00:00:00:36 – 00:00:20:49
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining us as we finish today. In light of Thanksgiving and some changes next week, we won’t be with you for about a week and a half, but back on the 8th of December. But today, we try to get to a stopping point. We don’t really finish the Psalms. I think it’ll be almost impossible to do that.

00:00:20:49 – 00:00:42:08
Clint Loveall
But we get to a point where we’re going to stop, get through another category or two. The first one that we’re going to look at, relatively small category. There are not that many of these Psalms, but they are important. And I think they’re, they they remain a vital part of our language. And that is Psalms of Confession.

00:00:42:13 – 00:01:19:48
Clint Loveall
I think without any question, the the best known of them is Psalm 51, which the heading records for us comes from David after he is confronted by the prophet for his adultery with Bathsheba. And this is I think this is a really interesting Psalm. Michael. This certainly with that background. But even in in spite of that, you know, just this has the ring.

00:01:19:48 – 00:01:45:25
Clint Loveall
If you’ve ever if you’ve ever been in a moment where you, you just had to face the reality that you were guilty of something, that you had dropped the ball, that you had failed, that you had, you know, made mistakes. This is, this language is powerful, you know, right away. Have mercy on me. Oh, God. According to your steadfast love, your abundant mercy.

00:01:45:25 – 00:02:10:28
Clint Loveall
Blot out my transgression. Wash me thoroughly. Cleanse me. And then I know my transgression. My sin is ever before me against you, and you alone have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. You are justified in your sentence, blameless when you pass judgment. I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me. You desire truth in the inward being.

00:02:10:28 – 00:02:43:36
Clint Loveall
Therefore teach me wisdom and it goes on to well known words. Create a clean heart in me, oh God, and put a new and righteous spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence. And and then, a commitment to share God’s goodness with others. And then a prayer for all of the nation, again reflecting that not only this individual David had sinned, but he is one of a people who are all sinners.

00:02:43:40 – 00:03:16:33
Clint Loveall
Not maybe not the most comfortable Psalms, Michael. Maybe more, maybe easier to read when we’re talking about someone else’s sin. But for those moments that we have to face the truth of our own brokenness, I think it is, it is wonderfully helpful to be able to borrow language from our tradition and from our mothers and fathers in the faith, and to just simply face the fact that we do fall short.

00:03:16:33 – 00:03:25:51
Clint Loveall
And I think, the scripture writers and compilers have done us a wonderful favor by keeping these words in.

00:03:26:02 – 00:03:50:53
Michael Gewecke
This is without a question. And you mentioned at the end of the study yesterday, I would recommend to you, if you haven’t heard the conversations that happened just in the previous episode, Jump Back one. I think that as we think about those curse psalms of, you know, Lord God, that I, I know you’re on my side, go get my enemy.

00:03:50:58 – 00:04:23:42
Michael Gewecke
It’s important that you remember that right next to them. Sometimes Smosh next door are these Psalms in which it’s a confession of sinfulness and brokenness. And I’m going to step just ever so slightly on a soap box here. But we live in a world that doesn’t really like the idea of sinfulness or brokenness. I think that an operative idea that we find all the time, Clint, is people that think, well, I’m basically good, and I sometimes slip up, I’m sometimes not.

00:04:23:42 – 00:05:00:59
Michael Gewecke
At my best is language that people feel very comfortable with. And I think that that pushes far against the reality of our lived human lives. If you’ve lived any time at all, my point would be you may not have in your past a sin. That would be some equivalent to what David did with Bathsheba. What David does with Bathsheba husband, you likely do have a moment in your life that you look back on and these words wash me thoroughly, cleanse me, my sin as ever before.

00:05:00:59 – 00:05:32:06
Michael Gewecke
I suspect that you, I know that I have things and moments in which these words come alive, and in which they resonate with my soul like a tuning fork. These words resonate with me. These are in Scripture because the human life leads us on paths in which that brokenness will not always be contained. It spills out. It spills out of our lives into the lives of our loved ones, our closest partners, our children, our grandchildren.

00:05:32:16 – 00:06:09:07
Michael Gewecke
It spills out into our workplaces, it spills out into our communities. And these are incredibly humbling moments. And in Scripture are the very starting place. Words of where we begin as Christians, to confess the truth of that brokenness, to ask for forgiveness. Forgiveness is a central part of living the most robust life possible, because it admits the honest truth, which is that we have something to apologize for, that we are not just those people who occasionally have made a mistake, that those mistakes have come out of broken places.

00:06:09:07 – 00:06:25:06
Michael Gewecke
And the Psalms name that boldly. They give us a textbook, a primer of how to begin those prayers in our lives. And I think that they are in the Psalms as a way of not just teaching us what to say, but teaching us the reality of why we need to say it.

00:06:25:21 – 00:06:49:22
Clint Loveall
Absolutely. There’s another great example, Psalm 32. The joy of forgiveness is the subtitle, and it begins, happy are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sin is covered. And and then it turns personal. Verses three and four. When I kept silent, my body wasted away through my groaning. All day long. For day and night. Your hand was heavy upon me.

00:06:49:22 – 00:07:15:28
Clint Loveall
My strength was dried by the heat. Like the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you. I did not hide my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the guilt of my sin. I think one of the things that maybe is missed or underappreciated about these Psalms, Michael, is how permissive they are.

00:07:15:28 – 00:07:54:13
Clint Loveall
Not only can we not hide our sin from God, we don’t need to use this attaches us, connects us to that longstanding belief in the faith that God is open to hearing our confession. That when we face our brokenness, what we find from God is not judgment but mercy, and that we are able to carry even the worst parts of ourself and set them before God in the hope of being renewed and being put on a path that will lead us somewhere better to do better in our faith and in our life.

00:07:54:18 – 00:08:26:47
Clint Loveall
Happy. Joyful are those whose transgression is forgotten. When I kept silent. You know, when we’ve done that, when we’ve had our brokenness in. It eats at us. We we lose ourself. But in confession, in honesty and admission, we find our faith. And there’s this wonderful flow that’s happening in these. I think these are important words. I think again, we’re we are in the Old Testament here.

00:08:26:47 – 00:08:37:55
Clint Loveall
So we are pre grace, we are pre Christ. But we see forerunners of all of those things written through these Psalms.

00:08:38:07 – 00:09:01:43
Michael Gewecke
I think we keep going here, just one verse. Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you at a time of distress. The rush of mighty waters shall not reach them and make note. It is not faithfulness that keeps you from ever being in distress. It’s the fact that when you are in distress, that is exactly when the faithful will lift up their prayers to God.

00:09:01:47 – 00:09:29:15
Michael Gewecke
Clint. That is an uncomfortable message that to be honest, not even many Christians in the gospel of grace with Jesus Christ demonstrating the God’s decision for forgiveness from the cross, even in light of that revelation, Christians today, I think, still struggle with this idea that we are we do not measure up to the people that we wish that we would.

00:09:29:20 – 00:09:54:18
Michael Gewecke
We like to imagine that we could be something that we are not, and God has no interest in creatures imagining themselves to be something other than who he made them to be, and for them to be human in that relationship. God, like a good parent, wants us to be the best that we can be. But God’s not fooled by the ways that we see that slip out from underneath us.

00:09:54:18 – 00:10:21:16
Michael Gewecke
And I do think, Clint, the people who might find these Psalms not even challenging. There are some folks who would find these Psalms confusing, because not everyone has an experience of confession that comes easily for them. Some people, just to put it plainly, find it hard to admit when they’re wrong. And if that’s your experience, if you read text like this, I would encourage you for a moment to just reflect upon that.

00:10:21:16 – 00:10:48:14
Michael Gewecke
Even in our scriptures, the practice of confession, of admitting the truth. We do make mistakes. Those mistakes hurt ourselves, and they hurt people that we love. That is the first stepping ground to receiving the grace that’s already on offer for us. And if you refuse to ever do that, Clint, I think you really shut tight a door that God wants to come through to offer that grace and that blessing to you.

00:10:48:23 – 00:10:56:20
Michael Gewecke
Healing can come, but it’s always stacked up. If we’re unwilling to confess the truth of our lives and the and the brokenness of them.

00:10:56:34 – 00:11:32:27
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I think it’s a long held again, not only Christian, but certainly Christian doctrine, that until we’re willing to face the truth of the broken parts of ourself, we are not yet ready for grace to do its work in us. And, when we see the love and mercy and grace of Christ on display, it should evoke in us gratitude and commitment, but also honesty also confession.

00:11:32:40 – 00:11:58:36
Clint Loveall
And that is the place to start. You know, C.S. Lewis said, that’s the reason that the gospel is bad news before it’s good news because the good news is you have a savior. The news that we don’t want to hear is that means we need saved from something. We need saved from our sin, from our brokenness. And so, yeah, nobody’s maybe nobody’s favorite hymns, but certainly important hymns.

00:11:58:40 – 00:12:21:15
Clint Loveall
Michael, let’s just kind of finish up with maybe a little, easier category here, or at least maybe more popular category. Psalms of guidance or wisdom. No surprise, I think, to most people who have spent a little time in the Old Testament, wisdom is a very important theme. And wisdom in the Old Testament is not just general good sense or common sense, we might call it.

00:12:21:19 – 00:12:44:19
Clint Loveall
It is the ability to discern and do what God wants. So wisdom is always connected with godliness and with faithfulness. And we can start the book out here. If we go to Psalm one with this wonderful meditation on the two ways, one that leads to life and one that leads away. And so happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked.

00:12:44:24 – 00:13:03:07
Clint Loveall
Do not take the sinner’s path, or sit in the seat of scoffers. But their delight is the law of the Lord. And on that they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water which yield fruit in season. And then it goes on. Verse four, the wicked are not so. They are like chaff. The wind drives away.

00:13:03:21 – 00:13:26:45
Clint Loveall
So right away in this opening psalm, and we have to assume this is intentional. When they decided to start with one, they start with a psalm. It says, look, there are two paths in life, and you have to pick the one you want. There’s the path of the righteous and the path of the wicked. And the rest of this book is about the path of the righteous in avoiding the wrong path.

00:13:26:45 – 00:13:56:31
Clint Loveall
And so, a plea to God for guidance, a plea to God to help us stay on that right path. This is, again, intertwined all through the Psalms, the best example is also the biggest. If you look at Psalm 119, which is multiple pages long, probably take a while to sit down and read it, but it’s all a meditation on God’s law and on God’s commandments and how good they are and how they help us, and what worse they are in our life.

00:13:56:31 – 00:14:17:15
Clint Loveall
And, you know, again, Michael, thinking of these Psalms as a language of prayer that we borrow, certainly the prayer for guidance, the prayer for wisdom is, It is a key component to any life of faith.

00:14:17:20 – 00:14:43:03
Michael Gewecke
If we’re going to talk about wisdom Psalms, I think there does need to be a clarification here to because we right now live in a pretty divisive time where people think in opposites very frequently, like, this is what I think, and everyone who’s wrong thinks the opposite of what I think. So you read the wisdom Psalm like we just do, and we read these words about the person who meditates on the law of the Lord, a wise person.

00:14:43:03 – 00:15:06:10
Michael Gewecke
So you have wise on this path. And then you look down at verse for the wicked, that other path that you’re talking about. I just want the Scripture as it comes to it comes to those with a little bit of a different emphasis that I think we do in our popular language, because I know this, the blessing or the gift of being wise is groundedness and nutrition.

00:15:06:10 – 00:15:28:12
Michael Gewecke
There’s a health because you’re like a tree planted by streams of water. So in other words, if you’re a wise person, your life is going to be full of the richness that you need to grow over a long period of time to to grow in fullness and to grow in fruit. Right? So it’s a very vital living image.

00:15:28:12 – 00:16:11:08
Michael Gewecke
Wisdom following in God’s way creates a vital, engaged, living life. Right? And then note the opposite. It’s not that those people are a set out to be judged, though they will be judged. The point is that they’re like chaff that the wind blows away. They’re not full of life. There’s no substance. So. So when they are met by the inevitable gales of life, when the judgment of the world that besets everyone comes to their doorstep in that moment, they don’t have the substance and the foundation that they need to be able to continue to live their life because they’re outside of God’s will and God’s plan.

00:16:11:13 – 00:16:35:06
Michael Gewecke
I think that’s a radically different way of engaging with these ideas of the wisdom Psalms. Instead of thinking of them as well. We just need to export these ideas to the world and make worldly people more like this is no, this is God’s gift to God’s people. Wisdom is God’s gift, and the wise are the ones who take God’s gift and build it into their lives.

00:16:35:11 – 00:16:58:09
Michael Gewecke
We don’t need to wish harm on anyone else. That harm naturally comes from the opposite choice, but the ultimate good of the faith and these wisdom psalms is that if you hear God’s Word, if you meditate on day night, if you know it and it becomes part of your action, then at that point it will become a life giving force in your world.

00:16:58:13 – 00:17:24:39
Clint Loveall
Yeah, it’s it’s a little overstated, but I don’t think it’s unfair to say that in the Scripture, wisdom simply means the desire to walk God’s path and foolishness means to take another path. I don’t know, you could pass out all of what that means, but at the core, to be wise is to seek godliness. And to be foolish is to ignore godliness.

00:17:24:52 – 00:18:08:58
Clint Loveall
And so whenever we pray for wisdom, it’s not to have a life of, you know, health, wealth and satisfaction. Though that may be a nice blessing as well. Our prayers for wisdom are prayers that God will help us discern what his will is, and strengthen us to live in a way that pursues it. And really, we should be very careful when we do anything more than that, because that’s that’s really I would make the case, I think I would argue that’s relatively clear in the way that particularly the Old Testament uses the word.

00:18:09:03 – 00:18:28:10
Michael Gewecke
We don’t have a lot of time to teach us. I’ll be really, really brief. But if you look at Psalm 49, this is a specific example. Here my mouth shall speak wisdom meditation. My heart will be understanding. Incline my ears to a proverb. Why should I fear in times of trouble, when the iniquity of my persecutors surrounds me?

00:18:28:15 – 00:18:49:03
Michael Gewecke
Truly, no ransom avails for one’s life. They boast in the abundance of their riches. I think what you discover as you’re going to continue on through a song like this, such as the Faith, the foolhardy, the end of those who are pleased with their lot. We should be a little surprised by how much variety of content is in the psalm.

00:18:49:04 – 00:19:16:44
Michael Gewecke
You can go from confessing sins to judging your enemy, to praising God for God’s faithfulness towards outright heart rending, gut punch cries of lament to God for grief. And then you can just immediately switch into wisdom Psalms in which these things that we might even call Proverbs are just laid out within them. Clip that that’s the breadth of this book.

00:19:16:44 – 00:19:35:49
Michael Gewecke
And it reminds me when a family will be preparing for a funeral. The family brings a Bible of their loved one, and over the years, that person has put notes from sermons and they’ve been doing personal study. And they they put reflections in the Bible. And you look through that, you page through that with the family that I think that comes to us in our Bible.

00:19:35:49 – 00:20:00:58
Michael Gewecke
I think it is the Psalms. If you look at it, it’s like reflections of the people of faith throughout history just inscribed in the book, whether it was a moment of joy or heartbreak or a moment of of struggle and anger, it doesn’t matter whether it was a young person who needed wisdom neither to know how to choose this way, over this way, there in the Psalms, which goes back to our first episode.

00:20:01:01 – 00:20:24:14
Michael Gewecke
I think that’s why the Psalms are hard to read devotional a lot of times, because the psalm you might be reading, if you read Psalm number three yesterday in today’s Psalm number four, Psalm 94, it might be in a completely different country than where you’re at right now. And that’s part of what makes the Psalms, I think so compelling is if it’s not for you, it is for someone that day.

00:20:24:27 – 00:20:29:33
Michael Gewecke
And if you live life long enough that it will someday likely be for you.

00:20:29:45 – 00:21:07:01
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I think it would be helpful to be familiar with the Psalms, maybe even to read them and categorize them in some way. There are lots of lists out there that help you do that. If you are in a place where you need a particular voice, there are tools to help you find it. In the Psalms. But I think when things are going well, when you when you’re not guilty, when you’re not hurting, when you’re not coming to the Psalms with a particular need, they’re a wonderful land to go exploring to, to just let yourself read some and not worry about finishing every one word for word.

00:21:07:01 – 00:21:32:27
Clint Loveall
But scout for phrases or sentences or verses that speak to you that particular day. Highlight them. Take some notes on what what they say to you and what you learn from them. The Psalms are sort of a, playground isn’t the right word, Michael, but they’re just a bit. They’re sort of a, corn maze. So just a they’re just a place you can go spend some time and see what you find.

00:21:32:27 – 00:21:53:35
Clint Loveall
And there are so many nuggets of profound wisdom and praise and, and. So much of what represents what it means to be human that I can’t imagine most of us could spend much time there without finding something meaningful. There’s a lot in there.

00:21:53:40 – 00:22:09:25
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. Absolutely. We’re not going to make it through the whole Psalms, but the time that we spent with you, we hope, has been valuable to you. So give this video a like if it has been helpful, helps others find it in their own study, and then subscribe so you don’t miss our next study, which will begin here in about a week and a half.

00:22:09:25 – 00:22:15:54
Michael Gewecke
And, we look forward to doing some advent stuff with you at that time. Stay tuned. We’ll put out some more info. And, until then, be blessed.

00:22:15:54 – 00:22:16:15
Clint Loveall
Thanks for.