prayers that come from all different periods in Israel's history. Many of

these poems are connected with King David-- 73, actually. And he was known as a

poet and a harp player. But there are many different authors behind these poems.

There's the poems of Asaph, or from the sons of Korah, and some from other

worship leaders in the temple. Even Solomon and Moses have their own poems and nearly

one third of these are anonymous.

Now many of these poems came to be used by the choirs that sang in Israel's

temple. But the Book of Psalms is actually not a hymn book. At some point in the

period after Israel's exile to Babylon, these ancient poems were gathered

together and intentionally arranged into the Book of Psalms before us. And it has

a very unique design and message that you're not gonna notice unless you read

it from beginning to end. Now to see how the Book of Psalms is designed, it's actually most

helpful to start at the end. The book concludes with five poems of praise to

the God of Israel and each one begins and ends with the word "hallelujah," which

is Hebrew for a command to tell a group of people to praise "Yah," which is short

for the divine name Yahweh. Now that's a really nice five-part

arrangement and it looks like someone's giving us a conclusion here to the book.

So it invites the question, "does the book have any other signs of intentional

design?" If you pay attention to the headings of the poems, you'll notice that at five

places your Bible translators have the heading "book one," "book two," "book three," "four,"

and "five" at various points and that these divide the book into five large

sections. Now the reason for this is that the final poem in each of those sections

have a very similar ending that looks like an editorial addition. It reads

something like, "May the LORD, the God of Israel, be blessed forever and ever, amen

and amen." So the book has a conclusion, it has an internal organization into

five main parts and so the natural place to go from here is now the beginning-- to

look for an introduction. And what do we find? Psalm 1 and 2,

which stand outside of Book One because most of the poems in Book One are linked

to David except Psalms 1 and 2, which are anonymous.

Psalm 1 celebrates how blessed the person is who meditates on the Torah,

prayerfully reading it day and night and then obeying it. Now the word "Torah," it simply

means "teaching" and more specifically it came to refer to the five books of Moses

that begin the Old Testament. And here actually, the word seems to be used with

both meanings in mind, which explains why it has five main parts. The Book of Psalms

is being offered as a new Torah that will teach God's people the lifelong

practice of prayer as they strive to obey God's commands given in the first

Torah. Psalm 2 is a poetic reflection on God's promise to King David from 2nd

Samuel chapter 7 that one day a Messianic King would come and establish

God's kingdom over the world, defeat evil and rebellion among the nations. Now Psalm 2

concludes by saying that all of those who take refuge in the Messianic King

will be blessed, precisely the word used to open Psalm 1. And so together these

two poems tell us that the Book of Psalms is designed to be the prayer book

of God's people as they strive to be faithful to the commands of the Torah as

they hope and wait for the future Messianic Kingdom. Now with these two

themes introduced, we can start to see how the smaller books have been designed

as well around these two ideas. So for example, Book One has, right at the center,

a collection of poems, Psalms 15 through 24, that opens and closes with a call to

covenant faithfulness. And then, in Psalms 16 to18, we find a depiction

of David as a model of this kind of faithfulness. So he calls out to God to

deliver him and God elevates him as King. Now in the corresponding set of poems

Psalms 20-23, the David of the past has become an image of the Messianic King of

the future, who will also call out to God, he will be delivered, and then given a

kingdom over the nations. And then right at the center of this collection is a poem,

Psalm 19, dedicated to praising God for the Torah. So here we go: the two themes

from Psalm 1 and 2 are bound together

tightly here. Book Two opens with two poems that are united in their hope for a future

return to the temple in Zion and this is the image closely associated with the

hope of the Messianic Kingdom. Then Book Two closes with a poem that

depicts the future reign of the Messianic King over all of the nations.

This poem's really amazing because it echoes all these other passages from

the prophets about the Messianic Kingdom and it concludes by saying that this

king's reign will bring about the fulfillment of God's ancient promise to Abraham to

bring God's blessing to all of the nation's. Book Three also concludes with a

poem reflecting on God's promise to David, but this time in light of Israel's

exile. So the poet remembers how God said he would never abandon the line of David

but now he's looking at Israel's rebellion in its result and destruction

and exile and the downfall of the line of David. And so the poet ends by asking God

to never forget his promise to David. Book Four is designed to respond to this

crisis of exile. So the opening poem returns us back to Israel's roots with a

prayer of Moses and he does what he did on Mount Sinai after the Golden Calf

incident, which is to call upon God to show mercy. The center of Book Four is

dominated by a group of poems that announced that the LORD, the God of

Israel, reigns as the true king of the world and all creation-- trees, mountains,

rivers-- are all summoned to celebrate that future day when God will bring his

justice and kingdom over all the world. Book Five opens with a series of poems

that affirmed that God hears the cries of his people and will one day send the

future king to defeat evil and bring God's kingdom.This book also contains

two larger collections, one called the "hallel", the other called "the songs of

ascent." Each one of these collections concludes with a poem about the future

Messianic Kingdom. And these two collections together, they sustain the

hope for a future exodus-like act of God to redeem his people. And then, right

between them is Psalm 119. It's the longest poem in the book. It's an alphabet poem, each

line begins with a new letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and it explores the

wonder and the

gift of the Torah as God's Word to his people. So here we go.

The themes from Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 and Torah and Messiah combined all together here in

Book Five. Which brings us all the way back to that five-poem conclusion. In

the center poem, Psalm 148, all creation is summoned to praise the God of Israel

because he has "raised up a horn for his people." Now the horn here, is a

metaphor of a bull's horn raised in victory. And this image

echoes back to the same image used in Hannah's song, 1Samuel chapter 2, but

also to the earlier Psalm 132. The horn is a symbol for the

future Messianic King and his victory over evil. It's a fitting conclusion to this

amazing book. Now here's one more thing that you are likely going to miss if you

don't read this book in order.

There's lots of different kinds of poems in the book of Psalms but they all

basically fall into two big categories-- either poems of lament or poems of

praise. Poems of lament expressed pain, confusion, and anger about how horrible

the world is and how horrible things are happening to the poet and so these poems

draw attention to what's wrong in the world and they ask God to do something

about it. There's a lot of these in the book, which tells us something important--

that lament is an appropriate response to the evil that we see in our world. But

what you'll notice is that lament poems predominate earlier in the book, in books

1 through 3. Pay attention because you'll see praise poems occasionally too. Praise

poems are poems of joy and celebration and they draw attention to what's good

in the world. They retell stories of what God has done in our lives and thank God

for it. In Books Four and Five you'll notice that praise poems come to

outnumber lament poems and it all culminates in that five-part hallelujah conclusion.

So this shift from lament to praise, this is profound, and it tells us something

about the nature of prayer. As we hoped for the Messianic Kingdom, as the book

teaches us to do, this will create tension for us as we look out on the

tragic state of our world and of our lives. And so the psalms teach us not to

ignore the pain of our lives but at the same time,

Biblical faith is forward-looking-- looking to the promise of God's future

Messianic Kingdom. And so Torah and Messiah, lament and praise, faith and

hope. That's what the Book of Psalms is all about.