Monday: Meet the Psalmists
Daily Lesson for Monday 1st of January 2024
King David, whose name appears in the titles of most psalms, was active in organizing the liturgy of Israel’s worship. He is called “the sweet psalmist of Israel” (2 Samuel 23:1). The New Testament attests to Davidic authorship of various psalms (Matthew 22:43-45; Acts 2:25-29,34-35; Acts 4:25; Romans 4:6-8). Numerous psalms were composed by the temple musicians who were also Levites: for example, Psalms 50 and Psalms 73 by Asaph; Psalms 42, Psalms 44-47, Psalms 49, Psalms 84, Psalms 85, Psalms 87-88 by the sons of Korah; Psalms 88 also by Heman the Ezrahite; and Psalms 89 by Ethan the Ezrahite. Beyond them, Solomon (Psalms 72, Psalms 127) and Moses (Psalms 90) authored some psalms.
Read Psalms 25:1-5; Psalms 42:1; Psalms 75:1; Psalms 77:1; Psalms 84:1, 2; Psalms 88:1–3; and Psalms 89:1 . What do these psalms reveal about the experiences their authors were going through?
The Holy Spirit inspired the psalmists and used their talents in service to God and to their community of faith. The psalmists were people of genuine devotion and profound faith and yet prone to discouragements and temptations, as are the rest of us. Though written a long time ago, the Psalms surely reflect some of what we experience today.
“Let my prayer come before You; incline Your ear to my cry. For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to the grave” (Psalms 88:2-3, NKJV). This is a cry of the twenty-first-century soul as much as it was of someone 3,000 years ago.
Some psalms mention hardships; some focus on joys. The psalmists cried out to God to save them and experienced His undeserved favor. They glorified God for His faithfulness and love, and they pledged their untiring devotion to Him. The Psalms are, thus, testimonies of divine Redemption and signs of God’s grace and hope. The Psalms convey a divine promise to all who embrace, by faith, God’s gifts of forgiveness and of a new life. Yet, at the same time, they do not try to cover up, hide, or downplay the hardships and suffering prevalent in a fallen world.
How can we draw hope and comfort knowing that even faithful people, such as the psalmists, struggled with some of the same things that we do?
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I am delighted that so many of our readers and commenters have accepted the challenge to write their own Psalms and send them to the Sabbath School Net Blog. Please keep it up. It adds a whole new dimension to our study and judging from the comments many of you appreciate it.
I should mention that one of the books on Psalms that I have found both interesting and challenging is C S Lewis's Reflections on the Psalms I have a very old dog-eared paperback version and it is going to probably fall to bits with use over the next couple of months. I notice that Amazon Australia has a Kindle version but I am not sure if it is available in Kindle elsewhere.
I like what C S Lewis says in the first chapter:
I think that sets the scene for really enjoying the Psalms.
And I hope that everyone has a happy and blessed New Year
Yes Reflections of the Psalms is also available on Kindle in the United States. It will be good reading for this quarter also, just downloaded it. It ought to be an interesting adjuvant to the lesson. It will be my 1st reading. Another good adjuvant is "Ellen G. White Notes on Psalms. You will have to go to adventistbookcenter.com to get it on Kindle. I just got it instantly on Kindle through ABC.
Happy New Year All!
[Moderator Note: Last we checked, the Adventist Book Center sold their Kindle versions through Amazon and Nook. So you can download download Ellen G. White Notes on Psalms directly from Amazon. The image on Amazon is just not as pretty, but it's the same copy. For the hard copy you will have to go to the Adventist Book Center.]
Amen,
Thank you, Maurice - may God bless you and your family with good health and joyous faith whichever circumstances the new year may bring. Some writers reflect in their worship recorded in the Psalms their longing to be in the presence of God. This is my prayer as well - that all of us long for this closeness when coming by the Spirit into His presence!
I am not a poetic. But would love to share a New Year Psalm one of my sons wrote as a teenager struggling to find his faith and standing with GOD.
A New Year Psalm
By Jahdai Mendoza
Life is a journey
And we’ve just reached a landmark
When we look back where we used to be
It’s clear how God has brought us through the dark
God made ways in the wilderness
God formed rivers in the desert
He’ll wipe away all the mess
He’ll blot our your sin and your dirt
After all the times we felt hopeless
After all the times this world kept us down
It’s now time for us to focus
Focus on claiming our crown
A new day. A new year
The same car. A new gear
No doubts. No fear.
More faith more prayer.
A new me. A new mind
A new aim! A new grind
No chains! No bind
More loving. More kind.
C S Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms
can also be read online at archive.org which offers free membership
False positivity is a way to pressure someone to express only positive emotions...to suppress any negative emotions and reactions. I'm grateful Jesus did not do this. We see Jesus recognize the moment and empathize with the person, and then guide the thoughts and heart into the "....but God". "I feel this way, but God is ______ (faithful, kind, forgiving, etc.)"
For example, with the woman engaged in adultery and thrown at His feet, He processed with her the emotional transformation of, "I feel condemned by men, but God does not condemn me. I feel impure, but God is pure and is confident that in His love, I can go and sin no more."
Would Jesus have helped her come out of her isolation, trauma and unhealthy coping mechanisms if He had just said something like, "Ok, life is short, get up and go home, out with the old, in with the new"..... "May your troubles be less, your blessings be more, and may nothing but happiness come through your door"....."No worries, you have a bright future"....."May the best day of your past be the worst day of your future"..."Tomorrow is the first page of a 365-page book. Write a good one!"....."It's time to forget the past and celebrate a new start"...."It's never to late to start over and be happy"...."Your present circumstances don't determine where you can go, they merely determine where you start"..... "Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right".....? (Yes, those are some New Year's greetings I just found on line.)
So what is a Happy New Year for us? Here we are with all our feelings about all that is going on in our personal lives and in the world....but God is with us.....in our new born-again life we treasure Jesus more than we treasure His gifts.... more than we treasure being made much of.....self is being replaced by Jesus in the deep-down core of us ..... all we really want is Him ....and we have Him.
Ps. 16:8-11; 23; 139:7,17-18; 145:18
Amen. But God is with us.
Anyway
The One that is above created my hands and feet.
Though the direction is not always clear I can see that I am in great need.
My needs are provided, yet my greeds are always fighting to make me think that they are my greatest need.
The One has been with me this whole time; guiding me through His word.
My flesh cries for preeminence. The Spirit longs for my surrender.
This I know for sure; The One, The Maker, The Sustainer is with me always.
And He, My Lord. Loves me anyway.
I agree with Esther. Time to process. God knows where we ARE but doesn’t want us to stay there. We should never deny we are where we are. Face our feelings express our thoughts and then look up to Him. When dealing with our neighbor it takes time to be like Jesus, listen to where someone is first and offer empathy and then the “but God”.
Thank you Esther for your thoughts 😊
I love reading the Psalms especially during challenging and difficult seasons of my lift. Knowing that these faithful people struggle as I do today, gives me hope. It tells me I am not alone and God will hear and answer me just as He did 3000 years ago. He is the same yesterday and today, our God change not. I am encouraged to seek God despite my struggles and temptation. Praise the Lord, for the undiluted scriptures.
From their beginning as a nation, Israel’s people were surrounded by their God’s enemies on all sides. Living and surviving became unanimous with defending their God against these nation’s mockery and destain of them and their God.
Their Psalms reveal to me their God and how His people struggled as they learned to trust Him. Their God’s claim for all the world to know is that He is God Supreme; a god not made by the hands of man but who made man by His hands, knowing his heart. He is the only living God, and their songs to Him testify to their living relationship with Him as they bare their emotions to Him.
I noticed that many of the most precious Psalms where either addressed to be sung by or from the pen of the sons of Korah. I wondered about this, as I recalled that Korah’s family had suffered great loss by God for Korah's rebellion – the earth opened up and swallowed them – Numbers 16:31-32. Though, Numbers 26:9-11; v.11 clarifies - “Notwithstanding, the children of Korah died not.”
Searching online for ‘what happened to Korah’s sons?’, I found an interesting article by Carla Waterman. [Carla Waterman: “But the sons of Korah did not die”.]
It appears that those who wrote some of the most beautiful and moving Psalms honoring and praising God are the children of Korah remembering their mighty God's Grace and forgiveness.
The comment states that they became a “subdivision of the Levites, a guild which formed one of the temple choirs.” They were referred to as ‘the family of the Korahites’. To their hymnbook belonged Psalms 42, 44-49, 84, 87.” [The Cambridge commentary remarking on Numbers 26:11 -].
What a remarkable turn of events to find those having lost the most becoming God’s most outspoken defenders of His Glory, Grace, and Justice - singing praises about His willingness to protect His People into all eternity.
Encouraging how God later used the sons of Korah:
-Samuel the prophet was a descendant of Korah (1 Chron 6:31-38).
-The Korahites were assigned the task of custodian and doorkeeper for the Tabernacle (1 Chron 9:19-21).
-According to 1 Chron 12:1-6 there was a group of Korahites commended among David’s military