Worship Lessons from the Psalter

Well, good morning to all of you. It's good to see you this morning and we're so thankful for Matthew Smith and his ministry to us this morning and are looking forward to His ministry to us, this afternoon. We hope you'll join us for the lunch, following the service and the one hour concert, as we continue, worship, even after this service is concluded. I want to have you, turn in your Bibles to Psalm 19, which is where we'll start, today.

We've, we've been in the Book of Psalms, for the last 8 weeks, and this will actually be our final installment today will be our final installment in our worship in the Psalms, series. Our theme obviously today is worship. So to close off our worship in the Psalm series, I want us to take some time this morning to sweep together 5 lessons about worship that I think would be important for us to learn from the Book of Psalms. We can easily make a list of 100 lessons or more.

About worship from the Book of Psalms. but today, I just wanna focus on, 5 of them that maybe we would be especially helped and encouraged, by this morning. I do have to tell you, I'm, I had a dream last night, a nightmare actually. true story, I, I dreamed that by the time I was finished preaching the sermon this morning, that there were no women left in the room.

And only 20 men were left in the room. It was discouraging. And I don't even know why I would dream that. There's nothing in my message today, at least that I know of that would be especially bothersome to women.

And to most men, but I guess we're gonna find out, right? So if just one woman is still in here, and more than 20 men are in here when I'm done this morning, I will consider this morning a success. Please stay. but just as we get, get underway this morning, let me, start off by giving you a working, definition of, I think what it means to worship.

There's a lot of good definitions that are out there and they're, they're all great. just for our purposes this morning. we could say that worshiping God is anything we do, wherein we with deliberate intent, manifest our estimation of God as Most High. And thereby bring pleasure to his heart.

And when we say God Most High, we're talking about esteeming Him the highest being, the highest God, the highest good, the highest love, the highest satisfaction, the highest companion, the highest beauty, the first and best of everything that our hearts need. And worship is anything we do, wherein we are manifesting that this is how we view God and our intent in doing so is to bring pleasure to his heart. So with this definition, we can actually see that, that in all of life, we have opportunities to worship God in this way.

More specifically, we call our Sunday morning services worship services.

this is a worship service and we call it that for, a reason. It's because everything that we do here falls within this definition of worship. In fact, we could call our Sunday morning service worship on steroids. because it is the occasion in which the whole cornerstone body comes together to worship God and we get to experience the extra encouragement of worshiping God together with our brothers and sisters in, in the Lord.

And that's what we do from the music that, that we sing to the prayers that we pray, to the greetings that we deliver to one another in the name of Jesus, to preaching the word and listening. To the word and the offerings that we give. Everything we do in this gathering is worship. All the same could be said about our care group gatherings, each week.

And everything that we do in such gatherings, we are seeking to exhibit our estimation of the greatness of God and thereby bring pleasure to, his heart. And to that end, I just want us to focus, this morning. On 5 lessons about worship from the Book of Psalms that I think would be good for us to focus on, on today. 5 lessons about worship from the Book of Psalms that I think would serve to intensify and even expand.

Our worship of, of God. Lesson number one that we can observe and learn from the Psalms is that the ultimate audience of our worship is whom? God. The ultimate audience of our worship is God.

This point is an obvious point, but it serves as a corrective, I think, to a gut level way that we might tend to think about our Sunday morning worship services. If you were looking at the picture that I have on the screen, behind me, and I asked you to point out the worship team, I think most of you would would point to the people who are on the stage. if I asked you then to point me to the audience, what would you do? Many of you might point to the crowd of great looking people sitting.

In the seats in the picture behind me, but would that be accurate? And I would submit to you that that would not be accurate. The people in that picture in the seats are not the audience. the people on the stage, we would call them the worship leadership team.

And the people who are in the congregation and in their seats are the choir. They are the worship team. And the audience of the worship that they're offering to the Lord is God. Psalm 19 actually shows us this.

This is one of the passages we could look at, at many. It shows us that David thought this way, in the 1st 10 verses of Psalm. 19, David is singing about God in the third, person, indicating that he's either talking to himself or to his fellow believers or worshippers. And in the last four verses of the Psalm, David begins singing directly to God and starts referring to God with the second person, you and your And in the final verse of the Psalm, David looks back on the entirety of this Psalm, and he says to God, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, oh Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

David here in the final verse of this Psalm is expressing the prayer that everything he has said in this Psalm, whether he's speaking to God or to himself or to his fellow worshippers, that it be acceptable. To God. Clearly David is viewing God as the ultimate audience of his worship in this Psalm, the ultimate audience that David is aiming to please. We should have this mindset when we gather in our care groups and here on Sunday mornings, whenever we sing songs of worship, whether we're singing How Great Thou Art, when we're talking directly to God, or singing Bless the Lord, oh my soul, when we're actually singing to ourselves, or singing a song like Rise Up Omen of God, where we're talking actually to our fellow believers.

Whoever the immediate recipients are, the immediate audience is that we are speaking to in a particular song, we should be aware of the fact that our words are ascending up to God and our prayer should be let the words of our mouth and the meditation of our heart be acceptable to you, Lord. In your sight, because he is the ultimate audience of our worship. which means we're not the ultimate audience of worship. God is, and we are the worship team.

We are the choir being led by worship leaders to sing before God, who is our audience. Now again, you may say, well, I already know that and I think most of us when we think about it, already know this, but I would ask you, do you have that sense On Sunday mornings, for example, do you have the sense that you're standing before God in His presence, and you are worshiping Him, and he is your audience. If Jesus Christ were really in this room, in the flesh this morning, and up on stage, and we had a chance to sing to him this morning, How would you have sung during the 1st 25, 30 minutes of our service?

I've often had a fantasy as a pastor that I would never have the courage to carry out.

so I'll just describe it for you, and you can imagine me actually, doing this. Imagine. That we had a robed choir come up here on stage. This morning of 30 people, let's say, standing before you here to sing for you a song.

And imagine that when the music starts and this choir starts singing, half of the choir isn't even up here. Because some are running late and some got hung up talking to others in the lobby. Also, during their singing of a song, you see a couple of the choir members looking at their cellphone and texting someone on their phone. Imagine seeing a couple of others talking to each other and not singing at all as the choir or as the song is being sung.

Imagine that you also see a person or two with their arms folded and with unhappy expressions on their face. You can tell from the look on their face that the reason that they're not singing is because they don't like the song choice. Or they don't like the way the song is being sung. You notice that some choir members singing, they're singing with all of their hearts, but others are clearly not giving their best.

Sometimes they're singing, sometimes they're not. It's obvious that their hearts are elsewhere. You also noticed that some of the late arriving choir members go ahead and come up on stage and join the singing as the song progresses. And you even notice a couple of choir members who come up and join the choir in the last 15 seconds of the song, just in time to sing the last two lines of the song.

The choir ends their song with a big crescendo, and they all clap at themselves when they're done. How would you respond? If you were audience to that performance from a choir, some of you might be offended. Some of you might even feel disrespected as audience members.

Some of you might even get up and walk out. You would be thinking, really? This is what they do? How dare they insult us with such a half-hearted performance.

Some of you would probably go up to some of these choir members after the service and say, what are you thinking? This is a Sunday morning service. You've got to take this more seriously. And I know some of you would be writing comments on your connection card for the staff to read on Tuesday, and some of you would be writing things like, don't ever have this choir sing again until they get their act together, right?

But guys, here's my point. We do have a choir every single Sunday morning. And that choir is you. And the ultimate audience that you are singing before is the God of heaven and earth.

And I'll let you ponder how much we as a choir look alike or different from the choir that I just described. to you. And all I'm asking, this is challenging for me to even say what I have just said, but all I'm asking is this, do we think about the fact that God is the audience of our worship? And then worship accordingly.

Do we cherish this once a week opportunity to worship together with the entire cornerstone body of our brothers and sisters in Christ? Do we make an effort to be in our seat on time and ready to be a part of this choir when the worship starts at 10:30? Do we sing with our whole heart and with all of our might and give our best to the worship with a mindfulness that we are a part of a choir that is singing before the audience of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, who gave his best and his all for us.

These are just questions for us.

To ask, But the upshot of what I'm saying is that when we worship, we worship with A mindset that recognizes that God is the audience, not me. John Wesley. Once wrote out 7 rules for congregational singing in church, and the 7th of his rules was this, or at least part of it was this sing spiritually, have an eye to God and every word you sing, aim at pleasing him more than yourself or any other creature, see that your heart is offered to God. Continually.

That's great advice on how to please the one who is the ultimate audience of your worship. As for how to sing, John Wesley has another rule. It's the second rule in his list of rules for congregational singing, and it goes like this, sing lustily, not lustfully, but lustily. And with good courage, beware of singing as if you were half dead or half asleep.

But lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of it being heard than when you sing the songs of Satan. Let's take that council to heart and aim to please the audience of the Triune Godhead who is the ultimate. One who beholds our worship.

You may hear this and say this is great. I appreciate this point. I would love to worship God in this way, but I honestly don't feel worthy to come before God and worship. My conscience is tormented about sins that I have committed this past week and even prior, and I'm thinking that I need to take care.

of some of those things before I can come to God into His presence and worship Him. I'm glad you mentioned that because it leads us to a second lesson about worship that we can learn from the Book of Psalms, and that is that worship entails us talking to God about our sin. One of the great lessons, guys, that we learned from the Psalms is that confession of sin is not something that you need to do before you're qualified to worship God. What we learned from the Psalms is that confession of sin to God is worship.

It's one of the ways that we exhibit our estimation of his greatness and bring pleasure to his heart. It pleases him when his people confess their sins to him. We sometimes tend to think of worship as coming to God with our best, but worship also entails us coming to God with our worst and confessing the worst truths about ourselves to God. I ask you, do you think of God so highly?

And do you trust His goodness so completely that you are willing to come to him with your worst even? And talk about your sins with him. There are several Psalms of repentance in the Psalter, and the most famous of them is Psalm 51, and you can turn there if you like. The ancient superscription that is written above Psalm 51 is as follows.

Listen to this, and, and you would have this in your Bible in all likelihood, a Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone into Bathsheba. Imagine that. This is the only divinely inspired hymnal in existence and one of the inspired worship songs has a subtitle that basically says, a song written by David after being confronted for committing adultery. If anything should give hope to sinners who want to worship God, this should.

Psalm 51 teaches us that there is such a thing as worship after sin, even serious sin. But what lyrics are found in this song? Of worship. Listen to some of what David says as he talks about his sin to God.

He says to God, I know. My transgressions. Keep in mind these are lyrics. I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me against you, you only I have sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified when you speak and blameless when you judge.

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin, my mother conceived me. Guys, these are lyrics in a song of worship. These aren't things that David is saying before he starts singing to God. These confessions about his sin and about his sinfulness are the first verse of his song of worship to God.

Notice also that David uses biblical vocabulary as he speaks about his sin in these verses. He doesn't come to God and say, God, I've had a bad day. I've made some mistakes that I'm not proud of. I know people who have done worse, believe me, but yeah, I guess I've blown it and engaged in locker room behavior.

No, David uses biblical vocabulary to describe his sin. He uses words like transgressions, speaking of rebellion, sin, missing the mark, and evil, and iniquity, speaking of the perversity and the crookedness of sin. And instead of trying to justify himself for his sin, the only person that David is seeking to justify is God. When he says, so that you are justified when you speak and blameless when you judge.

David is saying, God, you would be totally justified if you judged me right now and gave me the death that I deserve. David then has an aha moment and says, behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin my mother conceived me. David is not here trying to blame his mother for his sin. What he's saying is, Lord, I'm realizing that my lying and my murder And my lust and my adultery was not me on a bad day when I just wasn't being myself.

These sins were committed by me on a day when I was being myself. These sins are merely an expression of the deeply sinful condition into which I was born. This is truly who I am apart from you and your grace. God, I was born this way.

And David is not saying that as an excuse. He says this as a confession of the depth of the miracle that he needs from God, which he's asking for. In this psalm David is showing us here how to confess our sins to God. He's also teaching us something about worship.

He's teaching us that worship is not something you do after you get your sin problem taken care of. Worship actually includes you bringing your sins to God, and laying your sins and your sinful self before God and speaking to God about the truth of it all. But worship entails us doing more than just coming to God and speaking the truth about our sin. Worship also entails us asking God to do an intervention in our lives and to deal with our sin problem and this leads us to a third lesson about worship that we can learn from the book of Psalms, and that is that worship entails us asking God to rectify our sin problem.

Worship entails us asking God to rectify our sin problem. That's how David begins in Psalm 51. He begins his song by inviting God to do a radical intervention on him with regard to his sin. Look at what he says, he says, be gracious to me, oh God, according to your loving kindness, according to the greatness of your compassion, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

There are 4 requests here, 4 things that David is asking God to do for him. In connection with his sin. First of all, he's asking God for mercy. And the Hebrew word that is translated as gracious in this text speaks of mercy toward a person in dire need.

David is admitting here that he is in desperate straits. He's admitting that he is in a spiritual condition that is comparable to that of a beggar, and he's asking God to reach out in mercy towards him and his sin. And David doesn't point to anything in himself that would make him worthy of this intervention of mercy from God. He says, be gracious to me, oh God, according to your loving kindness.

Which speaks of God's covenant faithfulness and love. David is staring at God here, and he's saying, God, I don't see anything in me that would make me worthy of such mercy from you, but I do see something in you that makes me daring enough to ask for your intervention of mercy. And what I see in you is your covenant love. And faithfulness, and I'm appealing to that and asking you to be merciful to me.

David continues and ask God to do a second thing. He says, according to the greatness of your compassions, Blot out my transgressions. To understand this request, we need to see it as a courtroom scene that it is. The idea here is that there is a list of David's sins that are written in the record book of heaven.

The sins of lust and adultery and, and murder and so forth, and God the judge is sitting on one side of that book. And David is on the other side with the book in between Jehovah the judge, and David, the sinner. And David knows as God looks at that book and sees the record of the sins, that God has every right to judge David based upon the sins that are written in the book. But here, David is literally asking God, To take an eraser.

And erase those sins from the book. So that God the judge will no longer hold those sins against David and judge him accordingly. This is essentially David in legalese, asking for forgiveness, for God to send away his sins from between God and him. This is an amazingly bold request to commit the sins that David has committed and then to look at the record book of heaven that God the Judge is sitting before and say, God, Could you erase my sins from the record?

There's something about God that gives David the courage to ask such a thing. He says according to the greatness of your compassion, I'm asking you to blot out my transgression. The word compassion speaks of a deep love that is rooted in a natural bond. It is a feeling love.

This is the Hebrew word that speaks of the feeling that parents would have when they see their children hurting. When my children were, were little and I would see them running on the sidewalk and they would fall and bang and skin their knees. I would feel something in my gut when I would see that. And I know you parents can identify with that.

It wasn't just their knee that got scraped and banged up. Something in my gut was getting scraped and banged up as well. That's what this Hebrew word means. And David is saying, God, I know that your heart is churning with pain.

With a pained compassion for me as you see me in my condition, and it's on the basis of this feeling love that I know that you have for me. That I'm appealing to you and asking you to blot out my transgressions and forgive me. Not just to take away my pain, but even the pain that is in your heart. As you feel so deeply compassion for me.

These first two requests from David are a part of his song of worship to God, but he's not finished. David has asked God to expunge, to erase his sins from the record book of heaven, but he's not content with that, and this is what's so instructive for us. In verse 2, David turns his eyes away from the record book of, of heaven. And he looks upon himself and he doesn't like what he sees in himself.

He is filthy. His sin has made him filthy. And David knows that it's even worse than that. David knows that the sin he has committed, have not merely made him filthy.

But his sins are a manifestation of the deep filth that was already in him long before he ever laid eyes on Bathsheba. David's got a problem in his person. He is a man who has the filth of a sin enmeshed in the fabric of his person. And he's now ready to ask God to do something about that.

And as we look at what he is actually asking here, I just want you to ask, am I daring enough to ask God to do this for me? So David says to God, wash me thoroughly from my perversity, from my iniquity. He's saying, God, I'm not merely asking for you to erase my sins from the record books of heaven. I'm not content with that.

I'm asking you to wash me. And to understand what David is really asking here, you probably should understand that there are, there's 3 Hebrew words for washing that we find in the Old Testament. One of the words means to rinse. Like you would rinse water over a dish, the surface of a dish.

Another word was often used to speak of washing the body, which sometimes takes a little bit of scrubbing, but it's still pretty much a rinse. David doesn't use either of these words. In verse 2, because he's not asking for a rinse. He knows he needs more than a rinse from God.

So David uses another word and he uses the Hebrew word that literally means to pound or beat. This is the word that was used to speak of washing garments, which was done a little differently in David's day than it is in our day. Nowadays we throw our clothes In a washing machine and the machine will toss our clothes around. In water and soap for 30 minutes.

But as one Hebrew dictionary says in David's day, clothes were not generally laundered by means of soap but were pounded on wet stones. Another dictionary says the word here that David uses means to make clothes clean and soft by treading, kneading and beating them in cold water. Clearly, this is a rigorous process. And David is saying to God, Lord, do that to me, personally.

What I see people doing when they wash their clothes in this way, I'm asking you to do that to me. David's use of the word wash is strong enough, but the literal language of David's request here in verse two is even stronger. We lose this in the English, but technically, there are two verbs in the Hebrew of David's request. Literally the Hebrew could be translated this way, Multiply to wash me, or abound to wash me.

Clearly, David is not just asking God to wash him once. He's asking God to multiply, to wash him in order to get the sin out of his life and out of his person. David is saying, God, I'm putting myself in your hands. And I'm asking you to put me through whatever vigorous washing I need to endure.

I'm turning the dial onto heavy duty cycle, Lord. And I'm asking you to wash me as often and as deeply and as long as is necessary until the filth of my sin. is completely purged from the fabric of my person. We're learning here that worship is pretty intense.

We're learning here that worship is not simply asking God to forgive your sins. Worship is asking God to purge sin from your life. And I ask you this morning, do you just want forgiveness from God? Is that as far as your confessions and your worship goes?

Or do you really want God to rid the sin from your life? That's what David is asking here. And his final request in verse 2 is for God to cleanse me from my sin. The term for cleanse here speaks of ceremonial cleansing involved in the religious rituals of Israel.

The whole notion of ceremonial cleansing is based on the premise that nothing unclean could ever approach God or get close to him. And David is implying here, I wanna be close to you again, Lord. Implied in his request for cleansing is the fact that he wants to be close to God and enjoy fellowship with him again. So he's asking God to cleanse him from his sin so that he can enjoy this restored communion and fellowship and relationship with God.

He's saying to God, Lord, cleanse me ceremonially. And thereby render me fit to enter into your presence again. And enjoy sweet fellowship. With you Ultimately from the language of just the two verses of Psalm 51 that we've seen, we see that David recognized that he had four needs as a result of his sin.

He needed mercy from God, he needed exoneration or forgiveness from God. He needed a deep and vigorous washing of his person by the hand of God, and he needed cleansing in order to enjoy a restoration of fellowship. With God, and God is the source of all of those things he needs. David doesn't try to clean up his own act, cleanse himself, wash himself.

He comes to God and he says, God, you're the only one who can do this. I'm helpless, have mercy on me, and you do these things for me. David here is singing a song of worship in which he's asking God to meet these needs. He doesn't ask God to meet these needs before he starts singing a song of worship.

He's asking of God to meet these needs is the first verse of his song of worship to God. So be encouraged. Confessing your sins to God and asking him to intervene and rectify your sin problem is, in fact, worship. Worship is not simply us coming to God with our best, it even involves us coming to God with our mess, our sin and asking him to do an intervention on us.

That is the stuff of worship. You may say, all right, Pastor Milton, I, I get that and I appreciate this encouragement, but I'm honestly in a place right now where I'm not overly bothered by sin in my life like David was in Psalm 51. I'm actually at a place in my life where I'm brokenhearted. I'm hopeless over my circumstances and honestly, I'm not just broken hearted, I'm actually confused and frustrated with God.

In fact, to be honest, I'm a little ticked at God. So I guess I have no business even trying to worship God. If I'm in such a place. Well, actually, you are in such a place to worship and that leads us to the 4th lesson about worship that we can learn from the psalter, and that is that worship actually entails us coming to God with our sorrows and our complaints.

Matthew Smith talked about this in the Sunday school hour and I believe we'll have that recording up. If you weren't here during the hour of Sunday school, we would encourage you to listen to that. It was just wonderful. Sometimes we may fall prey to thinking that worship needs to be happy and fluffy or it's not worship.

And that somehow a person has to get himself to a happy place in order to be truly ready to worship God. Some worship leaders, they start out on a Sunday morning coming out and saying, how do you feel? Asking their audience, how do you feel? Like there's some way you're supposed to feel to really be ready for worship.

But the Book of Psalms teaches us that worship is not simply coming to God with your good feelings and your happy thoughts. Worship also entails coming to God with your complaints and your sorrows. You'll be interested to know that there's, there's actually over 50, 50 Psalms of lament that are in the Psalter. Psalms in which the psalmist is expressing to God his sorrows, his anger, and even protest over some deep sufferings in His life.

Let me just give you one excerpt from Psalm 38, which is one of the Psalms of lament, and as I read these lyrics, I want you to imagine us singing these lyrics on a Sunday morning. Imagine these lyrics going out over the airwaves on KSGN radio. Listen to this. My wounds grow foul and fester.

This is a song of worship, guys. My wounds grow foul and fester because of my folly. I am bent over and greatly bowed down. I go mourning all day long.

My loins are filled with burning, and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am benumbed and badly crushed. I groan because of the agitation of my heart. And all God's people said, Guys, this is in a song of worship.

The psalmist is singing this to God. Laying his sorrows and his brokenness before God. There are many psalms like this that, and that go on and on and on expressing sorrow and pain in the life of the psalmist. And there's even more to it than that.

It's one thing to sing songs that are expressing mourning and lamentation. It's a whole other level of lamentation. When included in that mourning and sadness are expressions of complaint against God. Voiced in the form of questions being asked of God.

Yet we see these kinds of things in the psalter as well. Here are some of them in Psalm 13, the psalmist says to God, how long, oh Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? In Psalm 22, the psalmist says to God, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Oh my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, and I have no rest. In Psalm 44, The psalmist sings to God saying, arouse yourself. Why do you sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not reject us forever.

Why do you hide your face and forget our affliction and oppression? In Psalm 74, the psalmist sings a worship song to God and says, oh God, why do you cast us off forever? In Psalm 88. The psalmist sings to God and says, oh Lord, why do you reject my soul?

Why do you hide your face from me? Let me ask you something, are these questions pointing to things that are factually true about God? Does God ever reject his people? Does God actually forget their affliction and needs us to remind him?

Does God sometimes fall asleep and need us to wake him up? Absolutely not. But these questions represent the truth of how the psalmist is feeling in these particular moments, and he's pouring out his feelings to God. And the example of the various psalmist in passages like what I've just read, teaches us guys, that we don't have to wait around until our feelings are perfectly right in order to worship God.

Their example teaches us to pour out all of what we are feeling to God and to be honest with him. And these psalms of lament teach us something about the nature of true worship, and that is that true worship entails us actually pouring out our sorrows and our complaints and our questions, and our confusion to God. And I share this with you to encourage you. When you're in a place of mourning, don't feel like you have to dry your eyes and change your attitude before you can worship God.

Come to God with the tears in your eyes. And let those tears pour out into his hands. what God will do if you do that? He'll call what you're doing worship.

And you'll be able to look at God and say afterwards, Lord, you've put my tears in your bottle. You see guys, our emotions are often a mess. But in God's economy, the only wasted emotions are the emotions that you don't bring to him. The only wasted emotions are the emotions that you don't bring to him.

And if you find yourself confused or even upset or angry with God, and you feel that God has been letting you down in some way, don't feel like you got to get to a better place before you can come to God and worship him. Come to God with that confusion, and with that frustration and even anger and express your confusion and your complaints to God as a part of your worship. And God will call that worship. You see, you honor God and you demonstrate how highly you think of him when you make him the one that you run to in times of sadness and mourning.

You honor God and you show how much you trust him when you make him the one that you pour out your sorrows to and your complaints to, and your confusion to. So be honest with God. This is what the Psalms teach you. This is what we find happening in the 50+ Psalms of lament that we find in the psalter.

Honestly, I personally, I'm astounded that some of the Psalms made it. And the psalter. Especially the ones saying certain things to God and asking questions of him like what I just read. If I were God, there would be maybe about 125 psalms in the psalter.

I would have taken some of them and hidden them. I would never have wanted the world to know that people who believe in me and follow me ever feel this way about me. But fortunately, God is not like me. He inspired even the Psalms of complaint and lament, and when they were finished, he said, put them in the book, publish them for the whole world to see.

And God published them so that you, thousands of years later, will know that you're not alone in your sorrows and in your frustrations. You'll know that someone's already walked this path before you. God published them so that he could provide you with some vocabulary to help you to actually give expression to your sorrows and confusion. And he published them in order to let that it's OK for you to come to him and spill your guts to him, even if you're angry with him.

God is a big God. He can take whatever you bring to him. And he'll call it worship. You may say, all right, I got a lot of complaints to unload on God, so I appreciate the freedom to do this now.

I'm glad to know it's OK to bring my complaints to God, so I'm gonna start doing that. I'm gonna start writing edgy songs of deep angst and my album covers will never show me smiling. I'll always look miserable on the album covers. Well, I guess that's OK, but make sure you take one final lesson.

With you that you can learn from the psalter, and we'll just look at this quickly. This brings us to the 5th and final lesson about worship that we learned from the psalter, and that is that worship entails us letting God move us from complaint to composure. What you see in virtually every Psalm of lament with only one exception. is a series of complaints and questions.

And you also see the psalmist moving from complaint to composure around certain truths that God is helping the psalmist to lay hold of. We don't have time to develop this this morning in detail, but I would encourage you to read Psalm 22. The, the psalmist starts off, God, why have you forsaken me? Where are you?

In verses 1 and 2. And fortunately, David, when he utters those complaints, he doesn't just vent and then walk away. And make verse 1 and 2 his song. David stays in the presence of God and lets God take him to truths that he can hold on to.

So David is frustrated. In verses 1 and 2, but then in verses 3 through 5, he seems to grab hold of certain truths about God that, that seem to be encouraging and helpful to him. But then in verse 6 through 8, he goes dark and depressed again. But then in verse 9 and 10, he reminds reminds himself of some additional encouraging truths about God and his care for David.

And then starting in verse 11, David cries out to God and starts making requests of God, asking for God's deliverance and help, as he describes in vivid detail. The dire straits that he's in in his condition of suffering. By the time he reaches the end of verse 21, he reached a point of catharsis. And he starts praising God and pronouncing truth about him and verses 22 to 31 are nothing but positive affirmations of truth about God that David is clinging to.

And the Psalm, not every Psalm does this, but the Psalm ends on a high note. David is still in his painful circumstances, but his heart is in a better place of understanding and of trust and hope in God. When you read Psalms like Psalm 22, it feels like you're listening in on a therapy session actually. Where David starts off in a low place, he wavers back and forth, but eventually he reaches a place of composure and grounding.

And hope in God. So here's the lesson that we learned from Psalm 22 and other Psalms of lament. Yes, your worship does entail you coming to God and being honest with him about your sorrows, your frustration, even your anger, and your confusion. Even when that comes out ugly.

But worship also entails you sticking around in the presence of God, staying there after you're done venting. And allowing God to move in your heart and lead you into truths about Himself that you can lay hold of and be helped by in the midst of your confusion. And suffering In other words, the Psalms teach you not to let your lament be the end of the story. Let your lament be the first step towards a transformed outlook.

Do what the psalmists do. As Timothy Keller says, the psalmist neither stuff their feelings nor ventilate them. They pray them. They take them into the presence of God until they change or understand them.

Oh I'll tell you just in closing, the one Psalm that's the exception to that rule is Psalm 88, which from beginning to the end is nothing but negativity and defeat and sorrow, confusion. And dismay. And that psalm, I think the Lord puts in the saltar to say, what, sometimes you don't get it all worked out and end up in a better place in one sitting, and that's OK too. Come to me, pour out your heart to me, and I will call that worship.

What a god We have I'll close with this. When I was in college, I came across a passage in a book and I immediately wrote it in the back of my Bible. It was written by Dinah Crake, speaking in praise of friendship over a century ago, and she said this, just listen, she says, oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person. Having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

And the message of the Psalms, guys, is that the Most High God. is our most high friend who is just like this, and he's even better than what Dinah Craig describes cause he doesn't just keep the grain that we bring to him. He even cherishes the chaff of our raw emotions that we come to him with. And he patiently works with us to move us from a place of sin.

To a place of freedom From a place of complaint to a place of composure in Him. And that, that's a God worth worshiping. Let's pray together. Lord, we do pray and ask you to make us a deeply honest people.

We pray that we would make rich use of the psalter. We thank you for the things that we've learned over the past 8 weeks that I think have whetted our appetite and appreciation for this wonderful inspired hymnal that we find in our Bibles. May we go deep in the psalter and allow its current to carry us toward you in good times, in bad times, in times of Rejoicing and in times of heartache in times of understanding and celebration when everything's making sense and even in times when we're shattered and nothing makes sense and even you don't make sense.

Help us to make you our most high friend that we run to.

In all of these varied circumstances. And worship you from where we're at. And we thank you that worship is such that you, you receive us into your presence, where we're at, and you don't leave us there. But you mold and shape us and transform us when we are before you in worship.

We praise you, Lord We praise you for your goodness, especially as it's been manifested through Jesus. His death on the cross, how he came to earth and died on the cross, and when he was on the cross, he asked why. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He asked our question.

That we ask in our times of brokenness and despair. You get it. And you receive us into your presence in such moments to worship you. We thank you, Lord, for this opportunity to give up our offerings to you.

We pray that you would receive these funds and do much. With every penny that is given for the glory of Jesus, for the spread. Of the good news of salvation through him. We give ourselves to you in Christ's name, and all God's people said, Amen.