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Study Gateway's First Listens: Find your next Bible study! Join host Shelley Leith as she curates first sessions of Bible studies on various themes each season, taught by some of the world’s most influential Christian authors, teachers, and pastors. To learn more, visit https://StudyGateway.com.
First Listens Season 4: Episode 4
Epic of Eden: Psalms, by Sandra Richter
Plus interview with Sandra Richter
[MUSIC PLAYING] SHELLEY LEITH: Well, welcome to Study Gateway’s First Listens where you get first listens to first sessions on Study Gateway so that you can find your next video Bible study. We are in Season Four where we're taking our inspiration from Women's History Month and focusing in on women Bible teachers you should know. I'm Shelley Leith, your host, and today, I have the privilege of introducing you to Bible professor, Dr. Sandra Richter. Welcome, Sandra.
SANDRA RICHTER: It's so good to be here, Shelley. Thank you so much for the invitation.
SHELLEY: You're welcome. Well, I want you to know looked you up on Wikipedia, and I discovered these fun facts. You did your PhD in Hebrew Bible at Harvard. One of your first published works was the unpronounceable Deuteronomistic History and the Name Theology. You are passionate about things like environmental theology and the intersection of the Bible and archaeology. And you are currently the chair of Biblical studies at Westmont College, specializing in Old Testament studies. These are rather impressive credentials Sandra, but I'd love to hear from you. How would you introduce yourself to someone who's never read your work or attended one of your classes?
SANDRA: Well, in this forum, my introduction would be that I am passionate about making the real people, real places, and real faith of the characters who populate our Old Testament come alive. This is a bottom line for me. I find over and over again in all of the context in which I teach, that our people, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, are in large part strangers to their descendants in the church. And my goal is to introduce you to your people and help you see them as real people who struggled with life just the way you do.
SHELLEY: Oh, that is remarkable. I'm curious, what were some of the influences that led you to become a Bible professor?
SANDRA: A great question. I actually started off in ministry, super naive to what ministry was. I was a late teen convert and got dropped into a little Christian college knowing almost nothing. So went into youth ministry, educational ministry, served in a number of churches. And I kept finding that my very best gifts were in the classroom. So a variety of pressures came to bear and not the least being I was a girl, and I was in a pastoral role. And I wound up pursuing additional education and God made it very clear to me that that was the direction I was headed. And I wound up in the classroom. So, although I am every inch an academic, my first love has been and still is the church. So being able to bring this stuff like the Deuteronomistic History and the Name Theology into the reach of the average believer, helping them see that the events that they've hung their lives on, and I think of events like the exodus, and the monarchy, and David's role in our lives and in the lives of the New Testament, that these things are real that they can be intersected with real archaeology, real history. And giving folks not only an introduction to their people, like confidence in their faith, that's the sort of stuff that makes my heart sing.
SHELLEY: You've mentioned that being a girl pastor was challenging. Is it any less challenging being a girl Bible professor?
SANDRA: Well, it depends what context you teach in, which is always really interesting. It depends on what region of the country you’re in. It depends on if it's undergrad or graduate students. It depends what denomination you land in. Now we, I would say, in the church generally have a bias against women in roles of teachers and professors. And there's some good reasons for that bias. Most of it is us mapping our own culture over that of the Old and New Testament. But the older I get, the less of a challenge it is. Which I find intriguing. And the generation that's coming up under us is far more comfortable with women in leadership roles and academic roles than the generation ahead of me. That's for sure.
SHELLEY: Fascinating. What other challenges did you have to overcome as you were establishing yourself as a Bible professor?
SANDRA: Probably all of them. I come from a fairly messy background, one of those families that just fractured all over the place. So one of the ways I wound up in a small Christian college was I had no life plan and I really had no parents. So when I became a Christian, which was a radical transformation in my life, I had a couple of elders in my life who recognized my calling and kind of shuttled me into what was then Valley Forge Christian College. And I wound up as a kid raised Catholic in a Jewish neighborhood dropped into an Assemblies of God Bible college.
SHELLEY: Holy smokes!
SANDRA: Yeah. Having no idea where I was. I think I was there a full two weeks before I figured out that everyone else belonged to this little nomination I never even heard of. So that was the beginning. And with that beginning was just a lot of unfamiliarity with the terrain I was moving through. So I wound up in the beginning, working with Teen Challenge in Philadelphia, which was incredibly formative. And that's how I got there in the first place. That's another story. And then I went to ministry, and I went into the ministry with Assemblies. And that was the day when they were really uncomfortable with women. and they were also less comfortable with education. Now that has changed and evolved, but that certainly was my day. So my natural gifting made life with that denomination kind of challenging.
I finally had a senior pastor who sort of shooed me out the door toward educational pursuits, but the news is that God was in all of that and was directing my steps. And that same senior pastor got me a one-semester gig at a teeny little Bible college in Rhode Island and asked me to at least consider it and I went in praying asking God to direct my steps. And honestly, Shelley, I didn't get through introducing my syllabus before the heavens opened, and I knew that I knew that I was designed in the womb to do this. And so that turned into the PhD and of course, needing and wanting to interact with the guild. So all of that hifalutin academic stuff. But in the midst all of that, there's nothing more important to me than watching the lights come on in the eyes of a lay person who's never been able to put their Bible together before, who's never understood why the Old Testament might be important to their faith before, who is still trying to figure out whose Solomon is.
SHELLEY: That's so cool. Okay. That leads me to about the title of your study that we offer on Study Gateway. It's called the Epic of Eden: Psalms. So, explain to our listeners where the Epic of Eden part of that comes from came from.
SANDRA: So the first popular book I ever wrote was a book named The Epic of Eden: A Christian Entry into the Old Testament. And the title actually is mimicking one of my PhD mentors, John Levinson, who wrote Sinai and Zion: a Jewish Entry into the Old Testament. So in writing that book my goal was to put people's Bible together for them, because that was the most transformative experience I had in my education when Meredith Klein of Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, put Eden and the New Jerusalem on one continuum for me and taught me that those are the grand bookends of the great story of redemption. Rocked my world changed my ability and my insight to read the Bible from that point forward. So over the years that I was in ministry in particular, I was doing the same thing with my youth groups, my young adult groups, my lay adult audiences.
So when I moved into seminary ed with the good wisdom of Bill Arnold, and Lawson Stone of Asbury Theological, I took that same curriculum and made it the front end of my seminary curriculum and the responses were amazing. So that material turned into a weekend intensive with an array of churches all over the Midwest and the East Coast. And eventually that curriculum grew into that book. And that book is, my goodness, twelve years old now. I still get emails and letters on a daily basis from people who say to me: Thank you so much for putting my Bible together for me. And so that launched into doing these video curriculums. And really, the argument was that there's only one of me and I can only be out so many weekends. So, if I write these up and I film them, I can get this material into the hands of the average Sunday school adult learner. And that's where Epic of Eden: Psalms came from.
SHELLEY: And why do you think Psalms is the one that out of all of these that we have published.
SANDRA: Well, we started this full collection with Seedbed Publishers. And Seedbed they’re still my tribe and fabulous people, but when it came to this particular juncture, we just maxed out. So we took Psalms, moved it over to HarperCollins, and Sara Riersma and her crew helped put this together. Trying to get a wider audience, a wider platform. And there are many that have come before it, the overview, the book of Jonah, the book of Ruth, the book of Isaiah. But Psalms landed with you folks and there will be follow up. The next one that I'm working on right now is a study on Deborah and the book of Judges. Men we'll film the book of Deuteronomy before we're too much further in. But this is the goal in the spirit of the Epic of Eden, bringing this material to the serious and the brand-new believer who is serious about their faith.
SHELLEY: Well, Sandra, it has been so great getting to know you and learn about your journey as a Bible professor. I just want to thank you so much for taking time to share with us today.
SANDRA: Well, thank you so much. And thank you for getting this study out into the hands of people who need it. I am so grateful.
SHELLEY: You are so welcome. And now, I'm so excited to be able to share with our First Listens audience, the first session from your study called Epic of Eden: Psalms. Let's tune in right now to Session One called The Hymnbook of Ancient Israel.
[MUSIC PLAYING] SANDRA RICHTER: Welcome to the first session of the Epic of Eden, the Book of Psalms. I'm Sandy Richter, the Robert H. Gundry Chair of Biblical Studies at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. For those of you who know me, you know I am a veteran of many years in the classroom from Harvard University to Asbury Seminary to Wheaton College, from Tallahassee to Lubbock, Houston to Boulder Creek, and dozens of places in between. And I am so glad that you are here. Thank you to all the faithful fans of the Epic series. I pray that this study finds a place among your people, a place of encouragement, of discipleship, growth, and joy.
Our topic for these eight weeks is the Book of Psalms, perhaps the most beloved book in our Christian Bibles. This anthology of prayers and praises is so familiar to us that quotations have found their way onto refrigerator magnets and cross stitch patterns, dedicatory plaques in national monuments, song lyrics and movie scripts, even Edmund Hull, the philosophy building of Harvard University, and the scenic overlooks of the Grand Canyon quote our Book of Psalms. Although I'm sorry to say that those at the Grand Canyon were actually removed in 2003, but that's another story.
The Psalms are so familiar to the Christian faith that this Old Testament book is often published as an appendix to the New Testament. But even in all of that familiarity, the great Old Testament theologian Claus Westermann, he was absolutely right when he said that "The Psalms belong to a world which is no longer our world." Let me say that again. "The Psalms belong to a world which is no longer our world."
Think about that. Israel's religion was a religion of temples and priests, sacrifice, blood, fire. Theirs was a world in which church and state were completely intertwined, where on any given holy day, the commander in chief-- that would be the king-- could be seen dancing down Main Street celebrating the fact that the priests were delivering the ark of God to the temple. And, like, when was the last time you brought a goat to a worship service? Yeah?
And if you did, indeed, decide to bring a goat, or an ox, two doves, how many of you would expect your pastor to help you dispatch that creature as an act of worship? Yeah, I thought so. No, that isn't our covenant. And that isn't our world. But that is the world of the Book of Psalms, the hymnbook of ancient Israel, a world long, long ago and far, far away, a world that actually ceased to exist more than 2,000 years ago.
But miraculously, the faith, the reverence, the celebration, the lament of the ancients that's preserved in the Book of Psalms, that has not ceased to exist. Rather the songs, the prayers of our forefathers in the faith continue to speak to us today. The great 4th century church father Athanasius said it this way, "The Psalms have a unique place in the Bible because whereas most of the scripture speaks to us, the Psalms speak for us." The Psalms speak for us. The Psalms pray for us. What a true and powerful world.
When I can't wrap words around what I'm feeling, when the heavens seem like they're made of brass and I'm lobbing baseballs off of that brass, when my prayers are bouncing back in my own brain, when the hounds of hell are snapping at my heels, when darkness is all I can see, the Psalms, they pray for me, for me. This is the only book in the Bible that is intended for immediate application to the reader, no filter. This book, you can flip open and start praying whatever you see because it was designed that way.
So for centuries, this book has served as the go-to for Jewish and Christian worship. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, you remember him, the cost of discipleship, the Lutheran pastor who died at the age of 39 in a Nazi concentration camp? He says that in the psalter is "unsuspected power." And if we lose it, "an incomparable treasure vanishes from the Christian church."
My goal in these eight weeks is to plug you into that power, into this book gifted to each of us by that great assembly of witnesses who walk the road ahead of us, who await our arrival at the journey's end, our ancestors in the faith. My prayer is that in this curriculum you will find the help, the structure, the accountability that you need for a deep dive into this sacred testimony of the living faith of our spiritual mothers and fathers. Allow their words to sink into your soul. Let them put words to your frustration, your joy, your despair.
Draw strength from their faith. Find hope in their confidence, and let them pray for you. And let's learn again that the Lord of heaven and earth has never ceased, and will never cease, to hear the cries of His people. Are you ready? Let the adventure begin.
OK. Our first question then is, what is the Book of Psalms? Well, the name of the Book of Psalms is "tehillim" in Hebrew. It means "songs" or it can be translated "praises" as well. In other words, these are the prayers that are poetry that are also song. So the Book of Psalms is a collection, a culled collection, of the praises and prayers of Israel.
The best way to think about this book is to think about the book as a hymn book, to think about the hymn book of ancient Israel, because these prayers and praises were gathered together into what we know as the Book of Psalms for a purpose. What was that purpose? Well, the purpose was the same purpose as your hymnbook.
So let's think about that idea for just a moment. What exactly is a hymnbook? What does a hymnal do? Well, it collects together, in a single text, everything a congregation needs in order to worship as a congregation. And it organizes that material for easy access to the individual worshipper.
Yeah, there's a table of contents. There's an index at the back. And generally, there's a very intentional structure to the book.
Well, guys, Israel's hymnbook had the exact same purpose. And when you hold your Book of Psalms, you're holding Israel's hymnbook, a hymn book that gathered together everything that these people needed to worship as a congregation. And this hymnbook, the Book of Psalms, facilitated the worship of Israel for over 1,000 years. 1,000 years, that's a very long time.
OK. So what kind of pieces are in the Book of Psalms? Well, hymns? Yes. Laments? Yes. Dedicatory prayers? Why, yes again. Responsive readings? Yep.
Wear they actually used in real Israelite worship? Well, yes, again. Big surprise. In fact, it was a guy named Hermann Gunkel-- think about that name for a moment, Hermann Gunkel. In case you're choosing a name for your first born this week, I would not recommend Hermann Gunkel, but back in the 19th century this was a very cool name to have. And this particular scholar was the first one who started asking the question like, hey, did anyone ever actually pray these prayers? Did they ever sing these songs? And if so, when did they do it? So it was Gunkel who first began to push the guild to start asking the question and thinking about where these various pieces came from, who wrote them, why, and most importantly, most importantly, how were they used.
So for example, let's take a look at our own hymnals. Yeah? Do you know the song "Up from the Grave He Arose?" You heard that one? When do you sing that song? Christmas? Labor Day?
Of course not. We sing that song at Easter. And as soon as you hear the chords coming over the piano, the organ, or some synthesizer who doesn't typically play hymns, you know it's Easter morning. Because when the congregation of faith starts singing "Up from the Grave He Arose," we all know that that particular piece goes with our highest holy day, the resurrection of the Christ.
How about "O, Little Town of Bethlehem?" What form is that? Do we sing that one at Easter? Well, not unless your pastor's like super confused. No. We sing "O, Little Town of Bethlehem" at Christmas. And we might sing it all the way up to Christmas, but it has to do with the Advent season.
Or how about if someone is standing in front of the congregation and you start hearing the words friends, this is the joyful feast of the people of God. They will come from East and West, from North and South and sit at the table in the kingdom of God. Well, friends, if you're a Presbyterian, you are hitting the button right now. I know that is. I know what that is. That's the communion liturgy. And guess where you'd find it? Yeah, in the hymnbook.
Or how about this one? Dearly beloved-- do I even need to go any further-- we've come together in the presence of God to witness and bless this joining together of this man and this woman in holy matrimony. That is a form that is used for the ritual of marriage. And once again, you can find it in a hymnal.
Each of these songs, each of these liturgies, has a particular function in our religious life, which to us churchgoing folk are completely transparent. It does not surprise us when we hear "O Little Town of Bethlehem" during Advent. But here's the rub-- these functions and forms would not be transparent to someone 2,000 years from now. Heck, sometimes our forms aren't even transparent to us.
Let's take, for example, a song you know very well, a modern form. The lyrics go something like this. "O, say can you see by the dawn's early light." Do I need to go any further? Is there anyone out there that doesn't know that song? Of course, you know it.
Now my question is what do you know about that song? Well, if your American history is really good, then it was written by Francis Scott Key in 1814. Hmm, as a poem, did you know that? And the name of the poem is the "Defence of Fort McHenry." And you're sitting there saying Fort McHenry, Fort McHenry. Where was Fort McHenry? Well, if you're from the Chesapeake Bay Area, you know, you're from Baltimore, or Washington DC, or perhaps the Eastern shore, then you might know that it was written during the War of 1812, toward the end of the War of 1812, a war that most Americans know almost nothing about, but a war that most historians would tell us really was the second Revolutionary War.
Why? Because at this juncture, the American experiment, it hung in the balance. And on September 12th through 14th, 1814, the Brits were winning. Washington was already in flames. Baltimore was next. And Fort McHenry was supposed to defend Baltimore.
The Chesapeake Bay was full of British ships. The bombs were flying through the night. Fort McHenry is lasting through the night, while one American who's being retained on the deck of a British ship was watching through the night to see which flag would be raised at dawn. So as the morning mist and the smoke of cannon fire cleared, American Major Armistead rolled out the biggest American flag anyone had ever seen, only 15 stars, commissioned specifically for this conflict. And as that flag unfurled in the "dawn's early light," Key was inspired to record the moment in the lines that you and I have known since elementary school.
Later, the poem was set to a popular-- and this kind of kills me-- British drinking song and retitled "The Star-Spangled Banner." Hmm. A song about America defending itself against the Brits set to a British drinking song. This all happened in the 1800s, but it wasn't commissioned as the national anthem until-- do you know? Do you know-- 1931 by Herbert Hoover. Who knows anything about Herbert Hoover? I would just like to say that I graduated from Herbert Hoover Junior High School in case you're interested.
OK. Now for the $64,000 question. How is this regal, ritual song that we all recognize, that we call our national anthem, how do we use it? How did it function? Answer? Sporting events. Sporting events. Does that make any sense at all? Yeah. Every one of us sings the song when it's time to throw the first pitch over the mound. We sing this song when all the big guys down on the football field are about to bash each other's heads in. This is how we use our national anthem. That's the function.
And the ritual stance? It has one. Hand over heart, yeah? Do you sit or do you stand? Do you take your hat on or off? All of those are ritual actions.
[MUSIC PLAYING] SHELLEY: Well, if you’re like me, you’ve already learned more than one thing you never knew before, about the Psalms, and even about our national anthem! You’re enjoying the first session of Epic of Eden: Psalms, by Sandra Richter, published by HarperChristian Resources and streaming on Study Gateway. Study Gateway is a streaming video service, and we’re the only one that has a subscription plan especially for small groups. For our First Listens listeners, we offer you an exclusive rate on our small group plan. When you use the promo code FIRST at studygateway.com, you’ll get 20% off of small group plan for up to 20 people. And, for a complete experience with Epic of Eden: Psalms, take advantage of our publisher-direct pricing on the essential Bible study guide designed to be used with the videos. You’ll get the group discussion questions and leader materials, the Scripture text and key ideas, and personal Bible study and reflection exercises to do between sessions. Get all the details at Studygateway.com.
Okay, let’s return to Sandra Richter, as she makes her point about the form and function of the national anthem.
[MUSIC PLAYING] SANDRA: So we see that the form and the function of some of our pieces of majestic music are not always transparent to us. And the function is sometimes a living, fluid thing that isn't easily tracked. And that's what we have to keep in mind as we approach the Book of Psalms as well.
Oh, and what about the tune thing, right? How much fun is it that "The Star-Spangled Banner" is actually set to a British tune? Is "The Star-Spangled Banner" the only set of lyrics to commandeer somebody else's melody? And the answer, of course, is no. How about the 11-- count them, 11-- church hymns sung to the tune of "Danny Boy."
(SINGING) He saw beyond my fault and saw my need.
No, I'm not going to sing for you anymore, I promise. All right. Or, if you come from the Jesus Movement like I did, "Amazing Grace" sung to the tune of "The House of the Rising Sun." And what's interesting about that is the juxtaposition of the lyrics of both songs is intentional. "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound" and, of course, "The House of the Rising Sun" is about a brothel. Hmm.
So how about Psalm 22 that opens with-- and I quote-- "To the choir master to be sung according to the tune of the hind of the dawn." Take a look. You'll be looking through these in your study guides this week. So yes, the hymns of ancient Israel were known to borrow tunes as well. And ultimately, what will be the most important question as we approach our psalter is not where it came from or even who wrote it, ultimately, the question here is going to be how the community of faith used it.
All right, so let's look at some of these ancient forms. In the Book of Psalms we're going to find "hymns." A technical term meaning a song written to extol the glory and greatness of Yahweh, particularly His mighty acts in Israelite history. You will crash into laments, both community laments and individual elements, which embody a cry for help in a dark and difficult circumstance. The worshipper names his complaint, quite loudly, quite emotively, but always concludes by expressing her confidence that Yahweh can change the situation if He chooses to, and with a vow to praise Yahweh regardless of His response.
You're going to crash into liturgical readings. These psalms had specific uses in a specific worship event. There will be covenant renewal liturgies, which can be found in Psalms 50 and 81. There are royal psalms used for the enthronement of the king. Psalm 2 is going to draw a lot of attention from us over the course of our weeks together. You're going to be working through all of these in your workbooks.
And in your study guides, you'll also be introduced to enthronement Psalms which are specific to announcing Yahweh's sovereignty over the world-- Psalms 47, 93, 96 through 99. These celebrate the reign of Yahweh present and future. They're royal psalms which are used for royal weddings, coronations, and prayers after battle. How much fun that all of this is in your psalter?
What was the function of these psalms? Well LaSor, Hubbard, and Bush in their well-used Old Testament Survey say it this way, "In their feasts and fasts, their daily worship and their special celebrations, the people of Israel remembered and relived--" I like that-- "remembered and relived God's past victories, committed themselves to present obedience of the covenant laws, which called for full loyalty to Yahweh, and anticipated future triumphs, especially the ultimate defeat of Yahweh's foes." That's what the Psalms were. And before we're done with this study, I will argue that that is what they still are.
But what you need to know right now in our very first section is that the Book of Psalms is a collection. It's a collection. And it's a culled collection as well of the very best of Israel's songs and prayers. Not every psalm ever written has wound up in your collection of 150 psalms in the Book of Psalms. That kind of messes with you, doesn't it? A lot of the songs that were written and used by Israel in worship didn't make the cut. Oh, that's kind of weird.
There are actually a slew more psalms to be found in the Dead Sea Scrolls which date to about 250 BC. Let's put them there. David is said in the Dead Sea Scrolls to have written 4,050 psalms. That's almost as many as Charles Wesley.
All right. There are psalms, hymns, prayers, and laments also scattered all over your Bibles, which you may not have recognized as hymns, prayers, and laments. But what about Moses' song, the "Song of the Sea" in Exodus 15? I will sing unto the Lord for He has triumphed gloriously. The horse and the rider has been thrown into the sea. That's a hymn of praise.
What about Hannah's song, in 1 Samuel 2, where she gives thanks that God has heard her prayer and rewarded her with the baby Samuel? How about Mary's song? You know it as "The Magnificat," in Luke 1. Oh my gosh, they're still writing hymns and psalms in the New Testament even. And once again, Mary gives thanks that the God that she worships have overturned her enemies and have given her a future, and a hope, and a life that she can celebrate.
Yes, so under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the long-lived community of faith collected, and culled, and organized all of these pieces that facilitated worship until our ancient hymnal was complete and highly structured. As you look at the slide on your screen, you're looking at a presentation of the five part presentation of the Book of Psalms. You're noticing that there are five books, just like, hmm, that would be the five books of the Torah.
And in this very carefully compiled collection, you have something akin to Chris Tomlin's "How Great Is Our God," The Essential Collection, 2011, or perhaps, The Very Best of Hillsong Live, 2010. Not every song that Tomlin has ever recorded made The Essential Collection, yeah? Not every piece that Hillsong ever sang made the Live album in 2010, but the essential ones did.
All right. What about the structure of the collection? Well, the collection is indeed structured. Again, the goal is to make it accessible, accessible to the congregation and accessible to the individual worshipper. There are indeed five books total. Each collection is actually named. And it's named in your Bible.
When you get to the end of Psalm 41 and you turn the page, you will see in bolded print a subheading just under Psalm 41 that says Book Two. Huh. Is that the editorial work of the NIV translation team? Nope. That is the biblical authors letting you know that the first book of the collection has concluded.
Do you know what else you'll find at the end of Book One? You'll find a doxology. The last verse of Psalm 41 reads as follows. "Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Amen and amen." in fact, each one of these five books will close with a doxology.
And then the Book of Song will, as a whole, it will end with a doxology of doxologies, Psalm 150. Notice as well that the culminating line of Psalm 72 in your Bibles, in newer Bibles, that is Psalm 72:20, it reads, "The prayers of David, the son of Jesse are ended." Again, NIV translation committee? No. Those are the original writers of your sacred text letting you know that the two collections that have been attributed to David, that have been dedicated to David, are concluding.
Once again, your biblical writers are cluing you into the table of contents of their anthology. The first book belongs to the Davidic collection, and so does the second, and then there are three more yet to come. We'll talk about all of this more as we move forward.
What is the point of this structure? Well, right now, I want you to notice the lens that our biblical author has placed on this collection. We've got our five books, our five subcollections, but the introduction, like every good book, sets the agenda. And Psalm 1 is a Torah psalm. Psalm 2 is a Messianic psalm.
What does that structure tell us? What do we learn from the way the ancients have put this book together? We learn that by the time this anthology, this ancient hymnbook, found its way into its final form and found its way into our hands, the biblical authors wanted their audience to have two truths stamped on their hearts-- the first that the Torah, the law, the character, the covenant of our God, is our foundation. You cannot walk through this door without that truth. And so the first psalm is a Torah psalm.
Two? That Messiah is our hope. We the community of faith have nowhere to go if we are not headed toward the new kingdom He is bringing. So the Torah our foundation, our past, we might say-- I like that-- and the Messiah, our hope, our future, we might say. And of course, all of this wrapped up in the jubilant words of the final doxology of Psalm 150.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
"Praise the Lord, praise God in his sanctuary. Praise him in his mighty heavens. Praise him for his acts of power. Praise him for his surpassing greatness.
Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet. Praise him with the harp and the lyre. Praise him with the timbrel and dancing. Praise him with strings and pipe. Praise him with a clash of symbols. Praise him with the resounding cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord."
Our foundation is the law. Our hope is the Messiah. Our congregation is the church eternal. And our focus is the Almighty. Let everything that has breath use that breath to praise Yahweh. All right. Get your homework done, and I'll see you in the next session.
[MUSIC PLAYING] SHELLEY: I love that the professor ends by telling us to get our homework done! If you want to see Sandra Richter teach in her classroom in front of a chalkboard, so you can see her very helpful charts and the text of the psalms on the screen, then never fear! We have unlocked Session One of Epic of Eden: Psalms on Study Gateway, so you can go there and watch the entire first session for free! Epic of Eden: Psalms is a video Bible study published by HarperChristian Resources and streaming on Study Gateway. Here at Study Gateway you can find your favorite authors, pastors and Bible teachers, all in one place. We’re the only streaming video subscription service that offers a small group-sized plan, AND has user-based pricing for churches, no matter what the size. And don’t forget, you can use the promo code FIRST to get a 20% savings on a small group plan, and that discounted rate lasts as long as you keep your subscription!
With Study Gateway, you also get a direct link to our store, where you get publisher-direct pricing on the essential Bible study guide for Epic of Eden: Psalms. The study guide gives you everything you need to have a great discussion with your group, and then go deeper between sessions with activities and study to help you take action on this material and learn to live out the principles. Is Epic of Eden: Psalms going to be your next study? Get started right now by going to studygateway.com, click start free trial, choose the monthly small group plan, and use the promo code FIRST for your 20% discount.
Make sure you rate and review this podcast so other people can find this show too. And come back next week for our next episode in the season on Women Bible You Should Know. In Episode 5, we will be meeting my friend, who was named one of the 50 women most shaping culture and the church by Christianity Today, Margaret Feinberg. During our interview you’ll find out the story of what was going on in her life when she was writing her Beautiful Word study called Revelation: Extravagant Hope. Then, we’ll get to listen to the first session called “Tempted to Give Up on God.”
See you next time on Study Gateway’s First Listens.
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