WEEK 25

psalms this week
"When you pray, do not put any limits on God. It is not your business to tell God how to answer your prayers. This is not a time to bargain or set conditions. Before you tell God what you want or need, ask that His will be done. This makes your will subordinate to His."
     - John Calvin
​Psalms 73, 74, and 75

introduction to the Series

Most of what we learn how to do, we learn from other people. Sometimes it is the learning that comes from specific and deliberate instruction. At other times it is the learning that comes by way of example and imitation. During 2023, our endeavor is to learn how to pray from the Psalmist.*

The Book of Psalms is the longest book in the Bible, and it is mostly a book of prayers. We will spend the year going through the book, beginning to end, and letting the Psalmist teach us by example how to pray.
In this endeavor, we cannot benefit from his deliberate instruction, of course. What we can do, however, is take full advantage of his example.  We will observe how he prays, and we will learn to imitate him.

Our approach will be week by week. The recommended practices and exercises are not daily, but rather suggestions for an individual to implement throughout the whole week. ​

Exercises for this week

Psalm 73
Read Psalm 73. Begin by creating an outline of the Psalm. Identify its major sections and the theme of each. 

Review the outline you have created and the themes you have listed. Talk to the Lord about the several themes. Which are familiar to you and resonate with your prayer life?

A significant feature of Psalm 73 is the Psalmist's lengthy confession to God detailing some of the thoughts with which he struggles. Focusing on verses 2-12, create a bulleted list of the things that characterize the types of people about whom the Psalmist is writing. 

Review the bulleted list in prayer. Talk to the Lord about how much of it sounds familiar to you. To what extent are there peoples who might still be described the same way today? To what extent do you share the Psalmist's feelings and attitudes about those people and how they live?  

Read verses 2-12 again, but this time focus your thinking on the Psalmist rather than on the people about whom he writes. How would you characterize his struggle?  To what extent is it rooted in something bad (e.g., resentment or envy)?  To what extent is it rooted in something good (e.g., a sense of justice and the way things ought to be)? 

Now take what you have observed in the Psalmist and talk with the Lord candidly about yourself.  (He already knows the answers to these question, and so the we may ask Him to help us see the truth about ourselves.)
  • What types of people tend to be a source of struggle for you?  
  • Why?
  • To what extent is your issue with those people rooted in something bad?
  • To what extent is your issue with those people rooted in something good? 
  • In what ways is the Psalmist a role model for you in Psalm 74?

As noted above, much of Psalm 73 is devoted to the Psalmist confessing to the Lord the thoughts with which he struggles. If you were to write a comparable Psalm, what would you say are the kinds of thoughts with which you struggle?  Try your hand at giving expression to them as the Psalmist does his thoughts in verses 2-12.  Talk to the Lord about those thoughts and that struggle. 
 
Read verses 13 and 14 in a variety of translations.
  • What do you understand to be both the tone and the content of what the Psalmist is expressing in these verses?  
  • When have you felt similarly?
  • What did you do about it? 
  • Did you talk to the Lord about it?

​Now read the Psalm with your focus on  the Lord.  What is affirmed or revealed about Him?  What, in the end, is the Psalmist's faith? 

Talk to the Lord about what is affirmed and/or revealed about Him in Psalm 73. How might those truths be helpful to you in struggles you have? 
Psalm 74
Read Psalm 74.  As you read the Psalm, stop after every 2 or 3 verses to reflect on how the Psalmist was feeling.  Jot down what you perceive him to be feeling in those specific verses.

Now review in prayer the feelings you identified in Psalm 74. Talk to the Lord about when you have felt similarly.

The Psalmist recalls and reports in prayer the violent, physical destruction of the temple. We don't have a parallel to the Psalmist's experience. But perhaps we also can think of tragic things that have happened which cause us pain to remember, and which create a faith struggle for us.  Accordingly, read verses 4-8, and then write your own version of those verses based on what experience is heavy and so problematic for you.  

After you have rewritten those selected verses out of your own experience, pray what you have written.  Talk to the Lord about these things. 

In verses 9-11, the Psalmist speaks as one who feels that God is silent, or absent, or at least presently inactive. When have you felt that way?  What has your prayer life been like during those times? What has your faith been like during those times? 

Remembering proves to be a significant theme in this Psalm. Focus first on what it is that the Psalmist asks God to remember. Make a list of those things. 

Now review the list that you just made. Inasmuch as there is not actually a problem that the Lord will forget something, what do you understand the Psalmist to be saying -- or asking for -- in each instance when he pleads with the Lord to remember something? 

There is something personal, urgent, and vulnerable about the Psalmist's pleas for the Lord to remember certain things. Focus now on a concern or need or trouble that is heavy on your heart. Pray to the Lord about that need. Make your own list of things that you want to ask the Lord to remember as your pour out your heart before Him. 

The first part of the Psalm's theme of remembering had to do with what the Psalmist wanted the Lord to remember. Meanwhile, the second part of the theme is what the Psalmist himself remembers.  Make a list of the specific things that the Psalmist remembers in Psalm 74.

Review the list of the things that the Psalmist remembers. Then generalize about it. What are the types of things that the Psalmist remembers? 

Now reverse the process for yourself.  Begin with the types of things that the Psalmist remembers. Now think of those types of things in terms of your own knowledge and life and experience.

Now make your own list of specific things that represent those types for  you.  After you make your list, talk to the Lord about it. What does it mean to you? What does it reveal to you? 
Psalm 75
Read Psalm 75.  This Psalm provides an excellent opportunity for a familiar exercise. Imagine that you don't know anything at all about the God of the Bible. You've never heard or read anything about Him. Then you find this Psalm. Based on Psalm 75 alone:
  • What do you know about God?
  • What do you think of Him?
  • What do you wonder about Him?
  • How do you respond to Him?

The central theme of Psalm 75 is the affirmation that God is the judge and that He does judge. 
  • What seems to be the Psalmist's attitude toward the prospect of God's judgment? 
  • To what extent do you share that attitude or perspective?
  • Talk to the Lord about the role that the truth of God's judgment plays in your faith, in your life, and in your prayers. 

Make a list of ten stories or events in Scripture when God exercised His judgment.
  • Walk through the list that you made and jot down your personal reaction to each story.
  • Jot down next to each story on your list what it reveals about God.
  • Reflecting on the accounts of divine judgment on your list, to what extent do you believe that the Lord still intervenes to judge in those situations or those ways today?
  • To what extent does each of the episodes on your list give you a sense for an end-of-time sort of judgment day? 
  • Talk to the Lord about the role of His judgment in Scripture and in history. 

What do you understand to be the relationship between verse 1 of Psalm 75 and the verses that follow?

According to Psalm 75, who and what does God oppose?

According to Psalm 75, who and what does God approve and support? 

To what extent do you believe those affirmations about what God opposes and supports are true still today?  Talk to Him about those things. 

We have occasionally referred to the prayer acronym ACTS. 
  • A = Adoration
  • C = Confession
  • T = Thanksgiving 
  • S = Supplication 
Spend some time now employing each of those parts of prayer with respect to God's judgment.
  • Praise Him for His role as judge, for His attributes of justice and righteousness, for His vanquishing of evil, and for His defense and vindication of the innocent and the righteous.
  • Confess your own sins, failures, and rebellions. Acknowledge the ways and reasons that you have deserved to come under God's judgment. 
  • Thank Him for the times that He has intervened to stem evil and to make things right.  Thank Him for His promise to conquer His foes and make everything right in the end.  Thank Him for His justice. Thank Him for His mercy. 
  • Pray for His judgment. Pray about situations where righteousness does not prevail and where justice is not being done.  Pray for Him to intervene and to judge. 
* We will refer to the author as “the Psalmist,” though of course not all of the Psalms were written by the same person. A significant number are attributed to David. Others are associated with Asaph, the sons of Korah, and an assortment of other individuals. Also, several dozen Psalms have no name attached to them.  For the sake of ease and uniformity, we will simply refer to “the Psalmist.”