewardship

60:44 of that experiential dealings of God with me to interpret these Psalms that have been open to me in the crucible of my own experience and over the years if I may just say this briefly by way of personal testimony there are Psalms that at one time it was simply the discipline of commitment to read through the Psalms and pray them through consecutively that took me through them there was no particular sweetness there was no particular answer of deep unto deep

61:26 and all it took was another month six months, a year in some cases ten years as I was sharing with Dr. Ferguson today I used to read Psalm 128 in God's promises upon the God-fearing man and I'd read that text they shall see their children's children I used to read that and say big deal they shall see them if it said they shall see their children's children each and every one become mighty giants in my kingdom I'd say I get excited about that just see their children's children big deal

62:06 you look on your first grandchild and you say now I know the blessedness of seeing your children's children experience in that sense becomes the crucible of opening up the significance of the Psalm you may read those Psalms there's not an enemy but thou my familiar friend lifted up his heel against me and say what's the big deal but as you grow older and as we were reminded in one of the previous messages with the changes that come in life to have a deep and familiar friend lift up his heel against you

62:50 to be in a situation where that passage suddenly is broken open the crucible off in the pain of experience likewise Psalms of praise and deliverance it's only when God who does not bring us into any crucible of testing for which his grace is not sufficient God brings us with the passing of the years even as he did with Abraham to our most severe testings of faith not on the threshold of our experience but in the riper years his greatest test of faith came

63:32 when the man was in his nineties take now thine only son whom thou lovest you see it is in the crucible of experience that God leads us deeper into our understanding of the Psalms and I say that that you'll not be discouraged when reading through some Psalms and say my communion with God simply is not greatly heightened by this Psalm I say be patient be patient and pass on to the next and in due course God will give you an ever growing corpus of Psalms that are exegeted in the classroom of the heart

Conclusion and Prayer

64:16 as God leads you on in the experience of his grace well I trust that this is not just been a classroom lesson but having been charged with and having accepted the responsibility of seeking under God to lay before you how and why the Psalms can be of peculiar benefit in cultivating our communion with God I trust that this Psalm will study tonight addressing those two questions why are the Psalms so suited for this and what are the prerequisites will be used of God to give us an intensified desire

64:59 to make the Psalms a lifetime companion in the cultivation of our communion with our gracious God who has revealed himself to us in the Lord Jesus Christ let us pray our Father we thank you for your holy word we thank you that it is a lamp unto our feet and a light to our pathway we thank you especially for the book of Psalms we thank you that this very moment all around the world in many languages your people are finding

65:43 these poems these expressions of confession and praise and aspiration to be meat and drink to their needy souls and we pray that you would so deal with us as a group of people that we may come to a new appreciation of this portion of your holy word we ask our Father for those who have no appreciation for the Psalms because they know not you the God of the Psalms we pray that even in these days you will create in them an insatiable thirst to be done with all of those

66:28 broken cisterns that can hold no water and may they find you to be the fountain of living waters coming to him who said if any man thirst let him come unto me and drink seal then your word to our hearts and the other words that have been brought to us this day oh God will you not raise up a generation of Daniels will you not bring out of this assembly men who are spirit filled fathers exerting that noble position assigned to them in the grace

67:11 and in the power of the Holy Spirit take then all that has come to us this day and enable us by prayer and meditation to profit from every word that you have brought to us we ask these mercies through our Lord Jesus Christ Amen