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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Talking Points 1st Quarter 2024: Psalms

Kameron DeVasher

Mark Howard

01 How to Read the Psalms

Pastor Howard, we are starting a brand new year, a brand new quarter, of a brand new series of lessons all about the Psalms.

And there's no other title except for the word Psalms.

And so I imagine the bulk of our entire, in fact, the entirety of our entire quarter's lesson is going to be about psalms.

Well there are 150 psalms and we have 13 lessons so yeah we're gonna be a...

It'll be a venture to see how those are divided up and how to organize but for this first lesson it's titled how to read the Psalms and that's a general overview of the Psalms in broad strokes I suppose yes so you actually put our talking points together and I don't know that we need to have any other commentary except for to, you know, just introduce the new year and a whole new study series.

Yeah, and my intro in our handout, and if you're just joining Talking Points, you discovered it here in the new year, we have outlines that you can print off of our website michigansspm.org.

Go to the Talking Points, to our resources page, you'll find Talking Points and you'll be able, or on the YouTube link you'll find these, a link to these handouts in the description.

But my introduction this week is, this week's lesson serves as an introduction to this quarter's study in the book of Psalms.

Quite comprehensive in a single sentence, but there it is.

So let me have a word of prayer for us before we have study anything from God's Word and then you can lead us through our talking points for this week's lesson.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for a new year.

Thank you that we have the privilege of knowing you and studying from your Word and Lord as we turn our attention to the book of Psalms, help us to find inspiration and application in our own lives.

We ask and appeal for you to be our teacher and that our Sabbath school classes may be a blessing to everyone involved.

All right, Pastor Howard, how many talking points?

But we've got, yeah, So the lesson is kind of, it's a little bit daunting.

I think it's gonna be so awkward because there are so many Psalms, like how to read the Psalms.

There's really, the Psalms are very broad in what they cover.

And we'll touch on that, some of that this week.

Number 1, the Psalms were given by inspiration.

That comes from Sabbath, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

I probably could have put Tuesday in there as well.

But the Psalms, you'll see why that's important.

You could assume it, but yeah, we'll get into that.

Number 2, talking point number 2, the Psalms give practical instruction in spirituality.

And that comes primarily from Sunday and Tuesday.

And then number 3, the Psalms assume the immediate presence of God.

That's primarily drawn from Thursday's lesson.

Okay, so let's start looking in the Psalms and start talking about number 1, the Psalms were given by inspiration.

That's an important thing to start off with.

Sabbath afternoon's lesson, for the very first sentence is, the Psalms have been a prayer book and hymn book for both the Jews and Christians through the ages.

Now you don't typically think of a hymn book or a psalm book as inspired.

And so right off the bat you're kind of like, yeah, you know, the Psalms, you could almost tend to, Not that we don't believe the whole Bible's inspired But you can almost tend to write certain things in the Psalms like oh, these are you know This is just a song I was gonna say I was about to say the phrase just a psalm so you could have the picture where the Bible is inspired And then here in the middle is a certain little subset that's different.

Right and so but we need to keep in mind and incidentally These prayers and hymns are drawn from the varied experience of God's people.

When we think about the Psalms, and as I mentioned there's 150 Psalms, we always think about David.

David wrote a lot of Psalms, but he wasn't the only psalmist.

Monday's lesson introduces us to a number of psalmists such as David and Asaph and Solomon and Moses actually various levites and The sons of korah just to name some of the psalmists So there's more than just david and all of these individuals had their experiences reflected in these hymns and prayers that they wrote.

And there's a tendency even in higher critical Christianity thinking to say, well this was the product of men.

We do that, they do that with the Bibles.

How much more is like, yeah, these guys were just writing their experiences out.

And so that's why I'm emphasizing this point.

Yes, it was men who wrote those things like the rest of Scripture but the Psalms are part of Scripture so like the rest of the Scripture the fact that the Psalms are the experience of these men may lead some to forget that the product of divine inspiration.

Lesson says on Sabbath that the Psalms did not originate with mortals but with God who inspired their thoughts.

Well that goes to a deeper thing and I don't know if I'm going to get into it and have time for it now, but as we understand inspiration, because you say given by inspiration, well, how does the Lord inspire his word?

I think there's a tendency sometimes when we think of inspiration, we think of almost verbal dictation.

He like grabbed their arm and said write these words or force them.

But we know as Scripture reveals that the process of inspiration doesn't just move on the man's hand, it moves on the man himself and it changes his mind and he opens up his eyes and he in his own words communicates the message of God.

So the fact that you have, well there's a little bit of David and there's a little bit of Solomon, that doesn't make it, oh that's clearly just their input.

It's got their personality marked on it, but it's still the thought and the direction of God.

It's a, it's honestly a fantastic view of inspiration.

Not everybody shares that view of inspiration.

There are some people who do view inspiration as a dictation kind of verbal, I'm going, and probably the clearest, in my mind, indicator that that's not the way inspiration works are the 4 Gospels.

Because if it was dictation, why don't they all read identically?

Well, and if they all read identically, why only did you have to do 1?

And so you see that God gives a person the thoughts but lets them express it from their own perspective And it rounds out the viewpoint and God guides in that process and there's a level of trust Of course, you know, it's the same thing when people talk about translations and interpretations and, you know, how does...

You've got to believe at some point, you know, people say, well, the Bible, hasn't the Bible been tampered with?

And Ellen White actually addresses that, I don't have to quote in here, and she says it's possible and even probable, but if you're gonna let that stand in your way of believing, you're never gonna believe, and I'm paraphrasing that.

In other words, you've got to have faith that God had the ability to preserve the integrity of his Word, and more than preserving integrity, whether we're talking about the Gospels or whether we're talking about the Psalms with the varied psalmists, it actually lends to not just its credibility, but its benefit, knowing that your experience and your personality are not like mine.

And so if everything was just written from the perspective of my personality, I mean, how helpful is that going to be?

So God used a lot of different perspectives and in the process of inspiration so that they would apply to a broader audience.

Right, well I was just thinking of, you know, 2 Peter chapter 1 where it describes the process of inspiration.

It said, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.

So it's their words but still God's message.

Their personality is reflected and praise the Lord for that variety but it's still the trustworthy inspired Word of God.

That's right and and the lesson the scripture reading in fact this week Jesus not the scripture reading the the memory verse Jesus points out that he on the road to Emmaus he opened or he told the disciples that all things had to be fulfilled concerning him that were written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms and then it says he opened their understanding that they might comprehend the Scriptures.

So very clearly Jesus, or Luke at least, includes the Scriptures and Jesus when he talked about those prophetic Scriptures, the Psalms were part of it.

In other words, it wasn't a separate thing.

Yeah, and we even think of Jesus like fulfilling prophecy in his own life and ministry.

And on the cross, he's quoting the Psalms, right?

So Jesus, and that's just 1 instance, but the Psalms are not a subset of scripture that are somewhat less inspired because they're somebody's personal journal or prayer book.

They are just as much a prophetic book of God as anything else, so we need to regard them as such.

Well, why don't we go to Romans chapter 8, and why is this so important?

Well, let me see if I can illustrate it in Romans 8.

And I'm gonna have you read verses 26 and 27.

02 Teach us to Pray

Continuing our quarterly about the book of Psalms, we are now in our second lesson titled Teach Us to Pray.

So, Pastor Howard, I'm the 1 who put the talking points together for this week's study, and obviously it's about prayer connected with the Psalms.

There were some interesting things about this particular lesson that I felt could have been misunderstood or could be misapplied or something.

So we need to dive into a few clarifying points as we get into our talking points, but obviously the psalms are, were powerful in their own right, but were included in scripture and referred to in other parts of scripture, clearly as a benefit to us and a blessing to our worship experience and we're gonna kind of walk through that this week about how the Psalms were intended to be used for those beyond just the psalmist himself and recording for their time What's the application for us in our worship experience?

I think is the is the upshot of the lesson this week.

And so, we're gonna take a look at that, but before we do, could you lead us off with a word of prayer?

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the Psalms.

We thank you for the spirit of truth who leads us into a proper understanding of your word.

Lord, we ask this week that you would guide us through this Talking Points episode, as well as being with each teacher who's gonna be teaching this lesson, with each student who's gonna be participating in a local Sabbath school class.

We pray, Lord, this would be for our edification, and that we would be more equipped to be faithful in the mission you've given us to preach the 3 angels' messages to the world.

We ask and pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.

We're going to stick with that title in our heads for a long time.

But again, this week, the title is Teach Us to Pray.

So clearly, we're looking at practical instruction in prayer as relates to the Psalms, the book of Psalms.

Now our memory verse this week comes from Luke chapter 11 verse 1 where Jesus' disciples were, if you look at the context, Jesus was praying on his own and they overheard him praying or saw him praying and they wanted to have a prayer, a rich prayer experience in their own right, so they asked him, said, Lord, teach us to pray.

And that's where we get the modeled prayer that we oftentimes think of the Lord's prayer, which ironically, they said, teach us to pray.

So he said, when you pray, you say, right?

And so, but either way, the Lord was gracious.

He didn't say, oh, prayer can't be learned.

It's just, it's so ethereal, you can't put word to it.

We also know that the Lord's Prayer was not intended to be, not that you can't recite it, but when the Bible says Jesus spent entire nights in prayer and it takes you all of a minute to pray the Lord's Prayer, you know that it was a model, like a, you know, focusing on- like a template for prayer.

Right, a template as versus a prescription.

And fourth, it's more of a descriptive than prescriptive.

It should look like this, but not be necessarily these words.

These components should be part of your prayer.

How do the Psalms play into that prayer life experience, right?

Now, the lesson brings out how in the first paragraph of Sabbath afternoon that God placed a prayer book, the Psalms, at the heart of the Bible, not simply to show us how God's people of ancient times pray, but also to teach us how we can pray today.

So we're learning the goal, the stated goal of this lesson is to learn, I suppose, tips for prayer or things about our own prayer experience that we can connect with or derive from the Psalms.

Now, I do think there could be a misunderstanding this week because they invoke the term pray or praying the Psalms.

Well, even as you just opened up with A prayer book last week.

It was a hymn book And so in fact typically think of the psalms as a hymn and not that there aren't prayers and things in it we're not right but I think I'm going to take this opportunity to say there are times when I'm not sure where the contributor to the lesson was going and we've had that a lot and sometimes that we've had people say well you should really stick with the left our goal here in talking points is to try to communicate first of all we appreciate the quarterly but the Bible is our study guide.

And as a teacher, especially in a local context, when we gave the talk, somebody told me recently, I don't get your talking points out of the lesson.

They say, when I read the lesson, I don't get your talking points.

Like the reason we come up with the talking points we do, in fact, if I were to go over this lesson, I would probably come up with different points than Cameron did.

Just like you'll come up with different points.

Our goal in talking points is that you will come up with some points So you know what you're gonna present you're not wheeling into Sabbath morning saying well I don't know what to cover I'm gonna do as much as I can on a cram in here And then there's a lot of discussion and you're halfway through Monday, and you're out of time And so it's to give you but having said that as Local teacher, you know talking points is not a this is not a Sabbath school for you.

This is an instructional video for people who are either going to teach Sabbath school or participate.

You know, so, you know, some people get used to watching their other things online.

And So there are things that, observations we're going to have on the quarterly lesson, we're not trying to be mean or throw stones, but sometimes, like you said, you're going to read something and say, I don't know that this, I know people where this would come across.

If I said the Psalms was a book of Psalms and you're going to pray the Psalms, I know people who might take that the wrong way and as a teacher you're responsible to teach in a way that doesn't confuse the listener.

So ironically we just talked about how the disciple said teach us to pray and what he gave them his instruction was not prescriptive like this is exactly what he did but it was descriptive here's some things you could do in prayer and in the same way, much much much reduced deep shadow of that, right?

But we're not trying to say this is how your Sabbath school should be or this is what the lesson is trying to teach.

We're just describing how we encountered the lesson and our discussion about it that hopefully it'll benefit you in the in the field.

So let's get into our talking points for this week then.

Yeah so why don't you share with us we don't have 3 talking points.

We only have 2 talking points this week and number 1 is...

Hold on a minute, hold on, I gotta catch my breath.

Talking point number 1, praying the Psalms quote shouldn't be vain repetition.

Right, so and you're actually using a phrase of Jesus that we'll get to there.

Exactly, we'll get into that but we don't want to miscommunicate what I think the lesson wasn't trying to, and surely wasn't trying to say that, right?

And talking point number 2 is that the Psalms can be a great benefit to worship, whether it's through song or through prayer or through recitation of scripture and quoting it, the Psalms are a powerful, wonderful blessing to us and they're a great benefit to God's people.

And that was drawn from the whole week's lesson, from Sabbath all the way to the Friday's lesson, the benefits of the Psalms in our worship experience.

So basically, number 1 is about like, don't misunderstand it and misapply it this way.

But let's look at the proper application of the Psalms in talking point number 2.

Talking Point number 1, praying the Psalms, and I'm lifting that phrase from the lesson that repeatedly invoked that.

For instance, on Sabbath afternoon on paragraph 3, it says, praying the Psalms has helped many believers establish and maintain regular and fulfilling prayer lives.

And what do they mean by this take praying the Psalms?

Well, first of all, of course the word Psalm is mentioned in the Bible many, many, many, many times.

Most notably in the book of Psalms right a Psalm for this and a Psalm for that's each by the way This is a great point to bring it up It's not a it's not a Dogmatic thing.

I just think it's an interesting fact that the the book of Psalms doesn't have any chapters Right.

It's a collection of those individual psalms.

So referring to the psalms or psalms plural.

You go to chapter 19, you go to psalm 19.

Now, the Bible does refer to the Psalms or Psalms as a plural only a handful of times.

I listed them out and kind of jotted them down.

We have sing Psalms, they led Thanksgiving Psalms, let us shout joyfully to him with Psalms, sing to him, sing Psalms to him, speak to 1 another in Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, right?

So we have repeated instruction to sing in the Psalms or to even shout them to the Lord, right?

We can speak to each other and admonish or I assume edify each other with the Psalms, but I couldn't find any reference to praying the Psalms in the whole Bible.

Now I think, well, surely In that instruction, I mean, our memory verse comes from Luke 11, 1, where they said, "'Teach us to pray.'" And we would look at Jesus' instruction in prayer, which is found in Luke 11, 1 through 4, and all through Matthew chapter 6, verses 9 through 13.

03 The Lord Reigns

This week, lesson 3, titled The Lord Reigns.

Pastor Howard, you looked at this lesson specifically and drew out the talking points, and as I'm seeing each of these lessons unfold right now, there's not like going sequentially through the Psalms and say this 1 talks about this it's a collection of different Psalms around a topic or a theme and so the the reign of the Lord his rulership and administration of the universe is I imagine the theme of this week's lesson.

All right, I don't know much else we can say about that except we're going to study it out.

But how about I give us a word of prayer, then you can walk us through the specific talking points.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much that you are sovereign over this universe and that you do reign.

Please Lord, help us to see that more clearly as we study your word today and let every Sabbath school class, every teacher and participant be blessed through this study.

All right, well, for my study intro, I revisited the idea that the Psalms are praises not exclusively or primarily but we do know that the And this is something I don't think we did bring up when we introduced the book is that the word, or the Hebrew title of the book of Psalms is Tehillim, which means praises.

It's derived from the root word halal, which means to praise.

So we've talked about the idea of Psalms being praises, the lesson is the Lord reigns, and so what I've drawn in my talking points is we're basically praising the sovereign reign of God.

Yeah I don't know it strikes me we've talked about each week like really the book is a song book the next week it's really it's a prayer book now this is a praise book but they're all extolling God in some capacity.

Well when I say praise it's praising with instruments typically and that's what the language is in in the New Testament the word that's translated psalm, psalmos, has to do with praising with music.

I've drawn that primarily from Sabbath, Sunday, Monday, and Thursday.

Thursday is 1 of those things you'll see that for me it kind of was a, as you say, there's this topic, and then we're gathering Psalms from all over the place, and so Thursday to me was kind of an addendum, a little bit, and I worked it into Monday's.

Okay, so it's maybe not as directly related.

The Sabbath, Sunday, Monday, this first part, Praising God's sovereignty, talking point number 2, praising God's justice, and I've drawn that from Monday and Tuesday, and then finally, praising God's mercy, drawn from also Monday and Wednesday.

So Monday has a little bit of everything in there because it talks about the just and merciful and sovereign reign of God which we'll get into under this first.

So Monday kind of sets the stage and the other things kind of maybe flesh it out a little bit more.

Okay so let's look at number 1 then praising God's sovereignty.

Okay so first of all God's reign is sovereign.

I didn't realize this before until I looked up the etymology, the word meaning there, and sovereign actually comes from the first part of the word, it means super, and then it's the sovereign.

So it's the super reign of well whoever's a sovereign is the ruler of all things.

He's the 1 over all the other ones who could be ruling.

Basically and a lot of the Psalms bring this up that they're praising God because he is the Creator and He is the owner and he's the sustainer as the Creator.

He sustains all things some examples Psalm 33 verse 6 Maybe you could look that up.

I'll go to Psalm 51 Verses 10 to 12 33 verse 6 The psalmist says by the word of the Lord the heavens were made and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.

Yeah, and I meant, I didn't mean, and of course you want to read verse 9 with it because you're always For he spoke and it was done.

It's such a powerful little passage there So obviously speaking 1 of so many psalms that speaks of the fact that god is creator of all things And I didn't mean psalm 51.

I meant psalm 50 verses 10 to 12 For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills.

I know all the birds of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are mine.

If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine and all its fullness." Now, it goes on there to talk about sacrifices, which will play into what we're looking at in a minute.

In other words, when you bring me sacrifices, God's saying, I don't need these.

So, again, you're speaking to, the psalmist is speaking here to the sovereignty of God, the fact that he owns all things, he therefore superintends all things, he's over all things, he controls all things.

Yeah, you have the little note in there about 1 Chronicles as well, when they were gathering things for the Lord, it's like let's be clear of your own we have given you, right?

Everything we could give to you is yours in the first place.

Well, I mean, I really would want to launch into a, we get into this all the time about our works and legalism and our righteousness and, hey, be careful, you can't earn your own salvation, and you know what I'm talking about you guys know what I'm talking about and this verse I mean to me this is like this is this should be 1 of the very first verses a Christian learns first Chronicles 29 14 they've gathered all these offerings for the Lord and as David praised the Lord he says to the Lord, all things come of you, come from you, and from your own we've given to you.

Like what am I that I can take any credit for this?

When you realize that God owns everything, what am I giving back to him that he didn't give me first?

And this is where Paul says, if there's nothing we have that we didn't receive, and if indeed we did receive it, where's the boasting?

So again under that umbrella of God's sovereignty, you know, David acknowledges that.

It's not in the Psalms, but it was David who said that in 1st Chronicles 29.

Yeah, it's, that's a really interesting point too.

It's the same concept, what are the odds?

But I like how, and we don't need to go down this road, but we think of it material possessions.

Oh Lord, you created the heavens, so we're just returning to you.

Any goodness I have, any righteous, any good deeds I can do, it's not like my good deeds contribute to your good No, no, there is no my goodness.

So anything good I do is still you working through me There is no me in this equation Anyway, so again, we're talking about God's super reign, his sovereignty is the supreme ruler.

Now it's interesting that the lesson brings this up 2 places, Sabbath afternoon and also on Monday, both in paragraph 3.

So I've included both of those here in this quote, but I want to look at the first part that comes from Sabbath Sabbath afternoon paragraph 3 Why don't you read that first part there?

Sure the Lord's sovereign rule thus renders the world firmly established and secure Now again, I've taken out of context it says thus renders and so there's more that came before that but if you just I put that first part here to say that we're we're first talking about God's sovereign reign and because God's sovereign we have security but it's not just in the sovereignty of God.

I mean, God's, you know, there's the old saying, God's large and in charge.

I don't know if you've ever heard that 1.

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Series

Talking Points 1st Quarter 2024: Psalms

11 Longing for God in Zion

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