Who Can Show Us Good? - Psalm 4

1. Prayer
He who dwells
in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of my God,
“He is my rock,
He is my for fortress,
He is my deliverer,
my God in whom I trust.”
Amen.

2. The Church Calendar
April 18

3. Psalm 4
WHO can show us GOOD?

6. Jon Collins
Tim Mackie
The book of psalms
is being offered as
a new Torah that will
teach Gods people
the lifelong practice
of prayer as they
strive to obey Gods
commands given
in the Torah.

7. Grace, by Eric Enstrom

8. This book is a personal plea. The psalms,
which make up the great hymnbook at the
heart of the Bible, have been the daily
lifeblood of Christians, and of course the
Jewish people, from the earliest times.
Yet in many Christian circles today, the
Psalms are simply not used. And in many
places where they are still used…they are
often reduced to
a few verses to be recited as “filler” between
other parts of the liturgy or worship services.
In the latter case, people often don’t seem
to realize what they’re singing. In the former
case, they don’t seem to realize what they’re
missing. This book is an attempt to reverse

9. “My God, my God, why have
you forsaken me?” (Ps. 22:1).
In the cave of despair, the blues
saves us. The brutal honesty of
the psalms asks: “How long
LORD? wilt thou hide thyself for
ever?”
BONO

10. Most of all, once more,
they are designed as worship:
the multidimensional worship
in which every aspect of human life,
love, fear, delight, anger, despair,
and gratitude is laid as an offering
before the God who himself comes
to stand at the crossroads of time,
space, and matter.

11. Paul speaks at one point of Christians
as “God’s poem,” God’s “artwork.”
We are his “workmanship,” say some
of the translations of Ephesians 2.10.
The Greek word Paul uses there is
poiēma, the very word from which the
English word “poem” is derived. God
gives us these poems, the Psalms, as a
gift, in order that through our praying
and singing of them he may give us as
a gift to his world.
We are called to be living, breathing,
praying, and singing poems.

12. The Psalms see right through us.
See right into us. If we famous people
make ourselves known in lots of
annoying and self-aggrandizing ways,
“making yourself known” has a whole
other meaning in the Scriptures. “Now
I
know in part,” writes the apostle Paul,
“But then shall I know even as also
I am known” (1 Cor. 13:12 KJV).
As we sing or read the psalms, they
BONO

13. My point is deeper. I am suggesting that the
entire worldview that the Psalms are
inculcating was to do with that intersection
of our time, space, and matter with God’s,
which Christians believe happened uniquely
and dramatically in Jesus. In the same way,
the story the Psalms tell is the story Jesus
came to complete. It is the story of the
creator God taking his power
and reigning, ruling on earth as in heaven,
delighting the whole creation by sorting out
its messes and muddles, its injuries and
injustices, once and for all. It’s also the story
of malevolent enemies prowling around, of
people whispering lies and setting traps, and

14. Part of the strange work of the Psalms
is to draw the terror and shame of all
the ages together to a point where it
becomes intense and unbearable,
turning itself into a great scream of
pain, the pain of Israel, the pain of
Adam
and Eve, the pain that shouts out,
in the most paradoxical act of worship,
to ask why God has abandoned it.
And then of course the Psalms tell the
story of strange vindication, of
dramatic reversal, of wondrous rescue,

15. Eugene Peterson says it this way:
“We often imagine, wrongly, that the
psalms are private compositions
prayed by a shepherd, traveler, or
fugitive.
Close study shows that all of them
are corporate: all were prayed by
and in the community…It goes against
the whole spirit of the psalms to
take these communal laments, these
congregational praises, these
corporate intercessions and use them
as cozy formulas for private solace.”

16. The Psalms offer us a way of joining
in a chorus of praise and prayer that
has been going on for millennia and
across all cultures. Not to try to
inhabit them, while continuing to
invent non-psalmic “worship” based
on our own feelings
of the moment, risks being like a
spoiled child who, taken to the
summit of Table Mountain with the
city and the ocean spread out before
him, refuses to gaze
at the view because he is playing with

17. What the psalms offer us is
a powerful aid to un-hide:
to stand honestly before God
without fear, to face one another
vulnerably without shame,
and to encounter life in
the world without any of
the secrets that would demean
and distort our humanity.

18. Benediction
He who dwells
in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of my God,
“He is my rock,
He is my for fortress,
He is my deliverer,
my God in whom I trust.”
Amen.