Deer Park Alliance Church

“I just don’t get it!”  I wonder how many songs I could download on iTunes if I got a dollar donation for every time I’ve said that while reading the Bible.  The Psalms in particular, all things poetic, have stumped my emotionally stunted software frequently.  I bet I could afford the entire U2 collection (though I’d still only listen to “The Joshua Tree” album over and over again).

My mission this summer, is to hear “Oh, I get it!” more than “…don’t get it!” as we experience the Psalms together.  I really want to learn, along with you, how to read, follow, sing, and pray the Psalms authentically.

Through the next 12 weeks of summer, I’m going to lead you through the most accessible guide available for the Psalms, How To Read the Psalms, by Tremper Longman III.  Tremper used to teach at Westminster Theological Seminary.  Now he writes and teaches from the delightful confines of Westmont College in Santa Barbara. (What that means is that probably every time you read what Tremper has written in biblical studies, the sun is shining and it’s at least 20C where he’s written it.)

What I’m going to do is pull one key principle from each chapter of TL3’s excellent book, and apply it to one of the psalms that we’re experiencing at Deer Park through the summer.  Here’s a snapshot of the little lessons to come:

1)   Getting the Genres straight

2)   Getting the Origins straight

3)   Getting the Context straight

4)   Heart of the Psalms:  Gospel

5)   Heart of the Psalms:  Soul

6)   What the?  Poetry

7)   What the?  Parallelism

8)   What the?  Imagery

9)   Love Songs

10) Sad Songs

11)  New Songs

I’m looking forward to seeing the distance between King David’s world and ours shrink.  In the process, I pray that the distance between King Jesus’ heart and ours would shrink also.