His Love Endures Forever!
Psalm 136
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, we are taking our break from Acts a little early. Chapter 15 offers a natural break point in the story. So we will take a breather, incase you find the focus being a little stressful.
So for a few weeks we will be looking at the Psalms.
Let’s start with a few points of basic overview.
Within the book of Psalms there are 150 chapters which come from a variety of authors and are related to different events and situations. A large number are attributed to David and Solomon and some they say to Moses. But the only way we can connect them to the people are the editor’s notes which appeared Centuries ago. The Book of psalms is a collection of poems or songs separated into 5 sections.
Ok, poetry. Quick show of hands, how many enjoy poetry?
How many can write poetry?
Personally, I have trouble with understanding most poetry. I had to read a lot a couple of years ago in a literature class. The teacher would ask what it meant.
I normally could only explain what it said. I have difficulty in understand what the author was trying to communicate. I recall a poem about The Fall of Icarus. He wanted to fly so that he could reach the Gods. So he built a set of wings with feathers he collected and attached together with wax. It says, in the poem that he flew high enough that the wax melted and the wings fell apart and he fell to his death. The poem is based on an ancient myth.
It was hard to read as a poem, the language of the 1500’s and I thought it was good just to figure out the story.
I was often amazed when the Teacher would branch off into a long discussion about the human condition, how we all wish to fly in one way or another and more often than not come crashing to the ground. That this poem was a bout hubris….I did not know the meaning of the word. It wasn’t in the poem. Basically, pride, and what happens to people that are too prideful.
Poetry is a form of communication that expresses more than just the basic information. It communicates emotion, and point of view. It often uses word pictures that give meaning more than actual facts.
This morning we are talking about the Psalms and their usefulness to us in devotion and worship.
The Psalms are Hebrew poetry which is probably a big mystery to most of us. The biggest reason is because we expect poetry to have rhyming words and rhythm.
We understand great literary works like:
Mary had a little lamb,
little lamb, little lamb,
Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow.
And everywhere that Mary went,
Mary went, Mary went,
and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.
It followed her to school one day
school one day, school one day,
It followed her to school one day, which was against the rules.
It made the children laugh and play,
laugh and play, laugh and play,
it made the children laugh and play to see a lamb at school.
And so the teacher turned it out,
turned it out, turned it out,
And so the teacher turned it out, but still it lingered near,
And waited patiently about,
patiently about, patiently about,
And waited patiently about till Mary did appear.
"Why does the lamb love Mary so?"
Love Mary so? Love Mary so?
"Why does the lamb love Mary so," the eager children cry.
"Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know."
The lamb, you know, the lamb, you know,
"Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know," the teacher did reply.
But when we read the Bible, the Psalms, we don’t hear the rhymes; we can’t even seem to find a rhythm.
CS Lewis, a Christian writer from the 1940’s, describes the importance of the Psalms like this:
What must be said … is that the Psalms are poems, and poems intended to be sung: not doctrinal treatises, nor even sermons. … Most emphatically the Psalms must be read as poems; as lyrics, with all the licenses and all the formalities, the hyperboles, the emotional rather than logical connections, which are proper to lyric poetry. They must be read as poems if they are to be understood; no less than French must be read as French or English as English. Otherwise we shall miss what is in them and think we see what is not.
To start with, it is normally very difficult to get rhyme and rhythm out of a poem that is translated from one language to another.
The words that that author used were specifically created for the language it was written in. When Hebrew was translated to Greek and later into English, how much rhyme and rhythm do you think could survive?
As we read scriptures we often become confused at word usage and meaning because of repeated words and sentence structure. All too often we never recognize that what we are reading is poetry.
In the king James Version of the scripture that most of you prefer never even recognizes that the Psalms are poetry.
Most other translations mark the text in the psalms to indicate the special nature that poetry includes, such as imagery, emotions and not just straight details.
The Old Testament Psalms are not just poetry; they are Hebrew poetry. It has a unique style and structure of its own, very different from the poetry that we re accustomed to in English. It was never meant to rhyme even when it was first written. So translation does not totally destroy the original meaning.
There is the use of rhythm but, it is not as significant.
So why do we care if it is poetry if it has no rhyme or rhythm?
If we are reading a story that starts out, Once upon a time, do we make any assumptions about the makeup of the information in the story? Is it telling us that dragons are or were real?
If poetry is understood to communicate differently than a history book we need to know which we are reading.
Hebrew poetry generally has a pattern between certain lines in the poem.
They call it parallelism.
It works like this, the first line of the poem is expanded or restated in the second. It can be a statement of clarification, perhaps completion or it can be an opposite or contrasting statement. There are several flavors or forms within Hebrew poetry and we won’t go into those details directly.
So as poetry we expect the information we read to included figures of speech and the use of similes, her eyes were like blue pools of crystal clear water.
In the 23rd psalm the Lord is described as a shepherd and caring for us as we are his sheep, this is a metaphor.
It would be a BAAAD idea to take the passage to mean that we are really sheep.
We will talk about some other characteristics of Hebrew poetry in the next couple of weeks.
What you need to understand right now is that when you read psalms you are reading material that is intended to get your mind to meditating. It is like listening to radio stories like on the Christian station in Chattanooga on Saturday morning. I like, “Ranger Bill, warrior of the woodlands.”
When I listen to the story I can take my personal experience and let the images that the story tells come alive in my mind. When they describe going to the mountains, I see the Rockies, massive and sheer and snow with winding roads. When the talk about bears, I think of the nature shows form TV showing me black, brown and grisly bears.
They don’t have to describe every detail for me to have a picture in my mind.
The poetry of the Psalms can speak to us just as clearly today as it did thousands of years ago because, the poems or songs allow us to join in the intensity of the story.
Now we need to expand the idea just a little. The psalms are poetry but they are also s songs. The book of Psalms is a hymnal. The titles listed in our bibles indicate certain instructions as to the events and usage of the psalms. In Hebrew they are called Tehillim, which means “songs of praise.” In the Greek Psalmoi, which started out as plucked strings and was later interpreted as “ sacred songs sung with accompaniment.”
I will guess that most of you will agree with me that music makes a difference in worship. Do any of us think that is a new line of thought?
Music is a powerful part of Jewish worship, Christianity is no different. The book of psalms is though to be the hymn book of the temple. It is edited and divided up similar to our hymnals today. Sections for different purposes, like praise, prayer, installation.
Our hymnal has a large portion called the Psalter. The psalms set to music which have been around a long time.
But setting scripture to music still happens today.
If you were to spend some time listening to the newer music of our day, you would find a large percentage of it is again using the lines of scripture in the psalms and other parts of scripture.
We don’t use the psalms enough as a church. And because of that then we probably don’t use them in our personal devotion time.
If you will read the psalms you will find that they authors seem to speak freely from their hearts. In fact the authors them selves almost fade from our minds as we speak them because so often they speak just as longingly from our hearts. The prayers come alive with our praise , fears and longings.
This morning I saved our scripture reading for us to share as an act of worship.
Here is how we will do this.
I Read…the sections of Psalm 136, You will read or recite the response. My part changes every line …yours stays the same.
You part is, His love endures forever.
So after I read a line, the response is the same every time.
I would like to do this is parts so to speak. The firs few times this side do the reply, then I will point to the other side for several lines and then I will point at both sides so that we are all participating in the reading at the same time.
READ SCRIPTURES
The Psalms are useful in corporate and private worship. They are songs, poems ..Prayers to God, about God and For God. Thy are an important part of worship.
Folks when we come to the house of God, it is not really the only place we expect to find Him…It is the place where our personal worship is joined with our church family and raised to God unashamed, with tears of repentance, tears of joy, devotion and direct attention on our relationship with God.
If you leave church and feel as if you failed to worship, you need to look at your expectations and see if they match what God is expecting.
All Glory be to God!
