Our arsenals are not well-stocked. Our camp of conservative Christians are missing out and, worse, flat-footed. I’m thinking about calling our group Epistolary Evangelicals, the truth-tube believers that live almost entirely in the New Testament letters. The epistles from apostles to growing (or struggling) churches are worth our attention, but they are not the only profitable parts of inspired Scripture. There’s more ammunition available for our worldview, our conversations, our liturgy, our very lives. Our Boom! is pianissimo, softly muffled by all our questions about why we would bother to say “Boom!”

Personally, my life is a lot less meaningless and the process of life more enjoyable having gotten my butt-kicked under the sun by Solomon in Ecclesiastes. My image-bearing in Trinitarian relationships and responsible dominion taking follows much clearer contours after beginning a study in Genesis. I expect to enjoy, and in some ways I already have enjoyed, no less life-altering fruit from the book of Psalms.

Who doesn’t think Psalms is a high note in the Old Testament? The Gideons bundle it with their pocket New Testaments. The NT writers quote it more than any other OT book, and that doesn’t include how many times Jesus Himself cited them.¹ John Calvin called it “‘An Anatomy of all the Parts of the Soul’; for there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror” (Calvin, xxxvii). Martin Luther called it “a Bible in miniature.” C.S. Lewis learned about indelible, irrepressible praise which fired John Piper up to preach almost every one of his sermons as a rehash of Lewis’ observation. You praise what you prize; you can’t help it because you love it.²

Tonight will only be an introduction to the Psalter. Two weeks from tonight we’ll plant our study in Psalm 1 and then make our way through the first five or six before the end of the calendar year. I envision coming back over the years, Lord willing, and studying more individual Psalms as we fill up our arsenal.

Seriously, what are you going to do if you are down in the dumps, downcast in soul? How are you going to climb out of the slough of despond? You’re going to find a psalm like that and sing!

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.
(Psalm 42:5, 11)

What if you are overjoyed and don’t know what to do? James says sing a Psalm!

Is any merry (among you)? Let him sing psalms (ψαλλέτω). (James 5:13, KJV)

How should you think, how should you encourage one another? Paul says speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs! Make melody in your heart with a psalm!

Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, (Ephesians 5:18–19, ESV)

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. (Colossians 3:16, ESV)

What if your enemies have you in captivity and make you sing your praise songs to taunt you? What would you sing? You’d get a psalm!

Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy!
(Psalm 137:6, see verses 1-3 for the context)

You will never have a trouble deeper than a psalm will help you through. Jesus quoted a psalm when His Father turned His face away; that was a true low point. We cannot out-need the psalmists. You will never love God’s Word so much that you will mature beyond the Psalms. Not only are the Psalms God’s Word, what will you do if you accidentally find yourself excited to praise God’s Word? You’re going to sing Psalm 19 or 119 and find lyrical help. You will never want to worship and think to yourself, “The book of Psalms is just so childish. I wish I had more.” You will never be without a profitable word if you have the Psalms (at least according to 2 Timothy 3:16).

We have a glitch in our worship giddy-up. We think of Christians mostly as studiers (which has a place) when we should be Christian singers. We want to study singing (and there is a time for doing that), when singing is the end.

We are not riders but pupils in the riding school; for most of us the falls and bruises, the aching muscles and the severity of the exercise, far outweigh those few moments in which we were, to our own astonishment, actually galloping without terror and without disaster. (Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, 96)

We can keep learning to ride or we can learn well enough so that we love to ride. We can know about God or recognize that the details help us know God. We can discuss worship or actually worship.

I have read the Psalms a couple dozen times, and parts of some Psalms probably hundreds of times, just as many of you have. Yet as I’ve been reading them again and reading other resources to get prepared for this series, I have been gladly surprised by a number of things. I’d like not only to share those surprises, I’d like to invite you into the gladness of those surprises.

I’m surprised at how purposeful the Psalms are.

I love to beat passages to find the authorial intent, the point of the paragraph as meant by the human author and by God who moved the author. No matter how much context is or isn’t provided for any of these 150 songs, I’ve never doubted the purposeful organization, flow, and aims for each individual psalm. I had not realized the purposeful organization, flow, and aim of the Book of Psalms seen as a whole.

There are five “books” within the 150, each marked by a final doxology. (1-41, see 41:13; 42-72, see 72:18-19; 73-89, see 89:52; 90-106, see 106:48; 107-150, see all of 150). It is impossible to know for certain when this final form was arranged, who arranged it, or how they decided the arrangement. But we can see that it was arranged on purpose. Book 1 emphasizes David’s kingship and troubles. Book 2 is Israel’s troubles in general. Book 3 is Israel in exile, the darkest of the five sections. Book 4 is end of the exile and looking to the heavenly King. Book 5 is exaltation. It’s a pattern of problems, prayer, and praise found not only in individual songs, but the whole hymnbook leads through the same process.

Even the bookends matter. Psalm 1 is the first Psalm because it encourages the singer with the fruit that comes from singing these songs. Singing is a way of meditating on God’s law. Sing the Psalms! Psalms will keep us out of the way of sinners and the seat of scoffers.

Psalms 146-150 finish on a crescendo of praise; there is no let down, praise is the climax, further up and further in. Get to praise; the end of all things is God’s glory! Those who collected and arranged the psalms did so with purpose, a canonical product over 800 years in the making.

Even though he wasn’t responsible for the final form, King David participated in and promoted the writing, singing, and corporate worship through Psalms for the temple and the nation. He was called “the sweet psalmist of Israel” (2 Samuel 23:1). He wrote most of the Psalms (73 say “a psalm of David”), and he commissioned the Levites and the Korahites and choirmaster (55 times) to put it into the worship rotation.³ Why?

It wasn’t because he was a dreadful musician waiting for his big break. It wasn’t that he couldn’t get anyone to buy his work until he became king and forced everyone to “like” it. He knew the power of music to calm the soul (as his harp strumming did for Saul). So his purpose wasn’t so personal (or petty). If you were the king trying to establish righteousness among your people and unite a divided kingdom, how would you do it? If you truly believed that men become what they worship, that God’s law was the way to blessing, how would you encourage your people to meditate on it? And what if your people didn’t have copies of God’s Word, or books of any kind, let alone a website to peruse?

You’d teach them songs. Scottish politician Andrew Fletcher wrote in 1704:

Let me write the songs of a nation, and I care not who writes its laws. (quoted in Wenham, The Psalter Reclaimed, Location 99)

Israel didn’t have a catechism. Rhythmic poetry with vivid imagery, set to melody, repeatedly sung together would likely engage the brain and get stuck in the people’s head. What other book of the Bible might people have memorized more? Why take the time to write an acrostic (eight of them in the Book, let alone 176 verses of it in Psalm 119)? We underestimate the power of music for meditation purposes, for shaping our attitudes and shaping our community. David knew these songs were beneficial for praise, but also for leading a nation. Praise points a people. Even in the exile, the subculture was identified by her psalms. How did they avoid assimilation? Their songs!

By comparison, no wonder we are so weak. We war over worship songs instead of having war songs for worship. Our music reveals our relative thinking and irreverent affections rather than faithful roots in truth. David knew the power, as did the final editors. The Psalms possess great purpose.

I’m surprised at how touchable the Psalms are.

I wrestled with a lot of word possibilities for naming this surprising observation. The Book of Psalms is a book of songs. The Greek name, psalmoi means “songs sung with musical accompaniment.” The Hebrew title is tehillim, meaning “songs of praise.” We think of it as Israel’s worship book, and we’re right.

But when we think about worship, we think about spiritual realities, about heavenly glory, about God’s transcendence. Yet there are no omnis in the Psalms. There are praises about God’s great glory, followed thanks for great crops.

We observe numerous types of psalms: thanksgiving, lament, and praise. We see royal psalms, Sabbath day psalms, psalms about creation, about the exodus from Egypt, psalms seeking deliverance from gossips and liars. There are Psalms confessing sin, others seeking forgiveness. Psalms utilize standard poetic conventions such as parallelism, acrostics, laying down patterns like embroidery, stitch by stitch. We find knees and hands and laying down prostrate.

We see David on the run from Saul. David on the run from Absolom. David’s guilt after adultery and murder. National captivity. Want for justice. Dangers, defeats, doubts, depressions, and delays.

In other words, the Book of Psalms deals with the terrestrial, earthy needs and troubles and gifts maybe even more than it does with celestial, mystical truths. There is more about nature and nations than the temple. Or, better, they sang about nature and nations in the temple.

God made it all. He holds it all together. He causes time and the sun to run their courses. God is no dualist. His people know and rehearse and rejoice in His special attributes, yes. They praise attributes such as His holiness, His mercy, His judgment, His steadfast love. But these are always connected to something tangible that He has done, that they can see or that they have hope to see. God is active, and the psalmists who complain about His inactivity do so because that’s not normal for Him (Grogan, 73).

We’ve begun to learn to sing Psalm 128 as a church.

Blessed is everyone who fears the LORD,
who walks in his ways!
You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands;
you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you.
Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
within your house;
your children will be like olive shoots
around your table.
Behold, thus shall the man be blessed
who fears the LORD.
The LORD bless you from Zion!
May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem
all the days of your life!
May you see your children’s children!
Peace be upon Israel!
(Psalm 128:1-6, ESV)

Too many of our (post)modern 7-11 songs miss worship in the flesh. Our songs (in lyrics or in style) are fleshly, in that they cater to the flesh, but they are not fleshy, that is, addressing life now where my body is. The Psalms care about the soul and body, about forever and today, about heavenly handwork and rich soil.

Worship should always be a preparation for living the Christian life in the real world and not simply a means of temporary escape from it. (Grogan, Prayer, Praise and Prophecy, 8)

God glorifies Himself, God makes and fulfills promises, God loves His people in time and space. The Psalms have handleability.

I’m surprised at the how demanding the Psalms are.

One reason people give for appreciating the Psalms is that they are so personal. David especially seems to open his soul, wear his affections on his toga sleeve. It’s true; there’s much expression of the heart canyons and crests, the desperations and delights that many experience.

The Psalms get into our bloodstream quickly, which is good, but also sneaky, or dangerous, because the Psalmists expect that when they call for praise, the singers will be ready to do it.

Worship in song can lift the heart of faith like few other things can. Something special, spiritual, supernatural happens when God’s people join their voices and tell of His greatness. But in our day of individualism, many Christian soloists say things such as, “I’m not singing because my heart isn’t in it,” usually followed with “and I don’t want to be a hypocrite.” Or, “I’m not going to do it just because everyone else is doing it.” Or, “I shouldn’t be expected to worship God on demand; that’s legalism. I’ll worship Him when the Spirit leads me to.” The psalmists extend no patience with this folly.

Epistles, as full of commands as they are, can be shrugged off because they were mostly for someone else. The history books of the OT, or the Gospels in the NT, tell us many important truths that are true whether we care or not, and we’ll let you know what we decide. We hear many parts of the Bible, but we are supposed to say or pray or sing the Psalms. The Psalms expect, they demand that we care, that we care now, and that we express that care in the great congregation, in front of one another and stuff. They push us on stage and command us to sing. We are not meant only to read them, we are meant to pray them and praise with them.

Take Psalm 47 for example. Notice who is supposed to clap and shout and whoop it up. It isn’t only Israel, and it isn’t (only) all the earth. It includes the subdued peoples, the nations that God defeated. All peoples get to work, God is King of all the earth!

With no embarrassment the psalms call us to praise, thank, confess, glorify, protest, accuse. Less defining and more declaring. The Psalms want more than for us to study them, they want us to sing them. They demand our active participation more than our observation (let alone our evaluation, “Oh, I like that one.”).

I’m surprised at how unfulfilled the Psalms are.

This is one of the more significant difficulties with the Psalms: they often apply on more than one level. A specific psalm, say one written by David, may refer to his expectation of deliverance. That deliverance may have happened in David’s life, but then a NT author may apply it to the Son of David, Jesus. Many of the royal psalms pray for blessing on Israel’s king, but ultimately look to the true King, God’s Son. Each psalm may have only one meaning but also have further significance in God’s plan.

Israel sang, Israel believed the promises God gave her, Israel served her king, she anticipated the Messiah, and she expected God to fulfill all the promises He made. As a nation, she endured exile, she returned, then much later some acknowledged Jesus as fulfillment. But there are still additional anticipations not answered. For example, “the nations” have not come to serve the Lord or praise Him. Many disciples have been made within many nations, but “all the earth” does not praise Him, the kings of earth have not yet rendered Him tribute (Psalm 72:10).

Take Psalm 2 for example.

The activities of the nations lie in the future: their raging, their plotting against the new David, their subjugation, and their serving the Lord with fear. (Wenham, Location 2981).

Many Psalms express thankful happiness for what God has done. Many Psalms express sorrowful heaviness over troubles. But perhaps the dominant tune is eager hopefulness that God will make it all right. Many psalms change keys from minor to major. Things may be bad because we’ve sinned or because others have sinned. But God will deliver.

So we sing not just once we’re out of trouble, but we sing when we’re in trouble to the God who loves to act. This is not triumphalist, but it is believing that one day He will triumph. For all that has been fulfilled, we can learn and meditate and sing Psalms with the same sort of hope of Israel. The Psalms are eschatological, optimistic, built on promises. They are songs for singing into imperfect, unfinished, sinful situations among rebellious, pluralistic persons. They’re meant for us, here and now.

Conclusion

We cannot study and sing these Psalms without being changed. They will change what we value, they will change how we handle troubles.

Christians increasingly live on a spiritual island; new and rival ways of life surround it in all directions and their tides come further up the beach every time. (Lewis, 64)

May these songs become an always playing soundtrack behind our theology, worldview, corporate worship, private devotion, prayer, singing, and art. The rounds are live, the blood is red, the volume is turned up. Let’s sing!

Footnotes

• The apostles established Jesus’ suffering (Psalms 22; 35; 41; 55; 69; 109), his messianic claims (Psalms 2; 72; 89; 110; 132), his priestly ministry (Ps 95), his being the Son of Man (Psalms 8; 16; 40), and the coming judgment and redemption (Psalms 18; 50; 68; 96–98; 102) on the Psalms. (VanGemeren, 8) ↩

• For example, Lewis wrote: “My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value. I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed” (Lewis, 95). or “Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him” (Lewis, 97). While a few paragraphs in Lewis’ Reflections are solid gold, I don’t recommend this book overall. ↩

• 101 of the 150 psalms name a specific person or group of persons in the heading. Those mentioned are: David (73 psalms), Asaph (12), the Korahites (11), Solomon (2), Moses (1), Ethan (1), and Heman (1). (Wilson, Psalms, Vol 1, 78). ↩