Sovereign Grace Community Church

As Israel's songs of sonship, the psalms proclaim and extol the rich blessings of love and care that God gives to His children. His goal is to perfect His own life in them, such that they would be characterized by love as He is love. And He is the supreme object of their love, which expresses itself in devotion, gratitude and praise. God's children are a grateful and praising people, and thus the psalms have this as a central and pervasive theme.

Israel's sonship was central to its self-identity and worship, and the nation's psalms reflect this in a myriad of ways. They celebrate the blessedness of sonship, as well as its ultimate goal in God's purposes. Psalm 91 makes its own contribution to the Psalter's celebration of sonship by extolling the specific benefits and blessings that God bestows on His faithful children as a faithful, devoted Father.

Israel's covenant sonship is the core premise of the Psalter, and thus the various psalms give voice to all of the aspects of that relationship, including commemoration, celebration, praise, thanksgiving, supplication, penitence, imprecation, etc. The Psalter opens by proclaiming the blessedness of those who are devoted to God and His revealed truth, and Psalm 8 shows that the essence of this blessedness is human sonship - man's status and vocation as God's image-son.

The Jews who collated Israel's psalms determined to begin the Psalter with this particular psalm. Their reasons are unknown, but this psalm provides a suitable introduction because of its focus on the blessedness of devotion to God and His revealed truth. If the Psalms are the songs of sonship, the first one extols what true sonship entails and what it enjoys.

This second message in the series considers the structure and organization of the Psalter and its various themes, emphases and authors. Most importantly, it stresses the covenant relationship between Yahweh and Israel and its historical progress as the context for interpreting the Psalms.

The Psalter can be described as the songs of sonship because they express all of the facets of Israel's life and relationship with God as His unique covenant son. Composed over a thousand years, the psalms became Israel's worship songbook during the Second Temple period, and so played an important role in Jesus' growth in the knowledge of His Father, God's purposes for the world through Israel, and His own messianic identity and vocation.

After a series of exhortations directed at his readers and their faithfulness, the writer petitioned them to pray for him with the same goal in mind. He was aware that he, too, was subject to the same temptations to waver in his faith. Even more, he recognized that his continuing faithfulness depended upon the intercession of his brethren in Christ. God supplies the needs of His children, but through the household of faith. The Body is the means for the growth of the Body.

The writer reminded his readers that all followers of Jesus the Messiah are obliged to abide with Him -outside the camp,- which means ordering their lives with Him according to the new creation He has inaugurated in Himself. This involves new sacrifices, namely the sacrifice of confession and the sacrifice of service. Together, these fulfill the two great commandments of love for God and love for one's neighbor.

Jesus' resurrection is the focal point of the Christian faith, but also the turning point in the history of the world. For by it, God inaugurated the new-creational kingdom He'd promised and prepared for since the fall. This new creation has its present existence in the human beings who share in Jesus' resurrection life, such that they are now animated by a new paradigm of human existence having its substance in Him. But this new reality must be lived out if Christians are to be people of the truth- people who manifest, and so bear witness to, God's new creation in the world.

The writer warned his Jewish readers about foreign doctrines, which he showed to be teachings and practices associated with Mosaic Judaism. God had disclosed and commanded these things to Israel, but they were now alien because of reaching their destiny and fulfillment in Jesus' person and work. Any Jew who would know and serve Yahweh in truth must depart Old Covenant Israel and the former order and go to Jesus outside the camp.

The writer exhorted his readers to imitate the faith of their leaders, having witnessed its good fruit, of which they themselves were part. Jesus had proven faithful and fruitful in the lives of those men, and He would do the same with them, for He never changes. But precisely because Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever, those who embrace Him must do so according to the truth of who He is, and then hold tightly to that truth without compromise or alteration.