As I was in prayer, I had one
of those divine reversals this week.
I had already intended on a different series,
and the Lord really messed me up, you
know.
When you open your ears to Him and
you get this, like, no, no, that's not
where I was going to go.
Yeah.
And so I feel like, you know, when
we're groping through these things, I don't have
like a hotline to Heaven, right?
None of us have that.
But we can hear His voice and be
led by His Spirit.
And so He prompted me to move through
the book of Psalms for the summer and
to show how the New Testament church, the
early Christians, used the book of Psalms.
How they preached out of the book of
Psalms.
How they prayed the book of Psalms.
Why are the Psalms important?
And how did the early church, and how
has the church, the historic church, continued to
use the Psalms right up to our three
mornings a week in morning prayer?
You see, we don't really read the Psalms.
We pray the Psalms.
We sing the Psalms.
The Psalms are songs, the songs of Israel
and the Christological, the songs of Jesus being
proclaimed, today I have begotten you, says the
Father.
And so the responsorial part allows us to
participate where it's not just a reading.
It is a prayer from the lectern.
And then we respond with that prayer and
we pray together that Psalm.
OK, so that's the way we want to
look at the responsorials, right?
It's a part of our worship.
If I were on a desert island, I
was thinking this day, I said, what book
of the Bible would I take?
What book of the Bible would you take?
Think about this, that I think I would
take the book of Psalms with me if
I could choose.
You say, oh, Michael, why wouldn't you take
the gospel?
Why wouldn't you take John or something like
that?
It's because before John was ever written, which
was around 90 AD, the church had been
around preaching apostolic messages out of the Old
Testament.
And so like today, we're going to turn
to Acts 2 and we're going to see
the first sermon on the day of Pentecost
was utilizing the prophet Joel, Psalm 16, Psalm
110.
And then they got in trouble because of
the healings that were taking place.
And then they came together and they prayed
Psalm 2, which we heard today.
So we could call this meeting with God
and his people.
With the Psalms, meeting with God and his
people, with the Psalms.
This is not some pursuit of individual spirituality
where I go away on an island, even
though some of us want to do that
right now.
Yeah, but I'm there, Robinson Crusoe, Christian, all
alone with God.
The Psalms are the proclamation of the covenant
that God made with Israel and that God
promised to all the earth.
Because in the Psalms, it's not just about
Israel, it's about all the earth and all
creation praising him.
You see, David got what Israel never fulfilled.
And that's why Jesus, the new vine, the
new Israel came to fulfill it all and
opened up the way for the Gentiles, all
the nations to be saved through him.
And so David is proclaiming that full impact
of the gospel throughout the Psalms.
When we meet in morning prayer at the
ministry center, we're not only meeting with God,
but we're meeting with his people, praying the
Psalms.
And in praying those Psalms, we encounter God
and we encounter communion with each other.
And then we finish that up with the
eighth sacrament.
Everybody know what the eighth sacrament is?
Oh, yeah, it's the coffee.
I mean, the church would not survive without
coffee.
Come on.
It's the power of the holy being.
After the power of the Holy Spirit, it
must be the power of the holy being.
OK, I'm sorry.
Amen.
Let's pray for those baristas.
More power.
Right.
And so we hang out together and we've
been doing this all year now where we're
praying three times a week from seven to
seven thirty.
But then it's not over.
People stay for an hour or however long
they can stay, sometimes two hours.
And it's like three small groups going on.
It's centered around prayer, meeting with God and
his people.
Community is being developed and people from other
churches are coming.
It's an ecumenical reality where people from other
churches are hungry.
They get on our Web site.
They see that we're meeting with God and
they come to.
It's a beautiful thing.
I invite you all if you're around and
you're within driving distance.
I mean, there's people that do drive from
the Northland three times a week to do
that.
There's people that drive from Overland Park three
times a week that do that.
So if you can do that, I just
want to throw out that invitation because there's
something very powerful happening.
It's indescribable, really, about what's happening through the
week.
And it's all centered around prayer and people
hungry for God and people from other churches
coming wanting to pray liturgically.
It's a really cool thing.
Meeting with God and his people, those are
corporate prayers that we're praying then, right?
There's individual psalms, there's psalms of individual devotion,
and then there's psalms for the corporate body
in those hundred and fifty psalms, the largest
book in the Bible.
And it's right in the center of the
Bible.
It just proclaims the gospel.
All of the prayer warriors have prayed these
corporate prayers throughout the history of of the
church.
Liturgical poems, they are their liturgical poems that
bridge the prayers in heaven and on earth,
because all of those saints in heaven, which
in Revelation 5 says the prayers of the
saints in heaven are like sweet smelling incense.
And so that's what's happening.
These liturgical prayers bridge the prayers in heaven
and on earth because they're the common liturgy
that we have all prayed together as we
rise up to be with the Lord.
They formed us, they informed us, and they
have formed us in our spiritual formation.
So all the prayer warriors in heaven, the
prayers of the saints were formed by praying
the psalms individually and corporately.
OK, so what would be our aim in
going through the psalms and emphasizing the psalms?
Number one, it would be to taste and
see the beauty and awe of God in
the depths of prayer, the heights of praise
and the in-betweens of utter emotional disillusionment.
It's all in the Psalter.
And that was a lament, that was a
psalm of sorts, a poem, a prophetic poem
from Jeremiah that we heard this morning.
It was a complaint, right?
The psalms give us permission to go there
with God, isn't it good that you don't
have to, like, deny your feelings and the
the view of reality that you're experiencing?
It's not reality, ultimate reality, right?
Pure spirit, that is.
But when our eyes get, we see through
a glass dimly at best.
At our best, we see through a glass
dimly, Paul says.
We are still falling creatures in the midst
of being restored and groping for God, and
sometimes it's hard to pray, you find it
hard to pray sometimes.
I do.
And the Psalms give us that every season
of the soul variety of prayer where it
lets us know that we're human and it's
OK, it's good to be human.
And, you know, sometimes we we exalt rationality
over emotion.
But both are just as fallen.
Selah.
Selah is a musical term in the Psalms.
It means pause and provide some space in
the improvisation.
Now, when I thought about that this week,
I thought that is significant how we exalt
rationality over emotion when both are falling.
And the Psalms levels all of that out,
at least David does, because he's the guy,
the king who dances naked before the ark.
He's the guy that offends Michal, his wife,
right?
He's the guy he's just as thinking like,
what a great vision statement for a church.
We already have one, but man, it would
be a church after God's own heart, because
that's what David was.
He was a man after God's own heart.
And don't you want to be a church
after God's own heart?
It's praying the Psalms that will give us
the tools, some of the tools to be
there.
But you see, the book of Psalms is
everybody's prayer book that belongs to everybody doesn't
have to have Anglican on it.
We have our prayer book and our prayer
book.
It has the whole book of Psalms.
But the book of Psalms is our second
aim would be to explore how the Psalms
prophesy the redemptive mission of Jesus.
Crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, enthronement.
And new creation.
New creation in vivid detail.
Jesus quoted the Psalter in order to clarify
his redemptive mission.
And in quoting Psalm 110, it was the
last one of the last Psalms before his
crucifixion that he quoted that actually got him
there on the cross.
And so the new is in the old
concealed.
And the old is in the new revealed,
Saint Augustine.
The new is in the old concealed.
The old is in the new revealed in
this out.
This is how the apostles preach the gospel.
There was no New Testament except for this.
This is this is the new covenant in
his blood, Paul says.
The new covenant is not a book.
It's the body and blood of the Lord.
You get that we're supposed to eat the
new covenant and drink the new covenant.
Number three, how the early church employed psalms
as liturgical prayer, why do I say liturgical
prayer?
Because you read them, it's a liturgy, it
provides banks, it provides a common prayer book,
a book of common prayer, really, before the
book of common prayer.
There was the book of common prayer, the
Psalter.
Oh, and so it's how the early church
employed psalms as liturgical prayer.
Written prayers brought to life in proclaiming the
gospel.
And making intercession, proclaiming the gospel, preaching Jesus,
so what Peter was doing on the day
of Pentecost out of Psalm 16.
And then in Acts four that we heard
read this morning, making intercession, preaching the gospel
and making intercession common prayer.
And you know what, when you pray the
Psalms, you know, you're praying the inspired scriptures.
Okay, Acts two, as you know, we're now
coming out of Pentecost.
We've celebrated the ascension of the Lord and
then Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit falls on a promised feast
day in Jerusalem called the Feast of Pentecost,
the Feast of First Fruits.
And when the Holy Spirit fell, it enabled
those waiting in the upper room to speak
languages that they had not learned.
And those languages, see, speaking in tongues, it
said, but it's just speaking foreign languages in
Acts two, because all the proselytes from all
over the world were in Jerusalem for that
feast.
And they were hearing the proclamations of praise
and the gospel preached in their own language.
And they said, what does this mean?
What is going on?
And so Peter stands up and he begins
to address the crowd.
And I believe that this is what Jesus
means when he says, I'll give you the
keys to the kingdom.
Because he preaches Jesus Christ, the king of
the kingdom, and he takes it out of
Joel and he takes it out of Psalm
16.
Then Peter stood up with the eleven in
verse 14.
I like that he stood up with the
eleven, they're all standing up, you know, and
they're cheering him on.
It's like a team.
Yeah, you go first, Peter.
You know, I'm sure they had relief preachers
in that in that line there.
Right.
He raised his voice and addressed the crowd,
fellow Jews and all of you who live
in Jerusalem.
Let me explain this to you.
How would you like to explain the day
of Pentecost to somebody?
Right.
Let me explain this to you.
See, only Peter could do that.
Only Peter is so bold and so brash
to even try.
All right.
He's the one that Jesus said, get behind
me, Satan, you know, let me explain this
to you.
Listen carefully to what I say.
These men are not drunk, as you suppose.
It's only nine o'clock in the morning.
It is an hour of prayer, by the
way.
It's when good Jewish people would be in
the synagogue praying and at the temple praying
nine o'clock in the morning.
No, this is what was spoken by the
prophet Joel.
And then he goes through.
I'm not going to read all of that,
but, you know, I'll pour out my spirit
in the last days.
And of course, Peter is telling us that
Pentecost inaugurated the last days.
We're not waiting on the last days, we're
in the last days.
I will pour out my spirit on all
people right in the last days.
So he's saying, we're there.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your men
will see visions, your old men will dream
dreams.
He goes on down.
Men of Israel, listen to this.
Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by
God to you by miracles, wonders and signs,
which God did among you through him.
As you yourselves know, this man was handed
over to you by God's set purpose and
foreknowledge.
And you, with the help of wicked people,
put him to death by nailing him to
the cross.
You see, there was no need to expound
Psalm 22 at this point.
They got it.
Jesus was crucified and they did it.
But the crucifixion is explained in Psalm 22
with just uncanny details.
But that's not the right song for the
occasion.
They got that.
He's going, but God raised him from the
dead, freeing him from the agony of death
because it was impossible for death to keep
its hold on him.
David said about him, and here it is
in Psalm 16, here is an apostle handling
the book of Psalms, Psalm 16.
I saw the Lord always before me because
he is at my right hand.
I will not be shaken.
Therefore, my heart is glad and my tongue
rejoices.
My body also will live in hope because
you will not abandon me to the grave,
nor will you let your holy one see
decay.
You have made known to me the paths
of life through death, by the way, unless
a grain of wheat fall into the ground
and die.
You have made known to me the paths
of life.
You will fill me with joy in your
presence.
Brothers, I can tell you confidently that the
patriarch David, the father David, died and was
buried and his tomb is here to this
day.
But he was a prophet.
The spirit of prophecy is on the Psalms.
The spirit of prophecy, John tells us, is
the testimony of Jesus.
The spirit of prophecy is the testimony of
Jesus.
Peter is preaching prophetically the testimony of Jesus
out of the Psalms.
He was a prophet and knew that God
had promised him on oath that he would
place one of his descendants on his throne.
Seeing what was ahead, he spoke of the
resurrection of Jesus, that he was not abandoned
to the grave, nor did his body see
decay.
God has raised this Jesus to life and
we are all witnesses of the fact exalted
to the right hand of God.
There's the ascension he has received from the
father, the promised Holy Spirit, which has poured
out what you now see in here.
For David did not ascend to heaven.
And yet he said, Psalm 110, The Lord
said to my Lord, sit at my right
hand until I make your enemies a footstool
for your feet.
Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this.
God has made this Jesus whom you crucified,
both Lord and Christ.
And so when the people heard this, they
were cut and they got it and the
Holy Spirit was convicting them and they said,
what must we do?
Three thousand coming to the kingdom by Peter,
an apostle, preaching out of the book of
Psalms.
Beautiful thing.
Turn with me to Acts 4 and we'll
end here.
By the healing of a man by the
gate, beautiful, they get locked up.
Peter and John get locked up for doing
this.
There's a whole lot of dialogue going on
and Peter is talking to the council and
he says salvation is found in no one
else where there is no other name under
heaven given to men by which we must
be saved.
And he goes on and he expounds and
it says in verse 18, chapter four, then
they called them in again and commanded them
not to speak or teach at all in
the name of Jesus.
But Peter and John replied, judge for yourselves
whether it is right in God's sight to
obey you rather than God.
But we cannot help speaking about what we
have seen and heard.
They punished them and they let them go.
And then it says in verse 23, on
their release, Peter and John went back to
their own people and reported all that the
chief priests and elders had said to them.
And when they heard this, they raised their
voices together in prayer.
Take note of this.
They raised their voices together.
They raised their voices.
They raised the word.
There is homo thumed on, you know, where
we get our word for thermometer.
And so they are of one temperature.
They raise their voices and they change the
atmosphere.
They have the thermometer.
They have the thermostat.
It's the thermostat of the kingdom.
And the thermostat of the kingdom is raising
your voice together in prayer.
Amen.
Prayer changes the atmosphere.
Thy kingdom come on earth.
I mean, that's the prayer.
That's the prayer of Jesus.
Pray that my kingdom would come on earth
as it is in heaven.
That is, change the atmosphere of the earth
to make it the atmosphere of heaven where
God reigns, where God reigns.
How do we exercise our royal priesthood?
What does a priest do that makes sacrifices?
We call this the sacrifice of praise and
thanksgiving because our Lord Jesus has made that
one and final sacrifice for us.
All we have to do now is sacrifice
our time, money and energy and give praise
and glory to Jesus because he's done it
for us.
And we can read about it in the
Psalms.
We can pray about it in the Psalms
and we can preach about it in the
Psalms and with the Psalms.
It's like having something that you didn't realize
what you had, you know, the power that
was just sitting there in your living room
until it gets unleashed.
Right.
You just open up the Psalter and you
open up your heart to God and you
say, I'm going to go.
I was glad when they said to me,
let us go to the house of the
Lord.
I'm not even going to try to do
this on my own.
I'm going to pray with the church and
I'm going to raise my voice and I'm
going to change the atmosphere of Kansas City.
That's what we aim to do.
And how are we going to do it
through our weak and feeble prayers?
Really?
I mean, you know, when you're there at
seven in the morning, it doesn't feel like
the day of Pentecost.
Right.
When we walked out of Friday, everybody was
saying, we're just such a buzz in the
place.
You know, there's all these new people and
meeting each other.
And it's just incredible to see it.
You know, it's just you hear that buzz,
that life that's in the room.
That's what happens when people come together around
Jesus Christ.
And so they raise their voices together in
prayer.
That thermostat got shifted over to the kingdom
of God.
And they said this.
And I don't think this is the first
time they thought about this.
I think they had been instructed by the
apostles how to read Psalm 2.
They probably had memorized it because they're saying
it and praying it together.
It says, Sovereign Lord, they're praying this.
Sovereign Lord, they said, you made the heaven
and the earth.
And the sea and everything in them, you
spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth
of your servant, our father, David.
Why do the nations rage, Psalm 2?
They're praying this together.
Why do the nations rage and the people's
plot in vain?
The kings of the earth take their stand
and the rulers together against the Lord and
against his anointed one.
They take that little piece out of Psalm
2.
We heard the whole psalm today.
And then they began to interpret that passage,
those two verses.
This is the interpretation in real time.
This is real time interpretation under persecution.
So they're taking that psalm and they're personalizing
it and they're going like, oh, this is
it.
This is what the Lord was telling us.
This is the apostolic teaching.
Indeed, Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with
the Gentiles and the people of Israel in
this city to conspire against your holy servant,
Jesus, your holy child, Jesus, whom you anointed.
They did what your power and will had
decided beforehand should happen.
Now, Lord, here it is, there's going to
be three points of intercession.
Number one, now, Lord, consider their threats.
Number one, think about what they're threatening us
with death, imprisonment.
They're here to shut the church down.
OK, sound familiar?
Consider their threats and enable, number two, enable
your servants to speak your word with great
boldness.
Oh, how we need to pray this, that
I could speak your word with great boldness.
In the midst of the secularization of the
cosmos.
Number two, enable your servants to speak your
word with great boldness, and number three, stretch
out your hands to heal and perform miraculous
signs and wonders through the name of your
holy servant, Jesus, your holy child.
Three answers come to those three requests after
they prayed.
The place where they were meeting was shaken.
And I'm thinking that's relating to God considering
their threats, he's just shaking up Jerusalem and
he's shaking things, everything will be shaken.
That which only will remain is that which
cannot be shaken.
So the place was shaken.
Number one.
Number two, they were all filled with the
Holy Spirit, what they were asking for.
Give me great boldness in the spirit to
proclaim your word.
And number three, they spoke the word of
God boldly.
They spoke the word of God boldly, the
only way they could have done that was
to submit themselves to corporate prayer and crying
out to God.
God, consider their threats.
Enable us to speak your word boldly and
fill us with the Holy Spirit so that
signs and wonders and great healing so that
your compassions can be flowing through us, O
Lord, that it all came through prayer.
Right.
God so desires to answer our prayer.
And he's given us such a beautiful tool
called a Psalter to get familiar with and
to pray corporately with.
And this is in the Anglican tradition, praise
God.
It's just that let's pray the Psalms instead
of just reading.
Let's pray them because they have great power
when we engage in faith with the Lord
in the name of the Father and the
Son.