Okay, and this fifth lesson on the Psalms, we're going to the finishing book one. So that Psalms 32 to 41, these 10 of them here. Some really good ones here. There's not like some super famous ones, like Psalm 22, Psalm 23, but there's some really, really good ones here.
We're gonna start with Psalm 32, which I think is just absolutely beautiful. But just two tidy things up a little bit, since we're coming to the end of book one. Remember that Psalms one through 41 comprise book one. Technically you could put Psalm one into a side.
They are the preamble, the preamble, the preamble, the preamble, the beginning, the introduction of the whole Psalter. So you could say that book one is Psalm three, all the way down to 41. And remember, as I described in the first introductory lesson introducing the Psalter, that the Psalms, this whole Psalter one through 50, have, are following the narrative trajectory of Israel's royal history, the story of the king, the king David, the David king and the kingdom. So book one, primarily, if you're looking at it thematically is about the righteous, the upright, suffering, David king, who cries out to God for vengeance against his enemies.
And this is all encapsulated in Psalm two. Remember I said multiple times, Psalms one and two, you're gonna find repeated all the time throughout the Psalter. So in almost every single Psalm, you see this aspect in the lament Psalms of book one, David is righteous and he's, I mean, obviously he's not impeccable, he cries out for forgiveness of sins many times, as we're gonna see her immediately here in chapter 32 and 38. But David still is righteous and upright and he calls out to God.
You see that, that comes from Psalm two, and you see it all over the place. As well as Psalm one, you see reverberated, which is the two ways, the way of righteous versus the way of the wicked. And so we're gonna see that a ton as well. Well, honestly, every single lesson from here on out, we'll see Psalm one and two echoing.
All right, so book one, that's the theme. Suffering, righteous king, David, calling out to God for vengeance and deliverance against his enemies. And all of this points forward to Jesus. There's a lot of great connections to the New Testament that we're gonna talk about.
I remember that Jesus is perfectly the righteous, upright, sinless son of David and son of God, who cries out to God for deliverance against his enemies. So we're gonna end actually with Psalm 41, being very, very Christ of centric, very messianic and 24 to Jesus. So a lot of just talk about here. So let's, without any further ado, look at chapter 32.
Now chapter 32 is a wisdom psalm and it's also a penitential psalm. And I did explain this in lesson one, there are all these different types of psalms. So every time I take you through a psalm, like your most commentaries will tell you what kind of psalm it is. You got wisdom psalms, penitential psalms, praise psalms, lament psalms, and prectatory psalms, et cetera.
But a lot of times you're gonna find these various elements within a single psalm. So for example, in the last lesson, small little rabbit trail here, I beg your pardon, but in the last lesson, I explained to you that there's what's called the todah cycle, the thanksgiving cycle, where the whole Psalter moves from petition or from lament to praise and thanksgiving. And individual psalms themselves move from lament to praise and are thanksgiving. So that is a whole todah thanksgiving cycle, the movement from lament to praise.
So in one psalm, you have those two different genres. And so in other psalms, you'll have a genre of lament and teaching or wisdom or penitential or whatever. So it's not always just cut and dry. This Psalm is 100% wisdom.
This Psalm is 100% lament. You often have overlap in the genres. Having said that, there's Psalm 22 is wisdom and penitential. So this Psalm is beautiful.
It really does proclaim the importance of freedom, deliverance through confession of sin. All right, echoing the exit. There's so many echoes to the exit of this throughout the Psalter here. But when you confess your sins, you're made free and you're delivered from oppression and illness and difficulty and misery and burdens, right?
Sin is a burden. And when you try to hold onto that sin and not get rid of it, you don't feel so well, right? So following God's law, confessing of sin is the main point here. This is the second of the seven penitential Psalms.
I got the list for you right here. I think it was in lesson two, we looked at Psalm number six. And then now it's Psalm 32. And then we'll see 38 as well in this lesson in the 51st and most famous one.
But there are seven penitential Psalms. I think that significant because seven is the number of the covenant. So when we sin, we break the covenant and when we repent of our sins, then we are restored to the covenant. So I think in God's providence and the inspired scriptures here, we got seven penitential Psalms.
So let's read the first part of this. I really love the Psalms so much. I wish everybody can study Psalm 32. Just the call to just free yourself from your burden of sin.
I love it. So here it says, verse one, blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit. When I declared not my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all the day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me.
My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Excuse me. I acknowledge my sin to you and I did not hide my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and then you forgave the guilt of all my sin.
Oh, that's so beautiful, right? So okay, so this begins in verse one, talking about blessed is the man who sin is forgiven. That again goes back to Psalm one. The whole Psalter, Psalm one, verse one, blessed is the man who knocks, who walks not in the way of iniquity here.
Chapter one verse one says, blessed is man who walks not in the council of the wicked nor stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the sea of scoffers. That's being echoed right here. Blessed is the man who repents of all these evil things. So again, you've got the reverberation throughout all the Psalms.
So he's blessed. Now he's blessed because he's gotten rid of this guilt of sin and it really is a guilt. When we sin against God, we sin against the infinite perfect being who is holiness, who is perfection. And that is quite a burden to have that we should acknowledge and get rid of.
Now Paul will quote this. I'm not gonna get into the details too much, chapter four, verses seven and eight. Paul quotes these lines here, talking about the beauty of being forgiven and how we're forgiven through faith in Jesus Christ. I always like to, even though it's a quick reference, I wanna share that with you.
You'll find it in your commentaries. But Paul quotes Psalm 32 stating that faith does forgive us our sins when we turn to Jesus Christ and repent of our sins and have faith in him, we are forgiven. So Saint John Fisher has a really beautiful little quote on this concept of being blessed for your forgiveness of sins and he says, penance has three distinct parts. Our sins are forgiven by contrition, number one.
They are forgotten by confession. And then every sign of them is removed by satisfaction or what we would call generally penance, right? Make amends for what you did. He goes on, the prophet declares, blessed the one who sins are remitted, whose sins are put out of memory and whose sins are not charged to his account by the Lord.
End quote. That's really lovely here. There's a lot to say about forgiveness of sins. Of course, I'm always tempted to get into talking about, I'll say a couple of things about that in a moment.
But there's a lot to say. The main point here is if your sins are forgiven of you and your debt is cleared, you are truly blessed, truly happy, the word for happy and Hebrews asher, we talked about this before in chapter one. So the flip side of the coin here is that when he didn't confess his sins, he was not blessed in fact. He suffered tremendously at verse three.
When I declared not my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all the day long. And that's what I mean. That sin is a burden, right? When you, we tend to do this as human beings.
We tend to not address the fact that we are sinners. We deny that sin is actually real. And if we do something that we know is wrong, we suppress it, we make justifications for it, and we hold onto it. And God is saying to us through the blood of Jesus Christ, he's saying, let it go.
Confess it. Once you get rid of that burden, you will be asher, you will be blessed. And that's what he wants of us. And so if we repress our sin and don't acknowledge it, we can manifest itself.
I'm no psychologist or anything like that. But I've heard plenty of people talk about how, when you don't get rid of the guilt that you carry, it will affect you psychosymatically. Your body can get ill, you will have mental illness, depression as a result of not acknowledging your sins and getting rid of it. There's all kinds of consequences that I think that Psalm 32 verse three is talking about here.
He suffered physically, mentally, he had anguish. So we talk about Catholic guilt, right? People always make fun of Catholicism. Oh, there's so much Catholic guilt.
Well, I mean, yes, you can make people feel guilty for things that they are truly not guilty for, right? You can be scrupulous. But there is such a thing as a conscience that you're supposed to form, and that conscience tells you when you're doing something wrong. Just like your nerve endings tell you don't touch the hot stove.
Your conscience says, look, don't commit this deed. It's wrong. So guilt is a good, it's a moral compass for us sometimes. It tells us, look, I did something wrong.
I went against my conscience and I'm going to let it go. So again, I could go on and on about this. The Psalm just really excites me because I wish everybody could hear this and say, look, if you let it go, you're going to feel better. You truly will feel better deep into the marrow of your bones if you just simply confess your sins, and then you will be blessed.
All right, now I will say really briefly about confession. From the Catholic and biblical point of view, there is the sacraments of confession. Now, all of us should, on a regular basis, nightly, even before going to bed, make an examination of conscience and think about how we might have offended our Lord or offended our neighbor, our family members, and ask God in our hearts for forgiveness, 100%, especially what we call all venial sins. We need to constantly have an awareness of virtue and vice and strive for righteousness.
But Jesus did institute the sacraments of confession in John chapter 20 verse 21, where he breathes on the apostles and says, who sends you, forgive or forgive them? Who sends you, retain or retain? This is so explicit. This verse totally got me when I was becoming Catholic myself.
There's no way to get around the issue, the fact that Jesus gives them the power to forgive or to retain sins. That's the sacrament of confession. So for grave sins, mortal sins, we are supposed to go to the healing arms of holy mother church, go into the sacrament of confession, where Jesus forgives us through the ministry of his priest and personal Christi. So it is a both and, yeah, we should definitely ask the Lord for forgiveness whenever we do something wrong regularly with venial sins, but if you have a grave sin, ask the Lord for forgiveness in the silence of your bedroom with the doors closed, but then go into the confessional.
And confessing sins to a priest is biblical. I did put in your notes here. Now, if you go back to Leviticus and Numbers, it's the same location, which is kind of cool. Leviticus 5, 5 through 6, and Numbers 5 through 6.
If you look at that little area right there in each book, the individual Israelite would take their sacrifice, go to the priest, confess their sins, and then offer the sacrifice to be forgiven, and have communion with God restored. So that's a beautiful thing. We see confession, public confession, or I don't mean like public telling everybody, I mean, he's like telling the priest, and you'll test him it. And then of course it's fulfilling the New Testament as well.
All right, so that's all I wanna have to all our time to say about. It's just such a really moving, I hope you see that, it's just such a moving psalm, this penitential psalm about getting rid of that burden of sin. All right, then it goes on in verse six and following to give instruction. So it says, therefore, now again, there's an old adage.
It says, if you're reading the Bible and you see the word, therefore, look at the previous verses to see what it's there for, right? So there's a conclusion that the psalmist is saying. He talked about how the man is blessed, who's sins are forgiven, how he languished and suffered because he didn't confess his sins, but then once he acknowledged his sins, he felt a lot better, okay? And then he says, therefore, from this lesson, essentially, let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time of distress and the rest of great waters, they shall not reach him.
You are a hiding place for me, you preserved me from trouble, you surround me with deliverance. In verse eight, seems to be, well, instructions on following God's law, and but we don't exactly know is the psalmist saying this to the reader or is God saying this to the psalmist? You can go either way. I kind of like the idea of God speaking here in verse eight, but I'm not married to that idea.
In verse eight, it says, I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go. That's Psalm one, right? The way of the righteous. I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go.
I will counsel you with my eye on you. Definitely note that if you have your Bible in front of you, underline it, because the whole concept of God's eye upon his faithful is gonna come up many times in the next couple of Psalms here. So he's gonna counsel you with my eye upon you. That's why I think God is actually saying this.
Be not like a horse or a mule without understanding, which must be curbed with bitten brittle, else it will not keep with you. Many are the pangs of the wicked, those who do not confess their sins. But steadfast love, chesed is the Hebrew word, steadfast loyal covenantal love and mercy, surrounds him who trusts in the Lord. And then the Psalm ends in verse 11, be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous.
Shout for joy, all you upright in heart. So keep that in mind here for a second. So the second half of this penitential Psalm is instruction. So the first half is the lesson learned about, hey, free yourself from this guilt and turn to God.
And the second half is instruction to do just that. God is gonna teach us, show us the way we should go, the way of righteousness and he's gonna keep his eye upon us. And we should not be stubborn like a horse or a mule, and then we will rejoice in God. So that is the essence of Psalm chapter 32 here, beautiful penitential Psalm of God instructing us so that way he can free us and we could be blessed.
And therefore respond with great shots of joy. Now Psalm 33 picks up exactly where Psalm 32 ends. So Psalm 32 ends with that verse 11, about the righteous rejoicing in the Lord and the upright rejoicing in their heart. That's exactly how Psalm 33 begins verse one, rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous, praise befits the upright.
So that's what I call the links in the chain and the Psalter, right? It kind of came up with that in this lesson or this Bible study. Each of the Psalms to a greater or lesser extent are linked together in this great chain, which is the narrative history of Israel's, well, the narrative trajectory of Israel's royal history about the Davidic kingdom and Davidic kingdom. But a lot of people think that the Psalms are randomly placed together and that's of course not true at all.
The Psalms do have a flow to them. Like I've been trying to explain, hopefully I've been doing a good job for you over the past number of lessons. They are linked together. So here the link in the chain is, there's a number of links, but chapter 32 ends right where chapter 33 begins or I should say the reverse 33 begins right where 32 ends about the upright and the righteous calling out to God.
Now they're calling out to God and praising him in verse three with a new song. Seeing to him a new song plays skillfully on the strings with loud shouts. All right, now that's, we gotta stop a moment and look at this, this whole concept of a new song. This is gonna be repeated again in a few songs, Psalms down the line in chapter 40 verse three.
So we'll get to there soon enough. But singing this new song, the Lord is very much an echo to the Exodus. So remember that in the story of the Exodus, the Israelites are delivered to Passover, they go through the Red Sea, and then afterwards, Miriam, the most, Moses is bigger sister, sings this new song to the Lord. And it's a new song of deliverance, of rejoicing and praising God for what he has done for them.
So when Psalm 33 says, sing a new song to the Lord, I think it's because in Psalm 32, they were talking about the deliverance from sin. And that's what the Exodus is really all about. Exodus is, yes, historically, about the deliverance of Israel from Egypt and physical bondage and slavery, but it's spiritually typologically about all of humanity being freed from the bondage of sin. Psalm 32, we just talked about him being freed from the bondage of sin.
And so now in Psalm 33, he is singing a new song to the Lord just like Miriam, sing a new song back in the book of Exodus. I hope that makes sense, right? So those are the links, thematic links in the chain. Now, St.
Augustine said something really beautiful about singing well. I really like this quote because everybody pretty much knows the quote, he who sings praise twice, right? So very famous quote, if you don't know it, it's popular, he who sings praise twice. But St.
Augustine had a lot of other things about singing and singing well, right? So here's a great, it's kind of a longish quote here, but I got it from your Novar Bible, but here it says quote, everybody wonders how he should sing to the Lord. See the hymn, but seeing well, emphasize that, seeing well, he will not listen to a song that offends his ears, seeing well, my brothers. Now that seems to kind of be a little bit of a slapdown, you know, smackdown on people who are up there in the church singing when they probably shouldn't be because they're offending people's ears, they're not singing well.
Well, certainly a lot of people make jokes about this and we all know individuals who are up there singing and they probably shouldn't be, right? But that's not really what St. Augustine is talking about here. He's talking about the disposition of singing, like just not going through the motions, like just like you don't go through the motions of just muddling through prayer or the our father, whatever, you make it meaningful.
Same thing with songs. Even if you're like me and you can't really, I, you know, confession, a little private cadet, confession here, I can't sing very well. I suppose I could if I got some instruction, but I just can't match the tune, right? I just can't, that's not what he's talking about.
Let's go on with the rest of the quote. He says, who then thinks himself so great a master as to sing for God? Who can claim to sit in judgment on the canter? That's a good warning for us.
I might judge the canter because they're not singing very well at all and they may be offensive to the ears, but St. Augustine says, who can sit in judgment on the canter? Not I, who can listen with a truly critical ear? This verse tells of the way you opt to sing to him.
Do not be concerned with words as if words were able to convey what brings the light to God. Seeing with joy, that's his point this whole time. Seeing with joy. The song sung with joy is the song that pleases God.
And to sing with joy is to recognize that we cannot put into words what our hearts feel. That's a really great quote, that's the end of the quote. It's really beautiful. So yeah, jokes of course are plentiful about actually physically singing well and making it lovely to listen to.
They're really what he's talking about here singing with joy. A joy that comes from the heart, though the words of the heart is what he's talking about. So I really like that. So I want to share that quote with you from when your commentary is there about singing this new song to the Lord, but singing it with joy.
All right, so then song 33 continues from here about well, when you're singing a new song to the Lord and you're singing and rejoicing from an upright heart, you're praising him. It goes on to talk about first creation. God is being praised as the creator of the universe where he brings everything into existence. With his efficacious word, let me read these verses.
Verse four, for the word of the Lord is upright and all his work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of the mercy of the Lord. By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made and all their hosts by the breath of his mouth.
He gathered the waters of the sea as in a bottle. He put the deeps and storehouses. Let all the earth fear the Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him for he spoke and it came to be, he commanded and it stood forth.
This is really lovely here. This is a great little reflection on Genesis one and two of course, specifically chapter one of Genesis where God simply speaks and everything came into existence. So all of the universe came into being through the word of the Lord and through the breath of his mouth. The word, the Hebrew word for breath is Ruach.
And I talk a lot about this in the Genesis Bible study, but Ruach can be in breath or wind or spirit. And so there's this reflection here, especially verse six, you can highlight. It's very Trinitarian. Because when we talk about Genesis chapter one versus one and two, you see the invested design, a hint of the Holy Trinity there in the process of creation.
Where God the Father is creating and the spirit of God, the Ruach hovers over the face of the deep. But then when God speaks his word, everything comes into existence. And so as I explained in Genesis chapter one in that study and you'll find in your commentaries a good commentary, you see the Trinity right there where the Father, the Son is in the word of God because as John says, Jesus is the word who was with God and is God. And then the Ruach, the spirit of God is the Holy Spirit.
Well, that's what's being described right here in verse six. The Lord is Yahweh, that's God the Father. His word is Jesus Christ. And then the breath of his mouth is the Holy Spirit.
So we're praising God with this new song, this Exodus imagery, we're being renewed, we're being delivered from sin. And we're praising the creator of the universe who created all things, but then renews all things through the power of the Holy Spirit. The word, the breath and then the power of God the Father. And then amazing, I hope you get that there.
That's, I think, the flow of these two Psalms. So then a couple of other points to share before we move on. In verse 12 it says, "'Blessed is the nation who's God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage." I wanted to share that because we're talking a lot in this lesson, the word blessed is gonna come up a lot more, just many occurrences here in these last 10 Psalms. And of course it echoes Psalm chapter one, verse one, blessed is the man.
But in this case, it's blessed is the nation. And I thought that was really interesting to point out because yes, individuals must choose to walk the way of righteousness, but so too must nations. A nation should have God, have Yahweh as his God. And that people who takes God as their Lord will be blessed.
So I think that's really, really important for any nation, of course, I'm American. So I pray that my nation, the entire people of Americans would take God as their one God and follow the path of righteousness and be blessed. That's a really important part. We have part of this whole message of the Psalter.
You can't really separate church and state, like theologically speaking, the state must uphold the eternal and natural law of God. But that's a whole other conversation for another time. My only point was you always talk about blessed as a man in Psalms, but here, in this instance, you got blessed as the nation who follows the way of righteousness. That's great.
All right. So the little point here is God is looking down from his heavens, because remember, he creates all things from his heavens, but he looks down to govern and care for the sons of men in his creation. So two quick little points here. Then verse 16, oh, back up here.
Let's just go to verse 13. The Lord looks down from heaven and sees the sons of men from where he sits and thrown, he looks forth on the inhabitants of the earth. He who fashions the hearts of them all and observes their deeds. A king is not saved by his great army.
A warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a vain hope for victory, but by its great might it cannot save. So the point here is, as a constant refrain in the Psalms is that God is the deliverer, God is the king. So don't place your trust and your confidence in your army or in your cavalry or whatever it is.
Your hope, your victory, your strength comes from God. He will deliver all things because of his word, right? So he can create all things easily just by speaking. He can certainly deliver you as well.
And I want you to note verse 18, Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his merciful love. So there's another link. Remember I shared with you chapter 32, verse eight. I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go.
I will counsel you with what? My eye will be upon you, God says to the Psalmist and to us. Now 33, the very next Psalm, we praise the Lord with a new song and we place our hope in him and our strength comes from God because the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him. So the eye of the Lord refrain, it's gonna come up again as well in chapter 34.
So be on the lookout for that. Keep your eye peeled on that pun intended. The eye of the Lord is upon those who love him, who fear him. So that's gonna be repeated multiple times.
It is also connected, I shared with you before, the whole phrase, the apple of God's eye, the apple is the pupil. So if you're in the apple of his eye, it basically means I believe that God is fixated on you. He is watching you, you are at the center of his pupil, right? So his gaze is fixed on you and he is protecting you.
I think that's what that means. And that's what these verses are echoing as well. The eye of the Lord watches those who fear him and also wait on him, verse 20. I want you to underline that as well too because waiting on the Lord is a big theme in today's lesson as it is all the Psalms, but verse 20, our soul waits for the Lord, he is our help and our shield.
So look out for that refrain as well. All right, so let's move on in chapter 34. A Thanksgiving Psalm, but it's also a wisdom Psalm. You have two aspects in here.
This is gonna continue the themes of the previous Psalms 32 and 33 with the theme of the blessed man who's praising God for his deliverance. I think you can still make the connection that the man is praising the blessed man is praising God for his deliverance from sin of chapter 32, if that's not stretching it too much. So what happens at the end of 33, verse 21, the Psalm 33 ends with the words, we trust in his holy name. Now chapter 34 begins, 34 verse three, we're exalting in his holy name together.
So 33 is ending with blessing and trusting his holy name, 34 begins with exalting his holy name. Hey, this is Dr. Neck, thank you so much for listening to this course sample. If you enjoyed it and wanna listen to the entire lesson, please become a student over at scripture and tradition.com where you can listen to this entire course, but also all the other courses that we have available in the S&T audio library where you can listen to them on demand, however, and whenever you want.
So thank you so much, God bless you and keep studying your Bible.