This is the overview of the three-week Psalms of Advent class, December 2021.
Download or view the PDF outline here.
Category: Psalms Group
These materials were shared with the Psalms Group, a fellowship group with a special interest in learning about, reading and praying the Psalms daily.
Our Security in Christ Our King and in His Community
Presented December 5 and 6, 2021
Download or view the PDF below.
For Monday Psalms, November 15, 2021
Book 1 of the Psalms(Psalms 3-41) reveals our human condition of limitation and our struggle to trust the steadfast love and power of the LORD. It is dominated by Psalms “of David” in which the psalmist is constantly beset by problems, difficulties, trials—most often at the hands of others who are determined to make life difficult for him, though sometimes he makes his own trouble. (Psalms 32 and 38 are penitential.)
Prepared for Monday Psalms, November 1, 2021
Prepared for Monday Psalms, October 18, 2021
1. Our group focused on Psalm 107 on 2/16/20, a month before the COVID 19 lockdown that started during March 2020. Reflect on how your understanding of who God is to you and to his people has changed from February 2020 to now, October 2021.
Read the cry to the LORD our God in Psalm 106:47. Psalm 107 starts out like Psalm 106, with an ancient liturgy extolling the LORD’s goodness and steadfast love (See also Jeremiah 33:11). But then Psalm 107 goes a different direction and becomes an answer to the cry for help that ends Psalm 106. This is the strongest link in the Psalms between the closing psalm of one book and the opening psalm of the next book, the link between Book IV and Book V of the Psalms.
Read Psalm 107:1-3, recalling Exodus 34:6-7,the central confessional passage for the OT about God’s gracious character and purpose, extending unfailing love and forgiveness to thousands of generations.
Notice the words used to describe God in 107:1-3:
good (tov=good in the widest sense, everything good you can think of, God is better and best)
steadfast love (hesed=unfailing love, covenant love, faithful and loyal love, “never runs out” love, merciful and kind love, enduring love)
What is the connection between verses 1 and 2 of Psalm 107? What are the redeemed of the LORD told to say? (“Let the redeemed of the Lord say so…”)
2. Psalm 106’s ending cry for help is answered by Psalm 107’s four examples of God rescuing people who cry to him in their trouble/distress. These four examples form a community song of thanksgiving with repetitions:
One of the enduring delights of this psalm is repetition—repeated descriptions of threatening situations, repeated recourse to prayer, repeated divine response, repeated calls to thankfulness.
New Bible Commentary, p. 557
Read the four examples of trouble and distress(vv.4-9, vv.10-16, vv.17-22, vv. 23-32).
Notice what words, phrases, and images speak to you? What seems to draw you? Why? What life experiences of your own or others help you relate to the troubles described?
The circumstances of Psalm 107 include human suffering due to human limitation and also suffering due to human sin. Sometimes the reasons for suffering are mixed, both self-inflicted and completely beyond one’s control. How does Psalm 107 present God’s response to the wide variety of people in distress who cry out for rescue?
3. Notice the repeated calls to thankfulness in 107:8-9, 15-16, 21-22, 31-32. How do these calls to practice thankfulness develop the theme presented in 107:2?
Which of these four calls to gratitude draws you most strongly now? Why?
How would you describe what Psalm 107 teaches about what redeemed, rescued people need to be learning to do? We need to learn to feel and express gratitude for…what?
5. Psalm 107 ends with a wisdom meditation leading us to reflect on how the LORD vindicates Himself through reversals (107:33-43). Whom do the Lord’s reversals ultimately benefit?
Think of examples of this teaching about “reversals” from the Gospels and the teaching ministry of Jesus.
Ponder Jesus Christ’s life, crucifixion and death, resurrection and ascension. What wondrous, mighty acts of love on behalf of whoever will believe and receive God’s goodness and enduring love!
Then reflect on your own life, “hidden with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3:3)
Our Triune God, the LORD of all, is bigger than each of our individual stories and bigger than the stories of nations and cultures.
The Inward/Outward Journey From Self-Preoccupation to God-Centeredness
Prepared for Monday Psalms, October 4, 2021
Prepared for Monday Psalms, September 20, 2021
Prepared for Monday Psalms, August 30, 2021
Video for Session 8 of Truthful Speech for Common Prayer: Jesus and the Psalms.
Our Savior the Lord Jesus Christ was the perfect worshiper of God and lover of people, the most authentic and genuine human who has ever lived. He knew and prayed the Psalms, even with his dying breath. He models the Psalms’ transformative power and use in an open, submitted human heart. He died for our sins and our wounds so that his heart and all of our hearts, his brothers and sisters (That’s us!), can be one in him.
Prepared for Psalms Group meeting on Monday, 8/16/21
Session 7: Public and Evangelistic Praise
Prepared for Psalms Group, August 8, 2021
Based on Session 6 of the Truthful Speech as Common Prayer series.
Lesson summary
“The world rings with praise,” C.S. Lewis once wrote, and it’s true. Praise isn’t just a religious phenomenon; it’s a regular and common feature of our lives. Whenever we encounter beauty or goodness or blessing in our lives, our natural and fitting response is to celebrate it and sing its praise to others. For that reason, it comes as no surprise that the activity of praise is so central in the psalms. The God we encounter in the Psalms, and all of Scripture, is an unending source of beauty and goodness and grace. The question is: what does genuine, authentic praise look like? And how can we continue to praise amidst the sorrows and disappointments of life? Father Jonathan explored praise by focusing on what the psalms teach us about both the context of praise and the content of praise.
1. Review Psalms 146-150, focusing especially on 146 and 150. How would you compare the attitude expressed in these psalms to your attitude in your life with God?
Why do you think the book of Psalms as a whole concludes with these 5 psalms of praise?
What was one point from this week’s video teaching that stood out to you?
2. Describe one particularly memorable experience of praise from your own life. What stands out to you about this experience of praise? How would you relate it to the description of praise that we find in the psalms?
3. In Romans 1:21, Paul describes sin in human history by saying that “although humans knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.”
Why would Paul connect sin with the failure to praise? How might a lack of praise lead to futile and foolish thinking? Why do you think praise and thanksgiving to God don’t come more naturally to us in August 2021?
4. Why do you think the writers of the Psalms found themselves drawn to praise even during times of great distress and sorrow? How can we continue to praise when life goes badly? What has helped you do that?
5. What do you think is the greatest challenge for you in applying the lessons of praise and thanksgiving to God found in the Psalter’s concluding psalms of praise? What is one practical step you can take in the coming week to overcome this challenge?
(Read Psalms 95, 96, 97, 98, 99 and 100 in preparation for the next lesson.)