8/31/22

One of my favorite children’s musicals was Fat, Fat, Jehosphaphat. In the musical, before a great battle, good King Jehoshaphat invites the High Priest to offer a prayer to God, and the High Priest prays, “O God, thou who has been so beneficent to us, wilt thou not show us thy benevolence forthwith?” Jehoshaphat stops him and asks him what he’s doing. He replies, “I thought you’d be impressed if I used a lot of big words.”

There’s no need to do that. I remember as a kid hearing people who regularly used “ain’t” and dropped their final t’s and d’s like the rest of us, suddenly slip into the finest King James English when it was their time to pray, as if Elizabethan English were their secret prayer language! But prayer in the Bible is not like that at all. One of the remarkable characteristics of prayer in the Psalms is just how familiar and how knowable God is.

The familiar King James version of Psalm 23:4 is “For Thou art with me,” but it can just as easily and accurately be the NRSV’s contemporary rendering “for you are with me” without any disrespect or loss of sacredness.

I wrote last week that this is the central verse - and the central message - of Psalm 23. Not only that, but the phrase marks a shift in the way the psalmist addresses God. Up to this point, the psalmist has spoken of God in third person: “The Lord is my shepherd . . . he maketh me . . . he restoreth . . .” But now, for the rest of the psalm, David refers to God in second person: “for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff comfort me, thou preparest a table . . .” The word, “thou,” isn’t a deep theological word - it’s just the old way of saying “you.”

It’s such a common thing we probably take it for granted, but in the book of Psalms, God is a specific knowable, addressable and reachable “you.” He’s not some mystic “presence,”nor is God so far above us that he is beyond our knowing. There is no hoping or guessing who God is - God is “you.” God is Someone we can know; Someone we can address, and Someone we can reach.

Not only that, but we know who this “you” is because of the relationship God has with us.

Read any psalm and you’ll see it. For example, look at Psalm 86:7-15, and look for all it says about who this “you” is:

7 In the day of my trouble I call on you,
for you will answer me.
8 There is none like you among the gods, O Lord,
nor are there any works like yours.
9 All the nations you have made
shall come and bow down before you, O Lord,
and shall glorify your name.
10 For you are great and do wondrous things;
you alone are God.
11 Teach me your way, O LORD,
that I may walk in your truth;
give me an undivided heart to revere your name.
12 I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart,
and I will glorify your name forever.
13 For great is your steadfast love toward me;
you have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.
14 O God, the insolent rise up against me;
a band of ruffians seeks my life,
and they do not set you before them.
15 But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

Notice, there are no fancy titles or flashy rhetoric. Besides “you,” in verse 11 God is referred to by the name, “LORD” (Yahweh in Hebrew), and throughout by the title, “lord” (adon in Hebrew). The psalmist, unlike the pagan poets of the day, did not pile up flattery - God is simply “you” and God is known through what he’s done for the psalmist.

As you read the psalms, notice how the worship of God is closely tied to God’s actions. In many Eastern religions, god, or the divine or whatever, is contemplated through introspection or through meditation apart from any action. But in Judaism and in Christianity, our worship of God is in response to what God has done.

The God we worship is the God who is known through his covenant with Moses and his new covenant with Jesus. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as well as the God of Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel. He is the God who delivered Israel from slavery to Egypt, bringing them through the Red Sea. He is the God who, in the Person of Jesus, entered into our world, died for us, and was raised from the dead. Furthermore, God is the God who loves us, saves us, heals us, and desires to be in relationship with us. When we worship, we are responding to what God has done, is doing, and promises to do!

The faith of both the Old and New Testaments is centered on the actions of God which took place in historical time - actions through which we can know this “you” of the psalmist.

And, notice in particular, verse 15: “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” Sound familiar? It should! These are words God said about himself, ways in which God said he is and will. It is this “you” and no other that we worship . . . and I’ll write more about that next week.

So as you read this week, pay attention to the “you” in the psalms. What does the psalm say about who “you” is or what “you” has done or hasn’t done - or needs to do! Then pause to think about who this “you” is, has been and will be in your own life.

Blessings!
Pastor Terry