Practical Counsels

Introduction: Practical Counsels for Using the Psalms

0:01 Now then, just briefly to review, I trust if you have been here through the entire conference, you'll remember way back to Tuesday night when in the initial session I sought to answer two basic questions. The first being, why are the Psalms uniquely helpful in cultivating our communion with the living God? And the second question was, what are the prerequisites to a profitable use of the Psalms in cultivating our communion with God? Then in the second session, I attempted to set before you what I called guidelines for the profitable use of the Psalms in cultivating our communion with God. And those guidelines I extracted from the Scriptures. The Scriptures sought to demonstrate their biblical roots and then to illustrate them from specific portions of the Psalms. Now in this, my final session, I want to set before you what I am calling practical counsels for the use of the Psalms in cultivating communion with God.

1:23 Practical counsels in cultivating your communion. Now let me take just a moment to explain what I mean by the term practical counsels. And then I shall attempt to lay before you within the time constraints five such counsels. In using the word counsel, I am seeking to underscore the fact that what I'm setting before you are practical suggestions, and directives that are not divine commandments.

2:04 In other words, the things that I will lay before you by way of entreaty and exhortation do not have the authority of a divine commandment. They are merely counsels. They are not clerical decrees. I am not attempting to bind your conscience.

2:28 To these directives and suggestions. They are in the realm of what I trust is sanctified and sound advice. Rooted in a broad range of general principles. Some of them biblical principles.

2:47 Some of them principles growing out of the experience of the people of God over many ages. And some of them growing out of my own. And some of them growing out of my own. And some of them growing out of my own.

2:58 own experience of living for some 43 years as a constant companion of the Psalms. And in preparation for this series, I was reminded of something that I do not often remember, and that is that the first formal sermon that I ever preached in a church setting, having preached for several months on the street corner as my initial experience in preaching, the first proper sermon preached in a proper church setting, I preached from the 37th Psalm. And I can still remember the basic outline of that sermon. And so in a very real sense, having come out of the womb spiritually, I have found myself unweaned from the breasts of the Psalms. And from them I have continued to draw. That which has been of nourishment to my own soul, and therefore I want to give practical suggestions, practical counsels for your use of the Psalms as you seek to cultivate your communion with God. All right then, with that explanation of what I am doing, that I am not binding your conscience

Counsel 1: Acquire General Acquaintance with Psalms Suited to Christian Experience

4:23 by explicit divine commandment. I am not pontificating in some kind of assumed and unbiblical clerical authority, but rather seeking to give what I trust is wise advice born not just from my own experience, or even primarily from my own experience, but from principles rooted in the Word of God and in the experience of God's people over the ages. Counsel number 1. Seek to acquire a growing general acquaintance with the Psalms which are most suited to the major categories of ordinary Christian experience. Seek to acquire a growing general acquaintance with the Psalms which are most suited to the major categories. of ordinary Christian experience. Now, while each of our lives is a tailor-made pattern of God's sovereign ordering

5:40 of our events, relationships, joys, and sorrows, yet the Scriptures teach us there are certain things that will be the common lot of all of God's people throughout their earthly pilgrimage. For example, the Lord Jesus said in John 16, 33, In the world, and therefore as long as you are in it, you shall have tribulation. And that word tribulation means you will be in pressured, stressful circumstances. When the apostles went back through on their followings, follow-up ministry to the early churches that they had planted, as recorded in Acts chapter 14, one of the notes that they continually sounded was this, that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. Or 2 Timothy 3, 12, All that shall live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. So tribulation, stress, pressure, will be part and parcel of ordinary Christian experience. Joy and peace and the unique blessings of being a pardoned sinner are part of ordinary Christian experience.

7:08 Romans 5 and verse 1, Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God. And growing out of that peace, we are able even to rejoice in our tribulation. We are told in Romans 14, 17, that the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace.

7:39 And so when I say that there are those things that are part of the major categories of ordinary Christian experience, it is these kinds of things to which, I am making reference. And my counsel to you is this, seek to acquire a growing general acquaintance with those psalms that are most suited to these major categories of ordinary Christian experience. So that when you find yourself in a situation where you feel the pressure of opposition, the pressure of misogynism, misunderstanding, the pressure of false friends, you will have a growing catalog of those particular psalms in which the psalmist is crying to God out of a situation of unusual pressure, out of a situation of affliction, out of a situation of the betrayal by close friends. And as you become increasingly aware of those psalms that are most suited to ordinary Christian experience, those various categories of ordinary Christian experience, and those particular psalms written in parallel situations, those psalms will be the psalms to which you will instinctively turn

9:09 as you seek to pray out that experience in the presence of the living God. Confession of sin, renewed repentance, is a part of ordinary, ordinary Christian experience. Jesus made it plain, it ought to be an element in daily Christian experience. After this manner, pray ye, forgive us our debts as we forgive those who sin against us.

9:41 And so the psalms that are called commonly the penitential psalms ought to be your companion. You ought to know where to turn when your conscience, your conscience is smitten with a sense of having offended God and grieved the Holy Spirit, that you might not simply and only acknowledge that sin and claim the promise of 1 John 1-9, but that you might enter in to the deeper, broader nuances of a truly penitent heart, as those nuances are embodied in the language of the Spirit of God in Psalm 50. In Psalm 51, in Psalm 6, in Psalm 130, and similar psalms. So I exhort you that though the psalms cannot be placed into airtight categories, there are nonetheless general categories which find an echo in the general categories of ordinary Christian experience. When you have experienced, for example, an unusual deliverance from the Lord after a season of waiting upon Him, surely you ought to know Psalm 40 may be a very appropriate psalm.

11:08 I waited patiently for the Lord, and He inclined unto me and heard my cry and brought me up out of an horrible pit. And there are other psalms in similar categories. And so without setting out any artificial category of my own, I highly recommend what in my background reading I found to be the most helpful, useful framework of the various categories of the psalms in the introduction to the Old Testament by R.K. Harrison.

11:47 He spoke of these categories of the psalms, prayers, whether for protection, deliverance, intervention, or blessing, praises, both general and specific, penitential psalms, intercessions for the king, for the nation, confessions of faith in God as king, ruler, and judge, homiletical dealings with wisdom and with the law of God. Psalm 119 in the Hebrew is a psalm structured in the form of each section of eight verses begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It was obviously an aid to help people memorize that psalm in celebration of the place of the law and word of God in the life of the child of God. Imprecatory psalms where the judgment of God is preyed upon the enemies of God and of his kingdom. That judgment is not taken into the hands of the psalmist. He does not vent personal vengeance, but he is crying to the God of vengeance.

13:03 O God, thou God to whom vengeance belongs, shine forth, and that truth is given to us in the New Testament. Vengeance is mine. I will repay. We are not to avenge ourselves, but our comfort is that in placing our case in God's hands, he will bring vengeance where appropriate in the appropriate time.

Counsel 2: Engage in Consecutive Praying Through the Psalms

13:29 So I would urge you to make up your own little catalog of the major categories of your own. And as you find a psalm that particularly fits joy in the Holy Spirit, maybe have a three by five card in your Bible and that particular psalm. You find a psalm in which there is a crying out to God for great ease of knowledge of himself and of his ways. Jot it down and have your own growing, working catalog of those particularly suited to the ordinary range of normal Christian experience. And my second word of counsel is this. Consider engaging in the discipline of a regular or periodical consecutive praying through the Psalms for your devotional prayers and supplications. Consider engaging in the discipline of a regular or periodic consecutive praying through the Psalms for your devotional prayer

14:57 and supplication. If 2 Timothy 3.16 is true, and it is, all Scripture is God-breathed and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. And as we saw in our initial study, there is a uniqueness about the Psalms with respect to their major content and form, with respect to the various strands of what went into the Psalms that make them uniquely suited for our personal communion with God.

15:39 When we seem to lack the raw materials out of which to construct much fluency and constancy in secret prayer, it is of tremendous benefit to take the very words that God has inspired and not necessarily pray them word for word, though that certainly would not be displeasing to God any more than to meaningfully pray back the so-called Lord's Prayer in secret is displeasing to God. But take the Psalm as a framework to pray through that Psalm in terms of your own devotional heart's communion with the living God. For example, if you went back from this conference determined to do this, and you started in Psalm 1, and you've asked the Lord to make his word precious to your heart, how would you go about that? Well, you begin reading, Blessed is the man that does not walk in the counsel, in the advice of the wicked. And you stop and you say, Oh, remembering what Pastor Hamilton preached at the conference and remembering how I thought of the area where I've been careless in exposing my mind the advice of the ungodly, that fornication is not sin.

17:08 I've exposed my mind to ungodly patterns and images. Lord, give me grace that this day I will have that sensitive conscience that the advice of the ungodly will not come to me by what I look at on the television, by what I listen to, on the radio, by what I listen to in my Walkman, by what I listen to in the conversation of others. Why, you see, you're taking off, praying up a storm now about the whole matter of all the ways that the advice of the ungodly might fasten itself upon your mind. And then you take the next phrase, Nor stands in the way of sinners.

17:51 Oh, Lord, I must walk through this vanity fair of this world, but may I never stand comfortable in the way of sinners. May I not plant my feet in their way of self-indulgence, in their way of straying from you. Lord, remembering Pastor Martin's message that each of us is turned to his own way and that the way of sinners is self-will and self-indulgence and self-actualization and self-fulfillment. Oh, God, may I be done with the way of sinners.

18:27 And then you pray up a storm on the next part until you're prayed out. And then you take up the next part. Nor sits in the seat of scoffers, those who think they're smarter than God, those who have their PhDs and think that their little pea brains are bigger than God's infinite mind. And they sit in judgment on God and his word and his ways.

18:53 And you say, Oh, God, help me as I must go into that class where that particular teacher is a scoffer. Lord, help me never in spirit to sit in his seat or her seat. Help me to recognize that teacher is a mortal enemy to my soul. Give me no sympathy with what they say.

19:14 Give me discernment to see through the emptiness and the hollowness of what they are saying. But his delight is in the law of the Lord. Oh, Lord, I do love your law. I love your word.

19:27 But God, I want to delight in it. Lord, increase my love for your word. God, give me such a delight in your word that I'll actually want to go to my Bible before I go to the sports page. That was one of the greatest proofs to me that God really saved me when I was 17 years of age.

19:45 I lived way back in the dark ages when the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn. And I lived in Connecticut just 30 miles up from New York City. And if ever there was a rabid Dodger fan, I knew the averages of all of the players back when Stanky and Forello and Duke Snyder and all of that crowd, all just ancient history to the rest of you. Those were my buddies.

20:11 I used to cry when they'd lose a close game. And even being unconverted in some of the World Series in close games, I marveled God didn't squash the cockroach. I had the nerve with a mouth that had just told a dirty joke. Or spoken a foul word in a close game to say, oh God, the Dodgers.

20:34 I was that addicted to the Dodgers. And when the daily paper came, I passed on it and went right to the sports page. And when God into the Dodgers, I said, Lord, only the Holy Ghost could do that to this guy's heart. Now there's nothing wrong with looking at the sports page.

20:58 But the righteous man delights in the law of the Lord. And you say, oh, give me such a delight in your law that there's nothing that's ever been written or yet to be written that will gladden my heart like your holy word. What I'm advocating is, as a counsel, I can't say you must do it, you ought to do it, God commands you to do it. But I'm saying consider engaging in this discipline of the regular or periodical consecutive praying through the Psalms for your devotional prayer and supplication.

21:41 And I've tried to illustrate with just the first few verses of Psalm 1 what I mean by praying through. Now what will happen if you do this? As a part of your daily devotions, you start with Psalm 1 and plow all sorts of months to Psalm 150. Well, several great benefits will come to you.

Benefits of Consecutive Praying Through the Psalms

22:04 Number one, it will help you to acquaint yourself beforehand with the broad range of legitimate spiritual experience. It will help to acquaint you beforehand with the broad range of legitimate spiritual experience. For if you start to do this, it won't be long before you'll come to Psalm 3. And you will read in your devotions that morning, Lord, how are my enemies increased?

22:37 Many are they. Many are they up against me. Many are they that so there's no help for him in God. Lord, I haven't had that happen to me yet.

22:50 But it obviously happened to David. And it happened when, as an older man, he was being tested from the rebellion of his own son. Lord, when the time comes, help me to remember how David sought your face. Help me not to be shocked to remove this wall around the new convert while he's beginning to get his spiritual moorings.

23:18 And he does not permit us to be tempted above that we are able. But the time comes when God would have our root system sunk more deeply into himself. And he allows of opposition to begin to blow upon us. Well, then you'll remember, hey, I'm not some weirdo.

23:37 I remember in my consecutive reading through the Psalms, the psalmist's enemies. This is one of the great benefits of this consecutive praying through the Psalms. It will acquaint you beforehand with the broad range of legitimate spiritual things. But secondly, it will help you to remember others who may be in the very condition reflected in the Psalm.

24:12 You may not be there, but you may have a friend. You may know someone in the church who's there, and that will immediately draw you out in intercession for them. And that Psalm, drawing the audience of another, will help to train you in the holy art of intercession for others and keep your devotions from becoming a kind of selfish spiritual thumb-sucking. It will stretch your heart when you can say, Lord, I thank you.

24:47 I'm not in this situation, but, oh Lord, think of your people in Muslim lands where if it becomes known that someone renounces Muhammad and claims allegiance to Christ and is baptized in many villages in Pakistan where I have walked personally, there is a price on the head of every single openly confessed Christian. The local Muslim priest has said, take him out and you get so many rupees. Well, then you're able to enter in and intercede, oh God. There are teenage people, you remember, some of you heard the news, the 14-year-old boy who was sentenced to death in Pakistan, thankfully, the sentence was overturned, whose adversaries are increased, who all around them say there's no help for him in his God. Allah is God and Muhammad is his prophet. Christ is not the final prophet. And you'll find yourself drawn out in intercession by the direction of the Psalm.

25:59 But then thirdly, and this is crucial in this generation, and I trust you'll understand what I say, I do not say it in a censorious manner, but I believe it's accurate. It will help you to learn the discipline of the mastery of your own emotions. It will help you to learn the discipline of the mastery of your own emotions. And what do I mean by that?

26:27 Simply this. If you're going to let your mind and heart and therefore your emotions included follow the path which the next Psalm cuts, that Psalm may cut a path into the dark woods of a sense of desertion. But you may be personally in a time of unusual joy and rejoicing and assurance. And as you seek to bring your mind and spirit and your emotions into line with the Psalm, you are learning the mastery of your emotions.

27:01 And you have been reared in a generation that regards the emotions as ultimate. Put your feet where your feelings take you. God says no. Put your feet where my word commands you, even if you must stick into the very of your emotions.

27:25 Otherwise, how can we ever learn to fulfill, Romans chapter 12 and verse 15? Weep with those who weep. Rejoice those who rejoice. You're walking down the street some morning and your brother or sister is coming toward you, your brother or sister in Christ.

27:49 And everything about them indicates they're in a state of heaviness of heart. You've just come from a time with the Lord and the joy bells are ringing in your soul and the hallelujah chorus is coming out. Perhaps you're even humming it. And now you meet your sad, depressed, broken-hearted brother.

28:08 God says weep with those who weep. You say, but I don't feel like weeping. I'm having a happy fit. Duty to harness your happy fit.

28:23 And draw near to your brother until your heart feels his pain and you weep with him. Likewise, the reverse is true. You've come with a heavy heart. Your brother meets you and he's rejoicing.

28:41 God has answered a prayer concerning something he's travailed over for months or years. And from 50 feet away he says, brother, my sister, I've got to tell you what God has done. And everything about him is ambulant and full of praise. And your heart is heavy as lead.

29:03 God says you've got to rejoice with him. But I don't feel like it. So what? Rejoice with him.

29:14 You see, your feelings are not ultimate. God's Word is ultimate and his authority over our feelings. And the Scripture says the fruit of the Spirit is what? Self-control.

29:27 Are your emotions a part of yourself? Then when you are under most of the control of the Spirit, there will be control of your emotions. And I have known no discipline more helpful to master to some degree my emotions than the practice of several decades of praying through consecutively the Psalter. And to my amazement, I found that this perspective was not novel with me.

30:03 In my background reading, as I took out Plummer on the Psalms, a reprint that the Banner did of a classic work on the Psalms, and I commend it to you, in the introductory section of that marvelous commentary, there is a wonderful distillation of quotes from across the ages on the benefit and blessing of the Psalms to the people of God. I found this quote from Augustine. I quote, Form thy spirit by the affection of the Psalm that you are reading. If the Psalm breathes the spirit of prayer, then do you pray.

30:46 If it is filled with groanings, then groan also yourself. If it is gladsome, do thou rejoice also. If it encourages hope, then hope in God. If it calls to godly fear, then tremble before the divine majesty.

31:07 For all things herein contained are mirrors to reflect our own real characters. Let the heart do what the words signify. I urge, I strongly urge and admonish, I can't admonish, exhort, entreat, that you consider engaging in this discipline of the regular, periodical, consecutive, praying through the Psalms for your devotional prayers and supplication. It will help to acquaint you beforehand with the broad range of legitimate Christian experience. It will help you to remember others who may be in a state reflected in the Psalm. And it will under God's blessing help you to learn the discipline of the mastery of your own emotions. And not only did Augustine have this practice, it was very interesting. I had the privilege

Confirmation of Consecutive Psalm Praying

32:15 of being wall to wall with Dr. Ferguson this past week and it's been many years since we've had such a lengthy opportunity for fellowship. On one occasion he spent two weeks in my home when he was a guest lecturer in our academy. But over the years our mutually busy schedules have taken us in different directions and our contacts have been very brief. But during this week we've had some precious times of fellowship. And as I was running by, I was able to show him some of this material since it was the first time I had presented it and I highly esteem his knowledge of the word of God and his precision as a theologian. And he said a very interesting thing. He said, you know Al, this practice that you said you're going to address about the consecutive reading through the Psalms as a spiritual discipline, my wife Dorothy has done that for years.

Counsel 3: Sing Metrical Psalms

33:09 And no matter how pressured she is as a wife and a mother, if her other daily portion of Bible reading must be put off to another time, praying through her Psalm every day is non-negotiable. And I thought again, here was a wonderful confirmation of the benefit of that practice. Well very quickly now, council number three. Seek to engage in the practice of singing some version of the metrical Psalms as part of your devotional exercises and as an aid to memorizing the Psalms. Seek to engage in the practice of singing some version of the metrical Psalms as part of your devotional exercises and as an aid to memorizing the Psalms. Now two key New Testament passages are vital with respect to this word of council. Ephesians chapter 5, familiar words to many, if not all of us. The central

34:25 duty is given in the imperative of verse 18, in which Paul says, do not be drunken with wine wherein is riot or excess, but be being filled with the Spirit. There's the central imperative, be filled with the Spirit. That's when there follows a string of participles. And those participles are, as it were, a picture of the streams flowing out of a Spirit-filled heart.

35:01 Notice them. Speaking one to another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ. How does a Spirit-filled heart manifest itself? Speaking one to another, singing and making melody. And in the midst of that, we read Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Now I have followed the argument of exclusive Psalm singers and non-exclusive Psalm singers with respect to the precise meaning of Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. But on this, there is complete agreement that those will exist in one dimension of that expression with singing and making melody and singing. I personally believe, based not on this individual text

36:18 or others, that there is an unavoidable biblical doctrine of praise that not only permits, but mandating of hymns that reflect the realities of an accomplished redemption and of experience under the new covenant. And someday I hope to preach or perhaps write an article on a biblical theology of praise that would address that very issue. But this much is clear, that being filled with the Spirit will involve making melody and song. And I would urge you as an example of an excellent metrical version of the Psalms that you can sing, is the recent reprint of the Psalms of David in meter, with notes exhibiting the connection, explaining the sense, and directing and animating the devotion by John Brown of Haddington. And this has been reprinted by Presbyterian Heritage Publications. We carry it in our own bookstore. I don't know if Edgewood Bookshop carries it, but what's so helpful is all of them are in short meter or long meter. So

37:38 if you just know a couple of tunes like, O God our help in ages past, or Jesus thou joy of loving hearts, a few familiar hymns that have a long or short meter, you can sing all of the Psalms that are in this metrical version. And I would urge you in the light of this, in the parallel passage in Colossians 3, we don't have time to turn to it, I simply mention it, Colossians 3, and verse 16, to begin to sing the Psalms. One of the curses of the glut, of all the noise that comes in upon our ears, is we have lost the ability to sing. We are not a singing people. There are people listening to the din of jungle music. I went into the weight room for a workout the other day, the first thing I had to do was ask the gal at the desk, please show me where the radio is that's blaring out that I said music. I perhaps should have used another term. But wherever you

38:45 turn, on the airplane, in the airport, in the barbershop, wherever you turn, and the tragedy, we've lost the ability to be a singing people. And who of all people should manifest that being filled with the Spirit, it is our delight to speak one to another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in our hearts unto the Lord. God has so constituted us that there is in this a coming together of the mind and the human spirit in an intensified and an exalted frame that I don't understand the psychology of it, but it is true and God has made us a people to sing to His praise. Council number four. Consider, consider the judicious use of non-technical commentaries as an aid to the devotional use of the Psalms. And when I say non-technical, I'm referring to a work such as Derek Kidner's on Psalm 1 through 72.

Counsel 4: Judicious Use of Non-Technical Commentaries

40:07 Though he is no mean scholar, it is not weighed down with the trappings of the kind of technical commentaries that a preacher would want in doing his spade work to preach on the Psalms. The very way the book is laid out after the introduction, each Psalm is set before us with a title, something of the background, a little bit of the outline, and then each section has bold print, the morning watch, verses 5, chapter 5, 1 to 3, chapter 5, 4 to 6, the champion of right, 5, 7, and 8, the pilgrim spirit, and the psalm is laid out in its natural progressions of thought and as you're seeking to pray it back to God, I will pray with the spirit, I will pray with the understanding, I will sing with the spirit, I will sing with the understanding, and I have found over the years a tremendous benediction in working through commentaries like this as part of my devotions. If you can get hold of McLaren on the Psalms, in the old Expositors Bible, Leupold, I've worn the covers thin on Leupold's commentary on the Psalms, using it in my own devotions, and I found Leupold continually referring as Alexander has so beautifully stated it or as, I'm sorry, as McLaren

41:35 has so accurately expressed it, and I couldn't find McLaren and all the while he was sitting on my shelf in this old used set of the Expositors Bible, he did the commentary on the Psalms, and having gone through those two volumes in my own devotions, I found myself tremendously enriched as he helped me to get into the Psalm, and then helped the Psalm to get into my own soul. Matthew Henry will be a great help to you in this way. Plumbers reprint on the Psalms done by the Banner of Truth, or you may want to take an individual Psalm, E.J. Young on Psalm 139 would be a wonderful devotional aid. And then of course, some of us every few years work through bridges on Psalm 119 as part of our devotional exercises to bring us back to that most fundamental central issue of the Christian life, our love for and absorption of and interaction with the Word of the Living God. So, my word of counsel is, consider the judicious use of non-technical commentary as an aid to the devotional use of the Psalms. For remember, Christ has given to His church pastors and teachers to

Counsel 5: Regular Use of Psalms in Corporate Worship

42:59 perfect the saints unto the work of service, and He has not given all of them in one generation. Paul said, all things are yours, Paul and Apollos and Cephas, and Derek Kidner is mine, and Plummer is mine, and Leupold and Spurgeon and Matthew Henry, and the others, and those who can be our teachers that we might better understand the mind of God as revealed in the Psalms. And then my final word of counsel is, prayerfully consider, and this comes particularly to my brethren who are pastors and elders and leaders in your churches, prayerfully consider the regular use of the Psalms in your stated gatherings of the church. Prayerfully consider the regular use of the Psalms in your stated gatherings of the church. If we may say that God has given a Spirit inspired prayer book and hymn book, surely it is the Psalter. It is the 150 Psalms in our Bible. Whatever

44:16 other hymn books or prayer books have been written, whatever their function should be and is and has been to the benefit of God's people, who would dare question that God's prayer book and God's hymn book stands in a class all of its own. And while as I've already alluded and in my second message sought to underscore, we must sing the Psalms as New Covenant believers. We must sing them in the light of the great and tender privileges and understanding that is ours. Remember the praises of God's people incorporate God's previous acts and God's previous revelations of himself. They don't cancel them. In heaven it is said in Revelation 15 3, they sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb. What in the world are they doing with singing the song of Moses in heaven?

45:33 Well, you see, the song of Moses was composed after that great earthly physical redemption of his people out of Egypt. And it pointed to that greater redemption of the people of God out of the spiritual Egypt of this world. But in heaven, that I am convinced that if our churches were more committed to the incorporation of the Psalms into our worship,

46:32 we would not be vulnerable to the cheap, tawdry, crap, and doggerel that passes in the name of modern hymnody. Much of it is just that. It's doggerel. It's crap. It's cheap. It's tawdry.

46:49 It will not even last to the end of this generation, let alone be sung in future. In future generations, the Psalms will give a richness of thought, a breadth, and an elevated nature of perspective. And it will also do something else that this generation needs to wake up to. If I may vent my heart for a moment, we're not the first people ever to open our mouths and praise God.

47:17 And what a wonderful sense of the continuity of the people of God there is when we stand on the Lord's day. And we sing our God, our hope for years to come.

47:37 And then we take up a psalm, and we begin to sing that psalm in the presence of the living God and realize David and the people of God, hundreds, several thousands of years ago, they sang these very words. And my Lord Himself, in the days of His glory, after they had sung Him, they went out into the Mount of Olives, and they would have sung the set portions from the Psalm allocated for the Passover feast. And Dr. Ferguson and I were talking and he said it was his own conviction that, surely, as our Lord had committed so much of the Scripture to memory, he said, I am personally persuaded, he said he had the whole of the Psalter memorized, so that the whole of the Psalter memorized. So that in all of the trials and trials, that we are lovedepotentople so that they have Christ as our foundation. so that in all of the trials and trials and trials amiss Through which he passed they were readily at hand, but be that as it may, we know from Hebrews chapter 2 that when the psalmist says that he will sing the praises of God in the great assembly, that's applied directly to Christ. Think of it, when we gather and he is present in the livingness of his power by the Spirit, he sings the psalms with us, the very ones he sang in the days of his flesh.

49:01 And it puts us in company with martyrs, covenanters, and those who seal their testimony with blood, and with those who sing in a hundred different languages the praises of God, based upon, the psalter, and it unites us with the people of God in past ages, and in the present day, and surely we ought to have a sense of the glory and the wonder that our little assemblies as we gather, one little drop in the bucket of God's great aggregate of his elect, that we sing united praises that ascend as a sweet smelling savor into the nostrils of ourれる gospel. of ouresar fifty-four thousand years ago, for being our natural volumes of church seminary read by Prz visual Crispi, in matters CEI, the ways we picture God, including the preaching of Christ, and through us as leaders of faith in Christ, also by Reverend Colenius Braulius, our dele すco, harshly cast the humblets of Holy Holy Arrivals, that as sweetly sanctify him by his Christ forgetting the power of God and by humiliation our pagaration, we are able to take him as virginally and out of us. Of the living God. Well.

Conclusion: The Goal of Intimate Companionship with the Psalms

49:53 These are my. Councils to you. I haven't given anybody orders. If anyone goes out of here and says.

50:00 Pastor Martin said you got to do. Friend don't break the ninth commandment. I'm too old.

50:08 To be very patient. When I guard my words. And then people go out. And allege that I said this.

50:14 Or said that.

50:18 Please for the sake of your own conscience. Don't bear false witness against me. I've given you counsel. That's all I've done.

50:28 Yes I've given it with passion. And with conviction. And tried to persuade you. Am I forbidden to do that?

50:36 But it's only been counsel.

50:40 And my counsel is. That your communion with God. Be deeply enriched. By the use of the Psalms.

50:49 As I sat at my desk. When crunch time came. And the preparation had to move. From the general and the broad.

50:56 To the specific and the definitive. And I said Lord. There's such a massive material. How can I ever begin to whittle it down.

51:04 And give it some shape and form. And direction. I asked myself this question.

51:11 If there's one thing. God would help you to accomplish. Through these three studies. What would it be?

51:16 I said well Lord it would be this. That the vast majority of the people. Who come to the Mid-America Conference. Who know you and love you.

51:23 Would leave the conference. Determined to make the Psalms. Their more intimate and lifetime. Companion.

51:31 In the nurture of their walk with you. Now I said Lord that's my one goal. And everything I include and exclude. Is going to drive.

51:41 To that one goal. Can you imagine the thrill I had. When sitting at the table.

51:48 Yesterday or day before. A woman I'd never met before. Face beaming. She said you know Pastor Martin.

51:55 As a result of. It had just been the second study. Of what I heard this morning. You know what I've determined.

52:02 I said what? She said I've determined to go home. And make the Psalms. My companion.

52:09 For the rest of my pilgrimage. I said dear woman. You've made my day. And her tears came down her.

52:19 Eyes and my tears down mine.

52:23 And I said mission accomplished. At least in one. May God grant. That that mission will be accomplished.

52:30 In many of us. That in cultivating. Our communion with God. The Psalms will have.

52:38 That unique function. Intended. By the living God.