Well, hello church, if you would open to Psalms. Open to Psalms, and I will tell you where we're going in a moment. Let me pray before we get started. Father, This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long. Really, we want to be able to live that out, Lord. Lord, our story, if we know you, is a story of nothing but grace, nothing but mercy. You've been nothing but kind to us and compassionate, and you are worthy of our praises. And we pray, Father, that as we look at your word now, that you would help us to praise you. Lord, that the fruit of what we see in the scripture would be worship to you, would be lives that bring all of our needs before you receive help and grace. But God, we just want you to get glory. And we want to get help from your word right now. And so we pray it and pray these things in the name of your son, because you say, if we ask anything in the name of your son, we will have what we ask of you. And so we pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. Well, today we continue this series in the Old Testament. Overviewing the Old Testament in 17 weeks is kind of a long Advent series, working our way through some central themes in the Old Testament, and ultimately seeing how all those themes are pointing us to Christ. So, last week we looked at wisdom literature. And that's Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. And this week, we're gonna talk about Psalms, the book of Psalms, try to overview it. And then next week, Song of Solomon. And I'm gonna give a view of that book that is not super common in our day, but I will wait till next week to argue for that and preach that, but that's next week. So let me remind us what we're doing in this series. We are going through the Old Testament, getting our cues really from the New Testament authors. For example, Peter, the Apostle Peter, who says in 1 Peter 3, all these things that have been written for you, meaning the Old Testament scriptures have been written for your sake. And he's saying this to New Testament churches. So we are reading New Testament authors over and over again in the New Testament who are saying the Old Testament is actually Christian literature and that these Old Testament scriptures are preaching the gospel to you. And so that's how we're understanding the Old Testament. We're going back and looking at the Old Testament and trying to see how it's all pointing to Christ and how Christian actually the Old Testament really is. That's what this series is seeking to do. So today we come to the Psalms. As we come to the Psalms, I want to say a few things about the structure and context of the Psalms. Could you turn me up just a little bit, brother, on this? I feel like I'm yelling. I don't want to yell the whole time. As you're looking through the Psalms, you'll notice there is 150 of them. All right? And the other thing you will notice if you pay, that's an easy thing to notice as you're looking through, but the not so obvious thing is that these 150 Psalms are broken into five books. And we know that there's five books there because each of the book ends with a doxology. And you may think at first, well, how do we, five books, how do we know that's something that we should pay attention to? And I would say because of those doxologies that end each of those five books and those five sections, those are actually divinely inspired. They're part of inspiration of scripture. And so those five sections actually matter when it comes to understanding the Psalms. And so I think there's a slide for this. You can see the divisions of these five books. And I would ask this question, why five books? Why five divisions in the Psalms? What's the point of this? And James Hamilton helps us. And he basically divides these and explains them like this, that book one and two, which is one through 72, essentially, you have much of David's life. Actually, half of the Psalms are written by David. Book 3, which would be Psalms 73-89, it really begins to reveal the discouragement of Israel that the Davidic King is no longer on the throne. He's no longer reigning over Israel, and there's this discouragement. And then Psalms 90-106 and Book 4 talk about this new and better exodus that's coming. And then that last book, that final book, what's often called Psalms of Ascent, it really begins to describe this new and better Davidic kingdom that is to come. So why do I point this out? I think mainly to say these aren't random. They're not just a bunch of random Psalms. There is a logical gospel progression, even in the flow of the Psalms and how they're laid out. And it's quite brilliant. I mean, it starts, you see this anointed King in Zion, Psalms one and two begin to lay this out. And then you see he's not actually on the throne anymore. Somehow in here, David is no longer on the throne. This Davidic kingdom is no longer what it once was. And then you begin to see this longing in these authors of the Psalms that the Davidic kingdom would be established again and that they would be able to enjoy the rule and reign of, it says, the son of David. And then there's this anticipatory worship as God's people gather toward the end of the Psalms that they're gathering in the hope and anticipation that a new and better David is coming to set up a new and better kingdom for his people. And then we read into the New Testament. Jesus is called who, what? The son of David, right? And he is the anointed King come. It says his kingdom has come, right? John the Baptist says the kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus is here to set up a new and better kingdom. I mean, this month we saw this all over the place, right? Jesus is King. Did we not see that written all of our social media feeds? Jesus is King. Where did that language come from? comes from Psalms, right? It's being fulfilled as Jesus comes in the New Testament. So a lot of people don't necessarily notice this context or structure of how the Psalms are even being presented. This redemptive context. Martin Luther saw it. He actually called the Psalms a mini Bible. because he saw how these Psalms are giving an overview of salvation history from creation through the beginning of the law, given at Mount Sinai to the establishment of the tabernacle and the temple, all through the exile of Israel to the messianic redemption and renewal of all things. So Luther was reading the Psalms and said, this is a mini Bible. The whole story of redemption is here, but it's here in prayers and in songs. That's the unique feature of Psalms. So you get these doctrines, you know, like you'll see if you were to read Psalms 119 or Psalms 19, you get the doctrine of scripture. Or Psalms 139 and Psalms 50, the doctrine of God. Or Psalms 8 and 14, the doctrine of human nature and sin. Or Psalms 51 and Psalms 32, you get a lot about confession and repentance. So you're seeing all these doctrines in Psalms, but you're seeing them through people's prayers and through songs. You're getting this doctrine. And so one thing I want to make clear today, this is kind of my thesis for this sermon is to try to help us see at least at a basic level, we are, we're not really using the Psalms rightly if we're just reading them. We're kind of misusing the Psalms. If we're just reading the Psalms, that's not really why they're in the Bible, to just merely be read. They are here, and this is how Christians have used them throughout history, to be sung and to be prayed. And we're reading them. As we read them, we are reading people's prayers and we are reading songs. And so Tim Keller said it like this, he said, Psalms should be used and reused in every Christian's daily private approach to God. We are not simply to read the Psalms. We are to be immersed in them so that they profoundly shape how we relate to God. shape, reshape how we relate to God. And I want to just argue that the way that these Psalms are reshaping the way we relate to God is primarily as we pray them and as we sing them. Or as we read people's songs and prayers and join them and beholding God's glory in this book as a song book and as a prayer book. So when you open a Psalms think, this is a song book, this is a prayer book. I join the saints of old and all Christians throughout history using it that way. To use it to just to simply read is not really doing with it what it was intended to be done. So I think what's clear, I hope you're hearing it at this point already. It's that God really wants us to sing to Him and to pray to Him, and He's given us a book of the Bible to help us with that. Now, a lot could be said about Psalms. I mean, I'm trying to overview all of the Psalms today. That's the goal. And so, man, I read some kind of high-level journal articles this week. trying to figure out what not to get into. So we don't want to go into all the typology and the eschatological implications and the Hebrew parallelism and all about Hebrew poetry and the different interpretive methods. I mean, there's a lot of places we aren't going to go today because it would really be getting ahead of ourself if we first can't just open the Psalms and enjoy the Lord in them and pray. and praise the Lord because of what's revealed here. I mean, if we can't hit that basic level, no need to dig deeper, in my view. We haven't even begun to treat these rightly. So y'all kind of see where my two points are today. Two things I want to kind of focus in on is praying the Psalms, singing, and then I want to say something about how these Psalms point to Christ at the end. So let's start with praying the Psalms. Praying the Psalms, I really think every Christian, if you've been a Christian for literally a day or two, if you've been a Christian 50 years, you should be spending time every week praying the Psalms. I mean, there's really no reason not to. It can take five minutes, it can take two minutes, and you can be praying the Psalms. And you say, well, I'm not good at praying. Well, that's why you should pray the Psalms. This is for people who struggle to pray well. This will help us. So I hear all the time. I get bored with prayer because I feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over. I'm just repeating the same thing. Or I can't really think of what I should say when I go to pray. My mind just goes blank. Or I get discouraged because my mind wanders and I can't focus in prayer. We all struggle with these things. And so if you go, pastor, I just don't pray well. Well, I would say that's why you need to pray the Psalms. That's the whole point. Praying the Bible gives you the words to say. They're here. Praying the Bible gives you confidence to repeat what it's saying here. Great is the Lord. And then I just say, yes, Lord, you are great. You are great. Well, that's a prayer. I can sing that to him, right? We are doing what the Psalms are here to do when we begin to treat them this way. And if you lose focus while you're doing that and your mind wanders, you just look back at the next verse and you're back focused again. It solves many of our problems in prayer if we'll begin to do this. So maybe here's a way to say it. Your problem in prayer may not be so much you, It may be just mainly your method is wrong. Christians throughout history have found the simple and biblical solution to improve their prayer life is to pray the Psalms. Just pray the Psalms. Here's the problem I had when I first became a Christian, when it came to praying the Psalms. Nobody taught me that. Nobody told me I should do that. And so I'm like, I guess I need to pray. I'm a Christian now. I want to pray. Lord, bless my family. Lord, bless the country. Lord, bless my job. What else do I say? Right? Oh yeah, I've got people I want to be saved. Lord, save Derek. Lord, save Chad. Lord, save that guy at work. I forget his name. Lord, you know, it's just like, I'm trying to come up with stuff to say. And I would get bored. I'd be like, no wonder people struggle to pray. This is pretty boring. I don't really, I don't really feel like I have a lot to say. And that's a lot of Christians problem. And here's when the shift occurred for me is in college, I hit a moment of desperation. If you want to learn how to pray, just get desperate. You'll learn to pray. That's the secret. I hit this moment of desperation. And you say, well, y'all are probably curious what that was. I was a year, I'd been a Christian a year, and then someone, a pastor called me to be a youth minister for 60 kids. I didn't even know what the Bible was saying. I didn't know anything. And I'm responsible now to disciple and preach to these kids. So I'm going, oh Lord, I cannot do this. I just told him I would do this, but I don't know how to do this. And I was desperate. And I accidentally did the wisest thing I could have ever done. It was an accident. The Lord sovereignly made it happen, but I did not know how wise this was at the time. I went out to a parking lot every day for a few months, and I opened to Psalms 119 and just prayed it. I just started praying over Psalms 119 every single day. And so it sounded like this, verse one, blessed is the man whose way is blameless, who walks in the law of the Lord. And I said, God, I don't want to just teach your word. I want to walk in it. I don't want to be one of those guys that just teaches the Bible, but doesn't obey it myself. Please make me blameless in obeying your word. And then I looked down at verse two, blessed are those who seek him with their whole heart. And I'd go, God, give me a heart for you. I don't want to love all this stuff in this world, and then you're an afterthought. I want to love you with all of my heart, Lord. Please change my heart. See, it's telling me what to ask for, verse 2 was. And then I keep reading on. I get to something like verse 18. And it says, open my eyes that I might behold wondrous things out of your word. And I'm like, Father, I'm reading this book and I have no idea what to say. I don't even understand what it's saying. I need you to open my eyes so I can behold wondrous things from your word and then I can tell others. And I'm like, I can't do this, Lord, unless you open my eyes. And see, I didn't know what to ask for, but it was literally telling me exactly what to ask for. And I accidentally stumble upon something that I'm probably still reaping the benefits of in ways I don't even know. Because I just prayed God's words after Him. And the wisest thing I ever do was go out to that parking lot. But if I would have gone out to that parking lot and I didn't bring this, I would have lasted a few minutes. But with this Bible open, I could go for a few hours praying all of these words of Scripture. And the pages are all brown in Psalms 119. It's all nasty. Because I was in that hot parking lot, just didn't know what to pray, but just reading the next verse and asking it. Read the next verse, ask it. It sounds really foolish. You should do this in private usually, so people don't hear you. This was an empty parking lot. So listen to how practical this is. John Calvin, thinking about Psalms as a place to go to pray the Bible, John Calvin said, the Psalms are the anatomy book for the soul. He says, there is not an emotion that you can feel that doesn't get represented in the book of Psalms. And Athanasius, he was one of the early church fathers, understanding this, he said this, every particular need or trouble we might have, the Psalms gives us words to express them. Listen to that. This man was like, I don't know what Athanasius, maybe 200 AD. I forget when Athanasius was alive. He was early. All right. And he's already saying every, the Psalms literally gives us words to express every single need we have and also the remedy to treat our ills. So every situation I'm going through, every problem I run into, I have words to repeat to God about that situation and solutions. And saying those things to God is part of the solution. So if you have worries or anxieties, you could turn to Psalms 55, 22, where it says this, cast your burden on the Lord. And He will sustain you. And then what do you do? You read that one verse, Psalms 55, 22. Cast your burden on the Lord. He will sustain you. And you just say, all right, Lord, this is a burden for me. I don't want to carry this burden. You tell me not to. You say to cast it on you. I'm putting it on you right now. And you promise, Lord, in this passage, you promise that you will sustain me if I give you my burden. And then you get up and you go on with your day. He gives you the words and he gives you the promise. And you'd be amazed how much anxiety and worry would leave you if you would begin to do that. Let's think about depression. Does Psalms speak to depression? Martin Louis Jones wrote a whole book on spiritual depression from Psalms 42 and 43. He wrote the whole, it's a pretty thick book. It was a series of sermons they made into a book, but it was on Psalms 42 and 43. And listen, if you open to Psalms 42 and 43 and in your depression, in your time of darkness, I will not stand here and promise you that the clouds will part and light will shine down and your depression will be gone. That's not how it works. But what I can promise you is that when you read Psalms 42 and 43 in your dark moments, that you will be able to remember, this isn't unique to me. Other people have gone through this. Christians, people who love the Lord, have gone through what I'm going through right now. And the other thing it will do is it will remind you, there is hope in this moment and something good to come in the future. It will put hope in you that you will make it through the darkness and that there is light to come. And you desperately need that when everything seems dark and bleak. You need that hope. And if you're trying to help somebody, if you have a friend or family member, even over the holidays, who's struggling with depression, one great thing you could do for them is not say, hey, here's how you can get happy, but to say, you know what could be helpful? Read Psalms 42 and Psalms 43. I know you don't want to, I know that's probably the last thing you feel like doing, but if you would do that, God has something to say to you in your darkness. And the Lord could liberate them and give them great comfort and help through Psalm 42 and 43. Now, if we go to Psalms 51, you will find where I've spent the most time personally, because I have problem with this thing called sin. If any of you struggle with sin, you should live in Psalms 51. We're all sinning more than we realize. You know the problem with our sin oftentimes is we do it without realizing that we're sinning. And then oftentimes when we do realize we're sinning, we don't really care. It doesn't really bother us, right? Here's what Psalms 52 or Psalms 51 does for the sinner. It reminds us this should bother you. And then it begins to bother us, our sin. When we read Psalms 51, we read David's words, have mercy on me, oh God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. And then listen, against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. I wasn't thinking my sin was evil, right? When I opened Psalms 51, probably, but God just told me it's evil, but I can blot it out. I can cleanse it. I can wash it away. I can give you mercy. See, it changes your mindset about sin. It shows you this is actually far more serious than you think it is. Psalms 51 will show you, but I can actually apply grace and mercy. I can cleanse and I can take what your sin has ruined. Guys, some of you have ruined your souls with sin. Ruined them. You wonder why things are going bad in your soul and it's sin. It's damaged you. You can't just keep sinning as a believer and it not damage you. It damages you at the deepest level. But here's the hope of Psalms 51. Restoration is possible. And you have words to even know what to say to God. He tells you exactly what you can begin to ask Him. You can say, create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit in me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. You have words to express exactly what you need so that God can begin to rebuild what sin has broken down. Alec Motyr, who's a Scottish theologian. He says, here's what happens when we bring our problems to God. Every circumstance of life is transmitted into the Lord's presence. Now think about this. Listen to that last line. Every circumstance of life is transmitted into the Lord's presence. So if you bring your problem into the Lord's presence, It's transmitted there. It's put there in His presence. And when you bring your problem into the presence of God, it's not really a problem in the way it was a problem before. Something's going to change. Some new mercy or grace will be applied. And you will be transformed. This is so personal. You know, God tells us, He speaks to us through the Word. We speak back to Him in prayer. This is communing with Him. This is how we commune with the Lord. He reveals himself in scripture and speaks to us. We speak back in prayer. Let me move us to singing for a moment, singing the Psalms. Second point, Psalms form our singing. So I would imagine somebody here is thinking, are you saying that we're supposed to sing the Psalms? And I would say yes and no. Even the Old Testament doesn't limit us to singing the Psalms. So, Psalms 33.1 says, Sing to him a new song. So a new song is not a psalm. It would be a new song, it would be something other than the Psalms, so that's even in Psalms 33, 1. But the New Testament, listen to the New Testament, Ephesians 5, 19, says address one another and listen to the categories. Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. So we clearly have something more than the Psalms that we're able to sing to the Lord and encouraged to sing to Him. We're not limited to the Psalms, but although even a lot of the songs that we sing together as a church are rooted in the Psalms and come from the Psalms, we're not limited to that. So I want to kind of I think it's valuable to look at the Psalms regarding singing and not just think of it as our songbook merely, that is true, but to think that the Psalms actually disciple us how to sing. The Psalms will actually teach us. I mean, if we didn't have the Psalms, we wouldn't know much about singing. This really gives us most of what we know about singing in Scripture. 400 verses in Scripture on singing, most of them come from the Psalms. There are 50 explicit commands to sing in the Bible, most of those come from the Psalms. And so I was originally gonna just read about 50 of these to us and just let it all land on us, but I thought that's maybe a little overwhelming. So we'll look at one and then we'll unpack that. So just for a moment, let's, if you'll turn to Psalms 95 and we'll look at just verses one and two. It says, O come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come into His presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise to Him with songs of praise." So the first thing that I think we notice here, we should notice, is how radically God-centered our singing should be. That our songs are about Him. Our songs are to Him. It says, sing to the Lord. Make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come into His presence. Right? Everything is God-ward. Everything has radically God-focused. And... We see this in many other places. 1 Chronicles 16, 9. Sing to Him. Sing praises to Him. Tell of His wondrous works. Sing to the Lord, all the earth. Psalms 30 verse 1. Sing praises to the Lord, all you His saints. Give thanks to His holy name. So we're to give thanks to Him. We say, who's Him? All right, we're talking some vague God up in heaven, which God are we talking about? And the Bible is very clear that we're to do it to the name of the Lord. And for Old Testament Israel and the Old Covenant, that would have been Yahweh, right? The God of Israel, they would have sung to Yahweh. We're gonna sing praises to Yahweh. Here's what we do as New Testament believers post death and resurrection of Christ. We know Yahweh has come down to earth in the person of Jesus. He's lived, he's died, he's resurrected, and he has the name above all names. This is God become flesh, right? And so we sing to the Lord by singing to Jesus. We don't want, in other words, we don't want a Mormon, a Muslim, a Jew, I mean, we want them to come here, but we don't want them to be able to sing generic songs and be like, oh yeah, amen, absolutely. I'll sing that to the Lord, right? Because it's so vague in how it describes God. No, we're singing to Jesus, right? We're worshiping Jesus as God. And that would be how we would read these Psalms in light of Christ's death and resurrection. We do everything to Him. We preach in the name of Jesus. We pray in the name of Jesus. We give a cup of cold water in the name of Jesus. We sing in the name of Jesus now. That has been revealed to us. And so Ephesians 5, 20 makes it very clear. Give thanks always and for everything, listen, to God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Ephesians 5 20. All right, the second thing we've noticed here is that singing is in God's presence. It says, let us come into his presence with thanksgiving. Psalms 100 verse two says, come into his presence with singing. So I try to remember this when I'm preaching. So I don't say silly things. I am preaching in the presence of God. For God. Yes, I'm hoping to say something to you that would make you worship the Lord, but ultimately, I'm here in the presence of God, and that's the environment in which I'm preaching. Like, 2 Corinthians 2.17 says it like this to me as a preacher. It says, we are not like many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak. So that's true for me as a preacher. I should be preaching as if I'm in the presence of God because I am. The same is true for you as a singing. If we're singing in the presence of God, should that not make us open our mouth a little wider? We're in God's presence, right? So we don't need lights to, and turn the lights off and do our, we don't need certain things necessarily. If God is here, it's enough. How could we not sing? And then we have this motivation always in scripture, repeated in scripture, is a command. It's just commanded to sing. So I know a lot of times we go, well, I don't feel like singing, or I don't really like that song. Does it really matter if you like the song if you're commanded to sing? Does it really matter if it's not your style of music if you're commanded to sing? I've stood there on the front row, not literally there because we've been in other buildings, but for 11 years. And I raise my hands every single week because there's verses that say, raise your hands and sing to the Lord. And I don't always like the songs we sing. We don't pick all the songs we sing because I like them. We pick the songs we sing because they're biblical and true, and we think, collectively, this would be good music to sing to the Lord. But sometimes I don't like it. But I still sing that to the Lord because He's worthy to be sung to. Not just because I had a good week. We don't sing because we had a good week and we obeyed God good that week, so therefore I've earned the right to sing to Him, and I had a bad week, now I don't sing. No, He's worthy to be sung to. We're commanded to sing to Him in season and out of season. If I'm gonna stand here and preach to you in season and out of season, you can sing in season and out of season, right? Same principle. He is worthy of our songs. And you know what? He even made us to sing. The research is, it's interesting. We don't have Nathan, our doctor here today to confirm this, but take my word for it. There's a lot of research coming out in the medical field that heartfelt singing releases an oxytocin into the body, a hormone that helps alleviate anxiety and stress, boost your immune system, improve your mood, and some have said helps to cure cancer. That seems a little much, but, It's certainly helpful for you. I think we might be made to sing. God might have made us to sing from the heart to him. It seems scripture argues for that. And it tells us to do it with a joyful noise. Some of us aren't capable of that. All right, let's just admit it. There's a reason why I stand on the front row. No one has to hear my inability to sing with a joyful, good sound. Some of us aren't as gifted at singing well, but we can still sing with joy. We can still sing. with thankfulness to the Lord. But look back at the passage, verse one says, let us sing to the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise with songs of praise. That emphasis on joy and singing, this is what John Piper said about it. I think he's right. Singing is meant to be a wholehearted activity. Emotionless singing is an oxymoron. God gave us singing to combine objective truth with thankfulness, doctrine with devotion, intellect with emotion. And so again, if you had a bad week, irrelevant, you don't feel like singing. Not the point. You have to get, if we're going to be a church that really sings to the Lord, you have to get in your mind, I'm singing things that are true about God, even if I'm not always feeling them. I am going to say what is true of God, because it's true of God, even if my heart isn't there in this moment. And here's what many people have learned, and I will affirm this. Many times when you do that, God, this is true about you, I'm singing it. Your heart runs and catches up. Your emotions follow. Jonathan Edwards, In his Religious Affections, he says this, the duty of singing praises to God seems to be appointed wholly to excite and express religious affections. Music has a tendency to move our affections. And affections, and make a quick thing here, because we don't use the word affections much, but it's not the same as emotions. And Jonathan Edwards distinguishes this, that emotions is not the same as affections. Emotions can be provoked and excited through a certain beat to a song, or a certain melody. We're like, ooh, I like that melody. And it emotionally moves us. That's not the same as affections. Edward says affections are what is enabling us to treasure God. That's different. And so Edward goes on in this old book, right? 300 years ago, he's arguing for this. And he says, we are to, music is to excite the emotions into the affections. Or you could, you wanna get to the affections because the affections is what exalts the Lord, and that oftentimes will include emotions, but is not limited to emotions. And he says the way you get to the affections is, here's the quote, exciting them with truth. How do you get to your affections? Truth. That's why John Wesley and Charles Wesley wrote 6,500 hymns. 6,500 hymns, not trying to get hit songs on the radio, but equip the church with truth. If they could sing, they had a song for every sermon, basically. For every doctrine, there was a song to go with it. Now, I want to say something really to kind of get on our level here, because I know that some of y'all, I mean, this is just, it's easy to say, yeah, let's get together and sing, but realistically, that's not where we're always at, right? So there's, I heard this said once, I think it's helpful, that we can worship the Lord on three levels. There's three levels in which we're able to come together, sing, and genuinely from the heart worship the Lord. The first level is with all of our heart, right? You might come in here and you might really be ready to say, Lord, you have it all. All glory to you. You have my whole life. I just praise you with all of my being. You might be at that point. Maybe somebody was here there today. Many times we're not there. And so there's another level in which we can worship the Lord. And at that level, we're saying, Lord, I felt that before. I actually have been there before, but I'm not right now. But I want to be. And that longing to worship God with all of our heart, we give that over to the Lord as our offering, and He accepts it as worship. That longing to be able to worship with all of our heart. Now, sometimes we're not even there, right? We don't even have the longing. And I think at even at a third level, it's possible to worship the Lord where we go, God, I have no desire to sing to you. I have no desire to worship you at all. And that breaks me. I'm actually really broken about the fact that that's where my heart is at. And then if you offer that brokenness to the Lord, What does the Bible say? He will not despise the broken and contrite heart. He will not reject it. He will even receive that as worship. You offer your very distorted heart to Him. and brokenness and it will be accepted as worship. So I think in order for us to obey what the Psalms say, extol the Lord with joyful noise, you have to have a miracle of grace happen in your heart. Anybody can just say the lyrics on the screen. To say those lyrics and really mean them with some joy is a miracle of God. And it's one that we should earnestly seek for. It's one that's actually affected by others in this room. Listen to the verse again. Let us sing to the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come into his presence. It's corporate. This is something we do together. Now guys, this is the one that, I mean, for some of you, your background, you're used to, this is a weird environment here because you're used to a very blacked out room and stage lights and a lot of hype and excitement from the stage, right? And so what we do in our singing feels very foreign and odd. Like, why do we leave all these lights on? We could turn them off. We could black out this room. We could throw a lot of stage lights here and just tell everybody, get way, Adam, you got to get way more excited, man. You got to jump around. You know, like we could tell people to do that stuff, but, but I'm not going to say in every case that's always wrong, but here's what we're, we're doing the way we do it. Why do we turn the lights on? Cause we want to see each other. Because we think when the scripture says us to sing together, we should realize we're with others. I'm not by myself in my own world, worshiping me and Jesus and nobody else exists. I'm with the people of God. And so that might be a little odd to have all the lights on for some, but there's a reason for that. It's to help our corporate singing. Plus we have in Ephesians 5.19, it says this, address one another. in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. So our singing isn't just ultimately for the Lord, it's actually for the body. You know, you should sometimes get out of bed on a Sunday morning and say, I'm gonna go to church just so I can sing to the people of God. Just so I can sing to them. I want them to see me sing today. And that actually is a service to the body of Christ. You're obeying a one another command, just to sing to the people of God. Let me say one last thing on this singing portion. Singing is mainly about salvation. We see this in the passage. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. And guys, if they could say that in the old covenant before Jesus lived, died, and resurrected, I mean, how much more should we be singing about the salvation of the Lord now? This should dominate our songs. is the theme of salvation. And I'll skip the passages that I was gonna work this out, but to show that much of the joy that we're to sing with is a result of songs that center on salvation. And the Bible makes those connections repeatedly. Let me end with this. I wanna end answering, how did the Psalms point us to Christ? How do the Psalms point us to Christ? I'm gonna take three different Psalms and try to help us see this. So let's take Psalms chapter one first. It says, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. Blessed is that man who does not sin. That's how it starts. Well, guess what? That's not you. And that's not me. Blessed is that man who never sins. The book of Psalms starts with Jesus. He alone qualifies perfectly to obey that passage. Blessed is the man who walks not in sin. who sits not in sin, who listens and isn't entertained by sin. That's Jesus. He is the fruitful tree planted by streams of water. He is the man. Now, what do we do with Psalms 119? Well, first of all, we praise the Lord for Jesus, who was the man who didn't fail, but then we also follow in his steps. In Christ, we seek to follow and imitate in what it says in Psalms 1 about the blessed man. Let's take another one, Psalms 24 verse 3. You can flip to these if you want. I'm going to hit them pretty quick, but Psalms 24 3, who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing of the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. Who has done that? Who has ascended the hill of the Lord and stood in His holy place? Who has clean hands and a pure heart? There is one. There is one. And look, because Jesus Jesus ascended the hill, that hill on Golgotha. He could ascend the Lord's hill, and He could stand in that holy place, and He could issue salvation and righteousness to all who believe. Here's the last example, Psalms 22. And guys, we could multiply hundreds of these if we were to sit here and have time. I'm just picking out three random ones, but this one's significant. Psalms 22. David says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? David says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Because David said that, because David felt like God had forsaken him. It felt to David like God had forsaken him, therefore inspired by the Spirit, he wrote the verse. That's what's happening on one level. On another level, Jesus is hanging on the cross, bearing the weight of sin, dying in our place, and he says, quotes Psalm 22, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And we have now its ultimate meaning. Its ultimate meaning. David felt forsaken. He felt like, it felt like he was forsaken. Jesus was forsaken. Jesus really and truly and totally was This is why Sinclair Ferguson said, when David experienced these things, it was like putting his toes into the shallow end of the pool. But when Jesus says them, it's as if he's been totally submerged into the depths. So David's writing Psalms 22 and saying, God, why have you forsaken me? It feels like you've forsaken me. And he's feeling that and writing that. But then when Jesus says it, he actually was forsaken. so that you would never have to be forsaken. You will never have to go down as deep as Jesus did. So if you feel lonely, Jesus felt more. If you feel pain, Jesus felt more. If you feel betrayal, he felt more. He took these Psalms to their deepest meaning and deepest experience so that you wouldn't have to. He went all the way down into the worst emotions, worst suffering, worst judgment, worst hell. He went all the way down to the bottom so that you wouldn't have to. He took David's words and went to the bottom where David never had to go, where no one ever would have to go if they would let Jesus go down for them. And then Jesus went up and He took all of David's high emotions, all the high emotions, and He took them up. And He went down to the grave, but then He went up. And He went up next to the Father and ascended next to the Father. Why? So that you could. So that you could experience the high emotions in Psalms. So that you could experience the life that you would never on your own. Guys, what an awesome gift we have in the book of Psalms. What a gift. What a gift. Let's spend our lives in the book of Psalms and thank the Lord for it. Father, Lord, we confess our distractedness to often turn to other things when you have words of life before us. Lord, I pray, Father, that something that we've looked at this morning, something that's been said would draw us to you, would create affections for you. Lord, when emotionally we just feel dead and apathetic. We pray we would turn to the Psalms and we would not only see others who have felt the same thing, but Lord, that you would also lift our hearts and give us hope and persevere us because of prayers and songs here. But Lord, we pray more than anything else that we would see the glory of your son that we would see he is the greater David, and the greater David has come, and the greater David will come again and establish his kingdom forever. We praise you, Lord. Thank you for these things. And we pray them all in Jesus' name. Amen.