9th August 2026 (am) - Psalm 14 & 15

When we read Psalm 14, here's the interesting thing, which, which that read to us, 14 and 15 really.

Which, which camp were you inclined to put yourself in when you read this? This is the thing when we read Psalms.

Were you thinking, "Yeah, I'm with the evildoers," so named in verse 4, if you look down at your Bibles? The ones that the psalmist is so scathing about in those first verses.

Or did you assume the persona of the psalmist himself? I wonder what you did when we read Psalm 15.

Did you go down that list and think, "Yeah, yeah.

Ooh, not sure." Like a checklist, isn't it, of things that we're supposed to be like if we want to, to dwell with God? Did, did you just mark yourself on it? Uh, and now as we look at these two psalms, 14 and 15, which, which I want to treat as a unit together, I wonder whether they were supposed to be, both written by David.

I want you to see, first of all, how they fit into the book of as, as a whole.

How do they fit into the plot line? So we don't really know when this psalm was written, but we are told that both Psalms 14 and 15, if you look at the, the, the titles above them, both of them were written by King David, so that's sometime around 1000 BC.

We also know these psalms were put into a compilation of songs chosen by an editor sometime after the return of the people of God from their exile in Babylon, cent- several late, uh, centuries after David, yeah? So they've come there.

This is a collection of books.

And we, we, we already, those who've been in the series here so far, you'll know there are five books in the collection.

If you look at the beginning of, of Book 1, s- uh, the title of Psalm 1, you'll see a superscription.

It reads Book 1, and if you've got an NIV, it'll tell you that's Psalms 1 all the way through to 41.

So that tells us, the reason that's important, it tells us Psalms 1 to 14, 41 even, 1 to 41, they belong together.

At the very least, it's telling us that, isn't it? Here, here is a unit together, a book.

And so these psalms we're looking at this morning, 14 and 15, they come from Book 1.

And actually, what I'd like us to do is to keep the entire book in mind as we focus on 14 to 15, so you do need that book open in front of you.

And we're gonna, we're just gonna quickly flick through it.

So are you ready? Psalms 1 and 2, they give us the big theme of the whole collection.

Do you remember? We actually, I preached on that two weeks ago, Psalms 1 and 2.

The big theme of the Book of Psalms, question: who are the truly happy? Who are the blessed people of God? And the answer really comes at the end of Psalm 2, that ultimately the blessed Are those who kiss the Son and take refuge in Him.

There is no greater place of blessing than taking refuge in the Son, and we, and we know, having the New Testament, there's no more blessed place than to be in Christ Jesus, is there? To take refuge in Him.

And it's a dramatic start to the book then, Psalms 1 and 2, beginning with the anthem of how to be blessed, but then you step off of Psalm 2 into, into book one, and you get to, you know, s- Psalm 3.

Y- there's a key change as you go in, if you, if you read through it.

Now the story, the plot line starts to begin.