Why I Love the Psalms

Dear Reader,

If you came to visit our church, the one thing you would most notice (if you don’t come from another Reformed Prsebyterian church) is that we sing the Psalms accapella. We have a book called Psalms for Singing (I think; there was just a new edition and I can’t keep up). It is all 150 psalms from the biblical book of Psalms set to music. Some Psalms are divided up; some have more than one version. The theological explantion of why we do this is here. It is a mouthful. I can try and give a simpler explanation at some point if anyone asks.

But there are others who can handle the theology behind it better. My topic today is why I love singing the Psalms. I didn’t initially. I was very wary of joining this weird church with its strange music. I am not a musical person (my sister says I am tone-deaf) and being faced with a whole new set of songs and people singing parts and all without instruments, well, it seemed overwhelming. But over time, I have come to appreciate singing God’s Word. Obviously, there is a lot of variety in what is out there these days. I am going to speak mainly about hymns but I think the same arguments could apply to popular praise music too. 

There are some great hymns out there. Some are written by great men of the church. Some contain deep theology that really gets to me. Some have good music. Some may not. Some have what I consider bad theology. I bet we all have hymns we like and don’t like. What I consider wrong in one may not bother you. You may not like another one that bothers me. So should we sing hymns that someone finds theologically offensive? Or do we start eliminating everybody’s least favorite? What are we left with?

When you sing the Psalms, you are singing God’s Word. It is like when you read the Bible. If there is something you don’t like, you are not allowed to throw it out. If there is a problem with what you are reading, then you need to look at yourself, not the text. It is the same with Psalms. They are not dependent upon your opinion or mine as to which are worthy. They have been chosen by God. To me hymns are like Christian literature. There is some great stuff out there. There are some books that really make me think. But even a writer I really admire, I know he is fallible. Somewhere in his writings there is something wrong. It is great to read the works of a Calvin or Jonathan Edwards or C.S. Lewis. I highly recommend them. We may even quote them in sermons or study them in Sunday school. But we do not preach from their books but however great they are, they pale in comparison to the God’s Word, the Bible. It is the same with hymns. Some are great. Others aren’t. None of them are God’s Word. The Psalms are. When it comes to corporate worship on Sunday morning, that is what I want to be singing.

I love that my kids are learning the Psalms. Kids pick these things up quickly and I think my 10 year old may have more Psalms memorized than I do. I have been very bad about giving my kids biblical memory verses in homeschool. But, you know what? They get them in church every time we sing. Because musc has a power over people that just reading something doesn’t. Music seeps into us. How many times have you had a song going through your head that you just couldn’t shake? And how come those always seem to be the most annoying songs? But what if we spent more time listening to good music? What would go through our heads then? What if it were God’s Word? If you sing it, it really gets in your mind and heart.

The timelessness of the Psalms also aappeals to me. They run the spectrum of emotions. And those emotions can be very raw and real. And when we sing them, we may be singing (albeit in a different language) songs that have been sung by God’s people, in their joy or sorrow, for 3000 years. How can you beat that?

Nebby