Seeing Jesus in the Psalms

  Psalm 150 1 Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary;     praise him in his mighty heaven! 2 Praise him for his mighty works;     praise his unequaled greatness! 3 Praise him with a blast of the ram’s horn;     praise him with the lyre and harp! 4 Praise him with the tambourine and dancing;     praise him with strings and flutes! 5 Praise him with a clash of cymbals;     praise him with loud clanging cymbals. 6 Let everything that breathes sing praises to the Lord! Praise the Lord! Psalm 150 3 And they were singing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb: “ Great and marvelous are your works ,     O Lord God, the Almighty. Just and true are your ways,     O King of the nations.[a] 4 Who will not fear you, Lord,     and glorify your name?     For you alone are holy. All nation...

  Psalm 144 Open the heavens, LORD, and come down .  Touch the mountains so they billow smoke. Psalm 144:5 Imagine waiting for God to send a sign of His presence that dealt with all your enemies, made you the top of the world order and blessed you with abundance of all things. Sounds too good to be true. And when it happens you think, whoa, wait a minute, this isn’t how it was supposed to happen. When God came to Moses at Mount Sinai It was with such power that anyone in the vicinity would die, the ground quaked, the heaven shook, thunder and lightning filled the skies. It was a scary scene. The people asked Moses to make it stop. Although a baby out in the animal shed may wake the chickens, it seems like it is a far cry from God’s presence in Mount Sinai. He is my loving ally and my fortress, my tower of safety, my rescuer. He is my shield, and I take refuge in him. He makes the nations submit to me. Psalm 144:2 Have you ever felt oppressed and at the mercy of an unfair gover...

  Psalm 100 - Prank phone calls used to be a thing. Radio stations called random people. Youth called random people with rude or odd questions. And in my twenties I called people in the church and just read Psalm 100 and hung up afterwards. I know it is strange. You’ll have to trust me, it was a different time. I used Psalm 100 for a few reasons: it was short, it had a certain “ring” to it, in that the reference and the words of the Psalm seemed “punchy”. It was like a random drive by declaration of blessing and kindness. Oh well, those days are long gone but Psalm 100 has persisted. Since Jesus calls Himself the good shepherd in John 10 readers of the Bible have had no problem seeing Jesus in Psalm 23. Here He is again. And Psalm 100 tells us more about this Shepherd King. Make some noise because Jesus is the shepherd King of all mankind (all creation) v1 All the earth, everyone is called upon to celebrate the Lord, who we come to find out is a Shepherd King.  Shouts, gl...

  Psalm 58 I’m starting this morning by comparing many many translations because the language and figures of speech are so interesting. I recommend you do that too. There are many ways to compare translations. You can have the books (Bibles) and open them and look at them, you can use the YouVersion Bible App on your phone and use the compare function in the app where you can add many versions from many languages and see verses in a scrollable list. Or you can use the website I’m using today to click through the versions, https://biblehub.com/esv/psalms/58.htm . I’ve dipped into the commentaries out of curiosity. As I suspected, the Hebrew here is very hard to translate and understand. Barnes Notes are particularly helpful (I'm not consulting that one alone, but don’t feel it is needed to mention every version or commentary that I am consulting) in pointing out the difficulties. I am not looking for answers, I’m looking for the agreed ideas that across the board are translated wit...