Introduction: Summer in the Psalms
We have come to the beginning of our journey in the book of Psalms. We will probably be in and out of Psalms for the next several summers. The Psalms are unique in scripture, and when I first became a Christian, I didn't understand the Psalms. I didn't have a category for them. I remember being in high school in 1998, and there was a song that came out called ‘Iris’ by the Goo Goo Dolls.

I was a junior in high school at this time, and I remember listening to this song. This song caused an unbelievable, powerful thing inside of me because there had been these emotions and sentiments that I had been feeling for several years. Then I heard this song, Iris, and it put to words things I had been feeling for years that I never knew how to articulate. ‘I don't want the world to see me, because I don't think that they'd understand.”

I remember I was talking to one of the youth leaders at our church, and I was telling her about how I love this song because it resonates with my soul. This guy feels what I feel, I'm not alone in the world in feeling these emotions. Someone else gets me and is singing about it, and I can sing about it in my bedroom, yelling at the top of my lungs, singing this song.

The youth leader at my church said to me, You know, that's what the Psalms do for us. That part of scripture that God has put right in the middle of the Bible. They put words to things that many of us are feeling that we're unable to articulate. The Holy Spirit has given us this gift of the Psalms that put words to reflections, meditations, prayers, and laments. They're put down so that you can read them and know you're not alone.

Not long after, I came across a music artist by the name of Shane Bernard. He would later team up with another guy named Shane, and they would become the band we know today as Shane and Shane. But Shane Bernard was sort of an unknown artist in the late 90s, and one of his early albums was called Psalms. In that album, he put to music a dozen or so psalms. I remember listening to that in my bedroom by myself on a CD.

I remember him singing from Psalm 103. The Lord is gracious, he's slow to anger. He is rich in love. He is good to us. I remember reading or listening to these songs and thinking, wow, what a gift that God has given us, the Psalms, to put to words the things that are inside of us that he wants us to articulate.

The Psalms are incredibly valuable, and it took me several years to really appreciate the Psalms and understand them. But the more I spent time in the Psalms, as I grew in my late teen years and in my 20s, it began to shape me. The Psalms have shaped how I pray. It gave me vocabulary that I didn't have before.

The Psalms taught me how to sing to God. I remember listening to some old hymns and recognizing some of the language in hymns. Oh, that was borrowed from these Psalms. The Psalms also taught me how to grieve and to cry. The Psalms are a powerful gift from God to us that are immensely helpful to us in so many ways, and therefore, they are worthy of our study. They’re worthy of our attention.

This morning, if you're not familiar with the Psalms, I want to give you a quick overview of the entire book of Psalms. Then we're going to hone in on Psalm Chapter One. Specifically, I want to give you a tool on how to read the Psalms. I want to give you some basic, tangible things to do when you're reading the Psalms that will make it much more helpful to you. We're going to look at Psalm 1, and I'm going to model how we can examine the passage. Before we do that, let's ask God for his help one more time.

God, would you help us understand the Psalms? God, thank you for this gift. May it profoundly shape how we live, how we pray, how we sing, how we cry, and how we see you. Would you help us now? Would you be pleased to glorify yourself through Psalm Chapter One? I ask in Christ's name. Amen.

 
Overview of Psalms

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