All right, good morning. Let's open our Bibles. You could be turning to the book of Psalms, actually the third Psalm, if you picked up a lesson book. That's the focus of today's lesson. I have some introductory material I'm gonna give to you and I'll explain why in a moment. I also wanna mention that Our Daily Bread, those are available this new quarter. Those are just devotional books you can take and give them to some friends. We have plenty. Those are available in the foyer as well. We're just completing a series of selected psalms on Wednesday night. That's what the children and teens studied here in the auditorium. We also looked, tried to stay in sequence with them each Wednesday night. And Brother Dewberry just picked out selected psalms. Of course, you can't do 150 psalms in just a few weeks, but we did look at Several psalms. I don't think we looked at Psalm 3 But we will be looking at that in just a moment, but I want to introduce some things I don't know if you can see the screen real well with a small screen because of the Bible school backdrop, but You can make the best of this The Old Testament is 30, I should have asked before I put this up here, 39 books, some of them are long books, some of them are very short books, some of them have many chapters and sections, and some have only one chapter really. But there are 39 books in the Old Testament, the way it's broken down in our English Bible, Interestingly, the first 17 are called historical books. The first five books, 5 Pentateuch, Law of Moses, Books of Moses, but then the history books, they're all considered history books because I don't think Genesis is true history. I think Exodus is true history. Numbers, Deuteronomy, they're historical books. They have some sermons in them and some Psalms, but also history. So there are 17 historical books at the first half of the Old Testament, and then guess how many prophetical books there are? 17. Oh, it's up there, if you can see it. Steve cheated. He went to Bible college, and so he knows that. But he's probably reading too. But 17, that's kind of interesting in a way, balance there. And the middle, the middle section, 17 and 17 equals 34. Thank you, Pat. And so since there are 39, we need five more books, right? And guess what those books are? And they are what kind of books? Poetical books. That's, I don't think you can see that. 17 historical, five poetical, and then 17 prophetical. Some symmetry there some some balance there in the Old Testament not always and this is from Bruce Wilkinson years ago. He had a Ministry called walk through the Bible. I'm not sure if it's still around but they had a lot of ways to help you remember the Bible history and Bible events and it was good with these charts. I borrowed it from him and used it before but we're in that middle section of the Old Testament for this study. The book of Job is a poetical book and well known because it deals with the whole question of suffering and also with the battle between Satan and the people of God. Satan's war is not directly against God himself. Satan's war is against the people of God and the things of God. That's the book of Job, book of Proverbs, self-explanatory really, a list of rules for life, rules for daily living, wisdom, practical wisdom. The book of Ecclesiastes, which I'm preaching from on Sunday mornings, Lord willing again today, is perhaps, I think maybe one of the most difficult books in the Old Testament. But I'll say more about that in the morning message. And then the Song of Solomon, which is, probably a music version of a Holy Spirit-inspired, poetry, a love story between two, and sometimes Bible scholars dispute about whether it's Solomon and another young maiden, or if Solomon's just an observer or whatever, but it is a fascinating, poetical play of divine love. But the book of Psalms, perhaps best known to most people. It's the most quoted book in the New Testament from the Old Testament. More quotations from the Psalms than any other book, I think. And in Hebrew poetry, Hebrew poetry is not like English poetry. There are all kinds of English poetry. not say normal, but regular poetry that we think of that has a certain pattern to the number of syllables in each phrase, and then there's usually a rhyme. The last words, either every line or every other line, sometimes, or double. English poetry, I think, is most often identified by having words that rhyme. That's pretty well known to us. There is poetry, English poetry that is three verse and that not rhyming and some English poetry doesn't have pattern to it, but that's sort of modern poetry. But Hebrew poetry is not like English poetry. That's pretty obvious. It doesn't have any rhyme that we know of. For one thing, it was written in Hebrew, not English. It's translated into English. We're very thankful for that because Hebrew is a very difficult language. But I don't even think there was rhyme in the Hebrew words. That was not their goal to have words that rhymed like glory and story. The Hebrew words did not rhyme. There probably is some kind of of meter, by that I mean some kind of pattern to the pronunciation of it. The problem is we don't really know what ancient Hebrew even sounded like. There are modern Hebrew language speakers. Modern Hebrew is the official language of Israel, I think. But scholars differ about how much Hebrew has changed from of the Old Testament to the present time, especially its pronunciation and how it's written and so forth. So Hebrew poetry is not like English poetry. Hebrew poetry is about parallels. Everybody knows what parallel lines are, two lines that shall never meet, they run alongside each other, parallel. You all are probably the last generation that knows what parallel parking is. Anybody? How many of parallel parking is your favorite event? Your favorite Olympic driving event, parallel parking? It used to be part of the test, remember? Actually, it was like half. Half of the test seemed like was like, can you parallel park a car? that parallel parking was harder for some people than driving. So I'm not surprised that we've sort of moved away from that. We do diagonal parking, we do parallel parking. all kinds of parking, but I think, do they still do the maneuverability test? The Y, backing up through the Y? Is that what they do? You should be able to do that, I guess, but parallel, you know what parallel means? And Hebrew, this is not mine, but one scholar, he found seven different kinds of parallel lines used in, when you're reading through the Psalms, you'll see this, you'll hear it even in the English, where like synonymous parallelism means the second line says the same thing as the first line with different words, but it's just repeating So sometimes when the Bible sounds repetitious or poetry sounds like, isn't he saying the same thing twice here or maybe four times? Yeah, intentionally so. He intends to parallel the lines synonymously. The second line repeats the first line. Antithetical parallel means the second line says the opposite of the first line. Now, it doesn't mean it disagrees or says some untruth. It just may be the first line says the righteous prosper, the wicked suffer. Sometimes they may say the opposite. But the second line contrasts with the first line. I'll go through these quickly. Synthetic, the second line adds to the first line. It just builds on it. Climactic parallelism, it has maybe more than two lines. It just keeps building to, it's telling a story or moving to a climax like a story. Emblematic, the figure of speech, the figure of speech is comparison, for example, is a figure of speech. A simile is when you compare something using like or as. He is like a rock. That's probably a compliment. If you say he's a blockhead, that's not a simile, that's a metaphor, and that is not a compliment, I don't think. You want to be a rock, but you don't want to be a blockhead. So similes use like or ask. We use them a lot. Metaphors we use. where you compare something without using like or as, you just say, but we understand the figure of speech there. There are more figures of speech than similes and metaphors. But the emblematic parallelism is the figure of speech is explained in the second line. He is a rock. He is strong and courageous, maybe the second line would explain the first line. Then you have alternate parallelism. This third line repeats the first, the second, the fourth. That means line A is repeated not immediately, but then the third line would repeat line one. And the second and fourth lines would be synonymous. Then you have chiastic. Chiastic's a good word for us because it's a word that sort of gives us the idea for the millennium or eschatology. But the second and third, the first and second lines are reversed in the third and fourth. So it would be, you'd say A and you'd say B and the third line would repeat the second line and the fourth line would repeat A. That sounds complicated. Well, try to memorize this. This will be on the test. No, there's no test. There's no test. But all I'm pointing out here is that when you're reading through the Bible and you're reading in the poetical books, you think, Well, it's kind of, we've got to slow down here and actually read what he's saying here. That's true of the whole Bible, right? You just, I guess historical narrative, when you say, when God's just telling a simple narrative, that's maybe easier to understand. But when you get to poetry, you have to slow down. because it's very easy to take it out of context, take a phrase or a verse and misunderstand what it's saying. So we may see that in the third psalm. So when you're reading through the psalms this quarter, and maybe there's psalms that you've read many, many times, and some of them are very familiar, and they've been studied by you and maybe memorized by you, and you're very comfortable with what they say, like the 23rd Psalm. I think more people have heard that psalm and heard it explained and probably properly explained many times. Not a lot of confusion about what is actually being said in the 23rd Psalm. Now, the 22nd Psalm, That's a little more difficult because most Bible students believe the 22nd Psalm is about the crucifixion of Christ. It's a prophetic psalm and it uses a lot of figures of speech and a lot of parallelism going on there. And some of the words are a little harder to understand. And this structure is helpful to us. Because if we get a difficult set of verses in Psalms, the first thing we could do is we could try to find out what kind of parallelism is going on here? Is he building a story here, or is he alternating lines, or is he saying the same thing twice? What's the pattern? If you can figure out the pattern, then Scripture really does become its own interpreter, becomes its own explainer. And the best interpreter of the Bible is the Bible. So when you're reading through the Psalms, especially this quarter, we're going to be looking for the kinds of parallelism that it is. Kim and I met an artist in Brazil. He, one of his hobbies, or I don't think he makes a lot of money at it, but he loves to draw sketches of the psalms. He gave us, this is Psalm 1 in Portuguese. You want to read that for me, Brother Steve? I can do that. You probably can, but your Bible's open maybe to Psalm 3, look back a page, and this is Psalm 1 in Portuguese, and it encouraged him to draw this sketch. I don't know if you can see that or not. Can you tell what that is? It's a tree planted by the water, which is one of the pictures in Psalm 1. And Marcus, he drew that for us and gave it to us. Isn't that the psalm you use with the ladies meetings, or you use Psalm? Psalm 39, yeah. All right. Now, back to your lesson, back to your book, you have your quarterly, we call them quarterlies because years ago they divided up the Sunday school year into four quarters, 13 weeks per quarter. Four times 13 is 52, 52 Sundays. So we're in the summer quarter and we're gonna be looking at Psalm 1 through 72. The aim, the author of your student book wants us to learn that singing songs of worship and praise will help us through good times, good and bad times. Lesson one, Victory in the Face of Defeat, Psalms 1 through 6. There are 150 psalms, Charles Ryrie said. It is believed that David wrote 73 of the 150 psalms, not quite half of the psalms written by David, the sweet psalmist of Israel. And the book of Psalms is divided into two books. This quarter we're looking at book one, and Book 2. Book 1 is Psalm 1 through Psalm 41, and Book 2 is Psalm 42 through 72. So Psalm 1 through 72 are the first two books of the Psalms. David wrote, Ryrie says, 37 Psalms in Book 1. and 18 in book two. So he did write quite a bit of the Psalms in these first two books of the Psalms. Charles Ryrie also points out there are different types of Psalms, and this may help you when you're studying the Psalms and reading it to get a sense of what it's about. There are Messianic Psalms. Most good study Bibles try to identify those. I think they'll put a star by the psalm or by a verse in the psalm. That means they think that the psalm is a prophecy of the Messiah. Jesus is the anointed one sent from God. They're called messianic psalms. Ryder says there are songs of lament or mourning, of sadness. Most recently we studied Psalm 137 when Judah had been taken captive by the Babylonians, and they were carried away from their homeland. They watched Jerusalem being destroyed, and they were taken away. And they got to Babylon, and there they were told, sing us a song. One of the songs that came out of that sad time is Psalm 137. It's a funeral dirge, really. It's a very sad song, a very sad psalm. There's an entire book of funeral psalms called Lamentations. Jeremiah wrote a prophetical book, but he also wrote a book of poetry called Lamentations. So there's psalms of lament. There are testimony psalms. Testimony sounds like what it means. Here's what happened to me. Here's what God did for me Here's my story Pilgrim songs were songs that they would sing on their journeys to Jerusalem God the Old Testament encouraged or required the children of Israel to make journeys to Jerusalem because that's where First the tabernacle was their place to gather, but then they gathered at the temple. They would go at the temple at least four times a year. Israel is not a huge nation geographically, but it was still quite a journey for some of them. And while they were making their journey, they would often sing these pilgrim songs. It's where the idea of pilgrimage comes from, taking a journey to Jerusalem. There are imprecatory songs. They're very difficult for us to understand. They pray for judgment on the enemies of God's people. We may see some of those this quarter. There are songs of repentance. Psalm 51 is perhaps the most famous in the book of Psalms where David has repented of his sin with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah and he has asked for forgiveness and he writes a psalm of repentance. There are several psalms like that. There are some wisdom psalms that kind of sound like Proverbs. There are some historical psalms that just relate the history of Israel. Then bribery says there are nature songs What he means by that there are just some songs that just praise God creation the heavens declares handiwork, or the beauty of the mountains, or the animals and the things that we still appreciate today. Even after 6,000 years of the sin curse, we can still look out and see the beauty of the stars. We can look out and see the beauty of the mountains. We appreciate the beauty of the river. I've lived here in this area now 25 years, and I don't ever, well, except during flood season or when it's storming, but I think the river's a beautiful thing. It's like, you see the light glistening across the water of the Ohio River, and it'd be a beautiful thing. You see the sun coming up, or you see, hear the birds singing, you know, there are a lot of, Beautiful things to see in nature and there are songs about that saying Look how wonderful God's creation is look how beautiful You know creation is so those are called nature songs or I already said types of songs we're looking today at Psalm 3 and we need to Key verses chapter Psalm 3 verse 8. They're not really called chapters. I Sometimes slip and do that, but they're actually Psalms. Psalm 3, verse 8. Salvation belongeth unto the Lord. Thy blessing is upon the people. Selah. All right, verse 8. Text the author wants us to see. This is from your student book, if you've had time to read it or you will take time to read it. Troubles, verses one and two. Faith, verses three and four. And Confidence, verses five and eight. You'll find, I think, that a lot of the psalms have even numbers of verses. And eight is a very common number of verses. Does anybody know the longest Psalm? 119 has how many verses in Psalm 119? Would it help if I told you that there are 22 sections of 8 verses each? 176. The interesting thing is each section of the 119th Psalm in some of your study Bibles, you'll see that each section is Starts with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet The Hebrew alphabet only has 22 letters How many letters does the English alphabet have? 20 Are you sure? Wow. Yeah, 26. I'm just kidding. I'm pretty sure there's 26. Yeah, 26, 22 Hebrew letters, 26 English. So that's four less. The Hebrew alphabet's a little different from ours. Even the letters look different. They're Hebrew. And if you have a good study Bible, it may give you the transliteration of that letter, and it may even show you what that Hebrew letter looked like in Hebrew script. But the 119th Psalm has eight verse stanzas, every eight verses. I believe it's an acrostic. That means the first eight verses of Psalm 119 begin with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph. The second stanza starts with Bet. And not A and B like ours, but it's similar. And so that eight verse collection is very common. And that's what we have in Psalm 3. We have eight verses. Psalm 3 is also a biographical psalm. Above Psalm 3, you may see this title. You should see this title, A Psalm of David When He Fled from Absalom His Son. This requires us to know a little bit about that event. As David grew older and the inevitable question of succession arose, who would be king after David? God had told David that the king would be David's son Solomon. But David's other sons, some of them had different ideas about that. And the one who led probably the most aggressive rebellion was a son named Absalom. It was almost civil war. David actually had to flee the capital. He had to, at the end of his life, run from an enemy, just like he had at the beginning of his life when Saul wanted to kill him. So David has to flee his throne, and the kingdom hangs in the balance. Of course, God causes David's enemies to be defeated, but the title of this psalm is When He Fled from Absalom His Son. It doesn't necessarily say it's about his deliverance, but some people believe David wrote this while he was in hiding while he was fleeing from Absalom. Verse 1, Lord, how are they increased that trouble me? Many are they that rise up against me. Absalom had been working the people, he had been politicking. Absalom had been, David was probably older and wasn't getting out as much as he once did, but Absalom was working the circuit. He was going around the country and he would, go to the city gates and meet people there. And he would say, you got any problems or anything you need? And they would, of course you have problems, don't you? Everybody has problems. You have business problems or maybe troubles in your family or arguments and so forth. And Absalom went around the country saying, if I were king, I would fix your problem. I guarantee you that if I were king, now maybe he started out saying, now I'm not the king yet, but if I were king, I would help you. He started making promises. You say, well, did he intend to keep those? I don't know. Knowing what I know about Absalom, I'd say not. But promises are easy to make, aren't they? It's easy to say, if I'm elected, I will do this and such. Or you send me to Congress, and I'll do this. And Absalom started politicking and became very popular. I should also mention that he was real handsome. Now, it might not be your cup of taste, but apparently Absalom had beautiful hair, long hair. Most of us do not have much hair at all. Of course, you're saying, well, I thought the Bible said it's a shame for a man to have long hair. Yeah, it does say that. So I'm not sure what was going on there. I know the culture in the Old Testament is a little bit different about some things. But Absalom apparently was very handsome. And when he walked in, people said, man, he looked like a king. He talked like a king. He would be a great king. All due respect to David, you know, but he's old. He's old. He's had his day. We need somebody like Absalom. And Absalom won the people's hearts. So when David says, how are they increased that trouble me, there were many, many people who were ready to follow Absalom. There were some of David's counselors, his cabinet, his closest friends. David's friends went over to Absalom's side. David was shocked and sad by that. It's one thing for maybe this young fella to get his friends, but evidently Absalom was able to gain the hearts of some of David's generation. Some of David's company. It wasn't. You can't just blame it on young people. Say, oh, those crazy kids. No, a lot of David's enemies that were increased were his generation. People that had once stood by him. He says, many are they that rise up against me. Many there be which say of my soul, there is no help for him in God. Now in verse one, If I had to guess, I'd say the parallelism in verse 1 is synonymous. See where I get that? How are they increased that trouble me? Many are they that rise up against me. Those two phrases are saying basically the same thing. So you say, How are they troubling Him? Well, they're rising up against Him. They're revolting. They're rebelling. So, that's synonymous parallelism. Verse 2, Many there be which say of my soul, there is no help in God. There's no help for Him in God. Now, that doesn't seem to be synonymous. That seems to be building a story there. A lot of people are saying this. What are they saying? There's no help for David. That phrase ends with the word selah, which we'll also see at the end of verse four and at the end of verse eight. Does anybody know what the word selah means? Don't be afraid because nobody really knows. You might have an opinion. Some people say, I think it's like saying amen, where you say, that's true. Some people believe it was some kind of musical instruction, like a lot of people think it means think about that, like pause here and consider this. But since it's part of the scripture, we read it and say it because God, it does cause us to pause there for a moment and think about what's just been said like it does at the end of verse two. Word for thought there. Verse three, but thou, O Lord, art a shield for me, my glory, and the lifter up of my head. This is while David is fleeing. He's on the run for his life, but he has faith. He recounts his trouble, verses one and two, but he's gonna believe that God will be his shield. He says, thou, O Lord, art a shield for me, my glory and the lifter up of my head. I cried unto the Lord with my voice, and he heard me out of his holy hill. David's going to trust God. He's not sleeping in the palace. He's not relaxing on the luxury of the pillows and tapestries of his home. He's probably sleeping in a cave or resting against a rock somewhere. But he said, I cried unto the Lord with my voice, and he heard me out of his holy heel. And then look at verse 5. I laid me down and slept. I awaked, for the Lord sustained me. Now, as far as I know, he's writing this while he's on the run. He's writing this while the kingdom hangs in the balance. He says, He had to be exhausted. He had to be stressed. But he said, I prayed, and I believed. God heard me, and he says, I laid down and I went to sleep. Maybe there were some who said, how can you sleep? Absalom's soldiers may be here at any moment. We may be overtaken. They're more against us than are for us. Verse 6, he says, I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people that have set themselves against me round about. Arise, O Lord, save me, O my God, for Thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheekbone. Thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly. Salvation belongs unto the Lord. Thy blessing is upon Thy people. Some people think maybe David added this or finished this when he had returned to his throne, but I think it's actually said in faith. David said, God, you've made me some promises. You made some promises about my kingdom and my successor. And that successor is not to be Absalom. I don't know how this is gonna turn out, but I don't see how you could keep your promises and let Absalom win. I'm gonna trust you to rise up and smite my enemies. David had seen God defeat his enemies many times in his life. He had seen God kill Goliath with a stone from David's slingshot. He had seen the house of Saul be defeated. David had seen Philistines and others be defeated by God's mercies and God's help. And he closes out with a testimony. Salvation belongs unto the Lord. Thy blessing is upon the people. So this is a autobiographical psalm. It's also a testimony psalm. It has elements of praise and problems, but it's one of faith and confidence in the Lord. He announces the trouble. He puts his faith in God and he trusts in the Lord. Salvation belongs unto the Lord. There are spiritual applications you can make of this. Every believer could say this about their victory in Christ. Our greatest enemy is sin and death. but Jesus Christ has hung on the cross to pay for our sins and has conquered death, hell, and the grave, risen victoriously from the grave and given us hope. And no matter what our trials and tribulations may be, our testing may be, we can lay ourselves down and sleep and expect the Lord to sustain us and keep us. and protect us and accomplish his will on our behalf. We surely know that he's promised to save us and keep us because salvation belongs unto the Lord. Even our eternal salvation that he gives to us when we put our faith in Christ the the Lord retains ownership of that He invests the Holy Spirit in us. He gives us eternal life that eternal life comes from God belongs to God cannot be lost because it's God's guarantee and Father, I pray you'll bless our study this quarter as we look through these selected psalms, but help us to build upon maybe some of the things we learned in the Wednesday night studies and add to our understanding. But help us to discover psalms that will be blessings to us and to others. Help us to learn how to trust you, to put our faith in you. Help us to learn how to encourage others who may be struggling, who may be going through trials and tribulations. Probably we don't have all the answers. We don't know how to solve. all the problems, but we know a God who knows, who cares, and provides for us. We ask that you would help us to praise your name today. When we sing in the congregation in the worship hour, whatever we're singing, help us to sing to your glory, and to your praise, and to your honor. Father, when we serve you, help us to do it in confidence that you would provide our every need. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.