| Lightbearers Institute - Psalms and Wisdom |
19 March 2010 |
The focus of a recent class was the section of Scripture containing the Psalms and Wisdom literature. Pastor Mike Lumpkin from UBC was the speaker. His overview of each of the books in this section was very helpful. I especially enjoyed his discussion of the Psalms and the emphasis he put on using the Psalms as part of how we respond to God in our personal worship. To be reminded of the incarnation of human emotion displayed in the Psalms was refreshing, too. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, each of the various authors of Psalms gave expression to such emotions in a variety of ways.
But even when such emotions included desperation and even doubt, the writers would return to a place of trust. We may not be able on an emotional level, to come to that place of trust within the time frame it takes to read a Psalm, but often those Psalms described a struggle that involved long periods of time. So the end result is clearly what God wants, even if the process of getting there takes awhile. The Psalms allow us to recognize that God understands us in our struggle of faith and allows us to communicate our struggle as we relate to Him and grow in our trust in Him.
Another aspect of Mike’s teaching on the Psalms focused on the centrality of Christ in them. Not only are Psalms quoted often by New Testament authors as they explain and defend Jesus as the Messiah from the OT scriptures, but at times in the NT we see Jesus himself quoting Psalms in his communication with God, as Mike noted, as if those Psalms were His Psalms. Of course, the Spirit of Christ is in fact who authored the Psalms through the human writers, so there is a sense in which they are all “His” psalms. But to see specific examples in the life of Jesus of him using Psalms to express his feelings to his Father further validates our use of them in our responses to Him.
In Mike’s discussion of the wisdom literature, helping us see Jesus in it was again enlightening and inspiring. Perhaps the New Testament verse that most helps us make this connection is 1 Cor. 1:24 and 30 where Paul talks about the preaching of Christ crucified as “wisdom from God” and then about Jesus “who has become for us wisdom from God”, calling us back to Proverbs 8 where the author (Solomon) so poetically describes the incarnation of God’s wisdom.
Mike wrapped up his teaching with an excellent summary of Ecclesiastes: Without God all is vanity; all is pregnant with significance and meaning with Him; and then of the Song of Songs which presents such a beautiful Biblical picture of the way God intended marriage to function for those who place their faith in Him and seek to live under the guidance of his wisdom.
