Record on phone!
We are starting with English 401 today. Who remembers doing this? (show slide of diagramming sentence) Lots of parts to a sentence! Here's an easy question from English 101, what two parts of speech are necessary for a complete sentence; what are they? Subject and verb. I have an example from the bible, the shortest verse in the bible. Anybody know it? “Jesus wept.” (John 11: 35) Subject—Jesus. Verb—wept. And what is a verb? An action word; past action, wept, present, weeps, future will weep. Or if you saw the Grinch on Friday night, stink, stank, stunk.
In today's psalm, I went through and listed a bunch of the verbs. Some are actions of God and some are actions for God's people. God's verbs: hear, leading, shine, stir up, come, restore, show, have fed, have given, have made, give. Our action words: shall be saved, never turn away, call (upon your Name), shall be saved.
Let's look first at what God has done; past tense. Fed, given, and made. They sound good, but they are actions God has taken in opposition to the sins of the people. They were fed... with tears, they were given...bowls of tears, God made...neighbors and enemies laugh with scorn. God brought judgment on the people.
But let's look forward. Today is the first Sunday of Advent. It is a time for looking ahead. So what kind of future verbs does the Psalmist use?