Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: — | Date: June 11, 2023 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

All right, if you will, take your Bibles, please, and turn to Psalm 1. Now this evening, as I’ve done on occasion before, I will not be expounding any particular psalm, but we’re going to look at another class of psalms, as you see on your handout, and that is didactic psalms, or teaching psalms. I’ll explain more of that in a minute, but let’s begin with reading Psalm 1.

“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 the scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He’s like a tree planted by streams of water that yield its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.”

All right, as I mentioned, we look tonight at another classification of Psalms, and we’ve decided to call this didactic Psalms, or teaching Psalms. And then we’ll, as you’ll see on your handout, there’s some subcategories beneath that that we’ll look at as well.

Explanation Of This Category

Now, first of all, an explanation of this category: all Psalms teach, but not all Psalms are specifically given to teach. So for example, we have seen Psalms of Lament. Psalms of Lament are given to lament and petition. Psalms of praise are given to praise. And psalms of trust are given to express trust in God. Now in all of those psalms there are teaching elements, but the purpose of the psalm is one of those other kinds of things. These psalms that we’re looking at now appear to be psalms that are specifically given to have this teaching function to the people of Israel, to teach them certain things, particularly regarding faithful living under God.

These Psalms are composed for that purpose. Psalm 1 is one example of that. I’ve given you some other examples of that on your handout: Psalm 19, Psalm 37, and so on. Others are just given to teach. Now these Psalms are not identified by a particular structure. We’ve talked about the structure and the essential components of some of the Psalms, like the laments, and the praise, and the individual’s praise, and the Psalms of trust, and they have a particular form that they follow. We don’t see that in these Psalms. They can have many different kinds of forms, but rather we determine this by the content.

The content is given to teach, to teach Israel regarding their faithful living under God. I’ll have more of that all along as I go, but let’s go ahead and look at some of the various types of the didactic psalms, or these teaching psalms. And I have three of them here for you. These are sub-genres of the teaching psalms: we have Torah psalms—that is, you know what Torah is, right? It’s the Hebrew word for law. So the law psalms that extol God’s Torah. Then we have historical psalms and then wisdom psalms. And I’ll look at each of those just quickly this evening so we can identify these kinds of psalms as we read through.

Torah Psalms

All right, first of all, the Torah psalms. And these particularly are Psalm 1, Psalm 19, and Psalm 119. Those of you who have read the psalms much at all immediately recognize these psalms as psalms that extol God’s law, extol God’s revelation, and praise God for the instruction that he’s given us in his word. The word of God, particularly in its instructive fashion—that is, its instructive function—that’s essentially what Torah means. It’s not just “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not,” but law, in the way it is used, means God’s instruction given to his people.

Often these Psalms then extol God’s law, praise God for his revelation of his word and the instruction that he’s given us, and then exhort the reader to live by that instruction that God has revealed to us. Particularly these Psalms stress the value of God’s law that has been revealed—”sweeter than honey,” those kinds of terms that you find—because they recognize the value of God’s word. He has given us his instruction, and if we live by it, we are the better off for it. And there is a great value then in God’s law and in having it.

So these Psalms extol God’s law, they exhort us to live by it, they stress the value of that law, the benefits of learning, the benefits of following, the benefits of meditating on that law, and so on. Psalm 1—and this one is, this one I think we could claim as a Torah psalm. We could also probably claim it as a wisdom psalm. We’ll see a little bit later. It kinda blends between them. But Psalm 1 is a clear example of this. It counsels us to meditate on the law of the Lord, to imbibe it deeply, to meditate on it all the time, and to follow it, and as a result of following it, be blessed. The blessed man is the one who follows not the counsel of the wicked. The blessed man is the one who delights in God’s law, meditates on it all the time, and as a result of having it, he prospers and he’s the better for it. That’s Psalm 1. That’s very familiar to it. We’ve been through it here together recently.

Look at Psalm 19. We have another example of a Torah psalm. You’re probably familiar with this one. In the earlier verses of the psalm, he praises God for his general revelation that’s been given to us in the created order. But then when we get to verses 7 to 10, he speaks of God’s special revelation in his word. So verse 7: “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.” Now notice here the references in each of the first parts of these lines reference to God’s revelation, his law, under whatever terminology is used: law, testimony, precepts, commandments, and so on. But then the second part of the line tells us its value.

“The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter than honey, drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned, and keeping of them there’s great reward.”

So he’s extolling the value of the law of God that has been revealed, and he’s telling the reader: “Live by that and you will be the better for it.” You find that often in the wisdom literature—we’ll talk about that in a little bit—that there’s this dual aspect of exhorting us to live righteously and wisely and following God’s law. On the one hand, it’s right and you ought to do it because this is God’s word and he has said so. But on the other hand—and there’s this heavy emphasis in the wisdom literature—you follow it for your own good. This is the value of God’s Word. As you follow it, you will be blessed, and you’ll find that God’s way is right and best.

Psalm 1 and Psalm 19 do that. Psalm 119 is a famous one of that. This is the longest of all the Psalms. This is a—if you’d like, turn there, we’ll look at a couple of them here. This is the longest Psalm, 176 verses. And it’s sustained attention given to God’s law, his statutes, his precepts, his commands, his rules; that kind of terminology is used throughout. And it draws attention to the life-shaping value of God’s word. And the whole psalm is given to that, extolling God’s word and telling us the blessedness of walking in accordance with what God has commanded.

So let’s take a few samples. Verse one: “Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord.” It’s a familiar theme in the psalm. You’re blessed as you not just read, but read and take in and follow God’s word. Verse two continues the same: “Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart, who also do no wrong but walk in his ways. You’ve commanded your precepts to be kept diligently.” Verse five, so the psalmist here makes this his prayer: “Oh, that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes.” And then verse six, the value of it: “Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments.” So there’s always that in there, that if I follow God’s law, I’m better off for it, I’ll never be ashamed, I’ll never regret obeying God, I’m always the better for it.

Verse seven: “I’ll praise you with an upright heart when I learn your righteous rules. I will keep your statutes, do not utterly forsake me.” Again, verse nine, now we have the value or the efficacy of God’s law: “How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you. Let me not wander from your commandments. I’ve stored up your word in my heart that I may not sin against you.” And verse 12, again, turns to prayer and petition: “Blessed are you, O Lord, teach me your statute.” So he sees the value of God’s word, he’s extolling that, turns it into prayer: “God, help me to follow your word, put this into my heart so that I live accordingly.” And the entire psalm, all 176 verses, is with that kind of a flavor.

So these are Torah Psalms that extol the value of the law of God that has been revealed. Now that’s a distinct sub-genre of the teaching Psalms, and it’s recognizable by its focus on the law of the Lord. It’s linked conceptually to the wisdom Psalms, and we’ll see that in a little bit. Wisdom is just—wisdom in the Old Testament is just Torah applied to a specific situation in life. The life of wisdom, the life of righteousness, is the life that is shaped by divine revelation. So these Psalms, Torah Psalms, are specifically given to praise God’s word. Psalm 19 that we just saw, there used to be a chorus that we used to sing in church some years ago. Do some of you remember that? “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.” Okay, now all of those verses is a great little chorus. It’s right out of Psalm 19. Might be a good one to pick up again.

Historical Psalms

All right, the next subcategory of the teaching Psalms is the historical Psalms. Of these, Psalm 78 and Psalm 136 are the most famous. Often these are grouped with wisdom psalms, but these are distinguishable by the fact that they don’t just teach how to live, but they do it by recounting Israel’s history. Psalms specifically recount what God has done in Israel’s history, mostly from the Exodus through the monarchy and those periods, and it recounts Israel’s history, not simply for history’s sake—it’s not just a history lesson—but the history is recounted as a vehicle for instructing and exhorting to faith and faithfulness and living according to God’s law. One commentator refers to these as “narrative law.” So it records Israel’s history, tells the story, but the point of it is to teach you to learn from history and to live accordingly.

So let’s look at Psalm 78. We’ll have an example of this. Psalm 78 recounts Israel’s history in order to embolden the covenant community, Israel, to fidelity. And the whole gist of Psalm 78 is our forefathers in the Exodus did not always trust God, and it didn’t work out well for them. So listen and learn. So there’s a recounting of Israel’s history and the things that went wrong with that first generation being led out of Egypt. They didn’t always trust God; didn’t work out well. So listen up and learn, don’t repeat their mistakes. That’s the gist of the psalm. And so, well, the opening verses actually are kind of reminiscent of Proverbs.

“Give ear, O my people, to my teaching, incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I’ll open my mouth in a parable out of their dark sayings. We will not hide these teachings from our children,” verse 4. Verse five: “He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel which he commanded our fathers to teach their children that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God but keep his commandments, that they should not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God.”

So God established these markers in Israel’s history, these feasts and festivals to be observed for the specific purpose of teaching your children what went wrong with former generations so that they’ll learn from that and not repeat their mistakes. So, verse 9, he begins the survey of Israel’s history. “The Ephraimites, armed with the bow, turned back on the day of battle. They did not keep God’s covenant, but refused to walk according to his law. They forgot his works and the wonders that he had shown them. In the sight of their fathers, he performed wonders in the land of Egypt, in the fields of Zoan. He divided the sea, and let them pass through it, and made the waters stand like a heap. In the daytime He led them with a cloud, and all the night with a fiery light. He split rocks in the desert, gave them drink abundantly as from the deep. He made streams come out of the rock, and caused waters to flow down like rivers. Yet they sinned still more against him, rebelling against the Most High in the desert. They tested God in their hearts by demanding the food they craved.”

So this is a recounting of Exodus and Numbers with the accounts of what the people of Israel did after leaving Egypt and tested God again and again. Verse 21: “We’ve recounted the history. Therefore, when the Lord heard he was full of wrath, a fire was kindled against Jacob. His anger rose against Israel because they did not believe in God and did not trust his saving power. Yet he commanded the skies above and opened the doors of heaven. He rained down on them manna to eat and gave them the grain of heaven.” Skip down to verse 35. “They remembered that God was their rock, the most high, their redeemer, but they flattered him with their mouths. They lied to him with their tongues. Their heart was not steadfast toward him. They were not faithful to his covenant,” and so on.

So the whole psalm is to teach Israel by recounting the unfaithfulness of their forefathers in previous generations. They didn’t trust, it didn’t work out well, God was angry, and they were the worst off for it. And so it’s an encouragement by recounting history, this in a negative way, in Psalm 78: learn from their faithlessness to be faithful. So history is employed to teach us to live faithfully.

Psalm 44 is another one of these history psalms. It’s not really given to history in the same way, but Psalm 44 actually recounts history in order to exhort the people of Israel to faithfulness. In this particular setting—and we’ll get to it months down the road when we get to Psalm 44—here, Israel has suffered some kind of a setback, a defeat of some kind on the battlefield. And so he, the psalmist here, recounts what God has done with previous generations. He talks about Joshua and what God did for him, leading him into the land and defeating one enemy after another. And then he complains that, well, we’ve lost it here. “You’ve made us a byword among the people. We’ve lost it.”

But the recounting of history in this case is to teach the people of Israel, even in times of defeat, to trust God and His promises, which we see often in the Lament Psalms, that essential element of trust, no matter what the circumstances. And so these history Psalms, like Psalm 44, are very important, pointing back to God’s faithfulness in the past as encouragement to the people of God to trust God’s faithfulness in the present and in the future. When I think of these psalms, I often think of those commercials that have been on the radio and television for years and years. It’s usually a commercial about the various investment firms. I forget which one would do it. They would talk about how they’ve invested and they’ve done well. Gets to the end of the commercial, you remember, it says something like, “Past performance is no indication of future results.” And it’s usually sped up. “Past performance is no indication of future results.” They wanna get off the hook legally, of course.

But these history Psalms, like Psalm 44, it’s exactly the opposite. Past performance is an indication of future results. Past performance is itself a pledge of what God is and what he does and how he’s faithful to his people, so trust him. And history is recounted for exactly that purpose. So history Psalms, given to teach, to trust. Sometimes it’s a negative example. Sometimes it’s like Psalm 136: “He brought us through the Red Sea because his faithfulness and steadfast love endures forever. And led us out with a strong hand because his faithfulness, steadfast love endures forever. And destroyed the armies of Pharaoh where his steadfast love endures forever.” And he recounts the history step by step by step, praising God for his acts in history, but the point of it is to teach us by those historical acts of God to trust him for what he will do in the present and in the future.

Wisdom Psalms

All right, so we have didactic Psalms or teaching Psalms of two kinds now: the Torah Psalms, extolling God’s law and its value; historical Psalms, which teach the people of God to live faithfully by historical examples or bad examples. And now lastly, Wisdom Psalms, and this is often grouped as a category by itself, but I think it’s probably best to see it as a subcategory with these others that are like it. The point is to teach the people to live righteously and wisely before God.

So, Wisdom Psalms. Before we look at these, look over to Jeremiah chapter 18. I’ll show you something here that I think is helpful in this regard. Jeremiah chapter 18. Jeremiah, as you know, is not dealing with a particularly faithful people, and they were rebelling against his word that God had given him. That was characteristic of them at that point in their history. But notice, our point is not to deal with that so much as to notice the way it’s remarked here in Jeremiah 18. Verse 18, he identifies three offices in Israel by which God revealed his will to his people. Jeremiah 18:18: “Come, let us make plots against Jeremiah. For the law shall not perish from the priest, nor the counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come let us strike with the tongue and let us not pay attention to any of his words.”

We have here the priest, the wise man, or the sage, and the prophet. And the function of these was to give God’s revealed will in some kind of way. The priests were to teach the law, to teach the Torah that God had given to Israel. The wise man, or the sage, was to give authoritative counsel based on the law that was given. He would give counsel regarding some specific area of life, applying the law of God to that situation. Proverbs is the most famous for that. So you have the priest teaching the law, the wise man or the sage who’s giving authoritative counsel based on that law, and then you have the prophet who delivers a new word from God, a new revelation that God has given.

So you have the priest who teaches God’s law so that the people know what God has required of them. And then you have the prophet who brings new revelation to the people of God, and he presents their responsibilities—matters of justice, covenant faithfulness, things like that—as well as God’s purpose for the future, to trust that as well. And then you have the sage, or the wise man, who applies the law of God to individual daily lives.

So we’re dealing with wisdom psalms. Now back to the psalms. Wisdom psalms are these kinds of psalms given to apply the law of God to specific areas of life. I haven’t yet outlined their wisdom connotations. It’s just a brief word of how this word is used in the Old Testament. The word translated “wisdom,” hokmah in Hebrew, is often used in other contexts which just means a skill. So the builders of the tabernacle had a skill in doing that. Those who built Solomon’s Temple were skilled in doing that; skilled administrators. The same word, wise, wisdom, was applied, but in that particular skill in that area of life. Government officials, particularly skilled in administrative work, the same word is used for that. So the idea is that of a masterful understanding or expertise in a given area.

Now in the Old Testament context, generally, wisdom is life-oriented. So it’s a specific skill in living, or better, the skill of living before God. The skill of living and navigating your way in God’s world in a way that’s faithful and a way that avoids the damage that is caused by not following God’s word. So it’s the skill of living successfully, specifically under God, the ability to navigate life according to God’s revealed will. That’s what wisdom is.

Now, because wisdom in the Old Testament is the skill of living before God, there’s an overlap with another word, righteousness. You live wisely before God. You’re living faithfully before him. You’re being righteous. In fact, you have those two terms used in interchangeable ways at some time. To be wise is to be righteous. To be righteous is to be wise. It’s what I’ve said earlier: that to live righteously is not only right because God has commanded it, but it’s in your own best interests. And so it’s wise. So to be wise is to be righteous, to be righteous is to be wise. And if you’d like, you can look over at Proverbs 9, verse 9, we have an example of that. Proverbs 9:9: “Give instruction to a wise man and he will be still wiser. Teach a righteous man and he will increase learning.” Notice the parallel in the first part of the verse with the second part, the second line: “instruction to a wise man,” “teach a righteous man.” A wise man is a righteous man. There it is.

Now, wisdom, as you know, in the Old Testament is grounded in the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Or in another verse, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. We find that in the Psalms as well. Psalm 111, if you’d like, the fear of the Lord—Psalm 111 verse 10: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” That is to say, if you don’t fear God, you don’t know anything rightly. Everything about your knowledge is out of kilter if at the bottom of it you don’t fear God. And that’s the outlook on life, and that has regard to faithful living, of course, in a powerful way. If you don’t fear God, you don’t know anything correctly, you don’t recognize who God is, you don’t recognize that we are his creatures, then you don’t live accordingly, and you’re certainly not being wise, you’re being a fool.

And so, living wisely entails living submissively to God’s revealed will. So, Psalm 19, we have an interesting use of the term “the fear of the Lord” is used as a synonym for the law of the Lord. “Fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.” That is the law of the Lord, but it’s called the fear of the Lord because to fear God is to live submissively to his revealed will. So the inspired sage then gives instruction to doing what is right and what is wise, and it has to do with a host of different specifics: matters of justice, loving your neighbor, treating your neighbor fairly, wisely, and so on.

Old Testament Wisdom Literature

And then that brings us to the next on your handout, and that is the Old Testament wisdom literature. The wisdom literature is a particular category of literature in the Old Testament, most often associated, of course, with Proverbs. Proverbs is full of proverbial wisdom and all of these sayings that guide us in how to live in various kinds of ways.

Some of the marks of wisdom literature are familiar themes like the two ways: the way of the righteous, the way of the wicked. You’ll have the contrast sustained in wisdom literature between the wise man on the one hand and the fool on the other, or the wise and the scoffer, or the wise and the simpleton. On the other hand, these are familiar themes in the wisdom literature. Another familiar theme in the wisdom literature is the value of Torah, the value of God’s law, the value of his word, living by it. And there’s an emphasis in wisdom literature on practical matters of living like honesty and integrity and ethical treatment of others, treating your neighbor fairly, and things like that.

Proverbs is the best known for that. Also Job and Ecclesiastes are recognized as wisdom literature. They’re a little bit more reflective. They’re not proverbial in nature, but it’s wisdom literature nonetheless. We have Job reflecting on the nature of suffering and why the righteous suffer. Taking that as the whole theme through the book; Ecclesiastes, the vanity of life without God—these are wisdom themes. Even Song of Solomon is often recognized as, at least portions of it, as wisdom literature. Portions of Deuteronomy, portions of the prophets are recognized as well.

Well, there are wisdom psalms then as well. And I put on your outline Psalm 37 as a good example of that. Wisdom psalms also instruct the reader in a right living or a successful living before God, and it touches on all kinds of aspects of faithful living. Psalm 1, again, that I mentioned earlier, it’s often referred to as a wisdom psalm. It has the familiar wisdom themes: the two ways, the way of the righteous, the way of the wicked, the way of the righteous prospering, the way of the wicked perishing. You have the blessed on the one hand and the cursed or the scoffing cursed, the scoffer on the other hand who perishes, and so on.

Well, Psalm 37, in many respects, sounds like Proverbs. Many of the statements in Psalm 37 are kind of proverbial. But even the ones that don’t, we have some familiar wisdom themes taken up into it. We have, for example, in the opening verses of Psalm 37, a warning against evildoers. That’s a familiar wisdom theme. “Fret not yourself because of evildoers. Be not envious of wrongdoers, for they soon will fade like the grass and wither like the green herb. Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust in him and he will act.” So you’ve got evildoers on the one hand. Don’t be envious of them and don’t worry about them and they may prosper. But don’t you be like that. Don’t be tempted to. You commit yourself to the Lord and trust in him and follow him. This is wisdom themes.

Some verses are proverbial like verse five: “commit your way to the Lord, trust in him and he will act.” Verse 16 is one of the familiar “better than” proverbs, which is familiar in the book of Proverbs, but in Psalm 37 verse 16: “better is the little that the righteous has than the abundance of many wicked.” These are “better than” kinds of Proverbs. Verse 17, we have a contrast between the two ways of the wicked and the righteous, contrasting their destinies as well. Verse 17: “for the arms of the wicked shall be broken, but the Lord upholds the righteous. The Lord knows the days of the blameless. Their heritage will remain forever.” And then often in these wisdom psalms you have command and admonition, prohibitions and so on.

Some of these wisdom psalms like Psalm 49 and Psalm 73 famously take on the question that’s familiar to Proverbs as well: the question of why the wicked prosper and why the righteous often suffer. It takes up those and comes back with us to trust God in those situations as well. Some psalms call us to fear the Lord. Some psalms are not fully wisdom psalms, like Psalm 37 might be classified, but there are wisdom elements in those psalms, and we can recognize those, be helped by it: calling us to fear the Lord, to trust the Lord, to guard our tongue. Those kinds of themes familiar in the wisdom literature. Treating our neighbor fairly and being just and so on.

Some psalms, like Psalm 34, it’s a mixed kind of genre. We have a psalm, the first many verses—I think it’s 10 verses of Psalm 34—you have a psalm of declarative praise. He praises God, but then in the very next verse, he begins a homily, where it’s kind of an exhortation to the reader. So you have kind of a sermon that’s given, and that could be classified then as a wisdom psalm as well.

All right, so we have these three different kinds. You have the Torah psalms, the historical psalms, and the wisdom psalms, and how they approach this generally the same angle, and that is to teach the people of God in faithful living before God. There actually are some other subcategories that some have pointed out: psalms of positive admonition, psalms of negative admonition. The minute it breaks down, it gets a little tedious. But generally, we should recognize that there are some psalms that are given to teach. I thought of that this morning when we were singing. When we were singing—which song was it?—”The True and Better Adam,” “The True and Better Isaac,” “The True and Better Moses,” “The True and Better David.” This is not a song that is given to depth of praise. But it is a song that we sang this morning that’s given to teach. It’s to teach us particularly how to read the Bible. That in Adam, we are meant to see the new Adam. And in Isaac, we’re meant to see the greater Isaac. And in Moses, we see a greater, and that’s how you read your Bible in the psalm. That song functions in that way as a teaching song.

The Role Of The Didactic Psalms Or The Teaching Psalms In The Psalter

All right, and finally on your handout, the role of the didactic Psalms or the teaching Psalms in the Psalter. I mentioned before that Psalm 1—I spent some time on this Sunday morning some weeks ago—Psalm 1 functions as an introduction to the Psalter. And it functions as an introduction to the Psalter in that it describes the kind of person who can read the Psalms, or better, who can sing the Psalms in praise to God. These Psalms are not for just anyone to be singing. These are for the righteous to be singing. God despises the feigned worship of the wicked.

And so, entering into the Psalter, we’re told, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, or sits in the seat of scorn. The blessed man is the one who delights in the law of the Lord. In his law, he meditates all the time, all the time, all the time.” So the blessed man is the one who treasures God’s Word. We find the same in Psalm 24, that he who approaches God and ascends the hill of the Most High is the one who has clean hands and a pure heart. This is a regular theme in the Psalter. And this is the role of these teaching Psalms.

God expects his people to praise. God is deserving of praise. He calls his people to praise. But those who can praise God are the righteous. It is an insult for God to be praised by those who ignore his law and defy his commands and don’t live accordingly. And so all the way through the Psalms we find reminders that those who may sing God’s praises are his righteous ones, his pious ones. They are the upright, those who keep the law, those who are the upright in heart, those who fear the Lord. Those kinds of statements throughout the Psalms reminding us that praise is for the righteous only.

The worship of God entails moral and ethical demands and requirements. If we are to praise God, we must not presume to praise him while rebelling against his law. And so, praise requires of us obedience, trust, faithfulness, treating your neighbor correctly. We’ll have one Psalm that expounds that at some length. The word of God must be reverenced and obeyed, and that’s when you can praise—when you are one of those people.

Now Psalm 50—I’ll have more to say about that in a minute—but Psalm 50 illustrates this, and let’s look at that. You have it on your handout. This is the Psalm of Asaph. It calls for praise, sacrifices of praise. This is what God wants from his people. He doesn’t need it as such, but he calls us to do it because it’s appropriate and it’s right. And look at verse 14 and 15. He explains who is to offer praise to God. “Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and perform your vows to the Most High. Call upon me in the day of trouble, I will deliver you and you shall glorify me.” Now he contrasts with the wicked, verse 16. “But to the wicked, God says, ‘What right have you to recite my statutes or take my covenant on your lips? For you hate discipline. You cast my words behind you. If you see a thief, you are pleased with him, and you keep company with adulterers. You give your mouth free reign for evil. Your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother. You slander your own mother’s son. These things you have done, and I have been silent. You thought that I was one like yourself, but now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you.'”

And then he concludes with a warning and a promise. Verse 22: “Mark this then, you who forget God, lest I tear you apart and there be none to deliver. The one who offers thanksgiving as a sacrifice glorifies me. The one who orders his way rightly I will show the salvation of God.” The point of all of these then is the role of the teaching Psalms in the Psalter is to say that God is deserving of worship. God calls us to worship, it’s appropriate to worship God, but apart from godliness, apart from obedience, apart from trust, apart from submission to his word, that professed worship is a sham and it’s disgusting to God and he won’t take it. To sing his praise while rebelling against him is an offense, and that’s a familiar theme, and I think I pointed it out before.

It’s a familiar theme, not only in the Psalms, but it’s in the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, chapter 5. It deals with an appointed way, and even in 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, regarding the Lord’s table, we find it cropping up again. God will not have us making a sham of worship by approaching him with an unfaithful heart. In fact, the worship vocabulary changes when we get to the New Testament and worship in the New Testament. Worship in the New Testament is not singing. Singing is worship, but worship is not singing. I’m always harping on this every chance I get. And it’s not that I object to calling singing worship. It’s just that when we call singing worship and nothing else worship, we forget what worship is in the New Testament.

The worship language in the New Testament is tied tightly to behavior and how we live before God and living faithfully before God, offering our lives as worship to God. Romans 12:1 and 2. The worship language picked up in that respect. Now we come together and it’s corporate worship. It takes the form of singing and praying and different things as well, and proclamation of the word of God and so on. But worship is more than just singing. And all of that to say it’s in keeping with this theme of the Psalter that—and these teaching Psalms are given to point that out—that we may approach God in worship only as we come with pure hands, clean hands and a pure heart. And so the teaching Psalms direct God’s people to faithful living as he requires.

Now, having said all of that, I wanna be quick to say something else. And that is we should learn to read the Psalms, I’ve said this before, at another level. What these Psalms command of us is that we must be faithful and obedient in order to worship God in an acceptable way. We must. But at some point, when we take that seriously, at some point we have to recognize my hands are not that clean, my heart is not that pure. And in that respect, we look to the bigger flow of scripture and we see that it points us ahead to the one who is, and ultimately our acceptability before God is in Jesus. But at the same time, it is calling us to obedience and submission and faithfulness in order to worship God aright.

All right, these are the teaching psalms. Now, I only have a couple of more topics in this Sunday evening series. Next, we will deal with the messianic psalms. And I’ll probably take a couple of weeks at least with that because it’s such an important topic. And then one more topic after that and we’ll be done with the psalms in the evening series. But we will continue the morning series of expositions. All right, let’s stand and be dismissed in prayer. Pastor Greg, would you pray for us, please?