Cornerstone Church of Knoxville

Psalm 1: Introduction to the Psalms Sermon Quotes
Bill Kittrell Sunday, November 15, 2009
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“Throughout the period covered by the OT, God revealed himself in providence...in miraculous events…in prophetic words…poetry and songs (e.g. Psalms). But even while OT believers knew that God had disclosed himself to his covenant people, they were aware that he had promised more definitive revelation in the future…God promised a time when a new shoot would emerge from David‟s line, a man who would sit on David‟s throne but who would, nevertheless, be called the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace…The NT writers are convinced that the long-awaited self-disclosure of God and his salvation have been brought near in Jesus Christ, God‟s Son.” DA Carson
Luke 24:44 Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures
“The Writings form the heart of the Old Testament, not only by their position within the Old Testament itself but by what they express. They are interested in how God‟s law applies to each person, and they reflect on the great issues that we face in our daily lives.” Mark Dever
“It is a striking fact that this type of poetry loses less than perhaps any other in the process of translation. In many literatures the appeal of a poem lies chiefly in verbal felicities and associations, or in metrical subtleties, which tend to fail of their effect even in a related language….But the poetry of the Psalms has a broad simplicity of rhythm and imagery which survives transplanting into almost any soil. Above all, the fact that its parallelisms are those of sense rather than of sound allows it to reproduce its chief effects with very little loss of either force or beauty. It is well fitted by God‟s providence to invite „all the earth‟ to „sing the glory of his name‟.” Derek Kidner
“He loved the psalms: he knew them, studied them, wrote on them, preached them, and sang them…Calvin believed that the value of the Psalter was…(that) the psalms teach all to know and honor God…the Psalter shows how Christians are to offer praise and prayer to God amid all the various circumstances of life.” Robert Godfrey, John Calvin, p.84.
“There is no other book in which we are more perfectly taught the right manner of praising God, or in which we are more powerfully stirred up to the performance of this religious exercise.” John Calvin
“(The Psalter) is an anatomy of all the parts of the soul…there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or rather, the fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men are wont to be agitated.” John Calvin
Joshua 1:8, “…This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then
Psalm 1: Introduction to the Psalms Sermon Quotes
Bill Kittrell Sunday, November 15, 2009
Page 2 of 2
you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”
“The deliberate echo of the charge to Joshua (in Psalm 1:2) reminds the man of action that the call to think hard about the will of God is not merely for the recluse, but is the secret of achieving anything worth while.” Derek Kidner
“The basic principle of covenant life is that God blesses those who are obedienct to his will and chastises those who aren‟t…One of the reasons for the presence of the book of job in the Old Testament is to warn us against making this a dogmatic principle of retribution. Nonetheless, the poepl of God are encouraged to remain obedient by the promise of a continued blessed relationship…As the righteous man, the man who observes the law of God, is blessed, so the wicked man is cursed.” Tremper Longman