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Singing and Praying the Major Psalm Types
by Eddie Johnston The goal of this presentation is to guide believers in the actual use of the Psalms, not merely into a study of them for their doctrinal and practical content. Therefore, we will look at using these major psalm types in private and public worship. The Cry for Help Psalm
Introduction:
Have you ever divided the Lord’s prayer into sections so you could order your private prayers to God, or, at least tried to remember to follow the parts of the prayer in your own devotions? That is an important practice because it teaches you to use the model the Lord Jesus gave us and not to omit important elements in your prayers. He knows better than we do just what we need to consider when we pray. Similarly, the Psalms were given to the OT people of God to teach them how to sing and pray. They are model prayers for the people. They were, in fact, given to the Levites, to lead the people publically at the temple, and stir them to proper prayer. We will look at several of the major categories ( Cry for Help, Thanksgiving, the Hymn, Wisdom, and Royal ) and try to learn what we need to do to pray, as the Lord is teaching us. The first category includes the Cry for Help, the Thanksgiving Psalms, and the Hymn. Grouping these first three together is a practical move because they are recognized by their form. The second category will include the Wisdom and Royal Psalms. They are recognized not by form but by content. The first psalm type we will look at is the Cry for Help, often called the Lament or Complain psalm. Cry for Help is a more appropriate label because it gives the real purpose of the psalm. 'Lament' only describes one section of a Cry for Help psalm, while the title we are using describes its purpose as a whole. In order to benefit from this type of psalm we need to examine the way it is put together. Follow along with your Bible so you can see these sections and use them as a model for your own pleas to God. We will use Psalm 13 as a guide, and, in addition speak about the implications of this form of Psalm. Its Sections Psalm 13 Introductory Cry | 1 How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? | Petition | 3 Look on me and answer, O LORD my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death; | Lament | 4 my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall. | Assertion of Confidence | 5 But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. | Promise to Praise | 6 I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me. |
Discussion of the Sections in Psalm 13 1. Initial address to God, 13: 1,2 In this section God is addressed in a very general way which often summarizes the themes to be found in the remainder of the psalm. It is important to remember that the address teaches us a very basic fact – the Cry for Help psalm is a cry for God to help, not a speech to others about your problems, not even a speech to God about your problems. It is a plea to God which uses your problems as a way to cry for help. Another important fact is that the shorter the psalm, the less likely it is that we will see this general introductory cry. In the shorter Cry for Help psalms, the initial address merges with the petition. 2. Petition, 13: 3 In this section, the believer asks the Lord to do something about his distress. He has come not just to voice his distress or to vent before God, but to ask for deliverance. The petition may involve several elements which address the need for God to respond to the complaint of the believer. Some of these elements are the request for deliverance from trial, the petition for God to deal with his enemies (the famous ‘imprecations’), the pleas to vindicate the believer before the world, the request for direction or teaching from God, all so the believer will behave wisely in the present circumstances, and others. 3. Complaint/Lament, 13:4 In these psalms there are at least three different approaches to or dimensions of complaint – specifically, it may be directed against God, against one’s enemies, or it may concern only the psalmist and his distress. a. Whenever the complaint affects the Psalmist’s relationship with God, we often find various types of WHY questions. Only God can clarify these questions – why do you not answer my prayers, why am I left to suffer, etc. b. The Psalmist may complain about his enemy, if his standing in society or in the community is threatened in some way. Enemies abound and God’s judgment is called for by the sufferer. The believer’s standing and well being among the people may be threatened. Indeed, if you study the 'enemy' in these psalms, he is never specifically identified except for his 'threat profile'. An enemy in the Psalms is anyone or anything that threatens the faith of the believer. c. Sometimes the Psalmist complains about his own weakness or misery. Does God not look on his misery? It is remarkable how often this feature is a source of his complaint and his petition to God. This should convince us that God is just as concerned about our distress as he is about the trial itself. Inward misery is a basis for petition to God and complaint about it. The distress may be the engine which drives the believer and drags him down more and more. It may, therefore, be a contributing factor in the trail or temptation. It should therefore be brought to God as part of the complaint. d. Only in this context, and with these features in mind does the trial of the individual take shape and have meaning. The individual life experience of the believer as an image-bearer of God, as a worshipper, as a father/husband or wife/mother, in the believer’s individual calling in life (whatever that is); all of these may be threatened. The complaint may refer to all aspects of life as under a threat. The psalmist is not speaking in a vacuum. And as before, only God can answer the complaint; the believer relies ultimately only on God to give him deliverance from his enemy. There is no hint that he is going to go out by himself to join the battle, that is, without the Lord's helping presence. It is the Lord who is his Warrior; it is the Lord who must equip him for the battle, Psa 72. Cf. Psa 18:33, 34. 4. The Expression of Confidence 13: 5 A fourth element in the Cry for Help is an expression of the confidence the complainer has in God. This seems to come as an abrupt change of mood, from one of distress and complaint, along with petition, to a sudden expression of the psalmist's ultimate trust in God. Often, in English translation, a ‘but’ will occur, with some explanation following, to show that the mood of the Psalmist has changed from complaint to trust. After reading the complaints and petitions this may seem to be a surprising or sudden shift of mood. Note the comment, for example, in 28:6 “He has heard my supplication.” Note also 27:6, 12:5, 119:67. This shift indicates a sudden transition from complaint to confession of trust, or an expression of assurance that the psalmist has been heard. Hence we have an abrupt transition from complaint to praise. Here, in the face of an existing predicament the praise of God can be boldly sung with the certainty that the Lord has heard or will hear. Note 13:5, 31:14, 52:8, 27:13, 141:8, 38:15. The so-called shift does not always suppose that the Psalmist is speaking about a PAST complaint from which he has already been delivered, but, in a great number of lament psalms the trust or praise is uttered during present distress with no relief in sight. Yet there are almost no examples of a lament which does not progress beyond petition and lament. This fact shows that Cry for Help psalms are the complaints of a trusting heart. All but one or two of these psalms end in either praise or a confession of trust. Laments are not a soliloquy of self-pity or unheard prayers, but are the cries of distress made in faith to a God who hears and answers his people, 50:15. In Psa 50 it is this cry of distress during the day of trouble that distinguishes true believers from the wicked. 5. The Promise to Praise, 13:6 (frequently with a future tense = “I will sing to the Lord”) Many lament psalms end with either a vow to praise or some expression of assurance that the psalmist will be heard by the Lord. The promise to praise is a VOW to praise the Lord. The believer who trusts in the Lord and knows Him to be faithful will cry out in distress, while being sure of an answer. This does not imply we will not doubt such answers but that this is the expectation for a believer who trusts God. The Lord is due the praise of his redeemed creature. Concluding Remarks About the Cry for Help. It is of the utmost importance that we consider each section as a vital part in the whole psalm when we are considering the Cry for Help psalm. Lament and petition take on their true biblical meaning only when accompanied by confidence in the Lord (the Expression of Confidence) and the an assurance that the lamenting believer is looking forward to praise the Lord for his coming deliverance from his trial. Lament by itself, or even joined with complaint, is a failure to come to grips with real biblical spirituality. True complaint has a bedrock confidence in God and expects the Lord to be his great deliverer. Lament almost always flows into petition, into an expression of confidence, and is crowned with the vow of praise – which anticipates God’s saving intervention. We can conclude that the presence of the lament gives suffering saints great encouragement to appeal to their compassionate Lord; it is a clear testimony to his readiness to save us from our own ordeals. The goal of the lament is the praise of God. Lamentation is turned into praise as the response of the delivered one. Whether in complaint or in thanksgiving all of life is praise to God. To live is to praise, even in the awful experiences of life. Praise shows that God is king, that he is king of our lives. He sets the rules. The Lament in the Redemptive History To speak this way about the character of the Cry for Help should cause us to cast our eyes across the pages of redemptive history to see if the saints of God have found this psalm type as useful as it seems by its description and occurrences in the book of the Psalms. I will give some important occurrences from major epochs in the history of redemption that will confirm what we have found about this blessed instrument from God. In the History of Abraham It is clear from Gen 18:20, 21 and 19:13 that both Abraham and someone (inside of Sodom?) were complaining to God about the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah. At any rate this gives us an excellent example of a lament and the way God uses it. The first indicator of this is Abraham’s intercession to God for Sodom. It is a plea that that God save the city because of the righteous in it. In his plea he asks the why question which is a commonplace in the lament psalms. He asks, “Will you destroy the city if there are a certain number of righteous people in it? Will not the judge of all the earth do right? A second indication of the lament theme in the Sodom story is the Lord’s response to Abraham. He sends angels to Sodom, not, initially, to destroy the city, but to investigate because of the outcry that had reached his holy ear: Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.” Gen 18:20,21. After the angels encounter the wicked men of the city they then conclude that the judgment is deserved: Get them out of here, Because we are going to destroy this place. The outcry to the Lord against its people is So great that he has sent us to destroy it. Gen 19:13 God’s response and the response of the angels demonstrate the actual pronouncement of judgment awaited the investigation of the angels, and that the judgment was a result of the cry of those suffering from the oppression caused by Sodom’s sin. The coming of the angels and their observations is part of God’s trial of the wicked cities of the plain. Further, the cry of the righteous is the basis for God’s attention to this matter. It is just because he heard the outcry of the afflicted that he sent his angels to examine the situation. This way of carrying out his judgment should encourage us to cry out under injustice, and realize that God will hear us. These indicators in the story tell us that we have a court scene in which the justice of the plea of the righteous is examined – not just a simple mission to destroy the city because of what God himself saw. In the Exodus from Egypt In the Exodus, deliverance for the people came as a result of God’s answer to their cry of distress: “I have heard their cry,” Ex 3:7. God’s coming to deliver was a result of a prior lament of the people. We can read this lament in Ex. 2:23-25. 23 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. 24 God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. 25 So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them. This demonstrates that the major Old Testament event of the Exodus occurred after the people cried for help to the Lord, and that he answered them. That explains the victory praise in Exodus 15, the Song of the Sea. Period of the Judges With all the wickedness that the people fell into the covenant faithfulness of the Lord shines through in the book. Note the following passages: 3:9, 15, 4:3, 5:28, 6:6,7, 7:20,21, 9:7,24, 10:10, 12,14. The passages demonstrate that even though the people continually fell into sin, that, when they turned from that sin and cried out to the Lord He then heard them. These laments would be laments over their own wickedness. The Kingdom The coming of the kingdom, concluding in the inauguration of the Temple, is the redemptive high point of the Old Testament. What initial event was responsible for God's bringing in the kingdom. In 1 Sam 9:16 we have the answer from the Lord. Speaking of Saul, the first king He said: "...he will deliver my people from the hand of the Philistines. I have looked upon my people for their cry has reached me." Not only was Sodom and Gomorrah judged and Lot delivered because of a cry for help. Not only did the Exodus occur because of the cry for help from a suffering people, but the grand event of the Old Testament came to pass because of the people's cry for help. We could go on and show more evidence of this but I would like to conclude with a few verses from the New Testament that are just as decisive and even remarkable. The New Covenant Luke 18: 1-8 In the Lord’s prayer the petition “Deliver us from evil’ is typical of a cry for help. In this passage the Lord tells his disciples to pray continually and not to give up. Because the widow cries out continually for justice the Lord reassures us that if she perseveres he will hear and bring justice speedily. This section squares with the OT use of the cry for help psalm (cf. Psa 43:1). Even if the answer to this prayer is at the last day we are to now persevere in prayer toward that day. Now we can have and express confidence in God and now we can praise Him. The long delay does not mean we should passively wait without lamenting, but that we should continue now in crying out for justice. The Book of Revelation There is a very important example in Rev 8:3-5. When the prayers of the saints, under the figure of incense, Rev 5:8, are poured onto the altar, the response of God is the judgments on the earth, described briefly under the figure of ‘peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake.’ Look at Rev 8: 3-5 Another angel, who had a golden censer came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, along with the prayers of ALL the saints, on the golden altar before the throne. The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints went up before God from the angel's hand. Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake. PRAYER Apparently the judgment of the trumpets in the following verses is a more elaborate description of 8:5. This account shows in a startling way that God’s judgments on the earth come as a result of the cries of the people of God to Him. The cry for help calls forth the judgment of God. In our cries for help we not only learn to bring our troubles to God, but he also answers them by delivering us from our enemies. The book of Revelation describes, in highly figurative language, that deliverance. In this case, the judgments of the seventh seal are staged as the result of the complaints of the saints (compare those under the altar in Rev 6:10, who cry ‘how long?’). This indicates that in the book of Revelation the author has not overlooked the significance of our laments in working out his plan for the world and the judgments which the suffering of the innocent calls forth. In short, the judgments of God against the world are based on and are a response to the prayers of His people. These few examples from the Old and New Testaments are extraordinary encouragements to believers to be faithful in prayer, always in prayer, because we realize, if we may say it in this way, that our great God is using us, in and through our prayers, to create world history, to bring in his final kingdom, and to render justice. Who can say, in the face of these wonderful and powerful examples, that his or her prayers mean little or nothing. Who will not be encouraged to redouble his or her efforts to cry out to God faithfully. Press on; cry out. God is listening. He will act.
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