tuesday bible study: Psalms

Also see: 1 Thessalonians Bible Study | Ecclesiates Bible Study | Revelation Bible Study | Tobit Bible Study | The Bible & Homosexuality Fall 2008, 6-7 PM on Tuesdays in the parlor Psalm 90   1.      What different pictures of God do you get throughout the passage? 2.      Death sets a limit to our lives and stimulates reflection on the context of life, which is not death, but God.  In verses 1-2, how does the psalmist set death within his view of God? 3.      Review the basis of verse 3 in Genesis 2:7 and 3:17-19.  How does the knowledge of your mortality affect the way you live your life? 4.      Why would God be angry with you (vv. 7-9)? 5.      How does the psalmist describe God’s anger and its effect on our lives (vv. 7-11)? 6.      How do you integrate this view of God with John’s well-known statement “God is love”? 7.      Luther commented on verse 12: “Lord, teach us all to be such arithmeticians!” What does it mean to number our days aright? 8.      How long do you expect to live, and how many years more does that give you?  How do you plan to live the years left to you? 9.      The psalmist’s sense of mortality is dramatic (vv. 4-6).  How do modern hospitals blunt this sense of brevity and fragility? 10.    This prayer brings death into focus.  But it does far more—it brings God into focus.  Study the verbs in verses 14-17.  What emerges as most important for you—the things that you do for the rest of your life or what God will do in your life? Explain. 11.    Plato believed philosophy was nothing more than a study of death.  In the Middle Ages pastoral care concentrated on preparing for a good death.  How does meditation on death affect the way you live? Psalm 137   1. This psalm combines the loveliest lyric we can sing with the ugliest emotion we can feel.  What makes verses 1-6 lovely?                2. The Babylonian exile put God’s people where they did not want to be, with no hope of returning.  When have you been where you didn’t want to be?    Do verses 1-3 express anything similar to your experience?         3. Remembering your own experiences how would you evaluate the emotions described in verses 4-6?   4. Why was Israel in Babylon and how does that factor into the feelings they are expressing?   5. Israelites were an oft-conquered, much-trampled people.  The Edomites in the past (v. 7) and the Babylonians (v. 8) in the present were oppressors.  Imagine what it would be like to be the world’s patsy.  How might that shape your prayers? 6. Notice again the change in tone in verses 7-9.  What words and phrases reveal the emotions in these verses? 7. It is easy to be honest before God with our hallelujahs and in our hurt; it is not easy to be honest in the dark emotions of our hate.  How honest are you? 8. Jesus said “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 6:44).  How can we possibly love and pray for such people? 9. The two dominant emotions in this prayer are self-pity (vv. 1-6) and avenging hate (vv. 7-9), neither of them particularly commendable.  Praying our sins doesn’t, as such, launder them.  What does it do? 10. Most of us suppress our negative emotions (unless, neurotically, we advertise them).  The way of prayer is not to cover them up so we will appear respectable but to expose them so we can be healed.  What negative emotion would you like healed?   Psalm 103 – Praying our Salvation   1. What are your general impressions of the psalm?                    2. Note the first and last sentences.  How does this bracketing affect your understanding of the psalm’s contents?   3. Salvation is more richly complex than we sometimes think.  What five actions of God add up to salvation (vv.3-5)?   4. Describe how you have benefited from one or more of God’s actions in verses 3-5.   5. How did God make his ways known to Moses and Israel (v.7)? 6. What astounding statements about God does the psalmist make in verses 8-14?  Which ones in particular expand what is puny in your thinking?   7. Carefully observe the contrast between us (vv. 15-16) and God (vv. 17-19).  Does this make you feel better or worse about yourself? Explain.   8. Praying our salvation concludes by praising the saving God.  The praise is orchestrated in verses 20-22.  Who are the players in this hierarchy of praises?    Who else would you like to call into the orchestra?   9. What does it mean for you to be saved? 10. What dimensions of salvation would you like to explore further?    If you are studying this psalm alone, add your personal notes of praise in a time of prayer.  If you are studying this with a group, pray together now as a chamber orchestra, each contributing your own notes.  Now or Later  Write a psalm of praise—on your own or with a group.  Freely use your own words—don’t try to sound like the psalmist.  Express the joys of your daily life and the world around you as you see God at work.  It’s fun to work with a group, passing around a sheet of paper and each contributing Psalm 23 1. This is a well-known psalm.  It takes strenuous effort to see it in a fresh way.  Is there anything here you have never noticed before?                    2. There are two large metaphors in the psalm: the shepherd (vv. 1-4) and the host (vv. 5-6).  Compare and contrast these two images.   3. Look carefully at the shepherd.  How exactly does he care for his sheep (vv. 1-4)?   4. How does the setting of verse 4 contrast with that of verses 1-3?   5. “I fear no evil” (v. 4) is a bold statement.  What does it mean for you to say that?   6. Look carefully at the host.  How exactly does he provide for his guest (vv. 5-6)?   7. How many times does the first-person pronoun (I, me, my,) occur in this psalm?    What impact does this make on you?   8. Enemies are prominent in the psalm prayers and appear here.  Who are your enemies?   9. What is the most comforting thing that you have experienced in the life of faith?   10. Psalm 23 is a weapon against fear.  What fear in your life will you go to war against with this prayer as your cannon? Psalm 6 – Praying our Tears   1. What different emotions are expressed in this psalm?                2. It is not popular in our culture to talk of an angry God (v.1).  What experience have you had of God’s anger? 3. Compare the first verse with the last.  Are the tears because of the Lord or the enemies? Explain. 4. “How long?” (v. 3) is a frequent question in prayer.  Considering the frequency with which it is uttered in Scripture, God must welcome it.  What in your life, past or present, evokes this question? 5. What is the cumulative effect of the three verbs turn, deliver and save in verse 4? 6. The emotional center of this prayer is verses 6-7.  How many different ways is weeping expressed? 7. Why the tears? Go through the psalm and note every possible source. 8. Tears are often considered a sign that something is wrong with us—depression, unhappiness, frustration—and therefore either to be avoided or to be cured.  But what if they are a sign of something right with us? What rightness could they be evident of?   9. In verses 8-9 there are three phrases in parallel: weeping, cry for mercy and prayer.  Are these aspects of one thing or three different things? Explain. 10. Remembering and praising (v. 5) are set forth as if they should mean something to God.  Why should they?    Are you practiced and skilled in remembering and praising? Explain. 11. Who do you know who is in grief?   Psalm 8 – Praying our Creation   1. Note the first and last sentences.  What is the significance of these bracketing sentences for the psalm even before we know its contents?    2. Look through the psalm and note every word that refers to what God has created.  How do these things reveal God’s glory?   3. How does Psalm 8 compare with the way you view yourself?   4. Why do you think the psalmist contrasts what children and infants say with what foes and avengers say in verse 2?   5. Bernard Lonergan once said that when an animal doesn’t have anything to do, it goes to sleep; when humans don’t have anything to do, they ask questions.  What kind of question do we find at almost the exact center of this psalm (v.4)?   What kind of answer is adequate to this question? 6. What evidence do we have that God cares for us?   7. Verse 5 comments on our position in creation.  How does it contrast with positions we are put in my nonbiblical authorities?   8. Verse 6 comments on our responsibility over creation.  In what ways do you feel or not feel responsibility for your environment?   9. The psalm lists six creatures (vv. 7-8) over which we have responsibility.  Name six other items over which you accept responsibility.   10. “Ruler” and “under his feet” (v6) can be twisted into excuses to exploit and pillage.  What is there in this psalm to prevent such twisting?   11. What adjustments do you need to make to view yourself as God views you? Psalm 51 1. How many different synonyms for sin are in David’s prayer?                    How do we describe what we dislike in ourselves?  What does this tell us about the nature of sin?    2. As Christians, we know we are sinful.  Why then is it so painful to be confronted with a specific sin?   3. What is God asked to do about sin? (Count and name the verbs.)   4. If I have been a sinner from birth (v. 5), sin must be something more than doing wrong things.  What else could it be?   5. Verses 1-9 exhibit a heightened awareness of sin.  What do they make you aware of? 6. Verse 10 is the center sentence.  How does it center the prayer?   7. What parallel does create have with Genesis 1:1?   8. Forgiveness is an internal action with external consequences.  What are some of them (vv. 13-17)?   9. What do you understand a “broken and contrite heart” to be (v. 17)? What is your experience of this condition?   10. According to verse 18-19, what is the relationship between personal forgiveness and social righteousness?   Psalm 103   1. What are your general impressions of the psalm? 2. Note the first and last sentences.  How does this bracketing affect your understanding of the psalm’s contents? 3. Salvation is more richly complex than we sometimes think.  What five actions of God that might add up to salvation (vv.3-5)? 4. Describe how you have benefited from one or more of God’s actions in verses 3-5. 5. How did God make divine ways known to Moses and Israel (v.7)? 6. What astounding statements about God does the psalmist make in verses 8-14?  Which ones in particular expand your thinking? 7. Carefully observe the contrast between us (vv. 15-16) and God (vv. 17-19).  Does this make you feel better or worse about yourself? 8. This psalm concludes by praising the saving God.  The praise is orchestrated in vv 20-22.  Who are the players in this hierarchy of praises? Who else would you like to call into the orchestra? 9.What does it mean for you to be saved?  From what?  To what? 10. What dimensions of salvation would you like to explore further? Psalm 3   1. Psalm 3 naturally divides into five sections: verses 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7 and 8.  Name each stanza with a single word or phrase.   2. What progression do you see from each section to the next?        3. The psalmist describes his foes in verses 1-2.  Do you ever feel overwhelmed by threatening people or circumstances? Give an example.   4. Deliver/deliverance is a key word in this psalm.  What do we learn about the nature of deliverance through its various uses here?   5. God is described as taking what actions in this psalm?  Are you used to thinking of God in these ways? Explain   6. The psalmist is described as taking what actions in the psalm?    To what extent do these characterize you when trouble arises?   7. The emotional center of the psalm is verse 5.  Take this seriously and ponder its significance.  When we are sleeping, what are we doing?   What might God be doing?   8. What, if any, is troubling to you right now?   9. What in this psalm will help you to pray your trouble? Psalm 2   1. What key nouns and verbs throughout the passage suggest the political orientation of this psalm?    2. Do you feel as responsible to pray for the nation, society and culture as you do for self, friends and church? Explain.   3. Compare the first verse of Psalm 1 to the last in Psalm 2.  What do we learn from these two blesseds?   4. Meditates in Psalm 1:2 and plot in Psalm 2.1 are the same word in Hebrew.  How is the word used differently in the two passages?   5. How does the Lord view the vaunted power of nations (v. 4-6)? How does this compare to or contrast with your attitude as you watch the evening news on television? Explain.   6. “Anointed One” in verse 2 is Messiah in Hebrew, Christ in Greek.  What in this psalm reminds you of Jesus?   7. It has been traditional for Christians to pray this psalm on Easter Day.  What in the psalm especially suits it for this occasion?   8. The psalm begins and ends with references to kings and rulers (v 2-3, 10-12).  How do they relate to the king enthroned by the Lord (v. 6)?  What impact does this have on the way we pray?   9. It is always easier to pray for personal needs than political situations.  But Psalm 2 is entirely political.  Knowing this, what responsibility do we have as citizens of a particular country living in Christ’s kingdom?   10. Name three rulers (presidents, kings, prime ministers or dictators) who you think are especially in need of God’s guidance.  Pray for them. Psalm 1   1. What contrasts do you notice in the psalm? 2. The first word in the psalm is blessed. (Some translate it happy.)  What kind of expectations should that bring to our life of prayer? 3. What significance do you see in the progression from walk to stand to sit (v.1)?    4. “The law of the LORD” is contrasted with the words counsel, way and seat.  What does this contrast bring out? 5. The psalmist describes the person who delights in God’s law (v.2).  What is your emotional response to scripture—not what you believe about it but how you feel about it? 6. Tree is the central metaphor of the psalm (v.3).  Put your imagination to use.  How are law-delighting people like trees? 7. In what ways are the wicked like chaff (v.4-6)?  8. How might these two radically different portraits (the tree-righteous and the chaff-wicked) motivate you to delight in scripture? 9. Do you feel a gap (or chasm) between “real life” (work, school, family) and your prayer life?  Explain. 10. How does meditation—listening to God speak to us through scripture or in the quiet—prepare us for life? 11. How can you incorporate meditation on scripture into your life? 12. Some prayer is spontaneous—a word of thanks, a cry of pain.  Other prayer is routine—at meals, in public worship.  But a life of prayer requires preparation, a procedure for moving from inattention to attention.  The same method will not suit everyone.  How can you develop an approach to medication that fits your circumstances and development?

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