Follow Him: A Come, Follow Me Podcast - Psalms 49–86 -- Part 1: Dr. Eric Huntsman

Episode Date: August 12, 2022

Can music be the soul's most earnest expression? Dr. Eric Huntsman explores the form, application, and the power inherent in the Book of Psalms and worship through poetry and music.Please rate and review the podcast!Show Notes (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese): https://followhim.co/old-testament/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followhimpodcastYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FollowHimOfficialChannelThanks to the follow HIM team:Steve & Shannon Sorensen: Executive Producers, SponsorsDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: Marketing, SponsorLisa Spice: Client Relations, Editor, Show NotesJamie Neilson: Social Media, Graphic DesignWill Stoughton: Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Translation Team, English & French Transcripts, WebsiteAriel Cuadra: Spanish TranscriptsIgor Willians: Portuguese Transcripts"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com/products/let-zion-in-h

Welcome to Follow Him, a weekly podcast dedicated to helping individuals and families with their Come Follow Me study. I'm Hank Smith. And I'm John, by the way. We love to learn. We love to laugh. We want to learn and laugh with you. As together, we follow Him. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Follow Him. My name is Hank Smith and I am here with my co-host who teaches transgressors God's ways. I'm the transgressor, John, and you have taught me very much in God's ways, so thank you. And vice versa, Hank, thank you. John, that phrase actually comes from one of my favorite Psalms, Psalm 51. In order to study

Psalms this week, we had to bring on somebody who really understands this stuff more than you and I do. So, tell our audience who's with us. Yeah, I'm very excited to have Dr. Eric Huntsman with us today. And for those of you who are watching, you can see he's in a little different setting. Do you want to tell us just where you are right now, Dr. Huntsman? I am in Jerusalem. So I am, for the next two and a half years, the academic director of the BYU Jerusalem Center. And I have an office that's about three times as big as my provo office with one wall of windows overlooking

the old city. It doesn't get better than that. The first time I ever went there, one of the first things we did was go to sacrament meeting. And I can remember singing, there is a green hill far away and going, well, actually it's not that far. Yeah. Yeah. We called a brown hill nigh at hand is what we say here because it's only green two months of the year. So it's usually brown and it's nigh at hand rather than far away. Oh, sounds great. It's just fun to be able to tell people where you are. John, I think this is our first international follow him episode.

We did have Dr. Bowen out in Hawaii, but this is some serious distance. Right now, I can hear outside my window, I can hear the call to prayer from our neighborhood mosque. So, I really am in the Middle East. That is fantastic. That is so wonderful that we can even do this. That's so cool. Well, Brother Huntsman, I'm going to read a short bio from the back of one of my favorite books, The Miracles of Jesus. It's a beautiful book, too. It's full color, gorgeous, illustrated. Eric D. Huntsman is a professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young

University. His background after graduating from BYU in classical Greek and Latin, earned a PhD in ancient history from the University of Pennsylvania, joined the BYU faculty in 1994, author of a number of books from Desert Book. In fact, I noticed this might be the most recent, Becoming the Beloved Disciple, Coming Unto Christ Through the Gospel of John. Is that your most recent? Yep, yep. And we have another one.

I worked with a colleague, Trevin Hatch. We've got an update of my God's Love the World Easter book coming out in February of 23 called Greater Love Hath No Man, a Latter-day Saint guide to celebrating the Easter season. It's going to be oversized, heavily illustrated, 380 pages. It's my magnum opus. It's everything I really, I can die after that book comes out because it's all Jesus, his entire last week in great detail. Oh, and I love the emphasis on Easter. We all know without Easter, there would be no Christmas. Easter ought to be bigger than Christmas. So I'm looking forward to that because

this one's just beautiful. Brother Huntsman served a full-time mission to Thailand Bangkok Mission. He's been a bishop. He served as an ordinance worker in the temple. And here's why some of you might recognize him because he sings in a tabernacle choir. I always love it when they're panning people and I can see, oh, there's Eric right there. Eric always has a beautiful testimony expression on his face when he sings. He and his wife, Elaine Scott Huntsman, are the parents of two children. There's another thing I wanted to mention. He gave one of those BYU speeches. You can go to speeches.byu.edu and find this. It was called Hard Sayings and Safe Spaces, and the subtitle, Making Room for Struggles

as Well as Faith. And that was in August of 2018. Do you remember that, Hank? Absolutely. I was listening to that live when Eric gave it, and Eric being a good friend, I knew that he was speaking from the deep within his soul. I think it should be required reading or required watching for every Latter-day Saint. Yeah, that was Hard Sayings and Safe Spaces, and then the subtitle, Making Room for Struggles as Well as Faith. titled Making Room for Struggles as Well as Faith. And if you go to speeches.byu.edu, you can search by date or by author, just find Eric Huntsman and you can.

If you search Eric Huntsman on YouTube and put Eric Huntsman devotion, it will come up, except I just need to forewarn everyone, the thumbnail is terrible. I'm lifting my hands, I'm in the middle of a preaching thing. But I often say sermons are better seen and heard and not read you know sometimes our testimony really comes out in our voice it was a subject that was i i wrestled with it i prayed about it i wrote it i rewrote it i had lots of people read it i just felt so constrained by the spirit that was important without i think

the line i used the beginning of the end without diluting our doctrine or compromising our standards. We hold firm to the standards of the church and we support the doctrine, but we just need to love more fully. And there are people who find themselves in marginalized communities who are hurting. And it's just about, you know, ministering to the one as the Savior would. I just put my heart into it because I felt so constrained by the Spirit to offer that. Yeah. Eric, so glad you did it. And I hope that all of our listeners either just pause the podcast right now, go listen,

or make a note to go listen to that this week. It's a life changer. Eric, today, we are our second week in the book of Psalms. We just interviewed Dr. Hopkin. Now we want to hand it over to another expert. Let's hand this over to you. You've been studying the Bible your whole life. Yeah, you're in good hands with Sean, because Sean does Hebrew Bible, and he's done a lot

of work on some of those Psalms, particularly Psalm 22, as your listeners from last week know. Just the disclaimer is, my emphasis is Greek New Testament. So I study and write about the Gospels, particularly the Gospel of John the most. When I got interested in the Erasmus studies and started teaching at the Jerusalem Center, I have very, very basic working biblical Hebrew and modern Hebrew, enough to get me in trouble, but it allows me at least to follow the commentaries and appreciate at least the literary beauty of the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Old Testament better. But I was glad, Hank, you talked to me about this before I left Provo.

When you said there was a possibility there'd be a Psalms episode open, I'd like to share a few things about the literary form and the poetic form of the Psalms before we get started in this week's Come Follow Me assignment. But I want everyone to know up front, I have been attracted to Psalms long before I knew a word of Greek or Hebrew or Latin. It was as a young man. I grew up in Pennsylvania for most of my growing up and my friends were, you know, they were Catholic, Presbyterian, great people, had a lot of fun. I moved to Jackson, Tennessee when I was in the middle of my junior year of high school. And I think that's probably where I picked up my preaching style, to be honest. So for a year and a half, all my friends were evangelical. And they were trying to save me, of course.

They didn't necessarily think I was going to heaven as a Latter-day Saint. But I really, really fell in love with the Bible. You know, I had studied the Book of Mormon my whole life. My mother taught me the Book of Mormon as a Latter-day Saint, raised in the church. But I fell in love with the Bible, particularly the New Testament. But I also discovered the Psalms. I used to go to this Christian youth organization called Young Life, and we would meet on Wednesday or Thursday evenings, and they would often read a Psalm before they would sing a song and have a prayer. And that

was new to me, right? That's not from our tradition. And I've since gotten very interested involved in interfaith activities. I almost have my own pew in St. Mary's Episcopal in Provo, because I like to go there for holidays. And they use the Psalms as how they worship. So when I was at a very formative place in my life, testimony developing, settling in whether I was going on a mission, becoming an adult, I was exposed to the Psalms. And since then, I've seen what a wonderful tool they are for worship for some of our Christian friends of other denominations. So when you asked me to do the Psalms, I was absolutely thrilled. You know, there's a commentary I read once to describe the three parts of what our Jewish friends call the Hebrew Bible.

Their Bible, the Tanakh, which is an acronym for Torah, which is the law or teaching. Nevi'im, which is the prophets. And then Ketuvim, which is the writings and the Psalms of the writing. But I was reading a commentary once that said Torah is revelation, prophecy is proclamation, the Psalms are response. And so it shows how people respond when they have the word of the Lord proclaimed to them, written as it was in the law of Moses, or in our canonized scripture, when it's proclaimed as it was by the ancient prophets, or as it is prophets and apostles today, or as this Holy Spirit speaks to us. But the Psalms represent the very human response to the word of God. You know, when I start the Book of Mormon, I have a special needs son that will talk up, but you know, as I read the Book

of Mormon with my son Samuel and we're starting over again, you know, Nephi's large in stature and he's so righteous and he gets revelation. And I realize most of us are Sams, we're not over again. And you know, Nephi's large in stature and he's so righteous and he gets revelation. And I realized most of us are Sams, we're not Nephis. And that's just fine because Sam believed in the words of his brother Nephi. Well, my son is named Samuel and he likes to go by Sam. When I say that to my family, you know what, I'm a Sam. When he was little, my son used to always say, no, I'm Sam.

The reality is we can all be Sam. That's one of those few moments where we can kind of get a little connection with what's going on one of the other ones sorry i know this is old testament year but you know as larry's saying occupational hazard as we're always thinking book of mormon second nephi four you know that wonderful so-called psalm of nephi if you're kind of fed up with nephi's layman let me work occasionally you know it all is always doing everything right. When he pours out his heart and he's mourning the loss of his father and his rejection by his brothers, he swings in the pendulum. I've got a psalm I selected for our discussion today, which one commentator called an emotional rollercoaster because the psalmist

is going from joy to sorrow, to excitement, to discouragement. And that's what Nephi does, right? In second Nephi four. So that's a very long-winded introduction to why I hope, why I hope, hope, hope your listeners and Latter-day Saints everywhere as they're doing Come Follow Me will find a new love for the book of Psalms and perhaps find some new ways to incorporate it into their daily worship. I love that introduction. Just a little bit of experience I've had in Psalms. It's usually something when I go to the temple and I have some time in the chapel just before, I usually open up the book of Psalms. I don't know why, but it's always appealed to me in that sacred setting. Either you or the spirits redirecting what I was going to do. And I still want to do a little of

the academic background, but I think the application is so much more important at this point. I'm like you and the Psalms have become such a tool in my toolbox that I use it as I'm waiting for sacrament meeting to start. I was in ordinance work in the Provo Temple for 19 years before my shift started while I was in between veils. I use it sometimes in the evening when I'm trying to wind down or in the morning when I'm trying to get up, and I find my prayers aren't centered. I wrote a book some years ago called Worship, Adding Depth to Your Devotion. And I talked about this wonderful Jewish concept called Kavanah, which is the idea of truly orienting yourself to God. It comes from the Hebrew verb, which means to direct. And our prayers are just words

if they're not truly directed to God. Our hymns are just music if they're not singing praise to God. Well, my problem is a lot of times I'll kneel down for my prayers and I'm not thinking about God. And I've gotten the point now in my personal prayer life, I'll play a little music to kind of set the tone and then I'll turn everything off and I will read a psalm or two aloud. And then I will sit in sacred silence for a bit, right? Till I feel the spirit and then I can pray. So the Psalms can be so useful in our personal worship, even though as a community, we don't do them as part of our sacrament, et cetera.

One other thing that I picked up during the pandemic, we always talk about how hard those two years were, but I like to talk about pandemic blessings. One of the pandemic blessings for me was I was able to get back to my personal worship life better than I ever had before, because I wasn't going everywhere. I wasn't doing choir practice. I wasn't ever had before, because I wasn't going everywhere. I wasn't doing choir practice.

I wasn't doing devil's gifts. I wasn't going to campus. And so I decided I would start each day with the word of God and not the way I'm predisposed to do it. I mean, you know this about me, Hank, from work. I'm what they call an exegetical scholar. I look at the original meaning to the original audience of text, but I'm also an expository teacher and preacher.

How does that apply to us? But my scriptures, they know, they're always marked and I'm looking at notes and commentators. And some years ago, I was prompted to shut all my commentaries and dictionaries and marked scriptures and sit down in the morning with a blank pair of scriptures and just read as long as I wanted, a verse, two verses, a whole chapter. scriptures and just read as long as I wanted, a verse, two verses, a whole chapter. And during the pandemic, I revisited that. I read a book about a medieval practice called Lectio Divina, which is sacred reading and how reading scripture can be prayer. And I came up with this idea. It's not always the Psalm. Sometimes it's from the Book of Mormon, often it's from the Gospels. But in the morning, I will just read and find a verse or two

that are simple to memorize, meaningful to me. And I'll just repeat it a few times till I know it. And then when I go to the gym, it's like between every set, I repeat it. And then when I'm doing cardio or when I'm driving to work, or in this case, walking up the stairs from my apartment to work. And I try to repeat that single verse throughout the course of the day. It's a way of kind of centering, right? And feeling the spirit. And the Psalms are probably my go-to source for my lectio, my reading for that day, my phrase, my mantra, I guess some people would call it. Probably 70 or 80% of the time, it's a Psalm. I'm really glad we're talking about this. I think, and maybe this is just a guess, that this is an area that's, can I say this, that's sometimes skipped?

Because, oh, these are just songs that people sang or whatever, but there's beautiful application and doctrine in there. And one of the things I was thinking this morning preparing was there's a verse in Luke 24 where Jesus speaks about things that are spoken of him in the law and in the prophets and in the Psalms. And that's, I think, the only place where he adds that, but I love that. Oh, listen, you can find things about Christ in the Psalms. Don't skip over that sort of thing. So, I'm glad you're saying this. I think I'm already feeling more motivated about them, and I hope our listeners are too. Well, if you don't mind, I just want to go back and just

do a little bit of the nuts and bolts of the Psalms and how they're constructed and what the poetic forms are and how it was assembled. And then we'll look at the particular block of the Psalms, about a third of them. We're going to look at about 51 through 100 today, which is from the Come Follow Me week for August 15th. First of all, the word Psalm is a Greek word. Psalmos in Greek means a song of praise. Strictly, it means an instrumental song. And that's because there's a Greek verb, psalmo, which means to sing with the lyre.

Now, whether or not David actually wrote any or most of these isn't the issue. But certainly David, this image of the shepherd poet strumming his lyre and singing to the Lord is one I think a lot of us have in our minds. And so we get the sense, at least from the Greek translation of the title, that these were songs, as John mentioned, that were sung in

one way or another. Now in Hebrew, tehillim just means songs of praise. But it's kind of fighting words when I hear people say, oh, those are just songs. As a musician, I'm not a soloist, I'm a choral singer. Sometimes music can carry the meaning of something to us really strongly. I mean, think about lyrics of popular songs. We learn them more easily, and we learn other things, and the music somehow adds the feeling behind the words. We have that song, Prayer is the Most Sincere Desire, in that book on worship I wrote. I did a chapter on music, and I said that if prayer is the soul's most sincere desire, then music is perhaps its most earnest expression. It's the way we can really carry our feeling into

the words. It's attributed to St. Augustine, whether he actually said it or not is debated, but he often said, he who sings prays twice. And we do have this in our worship tradition, our hymn singing. We always open and close meetings with song, with hymns. We always sing before we have the sacrament. And that's because it is a way of carrying our collective worship and prayer to God. In the Jewish tradition, there's this sense that the chazan or cantor, the guy who chants or sings in service, that he carried the prayers of the congregation to heaven on the melody of his voice. And so the song is kind of the vehicle. Now, we don't sing these psalms

usually, but as a choral singer, you know, there are a few we'll mention today, a lot of them have been set to music. But it's interesting to understand the poetic form, which we don't always get the way they're laid out in our normal Bibles, particularly our King James Bible. The King James Bible, like most standard scriptures, is set in tiny paragraphs, right? Each verse is its own paragraph. But if you were to get a study Bible, sometimes they will set them out in verse so that you can actually see within a single verse of the Psalms, it has two, sometimes three lines. And that's because that's really critical for understanding how the psalms were experienced and how they're conveying their message. You know,

I will often ask students, what is poetry? And they kind of hem and haw, they might give some examples. But I think we can accurately at least describe, if not define poetry in a very short sentence. Poetry is concentrated, creative, evocative use of language. Let me explain that. Poetry can say more in four or five words than prose can in a paragraph. It's concentrated. Creative, it's expressing things not in your day-to-day speech. In English, frequently poetry has rhyme scheme, not always. In Greek and Latin, it's always a metrical issue. It's about long and short patterns of long, short measures or beats, right? Syllables, long and short syllables. In Hebrew poetry, there is some rhythm and there's occasionally some rhyme, but the most important

poetic tool for Hebrew poetry, and this will be useful not just for the Psalms, a lot of the later prophets, Isaiah is very poetic as well. If understand how hebrew poetry works you can kind of dissect and understand the text a little bit better the most common feature of hebrew poetry is something called parallelism where a thought or line is expressed and then it's re-expressed a second and sometimes a third line and so you have the first line and then the next line-expressed a second and sometimes a third line. And so you have the first line and then the next line restates that in a slightly different way. That's called synonymous parallelism. Sometimes it's contrasting.

It'll express something and express the opposite. Sometimes it's what we call climactic or synthetic parallelism where it just builds, builds, builds. As you just said that, I thought of Isaiah, right? Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. He says it again. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. So that's an example of that parallelism, right? Yeah, that's the antithetical parallelism where it's contrasting, right? Sometimes it'll be synonymous, I think, of Psalm

2.1. Why do the heathen rage and why do the people imagine a vain thing? The one I really like is a little bit more complicated. It's when you have something that builds upon itself. And here I'm going to pull from 2 Nephi 33, 6. He says, I glory in plainness. I glory in truth. I glory in my Jesus, for he hath redeemed my soul from hell. So plainness is what Nepphi likes but of all the

plain things he really likes truth but of all the true things he really likes jesus and why because he redeemed my soul from hell and in our edition since almost all of us some of you may have studied bibles but since most of us will be using our lds edition the king james bible you'll sometimes notice in the middle of a verse a colon, right? So we're going to look at Psalm 51 in a moment. It says, have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness, colon. So that's the first line. According unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. That's the restatement. And when I visit with my friends at the Episcopal Church, they actually sometimes will read Psalms together and the worship leader will say the first line and then the congregation will say the next half verse after the colon.

So when I do these just for my own use at home before prayer or when I'm just trying to feel close to the Spirit, I will often very intentionally read it half verse by half verse. You know, pause as I suspect the original Hebrew psalmist would have. He would have expressed a statement and in our editions, it's up to the colon and then he would have re-expressed it or contrasted it or built upon it. And that's because repetition is how people learn.

And so if that idea, whether it's in the Psalms or whether it's in Isaiah or one of the other poetic books of the Old Testament, and we sometimes lose that. And that's why, even though it is kind of getting off in the weeds and we're being a little Bible studies geek here, I think it's really useful to know a little bit about the poetry. And let me just say one more thing before we see how it really reaches us individually. And as our manual suggests, it does. One of the reasons people like poetry is because it's so, remember I said concentrated and creative use of language. That's as far as we got, but it's the evocative part.

It's able to bring to the surface or distill out of us or summon out of us feelings, whether they be emotional feelings, as a lot of love poetry does, or spiritual feelings. whether they be emotional feelings, as a lot of love poetry does, or spiritual feelings. And that's what I love about the Psalms, is they're able to pull out of me the feelings of my heart. What's that passage in Romans 8 where Paul says, we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groanings that cannot be uttered. I think that's what Paul says in Romans 8. Sometimes we cannot express in words what our heart and soul is really feeling. And the Spirit can kind of step in for that. But sometimes the words of someone else, a psalmist can do that. And this particular batch, when I first was looking through it, you know, a lot of the great so-called messianic psalms that really point clearly to Christ

are in the group that Brother Hopkin had last week. And some of the more famous ones are in the second one. I promise I found some fun ones in this section. These were a little bit more personal. I mean, we can still see trusting in God, God saving us. We can see some allusions to the Savior. But really, the block of reading for this week is really about us, about our experiences, our joy, our sorrow, our discouragement, our heartaches, and our need for God. That's awesome. I really like what you said about the Psalms are kind of a response, and it's our feelings, as you just said. The first paragraph in the Come Follow Me manual says, the writers of the Psalms share deeply personal feelings in their poetry.

of the Psalms share deeply personal feelings in their poetry. They wrote about feeling discouraged, afraid, and remorseful. At times, they even seem to feel abandoned by God. Some Psalms carry a tone of frustration or desperation. If you've ever had feelings like these, reading the Psalms can help you know you aren't the only one. That's the same boat therapy, right, Hank? You can also find psalms that can encourage you when you're having such feelings because the psalmist also praised the Lord for his goodness, marveled at his power, and rejoiced in his mercy. So, I love that idea that these are a response and that we can identify with these different feelings just described. You know, one of the things that's hard sometimes for people using the Psalms,

I mean, there's some go-to Psalms, the 23rd Psalm, the Lord is my shepherd. I mean, there are some that are almost into our culture that we know. We almost feel like, wow, can I really read aloud something where someone thinks the Lord has abandoned him? That's not what I want from Scripture. And then there are some, a handful of Psalms that are called imprecations, where he's actually saying, I curse my enemy and may he bite the dust. It's like, we're supposed to love our enemies.

But part of that, I think, is simply to recognize the human experience. And if you understand kind of the context, this is someone who's frustrated, whether David wrote them or not, a lot of times they're set in David's experience. So, you know, Saul's trying to kill him. My enemy, may he stop chasing after me, that kind of thing. What I actually have done, although I've mentioned I like to read the scriptures, a blank set of scriptures so I can speak new to me each time. In my working set of scriptures that I use, I actually went through and I kind of color

coded the things that were pure praise. In my scriptures, orange are my praising God and prayer colors. And so I could mark parts of the Psalms that if I just need to pick me up where I'm looking for my Lectio that day to read, I can just look to that. The other thing I've done is I've often labeled each Psalm by the type it is. So if you don't mind, I'll just kind of list what some biblical scholars, the categories they've divided the Psalms into. The first one we're going to look at in a moment with Psalm 51 is what's called a penitential Psalm. Someone is not just discouraged or upset. This is someone who has sinned, someone who needs forgiveness. So penitential

Psalms are when a sinner, and we're all sinners, are seeking forgiveness from the Lord. There are Psalms that are complaints and lamentations. Now lamentation we get, we're supposed to mourn with those who mourn. We're supposed to take our disappointments to the Lord. I don't think most of us have a problem, grieve for the loss of those whom we love. Complaints are borderline. Should we really be complaining?

God, why did you leave me hanging here? But what's interesting is sometimes complaint Psalms are followed by Psalms of trust. And that's the thing is you have to read them in context. So even though one psalm of seven or eight verses is like, gosh, all that guy's doing is complaining. He's even cursing his enemies. We don't know how all of these were composed and when they were composed, but there was some thought put to how they were assembled. And so a complaint psalm will often be followed by a thanksgiving psalm, which is praise in response for blessings.

There are some psalms that I label hymns. A thanksgiving psalm is praise of God in response for his blessing us. A hymn is descriptive praise that's not dependent upon anything the Lord has done for us. It's just praising God because he is good. It's just praising God because he is good. It's just praising God because he's the source of life. It's because he's mighty, right? So I've labeled those so I can kind of see the distinction. And that's good for me because a lot of times my prayers, if I'm praising God, it's really thanking him for stuff he's done for me. It's not always just the hallowed be thy name, praising him because he's

holy. There are royal psalms. Now as Christians, we see most of these as messianic psalms. These were psalms that were composed for a king's coronation or his wedding, or when he came back victorious from battle. And the kings of Israel were called upon to be types and anticipations of Christ. That's why so many of them do speak of Christ. There are temple liturgy psalms. And Hank, you mentioned sometimes waiting for a session, opening the psalms. This is when I got into a pattern of reading psalms before my temple shift.

And in fact, I'm going to just quickly, quickly turn to one. This is one I always like. Once President Bacon, who was president of the temple years ago, he caught me running to the temple because I was going to be late for my shift. And he said, brother, we don't run in the temple or on the grounds. So I try to give myself a little bit of extra time to prepare. But there's one psalm I always, and I'm sorry, I'm going to get a little verklempt, as we say here in Yiddish, a little emotional.

As much as I love being here, the one thing I'm really missing is the temple. You know, the temple is somewhere. I'm once or twice a week at home and we don't have one here, but this is a line from Psalm 27, 4 that speaks to me. And I'll try to say it in the parallelism so you can hear the phrases. One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. And by the way, our translation inquire could be rendered meditate, you know, and I always like to repeat that to myself as I'm walking in the temple. Sometimes we're not supposed to add anything to the ordinances, but sometimes I slip off my shoes

past the reclimate desk. You know, I think of the voice from the burning bush saying to Moses, Moses, put off thy shoes from off thy feet for the ground on which thou standest is holy. It's a verse like this from Psalm 27, 4 that can get me in such a mode of worship that I feel like Moses. I can feel the holiness of the Lord's house. I want to take off my shoes. I want to put on my whites. And so there are Psalms that are called temple and liturgy Psalms. They were Psalms that were

literally sung in the temple while the sacrifices were being offered, while the incense was being burned. And then there are some Psalms that we call wisdom Psalms. I mentioned the cursing Psalms. So I've kind of labeled mine so that I kind of know what mode that Psalm is in. And as I said, I've marked them in such a way that I can skip the cursings or the complaints. If my purpose for reading the Psalm that day is to praise God, I'll just read the orange verses, that kind of thing. But kind of knowing the background and the different uses, probably the original ones were figures like David, who as a shepherd or as someone chased by the king or someone who was a king himself or someone who sinned himself, they were written by individuals

for their own worship, but they were adopted by the community and they become what we call corporate worship, which is like us singing a sacrament hymn, trying to unify ourselves in praise and reflection upon Christ and sacrifice before we celebrate the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Wow. Eric, as you were talking about temple psalms, it reminded me of Jacob inviting the people to the temple. And what he says, he says, I don't want to give the speech I have prepared. He's saying, this is what we usually come up for. He says, it supposes me that they, those who are coming to listen, who aren't transgressing, have come up hither to the temple to hear the pleasing word of God, the word which healeth

the wounded soul. It comes to mind as you're describing these psalms, they're the words which heal the souls, the wounded souls. And how many people listening have wounded souls in some way or another? And here's the medicine of the scripture, as Tyndale called it, right? Well, our Come Follow Me assignment for this week started with Psalm 49, but if you don't mind, I'm going to start with Psalm 51. It's one of the more poignant and powerful ones, and talked about a wounded soul. And I just want to point out a thing or two about the way the text is laid out before we read some verses from this. Under Psalm 51, I've written a lament or

penitential psalm, and we have the italicized chapter summary, which was added by the scripture committee later. But psalms are interesting because about 70% of the time before the first verse, there's something in small font, which is called a title. And it will say things to so-and-so or a psalm by so-and-so. And sometimes there's some funky things in there, some words we don't always know, and I'll point a couple of those out. But this one says the chief musician. Another way of rendering that is to the choir master, because there was a Levitical choir that stood in the court of the priest

and sang, as we mentioned, as sacrifices were being performed. It says a psalm of David. Now, there's debate in biblical scholarship whether all of those attributed to David actually were by him. I've seen some commentators call them a psalm about David or a psalm treating David. Because what happened is David was such an important figure in Israelite history and national consciousness that his experiences were ones people could associate with. So this one says when Nathan the prophet came unto him after he had gone into Bathsheba. So after he had both committed adultery and conspired to murder Uriah the Hittite. And the

way the text, 2 Samuel, tells us how it happens, Nathan came in and you know the story, the parable, that you lamb, thou art the man, that kind of thing. But what we have here, whether David originated this psalm or not, is by having that title, everyone's already thinking about David's experience. And we know how serious that was. But it's not just David's experience. Now, we haven't all committed adultery and conspired to murder. But we've lied, we've cheated, we've been unkind, we've been lazy. I mean, we all have things. This psalm, by the way, for our friends in more liturgical traditions, our Catholic friends, Episcopalians, Lutherans, this is one of the big psalms for Lent. So on

Ash Wednesday, this psalm is often read as they're getting ready for Easter. They're trying to repent and prepare for celebrating the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus. And I'll just read a few verses here. Verses one, two, and the first half of three. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness. According unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. You see the parallelism there? Wash me from mine iniquity, cleanse me from my sin.

I acknowledge my transgressions before me verse 10 i use this as my lectio my little mantra just a week ago create in me a clean heart oh god and renew a right spirit within me so he's sinned he's doing his best to repent but what he knows is he can't be forgiven on his own. And he needs to be, as you said, healed and changed. Create in me a clean heart. Renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. The mood starts to rise as he knows there's some hope. This is a verse not just for singers, but for preachers of the gospel. This is verse 15.

Oh, Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise. I've done this a couple times before I've taught a class. My tradition after a rehearsal Sunday morning, after Lloyd, our friend Lloyd would get up and say, you know, we're starting in 10 seconds. If you need to cough, please cough now. And we're getting ready for the overture of music, the spoken word. I'd always repeat this to myself. Lord, open thou my lips that my mouth shall show forth thy praise.

So David, who's been in the darkness, now is in a place where he can move the sorrow to praise. So that's, I think, just a wonderful example of how a psalm can be used. This is one of my go-tos before sacrament meeting. It's not always that I've said grievously that week, you know, why have I come to the board, right? I've come to renew the covenants. So why do I need to renew the covenants? Because I haven't kept them as well as I could have. And to be able to say as my prayer before sacrament meeting, create in me a clean heart, renew right spirit in me. And then also say,

hey, I'm about to sing a hymn. Open thou my lips that I can praise thee. That's just kind of a hint of how a psalm like this can be used, even within our tradition. I love that, Eric. I was looking at verse 13. Please do this. Please forgive me. Then I will teach transgressors thy ways. Sinners shall be converted unto thee. We learn from our experiences.

You know, I think of that particularly in a family context. I don't want my children to make all the mistakes that I've made. And sometimes when they have, and I've had to have that real serious father-child talk, I've learned myself by making this kind of mistake. Let me teach you, or at least share with you. John, is there something in that Psalm you like, 51? Well, I'm just noticing things that we would find like in the Book of Mormon, when the Savior appeared to the righteous, Nephites and Lamanites, he said, kind of, I'm the great and last sacrifice, so don't bring that anymore. Bring, verse 17, you are the sacrifice. Bring a broken heart and a contrite

spirit. And that's verse 17, the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. By the way, a broken heart and then contrite spirit, that's an example of climactic parallelism. We have the image of a broken heart. The words in both the Greek translation of the Psalms and the Hebrew for contrite means crushed. It's not just a heart broken in two. You're then crushed and pulverized and you're dust and God, but then God recreates, right? We were made from the dust the first time. And that's why that verse I mentioned, verse 10, create me a clean heart, renew a right spirit. We have to let ourselves be completely crushed.

We have to go through the cycle and then he will create something new. Yeah. And I like that because we're not the creator. We can't create a clean heart in ourselves. We have to rely on the creator to do that. I like that. Another Psalm, if we can move on a few chapters, Psalm 55 is an individual prayer. It was a psalm that's portrayed as a prayer of David.

Just a little bit on the title on this one. It says, once again, to the chief musician. So this is a psalm that may have been someone's individual prayer. It might have been David's, but it had been adopted into the temple. We have our tabernacle choir. Well, you have to imagine a levitical temple choir okay so the the choir leader would be reading probably antiphonal singing one half would sing part of it and the other half would sing the other it says on neginoth and like what is that we're not sure but it probably means on a stringed instrument not only do they have levitical temple singers they have

levitical temple players. We have an orchestra at Temple Square. I mean, they would have had musicians who would have raised their lyres at that point. Moskil comes from a Hebrew word probably meaning enlightened or wise. This psalm is like a proverb. You're going to gain wisdom by hearing this or singing this. And then once again, it's a psalm, quote unquote, of David, either composed by him in the first instance, or one that calls into mind the kind of experiences that great Israelite leader had. So let me make sure our listeners understand. So I'm going up to the temple. I get there, and as the sacrifices are being performed, the incense is being lit, I'm going to be hearing some music? Absolutely. I don't think that's something that everyone puts together.

One of my go-tos is from the New International Commentary on the Old Testament series. It's the volume on the Book of Psalms by Declassy, Walford, Jacobson, and Tanner. Anyway, there's a part where they described ancient temple worship as a multi-sensory experience. There's a line in Chronicles where I think Hezekiah is setting the temple in order. And these commentators said, you have to imagine you're seeing the sacrifices and the ritual gestures of the priest. You're hearing the singing. You're smelling the roasting meat and the incense. I mean, it's a full century

worshipful experience. I don't know if any of your listeners are familiar with the Chichester Psalms by Bernstein. It was an attempt to kind of recreate these Psalms for modern audience. So they're actually done in Hebrew with timpani, harp, and one other instrument, very spare accompaniment. And Bernstein tried to set it with kind of, you know, Middle Eastern feel. So we were on choir tour some years ago. While we were in New York, we have sacrament meeting usually as a choir and orchestra in the hotel we're staying at. But right afterwards, my buddy Andy Unsworth and I sneaked out because there was a Episcopal church nearby where we were staying that's called Smoky Bart's at St. Bartholomew's, but it's a high church, Episcopal church. Smoky

because they have all the incense, right? And as chance had it, we went in and they had the Chichester Psalms as part of that morning service. So there we were. There's this Episcopalian priest in robes, right? Burning incense. And then we have these drums and this harp and people singing in Hebrew. I thought, I'm in Solomon's Temple. That's exactly where I am.

And you know, I know our temples aren't like that exactly, but we see sacred gestures. We hear sacred words and we may not necessarily smell and taste things, but you know, the imagery is there. I think of Adam and Eve tasting the fruit and I think of the bitterness of the fall and then the sweetness of redemption. So I'm not actually tasting something, but those images are there. For me, the temple is as much as an experience as it is something that I do. And once again, the Psalms that kind of keyed me into that as I learned more about how they were used anciently.

Oh, it's absolutely interesting. So let's go back to Psalm 55, this emotional rollercoaster. David or a fellow like David is praying to God when he feels like he needs help. I'm just going to read around. I'll tell you the verses I'm in. Verse one and the first half of two,

give ear to my prayer, O God, and hide not thyself from my supplication. Attend unto me and hear me. This reminds me of Joseph Smith, where is the pavilion that covers thy hiding place? So this is a time when the worshiper, David, the psalmist, us, is feeling like God's not listening. Jump down to six. Oh, that I had wings like a dove. Then I would fly away and be at rest because the intervening verse is three, four, five. He's upset. He's being oppressed. He's pained.

Fearfulness has overwhelmed him. And then verse 11, I mark this in dark gray because this is not a happy verse for me. Wickedness is in the midst thereof of deceit and guile. They don't depart the streets. But finally he turns the corner, just like the Psalm of Nephi turns the corner, right? In 2 Nephi 4, verse 16, as for me, I will call upon God and the Lord shall save me. And verse 17 is one of these Lectiones I talk about, one of my personal mantras I use sometimes. Evening and morning at noon will I pray and cry aloud and he shall hear my voice.

Remember the ancient Israelite day and the modern Jewish day begins at sunset the previous day, right? So evening is the first prayer. And then you wake in the morning and you pray. And then you pray in the afternoon. Just a side note about this in terms of personal praxis, how I try to practice our religion. I think most of us do our morning and evening prayers. They may not always be good. We're rushed in the morning. We're all in bed, getting on our knees, praying, run. And maybe we wait too long in the evening and we're kneeling by our bed. We're about to pass out. We're so exhausted. But the prayer I think a lot of us miss is the

midday one. And maybe you can wrap it into blessing your food, your lunch. But you know, some years ago I decided that I'd find a time at one or two or three in the afternoon, I'd close my office door and I'd close all my books and I'd find some time for midday prayer. If you're praying for help for the day in the morning and you're reviewing your day with the Lord and thanking him for the blessings of the evening, why not in the middle of it? When you're in the middle of the challenges

and need to help and you're in the middle of the joys and you've got the gratitude. This Psalm says that we can turn from feeling abandoned and overwhelmed by our enemies. We can call upon God and he'll save us. Why? Because we're going to call upon him evening, morning, and noon, all times of the day. He hath delivered my soul in peace from the battle that was against me.

And then 22, this should sound familiar. It's worked into one of our hymns. Cast thy burden upon the Lord and he shall sustain thee. He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved. Wow. You're right, Eric. This is stuff you feel. The power is in not just reading, it's in, oh, wow, trying to get into the emotion of the writer. Evening, morning, and at noon. Let's just do one that's just a hymn, not necessarily because it's something God's done for us, but just because he's God. Let's turn to Psalm 62. I've labeled this as a hymn of praise or a declaration of testimony. Again, it's written

to the chief musician. So regardless of its origin, it was later incorporated into Israelite liturgy at the temple. To Jeduthun, and I had forgotten who that was. I had to look that up. He with another fellow called Heman, and that's not Heman the cartoon figure. Jeduthun and Heman were responsible for the soundings of the trumpets and the cymbals. So we mentioned that some of these, you take up the lyre, you strum it, and you sing. But there were some psalms and this is what bernstein's chichester psalms does sometimes they start banging the cymbals and they pull up the trumpets okay so this is a song of praise and they're gonna they're gonna go for it once again i'll jump around some but this is 62 let's do verses one and two truly my soul waiteth upon god from him cometh my salvation he only is my rock and my salvation.

He is my defense. Then let's do five through seven. My soul wait upon God. My soul wait thou only upon God for my expectation is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation. He is my defense and I shall not be moved. In God is my salvation and my glory,

the rock of my strength and my refuge is in god to jedith at that point jedith and heman probably got their symbols and their trumpets and started blowing them our god is a mighty god look how it ends verses 11 and 12 god has spoken once twice i've heard this that power belongeth to god also unto thee oh lord belongeth mercy for thou renders to every man according to his work. We could use a little bit more of this in our services, I think. We could use a little bit more unvarnished praise. You think so? Oh man, I almost want you to give me an amen. That's almost the idea. I'm laughing when you say that because a lot of times we have students on

site here in the Holy Land. I'll do the archaeology and the history, and then we read the scripture, and sometimes I'll even pray with them. And I'll look at the math words and say, can I have an amen? And they all go, amen. People think we're a Baptist group. No, we're a bunch of clarity saints. Our neighbor, Psalm 63. This is a psalm of complete trust is how I have labeled it. A psalm about David when he was in the wilderness. For those who've been in the Holy Land, I want you to think about down there by Masada and Qumran, right? Wadi Kelt on the way down to the Jordan Valley. Nothing. Dirt rocks hot, okay? And you have to have that context to understand the imagery of these first few verses. Oh God, thou art my God, early will I seek thee. My soul thirsteth for thee.

He's in the desert. There's no water. My flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is. And he's in exile. He's running from Saul. To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary. He's away from the tabernacle. He can't worship there because he's on the run.

So he's not only missing the. So he's not only missing the water, he's not only missing the food in the wilderness, he's missing the house of the Lord. But because thy loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. Thus I will bless thee while I live. I will lift up my hands in thy name. I'm going to back up to Psalm 42, because this is one of my fast Saturday, Saturday here in the Holy Land, or fast Sunday Psalms. Just a memory from back in 96, 97, when I was a young bishop and I was with my priest quorum, you know, like many bishops, trying to keep the young men occupied. I had one of those bishop drawers of candy. So if they'd answer questions, listen to the teacher, you'd throw candy at them.

Of course, couldn't do that on fast Sunday, right? And so they would always moan and groan. And I'd say, listen, let's talk about what fasting is. This isn't just ritual starvation. There's a reason for it. If you can just go back to Psalm 42 for a moment. It says, as the heart panteth after the water brooks, this is H-A-R-T, right? It's not the heart in your body. This is a deer. As the deer panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? And what I try to do,

I try to teach those boys all those years ago, and I still have to remind myself, is my spirit is as hungry and thirsty for God and the Holy Spirit as my body is for food and water that fast Sunday. And back to Psalm 63, this image of David in the wilderness and wanting the water and wanting to be in the presence of God. Can we apply these to our lives now? Absolutely. Absolutely. Eric, you're right. When I go out there with groups, it is so hot and so dry. And this idea of I thirst, kind of like Enos, my soul hungered, my soul is thirsting for something. Psalm 63, by the way, Eric, is mentioned specifically in

the Come Follow Me manual. The heading says, The Lord will help me in my time of urgent need. Several psalms describe in vivid language what it's like to feel distant from God and to desperately need His help. And then it says to look to Psalm 63 for what that might feel like. While we're kind of feeling the wave of the Spirit here, let's do another worship psalm. This is 66. Once again, to the chief musicians. Whenever you see to the chief musician, think temple courts, or think sacrament meeting, or think 22,000 people singing in general conference.

You have to think of music as worship in a corporate setting. Make a joyful noise unto God all ye lands. Sing forth the honor of his name. Make his praise glorious. Say unto God how terrible art thou in thy works. And of course you have to do a little unpacking for a modern audience. When it says that God is terrible, it's the idea of he's filling you with the fear of the Lord in the sense of you're awestruck by him. We say our God is an awesome God. It's a God that fills us with awe. Now, if you're not right with God, it will feel like terror. It will be fear. But if you're right with him, it'll be wow. Through the greatness of thy power shall thine enemies submit thyself all the earth shall worship

thee and shall sing unto thee they shall sing to thy name then we have a word people aren't sure what it means sila it might have been like uh repeat alcoa maybe sing that again up to that point it may be lift up your instruments come and see the works of god he is terrible or awesome in his doing towards the children of men. He turned the sea into dry land. They're thinking the Red Sea. We can think the Jordan River. We can think any number of things. They went through the flood on foot. They rejoiced in him. He ruled by his power forever and his eyes behold the nations. Verse eight, oh, bless our God, ye people, and make the voice of his praise to be heard. And then verse 13, I will go into thy house with burnt offerings.

Or we would say we would go and perform temple ordinances. Or we would go and share the sacrament. I will pay thee my vows. And the final two verses, 19 and 20. But verily God hath heard me. He hath attended to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God who hath not turned away my prayer nor his mercy from me. Now I mentioned that this is corporate worship, but you know, when I've had a day and I don't feel like praying,

it wasn't Brigham Young say, keep praying till you feel like praying. But this is the kind of psalm I'll sometimes read aloud. If I'm not feeling close to the Lord, I'm not feeling worshipful. I'm not feeling it. I read something like this aloud and it gets me in that mode. And then I can kneel down and offer my own prayer, if that makes any sense. Yeah. And it seems to me, Eric, like reading the hymn book versus singing the hymn book, there's just so much power in uniting your voice with the saints around you. There's something about the song of the saints, isn't there? I bet you felt that being in the Tabernacle Choir, just when all of you are singing these same words together, is there just a wow factor in that corporate song? Sometimes we feel like we're being joined by choirs from the other side of the veil.

We have instances of this. I just started the Book of Mormon over again yesterday. Opening vision of Father Lehi's in 1 Nephi 1. He sees numerous concourses of angels in the attitude of praising God. And when the myriad of angels were singing at the birth of Jesus Christ, that's on all sides of the veil, past, present, future, here, there, everywhere. And what's the book of Revelation full of? Full of images of beasts as well as angels and saints in white robes singing. Worship is not just an

earth thing. It's not just an in-time thing. It's a forever and eternity and everywhere thing. And you know, this raises an interesting question, if we can just pause for a moment and kind of reflect on this. Sometimes outsiders hear us talking about worshiping God. It's like, what kind of megalomaniac deity do you have? Why does he need to be worshiped? Now, we control that a little because of the fatherhood of God, that we see a personal relationship with him. I didn't praise my dad every time I turned around to talk to him. So there must be something in my book on worship that I wrote some years ago. The point I made, I tried to come up with a working definition of worship. And I said, a worshipful act, whether it be an ordinance or a prayer or singing or reading the scriptures or preaching

or being in a holy place or celebrating sacred time. Worship is an experience with God that transforms the worshiper. So if you're not in the presence of God, you don't feel his presence. See, that's why I read the Psalms till I feel the spirit before I pray. If you don't feel that you're in the presence of God or singing to God or performing a ritual, an ordinance in front of God, it's not transforming you. I don't think God wants us to worship him and praise him because he needs his ego stroked. It's because he knows it changes us. It makes us turn away from our own ego and our own strength, so-called, even our own weaknesses, our own failings, and look to something higher and better that we aspire to.

Does that make any sense? Yeah. Worshiping transforms the worshiper. That's what I wrote in my scriptures here. Right. I think that's true of prayer as well. We change during a prayer. I can think of when Alma prays for the Zoramites, how he starts out with, how can I behold this gross wickedness? And by the end, he's saying, behold, O Lord, their souls are precious, and many of them are our brethren. And he seems to soften in the act of prayer, changes him. Well, that's what I was mentioning about some of these complaint psalms that are followed by a psalm of trust. You get the complaints out, you get the whining out. I think even in the Bible dictionary, doesn't it say that prayer is not trying to change the mind of God? It's trying to bring the mind of the prayer into harmony with God. So I think some

of these Psalms, including the cursing Psalms and the complaint Psalms, they provide a template, right? If you can't be honest with God, who knows everything about you, who can you be honest with? Of all the people to put on a show for, God is not it. And yet we do. And I think what the Psalms are showing us is, be honest with God. Say, God, I'm upset. God, I'm hurt. God, I want him to fail. God, I want her to love me. And get out of your system and work through it, and the Spirit will lead you along, and then you'll suddenly change. And if Brigham Young said, keep praying until you feel like praying, I say keep praying until you get the garbage out, right?

So get all the hard and negative and wrong feelings out that God already knows you have. Just admit it. Just talk to Him about it. Just talk to God. And back to the fatherhood image of God. My dad died in 2004, and the last 10 years of his life were good. We had a good relationship. Kind of distant growing up. No fault of either one of God. My dad died in 2004, and the last 10 years of his life were good. We had a good relationship. Kind of distant growing up, no fault of either one of ours. He grew up on a ranch in a different generation. He wasn't me. I was open and gregarious, and he was quiet and reserved.

If I could redo anything, my years with my earthly dad, I wouldn't have waited for him to talk to me. with my earthly dad. I wouldn't have waited for him to talk to me. I would have stopped feeling upset that dad didn't open up to me or dad didn't ask about me. I would have just talked to him anyway. He's gone now and I'd do anything to talk to him. I would have asked him about work. I never did that as a kid. Dad, how was work? Dad, what do you do at work? I don't even know. Yeah, what do you do at work? I don't even know. Yeah, what do you do? Our prayer should be that way too. If he's our father, we should really talk to him. And I think the Psalms are giving us the template for that. We can talk to him about the good, bad, and the ugly. Yeah. If you're going to complain, complain. He's God. He knows it. He knows your heart anyway. It's okay. I love that, Eric. It's okay

to just be honest. If you hate something, tell him. Please join us for part two of this podcast.