Heart of a Psalmist - Worshipping Christ Through The Psalms

Keys To The Psalms

The Key of Poetry “ As the deer pants for streams of water, so I long for you, O God. ” (Ps. 42:1)

God is a master poet/lyricist/musician as evidenced by the longest book of the Bible. Every technique known to literature is incorporated in this remarkable book. There are the artful acrostic poems where each verse begins with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet; the repetitive antiphonal songs sung by 2 choirs, the free-form verses, the historical epic, the celebrations of creation, exuberant praise and the resonating sadness of mournful songs. The poets extol virtue, hurl judgment on their enemies and re- joice in the religious festivals. They write from beneath the wings of the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant and from the lonely deserts of Moab, from the Sabbath celebrations in Jerusalem to the mournful songs of exile in Babylon, from victories over massive armies to laments over their personal sin. It is all here, the human drama is completely documented in every conceivable style. Hebrew po- etry is mainly rhythmic rather than relying upon the rhyming of words. Scroggie masterfully treats this subject in his ‘Introduction to Psalms’ chapter where he points out the Hebrew technique of parallelism; some of the various forms are; ‘Synonymous Parallelism, in which the same thing is repeated in differ- ent words;…

“ The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof ”.

‘ The world and they that dwell therein ’. (Ps. 24:1)

Climacteric parallelism, in which the second line completes the first.

Give unto the Lord, O ye mighty, Give unto the Lord glory and strength. ” (Psalm 29:1)

THE KEY OF FAITH A guiding scripture for this entire work has been 2 Corinthians 4:13; “ But we continue to preach be- cause we have the same kind of faith the psalmist had when he said, ‘I believed in God, and so I speak. ’” The goal of study is to apply the discovered truth into life practice; to pray like the psalmists, to trust like the psalmists, to love God with their same measure of devotion, to forgive like them and to model our worship after the depth of their words and feelings; to speak words of faith like they did even when faced with overwhelmingly negative situations. My life has been slowly transformed as I have meditated, studied, prayed, composed and written on the Psalms. My prayer is that this book will be like a walk down the Emmaus road with Jesus and that your worship of him will become more meaningful.

1 Scroggie, page 16 2 Scroggie, page 10 3 Dr. Ervine, Lectures on the history of the Old Testament; 2003, Oral Roberts University

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