Psalms

September 5: Set List + Liturgy

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  • DOXOLOGY (AMEN)

CALL TO WORSHIP: Psalm 16

  • KING OF KINGS

  • BE THOU MY VISION

Read and Pray in Response: Psalm 119:1-8

Sermon: Psalm 134

Worship is always costly. And the cost is always your life. Worship does not turn on and off but is the continuous outpouring of your life - all your affection, all your attention. And because worship is the continuous outpouring of your life, sin does not stop your worship, it redirects your worship to created things rather than the Creator. The cost of this worship always leads to death. But worship that is rightly aimed at God will still cost you your life, but for the follower of Jesus, dying to self always leads to life in Christ. We gather as people who can echo the hymn writer - that we are prone to wander, and we feel it. We gather to say to God and remind one another, here is our heart - our rightly ordered, rightly aimed worship - take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above. We are going to respond in songs of worship, that will fuel lives of worship. Let’s sing.

  • COME THOU FOUNT

  • LIVING HOPE

June 15: Tuesday Refocus

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“Most Scriptures speak to us, the Psalms speak for us.” —Athanasius

Every experience of being human is represented in the Psalms.  

Fear and peace (Ps 56:3, Ps 91).  

Sorrow and joy (Ps 16:4,11).  

Pain and triumph (Ps 40, Ps 59:10)

And everything in between.

One of the things I find so profoundly moving is that Jesus, being fully God, put on our flesh and bone, and stepped into our brokenness.  Although Jesus was not broken on the inside the way you and I are broken, Jesus uses the Psalms to give voice to his experience of inhabiting a human body.  And we see this clearly on the cross - of all of the ways that the God-man could express His heart at that moment, He uses our words - ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Ps 22:1, Matt 27:46).

Wherever you are in your journey of faith, you can look to the Psalms to give voice to your experience.  And you can look to your Savior, who this very moment inhabits a fully glorified human body, like the one that will be ours when our sojourning is over, and we see our Savior face-to-face (Phil 3:21).

Jesus, we look to You - the one who has taken on our skin and sin.  The One who uses Your Spirit-inspired words to give voice to your experience.  The One who is able to empathize with us as our Great High Priest - and we are grateful to You, and for You.  In Your name, amen.

Looking,

AB