How to Pray the Psalms: All the Time
June 3, 2018
Dr. Tom Pace
Psalm 145:1-7

We’re beginning a new sermon series today on the Psalms and it will be five weeks long as we move into the summer. The Psalms are the prayer book of the Bible, that’s what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called them, the prayer book of the Bible. There are many kinds of Psalms and it really depends on how you do the breakdown, the taxonomy. Probably six types.
We’re going to look at two today, praise and thanksgiving. We’ll be talking about how we can practice that kind of prayer in our lives. So, listen now as we hear Psalm 145 read, just the first part of it. And get in touch with that praise and thanksgiving within you.
I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever.
Every day I will bless you, and praise your name forever and ever.
Great is theLord, and greatly to be praised; his greatness is unsearchable.
One generation shall laud your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.
On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.
The might of your awesome deeds shall be proclaimed, and I will declare your greatness.
They shall celebrate the fame of your abundant goodness, and shall sing aloud of your righteousness. Psalm 145:1-7(NRSV)
I wonder if you’ve ever been awestruck? Where you just don’t know what to say.
I was looking on the Internet about who we might be awestruck to see. It came up “Who are the world’s most admired people?” This will either humble you or maybe sadden you if you look that up I’ll tell you that. The number one was Bill Gates.
You know who was number three? You wouldn’t guess – Jackie Chan. The number three most admired person in the world, Jackie Chan. Oh, my, what have we come to?
Lisa Westheimer is a Roman Catholic woman in New Jersey and in 1994 when she was a very young woman she received a call from her local priest, Father Peter. He asked, “Don’t you have a four-wheel drive vehicle?” She said she did. Apparently, it was in the middle of a snowstorm and Mother Teresa had been stranded in New York by this snowstorm. Mother Teresa went to Mass every day and they were looking for a priest who would go and say the Mass. So Father Peter said, “If you have a four-wheel drive vehicle you can take me up to Harlem and it will be a great gift for you to meet Mother Teresa.” They went up there and Lisa expected there’d be a cathedral full of people, but found that there were just five of them in a small room. Father Peter said the Mass and when it was done Mother Teresa looked at Lisa and said, “Sit here, let’s talk for a while.”
What would you say to Mother Teresa? What would you say? I don’t know what I would say! I think I’d maybe just sit there! I think I’d be so awestruck by that moment, by the goodness of the person with whom I’m sitting.
What would you say if it were Jesus? Jesus calls and said, “Let’s meet at the Starbucks and have a talk.” So, you meet him and you get your latte and you sit across from Jesus and he says, “So – talk to me.” What would you say?
Here’s the deal. There are just sometimes when we can’t find the words to share that which is most profound within us.
I’ll tell you a secret. You know when these tragedies come around – the shootings in Santa Fe, or Parkland or you name it – as a pastor I feel like I’m supposed to say something. You know you just can’t let it pass. You can’t ignore it. And you want to write something. I get out my laptop to come up with something to put on the church Facebook page and webpage. I start trying to type a prayer of some sort. Everything just seems so “not enough” or so inappropriate or trite or something. The truth is the most profound things, down at our core, we just can’t seem to find the right words.
Thank goodness for the Psalms. Because the Psalms are prayers, they’re the prayers that we can pray to God to give voice to the most profound things that are at the core. When we come into the very presence of God and find ourselves awestruck and we can’t seem to find the words to say, the Psalms are there for us.
The Bible serves as both prophet and priest. Here’s what I mean by that. The prophet is one who speaks to the people for God. The prophet would say, “The word of God to the people in…” whatever the place is, and then would offer the word from God. The Bible is a word to us from God, a revelation to us from God.
But the Bible is also our priest. A priest was one who spoke to God, for the people, someone who interceded the other way. The Bible is also our priest. It gives us words; it expresses that which is within us to God.
One other piece to this that you need to understand is that when we pray we’re not just giving expression to that which is within us, which we are to do in fact. But also, our prayers are designed to lead us, they’re a leading edge in our life. As we pray, our lives will follow. As we pray in a disciplined, diligent, perseverant way, our hearts and our lives will follow those prayers.
The Bible really speaks of two things that are leading edges for us. One is our prayers and the other is our money. The Scripture doesn’t say, “Where your heart is there your treasure will be.” It says, “Where your treasure is there your heart will be.” As we give our lives, our hearts follow. As we pray our lives, our hearts follow.
The Psalms are not just the prayer book of the Bible; they’re also the songbook of the Bible. The Psalms together are called the Psalter, spelled with a “p” like Psalm. The Psalter is in fact the hymnal, the songbook of the Bible. There are more manuscripts, 10 times as many manuscripts of the Psalms as there are of the rest of the Bible put together. The Psalms were such an important part of giving expression. As the people of Israel would gather to worship and sing the Psalms was their hymnal.
And music always functions that way – to give expression to that which we’re feeling. Say that your boyfriend just cheated on you so you turn on a country western song of course. You listen to Miranda Lambert’s song “Kerosene” and you say, “How did she know that I wanted to burn down his house?” That’s what the song is all about. It says, “I’m going to burn down his house!” And you say, “Yes! That’s exactly right!”
So, our worship music not only gives expression to what is within us but it leads us, too. It sets our theology.
I could ask you this question: “Let’s pretend I came to you and said, ‘Right now I need for you to recite ten verses of Scripture from memory. Ten verses. Let me hear them.’” You’d begin with, “Jesus wept.” Okay, you got one. Then you might get through part of the 23^rd Psalm.
But if I came to you and said, “Give me ten lines from a hymn or worship song,” then you’d have no problem at all. You could come up with those. That’s because they form so much of what we do together. They lead our lives.
I hope during this whole season, this series where we look at all the different types of Psalms, that you’ll begin to practice those things and let the Psalms give expression to your prayers and your songs and let them lead.
Today we’re going to be talking about Psalms of praise and thanksgiving and I thought it was really important that during this series we not just talk about them but we actually do that. We say and sing the Psalms together. I’ve asked Sid Davis and his great team here to lead us in a time of singing praise and thanksgiving. And to teach us a little bit about the Psalms as they do that. Some of you are thinking, “I don’t sing” but give it a whirl, you’ll be surprised and I think you’ll enjoy it. Let’s listen and participate as Sid teaches us.
Sid Davis:
Thank you, Tom. I have some really good news. This is going to be super easy. I know you’re probably thinking he’s going to make me sing things I don’t know, but you’ll be surprised at how much you do know actually is tied to the Psalms. And I’m not going to mention the specific Psalm scriptures themselves, I’ll leave that to you to look up. Hopefully not during the rest of the sermon. But you can look those things up yourself.
I think there are three basic categories. There are hymns based on Psalms that are familiar but we probably don’t use them very often, if at all. Then there are some unfamiliar ones that are very easy to learn, and then there are some very familiar hymns that we do use often but we just haven’t made the connection between the fact that that hymn paraphrase or poem that was written was actually based on the Psalms.
Let’s listen to hymn number 75. You’ll find the words to these three verses from these three hymns printed in your bulletin insert, but if you’d rather follow along in the hymnal it’s hymn number 75. The words are based on Psalm 100 and fitting for today since we’re all about praising God today. Let’s sing this together.
All people that on earth do dwell, sing to the Lord with cheerful voice. Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell; come ye before him and rejoice. Old 100th
Most of you are thinking, “Now wait a minute, I know this. That’s the Doxology. And yes, it is the melody for the Doxology and you’re right – sort of. This tune is called “Old 100^th” because it’s been associated with the 100^th Psalm for so long. It is the tune we use for the Doxology which we will do later in the service. But it’s important to know that this isn’t the Doxology, it’s a Doxology. A doxology is a hymn of praise to the Trinity – Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, and this is the one we’ve chosen. There are many doxologies in our hymnal. We’ll sing that again in a few minutes.
Now to our second hymn based on a Psalm. In your hymnal it’s number 142 but while you’re turning to that Psalm 55 paraphrase, let me say a couple of things. It’s often thought that a song in a minor key is sad and that’s not necessarily the case. Also, you may think you need to learn music to sing this music, and you do not. This is really simple and I could sing it to you and you could sing it right back to me.
In a minute I’m going to ask Rob and Virginia to play a verse together just so you can listen. And I want you to take note of how sad this music is not, even though it is in a minor key. But it’s also important to know that the author of the text also wrote the music, which is not always the case. This Psalm paraphrase was written after he went through a very difficult time. He lived in 17^th century Germany and was traveling from one village to another and was robbed of all his belongings and all his money. For a long time, he went from friend to friend and stranger to stranger before he got back on his feet, and it was out of that that he wrote this poem based on Psalm 55. So listen to this music.
If thou but suffer God to guide thee, And hope in God through all thy ways, God will give strength, whate’er betide thee, And bear thee through the evil days. Who trusts in God’s unchanging love Builds on the rock that naught can move.
It feels like a dance because it was a dance. And last of all, a hymn based on a Psalm that is so familiar that I felt when I was little that this hymn should always be sung on Sunday mornings. It’s “O Worship the King” but we rarely stop to think about the fact that this particular poem was based on Psalm 104. Let’s sing the first verse of “O Worship the King” together.
O worship the King, all-glorious above, O gratefully sing God’s power and God’s love; Our Shield and Defender, the Ancient of Days, Pavilioned in splendor, and girded with praise.
Our offertory later this morning is also based on a psalm – that’s Psalm 46. And even though there are multiple stories about its origin, Martin Luther probably wrote it as the plague approached his city. It’s based on Psalm 46 and I hope that now you will be on the lookout for all things Psalm-related in the hymnal because it’s pretty much everywhere. If there’s a question I can answer for you, I’d be happy to do that. Thank you, Tom.
Dr. Pace:
Thank you, Sid, that was awesome. You always learn stuff. In worship team he throws out something about a hymn and I think, “That’s something good to know.”
Now I’m going to tell you something before we talk about these. I want to invite, challenge, prod or whatever it is, with how you say, “I just don’t like to sing in church.” And I see you stand and don’t participate in the singing. But I want to encourage you to give it a little try. You don’t have to sing loudly. Like when I sing and my wife is standing next to me, she says, “Shhhh!” because I’m a loud singer, not always a good singer. And if you’re not ready to sing open your hymnal and follow the words along. So at least you’re connecting mentally with the expression that’s there. Really, again, the point is to begin to lead our lives.
Today these hymns we’re beginning to talk about are songs of praise and thanksgiving. Now many of you have learned to pray using the acronym “A-C-T-S” which means Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication.” Supplication means asking for something, either for someone else or for yourself.
So today we’re talking about the A and the T – Adoration and Thanksgiving. And what I’d like to do is to use as our guide the prayer that you may have said as a child before a meal. “God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food.” We still say that at our house.
If you took off the “…for our food” you’ve got a picture of hymns of adoration and thanksgiving – of praise and thanksgiving. The goodness of God, the greatness of God, and thanking God.
I’m switching “good” and “great” and I want to start with the goodness of God. “God is good.” Listen to the beginning of the Psalm we read:
I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless you, and praise your name forever and ever.
So anytime you see the word name in Scripture replace it in your mind with the word character or the word nature – you could go either way. Name stood for someone’s character. For example, it says, “And you shall name him Jesus, for he will save the people from their sins” the word Jesus literally means “one who saves.” Another example – “and you shall call him Emmanuel” which literally means, “God with us.”
When we praise the name of God we’re saying we’re praising the character of God, the goodness of God, the nature of God. That God is righteous, that God is true, that God is just, that God is loving, that God is merciful. The goodness of God.
There’s a little liturgy that’s sometimes done and it goes this way. The leader says, “God is good” and the people say, “All the time.” Then the leader says, “All the time” and the people respond, “God is good.” Let’s try it.
That was pretty good – it could be a bit more enthusiastic but that’s all right. You’re Methodists, you know. Amen – this is an “Amen.” If I see someone nodding like that it’s as good as I get from something like that.
When we say, “God is good” what we’re not saying is “Everything’s good.” Yesterday I don’t know if you saw it in the news that an 8-year-old child drowned in a swimming pool. That’s not good! And if in the midst of that you say, “God is good” you’re not saying, “God did that and that makes it a good thing.” What you’re saying is that in the midst of a world that is full of all sorts of things good and bad, the anchor that we’re going to hang onto, the one thing that we will hang onto is the goodness of God. Because that’s not changing.
God is good all the time.
You know what I’d say if I sat down next to Mother Teresa? The first thing I would say? “You’re amazing. I’m just in awe of your goodness.” She’s a human being. What if I was going to say something to God?
Now let me just say that this is one of the hardest things to learn to pray. You’re trying to find words and it just seems like you’re saying the same thing. Like “You’re amazing, God. You’re so good, so righteous, so just.” This is one of the times that our songs and our hymns can help us the most. That when you begin with “ACTS – Adoration – and you can’t find words, use the Psalms because it’s filled with statements over and over of the goodness of God.
The first hymn in the United Methodist Hymnal always is the Wesley hymn, “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing.” It says, “O for a thousand tongues to sing, my great redeemer’s praise, the glories of my God and king, the triumphs of his grace. My gracious master and my God, assist me to proclaim, to spread through all the earth abroad the honors of thy name.” Thy character. Your goodness, to tell the world how good and righteous and just and loving and merciful you are.
God is good, and the second half is “God is great.” When we talk about the greatness of God, we’re talking about God’s mighty works, the amazing things God has done. This is the very next verse:
Great is theLord, and greatly to be praised; his greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall laud your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts. On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate. The might of your awesome deeds shall be proclaimed, and I will declare your greatness. They shall celebrate the fame of your abundant goodness, and shall sing aloud of your righteousness. Your amazing and mighty works.
Some of you have read the book by Anne Lamott called Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers. Those are the three essential prayers – “Help, thanks, and wow.” Here’s what she writes: “When we are stunned to the place beyond words, we’re finally starting to get somewhere. It is so much more comfortable to think that we know what it all means, what to expect, how it all hangs together. When we are stunned to the place beyond words, when an aspect of life takes us away from being able to chip away at something till it’s down to a manageable size and then we can file it nicely away. When all we can say in response is ‘wow!’ – that’s a prayer.”
To just be amazed.
One of our members emailed me this week and said that interior decorators will tell you that when you walk into the front door of a house the wall that you see first they like to call the “Wow Wall.” The idea is that you want to put something on that wall that makes people say, “Wow! This house is cool! The rest of it may be pretty shabby but… “
I like to think of sunrise as God’s “Wow Wall.” That every morning when the sun comes up and it’s light again and the birds begin to sing and a new day is given us – wow!
We’re headed to Colorado for vacation this summer. We call it “Pace-cation” and we do it one week a year. It’s all four sons-in-law, and all five daughters, and all nine grandchildren and my wife and maybe me. We’re going to Colorado and we go different places. I’m counting on a lot of “Wow time” to just look round and say, “Wow! Oh, my God, this is incredible!” Did you ever have that experience?
Here’s what the physicists tell us and this is amazing to me. That at one time everything there was, was inside something the size of the head of a pin. They call it the “Initial Singularity.” I prefer to call it God – that’s fine. The Scripture says, “In the beginning God…” And that in one second, what we call the Big Bang, everything expanded to a hundred million miles.
Here’s what Wikipedia – the expert on all things – says about it: “The initial singularity was a singularity of seemingly infinite density and mass thought to have contained all of the mass in space time of the universe before quantum fluctuations...”
And let me insert here “… or a decision of God.” “…caused it to rapidly expand in the Big Bang and subsequent inflation creating the present-day universe.”
I just can’t comprehend that. Wow! That’s incredible! The amazing works of God.
So how do we respond to those kinds of works? How do we respond to the goodness of God and the greatness of God? “God is great, God is good…” so let us thank him. We respond with thanksgiving, with gratitude.
I suspect you are familiar with the 100^th Psalm: “Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise, give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good, his love endures forever and his faithfulness continues through all generations.”
I didn’t even notice it till the 9:45 service- we just sang “O gratefully sing of God’s power…” Great is God. “…and God’s love.” Good is God.
Diana Butler Bass has written a new book called Grateful. It came out in 2018 and it’s subtitled The Transforming Power of Giving Thanks. She makes the point that gratitude is not an emotion – well, it is an emotion – but it’s not just an emotion. That real gratitude is an ethic. It’s a way of life and includes our actions, our words and our emotions. It’s a way of living. It is both a feeling and a choice. A way to respond to the world around us. To be grateful people in all circumstances.
It happened to me again this week. I was driving from the Woodlands where we’d been in Annual Conference and it was dusk. The buildings, the skyline of Houston was just gorgeous. You could see the glistening off the buildings and it was just so beautiful. I’d been reflecting on the day’s activities and conversations at Annual Conference which were sometimes tense. There was just so much going on and I was thinking about my own life, the good things and some difficult things, and everything. And I was just overwhelmed with thinking “God is so good! And I am so grateful!”
Do you ever have those moments when it just becomes clear all of a sudden? And the basic gut response about life, even in difficult times is to think, “I am so grateful, God!”
I want to live in “wow!” and “thanks!” all the time. I want to be anchored to that so when the difficult times happen all around me, I can stay focused on the thing that doesn’t change – the goodness and the greatness of God. I want to live in “Wow!” and “Thanks!” all the time because God is good – all the time.
So, the discipline of praying the Psalms, of praying about the goodness, the holiness, the righteousness, the justice, the love, the mercy of God. To continue to pray that I hope will guide my life, will lead me to that place where I live in “wow!” and “thanks!” because God is great, God is good. Let us thank him.
Gracious God, we do pray that you will break through our confusion and give us that sense of clarity about your goodness and your love and your power. And that whatever happens we can stay anchored to that and respond to you with gratitude. In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen.