Everything That Lives and Breathes

Filter Resources:

Everything That Lives and Breathes

If you have your Bibles, I would invite you to turn with me to Psalm 150. Sixteen years and two months ago, on September 1, 1996, I preached my first Sunday evening sermon as the minister of First Presbyterian Church on Psalm 1. Sixteen years and two months later, here we are at Psalm 150! Now if I had preached it all the way through, we could have done it in three years, but it was the first book of the Psalms, and Genesis, the second book of the Psalms, and Exodus, the third book of the Psalms, and then Numbers and Leviticus got — they happened on Wednesday nights mostly, but then I did the fourth book of the Psalms more recently, and in between the third and fourth book of the Psalms, Derek Thomas came on and preached a lot of Sunday nights for a decade or more at First Presbyterian…

Good and Pleasant Praise

If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to Psalm 147. We’re coming close to the end, not just to the fifth book of the Psalter but of the entire Psalter, and you can feel, in these final psalms, that the arranger is building to a crescendo of praise to God. This psalm, like many other praise psalms, begins and ends with an exhortation for us to praise the Lord. You’ll notice that at the beginning of verse 1 and at the end of verse 20. But there are three fairly easily identifiable parts to this psalm and I'd like you to note them. First of all, you’ll see these parts by the series of exhortations. In verse 1, 7, and 12, you will find an exhortation to praise the Lord, to sing to the Lord. You’ll see that in verse 1 — “Praise the LORD! For it is good to…

In Praise of…God

If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to Psalm 145. As you turn there, I would mention that this is the last of the psalms of David. We've gotten to that point in the Psalter. And it's an acrostic psalm, like seven others that we find in the Psalter. That is, each of its stanzas begins with a consecutive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Five of the eight acrostic psalms in the Psalter are David's. He apparently really liked following the letters of the alphabet in the composition of his psalms. The five previous psalms that we've studied just prior to Psalm 145 were prayers in which the author lifted up often urgent supplications to the Lord for help in times of trouble and trial. The five psalms that follow this psalm are praises. And so it's very…

The Lord, My Only Hope for Strength, Love and…

If you have your Bibles with you, I'd invite you to turn with me to Psalm 144. This psalm draws on phrases and words and ideas found in a number of other psalms, at least four, but puts them together in a unique way. It's a royal psalm; a psalm of David. It's a psalm for he and his successor kings lifted up in petition to the Lord for the whole nation. And so it combines the kinds of content that you would expect in a psalm on the occasion of the coronation and installation of the…

Relentless, Consistent, Everlasting, Committed Love

If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to Psalm 136. As you turn there you’ll notice how many phrases and how many similarities there are between this psalm and the psalm that we studied last Lord's Day Evening, Psalm 135. There are a few items I want to draw to your attention, some of them that you will see in the psalm itself as we prepare to hear the reading of God's Word. In the Jewish tradition this psalm was known as “The Great Hallel.” Now you’ll…

I Love the Lord because

If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to Psalm 116 as we continue to make our way through the fifth book of the psalms. This psalm is the personal tribute of a person who has experienced an overwhelming answer to prayer and it supplies us words to pray and to praise with when we can't find the words we need to lift up to the Lord in gratitude for the answers that He has given to us in prayer. If I were to outline the psalm for you, it would go something like this. In…

Non Nobis Domine (Not to Us, O Lord)

If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to Psalm 115. As we read this psalm together tonight, I want to point out several parts of the passage as we look through it. The opening declaration of the psalm is the destination to which the psalm is going even though it is stated out front. Now how do I make that argument? Because of what it said in verse 2. In the second verse, we have a taunt from the unbelieving nations against Israel, and that is the context for this psalm.…

The Heartbeat of True Piety

If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to Psalm 111 as we continue our way through the fifth book of the Psalms. Hebrew poetry, unlike our poetry, is not based on rhyming, but you will find various devices in Hebrew poetry that indicate that it has an elevated sort of aesthetic style. One thing that you will find in Hebrew poetry is parallelism, where the same thing is said right next to one another in different words in order to sharpen our understanding of what has just…

O God, Speak Up!

If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to Psalm 109. Psalm 109 is a hard psalm. It is the last of the imprecatory psalms. That is, it is a psalm of imprecation of curse. It calls down God's curse on the wicked. And it is well that it is the last of the imprecatory psalms because it is perhaps the strongest and certainly the most sustained of the songs of curse. There are something like twenty-four curses called down in verses 6 to 20 in the middle section of the psalm in…

Search the Site

Subscribe for Updates