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Glenn Leatherman joined the group Preaching the Psalms 1 year, 2 months ago

Marvin Penner posted an update in the group Preaching the Psalms: 1 year, 2 months ago

I love the Psalms, but sometimes I cringe when I hear how people use them. The Psalms are the words of people responding to God. As such they are honest, raw, and emotional. They are prayer. They teach us how to pray. They are not always expressing ideas that are “right”. For example in Psalm 3 David prays that God would break the teeth of his…[Read more]

Kenton Anderson replied 1 year, 2 months ago

I really agree with what you’re saying. A significant question, then is, how do we preach such that the intent of the Psalm is replicated in the sermon. It obviously is going to require something beyond mere information. We’re really going to have to work the affective side and we’re going to have to be content with a significant amount of struggle.
- Marvin Penner replied 1 year, 2 months ago
  
  The first application of this way of using or thinking about the Psalms is to be very careful when doing scripture word or topical searches to find cross references. Just because the Psalm says something does not mean that God is in favor of it or has the same opinion on the topic as what is expressed in the Psalm. All it means (and this means a…[Read more]
  - Kenton Anderson replied 1 year, 2 months ago
    
    I love your statement: “If this prayer is not my prayer then I must be missing something that I could know about God because He has given me this Psalm as a guide as to how I can respond to Him.”
    
    I think that what you are saying applies to more than just the exegesis of the Psalms. We tend to default to point/application no matter what the…[Read more]
    - Harvey Burian replied 1 year, 2 months ago
      
      One author I read summed up what you are saying something like this. We need to discern whether the passage is ”prescriptive” or ”descriptive”. Just because it’s in the Bible doesn’t necessarily mean we should do it!