This sermon was preached to Grace Church Guildford on 17 July 2022 to provide an overview of the book of Psalms before our summer series on the same. The full video recording of the service can be found below along with the transcript.
For some of you, it came on vinyl. For others, you accessed it on Spotify. And for those more in the middle of the Grace Church age range, it likely came on a CD. Nevertheless, whatever form it took, you probably remember your first music album. I’ll not publicly embarrass anyone by asking them to tell us who the artist or what the album was, I’ll let you privately embarrass each other after the service by asking your neighbour that. However, I imagine most of us can recall the details. Well, this evening, we turn to consider what is effectively the Bible’s music album, which is called the book of Psalms. And this summer, as we take a break from the Gospel of Matthew, we are going to spend seven Sunday evenings listening to tracks from it. Each evening a different brother will preach a particular psalm, that is song, that they have picked. However, tonight, I’m going to try and give an overview of the whole book, an introduction to the entire Psalter. As a result, instead of doing what we usually do, walking slowly through a particular passage of God’s Word, this evening we are going to be jumping around a lot. So I hope you brought your Bible-flicking fingers! For this music album doesn’t merely have 12 tracks, but is in fact a collection of 150 different songs written by countless authors over many centuries. As a result, it is surely the greatest music collaboration, the most famous music album, of all time. It is incredibly diverse, covering lots of different topics and themes, genres and styles. However, this evening, I hope we can get a sense of the whole by noticing two things the book of Psalms does for us: (1) Tells us a story; (2) Teaches us to sing. [Note the first point is the longest, with the second really being just an application of it to us.]
1. TELLS US A STORY
Has anyone ever asked you what your favourite book of the Bible is? Survey after survey shows many Christians say it is the Psalms. In one sense this is unsurprising, for the Psalms have always been popular! It is the book that other books of the Bible quote most often and archaeology suggests more copies of the Psalms were circulating at the time of Jesus than any other Old Testament scroll. Therefore, if the Psalms were a music album, they would have been at the top of the charts for thousands of years. And yet, like a fan who says their favourite band is ‘so-and-so’ because they like one or two songs, or favourite author is Jane Austen because they have watched a movie, I suspect many who say they love the Psalms really mean they love some Psalms, a few songs rather than the whole album. A few catchy tunes rather than the whole collection. Now, individual psalms are wonderful. We are going to spend the whole summer looking at some together! However, just as you can’t get a sense of a band without listening to a whole album, you can’t fully appreciate the Psalms without looking at the whole book. Without seeing how it has been composed not as a quickly thrown together playlist of some great Jewish hits, but constructed to be a collection of carefully selected songs set in a specific order to tell us a certain story. In the end, that is what music albums are. Artists don’t just stick 11 songs on a CD. They carefully craft their albums. Tracks are written and arranged around recurring themes. Albums are curated collections that are meant to communicate a clear message, pull us into a particular plot. And this is true of the Psalms, the book is supposed to tell us a story.
How do we know? How do we know that the book of Psalms isn’t simply a conglomeration of random songs? An ancient version of your old CD rack? A mix of CDs you can’t stop listening to and others you never should have bought? Well, first, notice that someone selected just 150, leaving the vast majority of songs sung in Israel at that time out. For example, in 1 Kings 4:32 we see King Solomon wrote over 1,000 songs. And who knows how many other authors penned! The songs we have in the Psalter are only a selection. We don’t know who the final compiler was. However, they clearly selected these 150 songs for a specific reason. Secondly, see that they have been deliberately arranged into five books. Psalms is one book with five sub-books. It is like a great symphony with five different movements. You can see that straight away on the opening page: Book 1 (1-41), Book 2 (42-72), Book 3 (73-89), Book 4 (90-106) and Book 5 (107-150). The compiler has split this collection into five sub-collections. And what is interesting, is how they have organised these. For, rather than splitting 150 evenly into five groups of 30, each book is a different size. Similarly, rather than grouping them by genre, each book has a mix of styles: some songs of praise, thanks, confession, and lament. Further, they are not arranged chronologically, for older psalms are not first. Nor are they categorised by author, for psalms by David and Asaph etc. are found in multiple books. And yet, it is clear the categorisation into 5 books is not random, they have been organised into this shape. For example, there are many different mini-sets of psalms placed throughout the books. For example, Psalms 42-49 are all songs by Sons of Korah. Or Psalms 120-134 is a collection called the Songs of Ascent. Clearly someone thought about how this great symphony was to be arranged, someone selected these specific songs and organised them into these five movements for a reason. And this evening, we are going to explore why.
In a moment, we are going to look at the five movements of this great symphony, walk through each book to see if we can spot the story they tell us. However, before we do that, we should begin by considering the opening two psalms that we have read. For as is often the case with many symphonies, the opening bars, first few minutes, introduce you to the key themes and melodies which will recur through the rest of the work. And the same is true of the Psalms, where the first two songs introduce us to the key themes that will recur throughout the rest of this masterpiece. You can see that Psalm 1 begins by introducing a righteous man. 1:1 speaks of a man who walks in the way of the Lord, obeying his law (1:2-3) and so experiencing God’s blessing. This is all in contrast to way of wicked men (1:4-5), that leads to destruction (1:6). In contrast, Psalm 2 tells us not of a righteous man, but of a royal man. It begins with the wicked plotting and conspiring (2:1) against God and ‘his anointed’, this chosen messiah (2:2), who is installed as king on God’s holy mountain (2:6) and given the whole world as his kingdom (2:7-9). As a result of his royal triumph, in 2:10-12, wicked kings are told to submit, to take refuge in this royal man and so be blessed. Psalm 1 tells us of the righteous man. Psalm 2 speaks of the royal man. However, far from being two unrelated songs, there are close connections between them. For example, both are united by their view of the wicked. Both end by saying the way of the wicked leads to destruction (1:6, 2:12). And there are many other ties between them. Perhaps the clearest and most crucial one is that they are bracketed by blessing. Did you notice that? Psalm 1 begins by telling us that this righteous man is blessed (1:1). Psalm 2 ends by telling us all who take refuge in this royal man will be blessed (2:12). The righteous man of Psalm 1 is blessed, the royal man of Psalm 2 will bless. And for an Israelite audience who knew their Old Testament, such language suggested these psalms did not speak of two different men, but rather of one man who is both righteous and royal, who is blessed and will bless. That was the whole point of Israel back in the beginning. Do you recall that first promise God gave Abraham in Genesis 12:2-3? ‘I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing...all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’ Israel was blessed and would bless. And this concept was carried forward and concentrated in Israel’s King, the one who was anointed by God to represent his people and reign over the whole world. This anointed king was to be both righteous and royal. For example, in Deuteronomy 17 we are told the King was to meditate on the law of the Lord all the days of his life, and so walk in righteousness and avoid the way of the wicked, just like we see there in Psalm 1. Here at the start of the Psalter, the composer tells us this music album follows the story of God’s people, and in particular of God’s king. The story of a righteous man who would walk according to God’s law (Psalm 1), who would be a royal man (Psalm 2) who despite the opposition of wicked men would be established as king over all the earth and bring blessing to those who find refuge in him.
If you are here and you are not a Christian tonight, can I encourage to consider Psalms 1-2 and see in them the overarching story of Christianity. As we are about to see, the rest of the book will take this summary and stretch it out across another 148 psalms. However, here you have a snapshot of the whole in just a few verses. In Psalm 1 you see the same truth that we heard Jesus teach last week from Matthew 7. There are only two ways to live: following God’s law or breaking it, a righteous way and a wicked way, the path of obedience and the path of sin. And as the rest of the Bible goes on to demonstrate, we all have sinned, we all have disobeyed God’s law and are walking on that wicked ways that leads to destruction. None of us by nature are that righteous man of Psalm 1. And so none of us in our own strength will stand in God’s judgement, we will all be blown away. And yet, there was a righteous man, one who came and lived a perfect life, obeyed God in every aspect of his law and delighted in his word. At the age of 12 he was found discussing it at the temple with the supreme scholars of his day, having a greater love and knowledge of it than them because he meditated on the law day and night. By the age of 30 he was teaching God’s law on the hillsides of Galilee, as we seen in Matthew 5-7, with such authority that the crowds were astonished. Jesus is this righteous man of Psalm 1, enjoying all the blessing of a perfect relationship with his heavenly Father. And yet he is also the royal man of Psalm 2. Called the Christ, that is the anointed one from his birth, he was chosen by God to be king over all things. Yet he was rejected by men, Jewish leaders plotted, and Gentile rulers banded together against him, and taking hold of him, raised him up not to a throne, but on a cross, putting him to death to try and throw off the shackles of God’s rule over them. And yet, despite all their fury, they did not undo God’s decree, for he had promised to install Christ as king on his holy mountain, to set his Son as sovereign over the whole sphere of this earth. And indeed, he has done so, for through his death on the cross, Jesus purchased God’s people back from destruction, bearing all of God’s judgement for them, and through his resurrection, he overthrew the powers of death and Hell, wrestling back the nations of the world for his own. And now that Jesus is enthroned in heaven, this warning in 2:10-12 goes out to all the people and kings and rulers of the earth, goes out to you this evening if you are not a Christian. Friend, be wise, be warned, come and serve this king, kiss God’s son, that is embrace him as your saviour and lord. If you reject him, your way will lead to destruction. But if you take refuge in Jesus, if you repent of your sin, turning away from it, and trust in him for forgiveness, you will experience the blessing of God. As Psalm 2:12 promises, ‘Blessed are all who taken refuge in him.’ Will you do that this evening? Will you take refuge in Jesus? God’s royal and righteous son? Or will you once again turn away from the only sure and safe refuge to be found and face God’s judgement alone? By yourself?
I hope you see here how the main message of Christianity can be found here in Psalms 1-2. But how do we know that this is the story of the whole Psalter? Well, over the next few minutes, we are going to briefly skim through each of the five books and see how the compiler stretches this story across the next 148 psalms. Straight away, as we move into Psalm 3, we are introduced to the historical figure at the very heart of the book. You see there at the beginning of Psalm 3 a superscription, those words in italics underneath the title which tell us who the author and what the context of the song is. While these superscriptions are not part of the lyrics of these songs, they are in all the earliest manuscripts and should be considered to be as much God’s Word as the lyrics themselves. They were likely added by the compiler as a kind of running commentary, as if you are going to listen to a classical concert and end up sitting beside an expert, who occasionally tells you what is being played, where it is from and who wrote it. Not all psalms have them, but they are there at key points to help us follow the flow of thought through this great masterpiece. And when you read Book 1-2, that is Psalms 1-41 and then 42-72, you find from the superscriptions that the dominate author is King David. Of the 73 psalms attributed to him in the whole Psalter, 55 are in Books 1-2. This idea that David is central to Books 1-2 is confirmed at the end of Book 2 in Psalm 72. You can see there in 72:19 a doxology, that is a short burst of praise that ends with Amen, which the compiler had placed at the end of each book. However, here, after the doxology we read in 72:20: […]. Books 1-2 clearly set out the story of David. And this is exactly what Psalm 2 suggested, for David was God’s anointed king, the one who was promised a dynasty that would rule over the whole earth despite the opposition of his enemies. Throughout Books 1-2 we see this struggle between David, God’s anointed, and those plotting enemies Psalm 2 mentions. If you had to summarise Book 1 in a single word, it would be CONFLICT. For in it we see that David is repeatedly surrounded by his enemies, harassed, and crying out to God for help. Psalm 22 is the best example of this, but it is just the tip of the iceberg: only 3 of 41 psalms in Book 1 do not mention some sort of opposition. In Book 1, the righteous royal man, King David, is in CONFLICT with his enemies.
However, in Book 2 this begins to change. The book begins in Psalm 42-49 with songs of the sons of Korah, who were the priests David appointed to sing in the Lord’s house after he had been crowned king. While there is still conflict in this second book, it is much less one sided, as this righteous royal man begins to overcome his enemies, just as David did after he became king in 2 Samuel. Further, the enemies are no longer just individuals, but are instead international, gentile nations attacking God’s king and people, and many psalms speak of victory and triumph over them. Therefore, summing Book 2 up in a word, it is no longer conflict, but it is now CONQUEST. God’s king is beginning to establish the global kingdom that Psalm 2 spoke of, starting to strike and shatter his scheming enemies. We this most clearly at the end of Book 2, where in Psalm 72, before we are told David’s prayers have ended, we are introduced to Solomon, David’s son, for the first time. Solomon is named in the superscription, and if you read through it you would see it is a prayer for God’s blessing on him as Israel’s new king. Some suggest it was actually a coronation psalm that David wrote for his son. By the end, it seems like God’s promise of a righteous royal man who is blessed and will bless is realised, for in 72:17 we [read]... It seems God’s promises to Abraham, to David, all that is spoken on in Psalm 1-2, is about to be fulfilled! And yet, if you know the story of the Old Testament you know that while King Solomon is a high point, a real low point is coming.
That is exactly what we have next in Book 3, which could be summarised in the single word: COLLAPSE. It begins in Psalm 73 with a psalm about the prosperity of the wicked, and then in Psalm 74 with the recounting of the destruction of God’s temple. This catastrophic event continues to dominate the rest of Book 3, for example in Psalm 79:1-4 we are told the nations defiled God’s holy temple and reduced Jerusalem to rubble. In Psalm 88, we reach perhaps the lowest and darkest point in the whole Bible, with a psalm of lament that ends not by asserting God’s faithfulness or calling him to save, as every other psalm of lament will do, but with these words of suffering: [88:15-18] The next and final psalm of the book, Psalm 89, makes clear this has happened, that God has rejected his king and people, because of their sin. And so, if Book 1-2 covers the life of David and the establishment of his kingdom, ending with Solomon, we can see that Book 3 charts the collapse of that kingdom after Solomon and the exile of God’s people into lands of Assyria and Babylon. And it is in this historical period, the time of the collapse and exile, that the book of Psalms was likely compiled. And yet, what is incredible is that the rest of the book doesn’t dwell on the bitterness of this exile experience, but rather tells the reader to turn back to and trust in God. Book 4 is the same length as Book 3, both have 17 psalms, but it is entirely different in tone, for it is full of psalms of praise, songs proclaiming God is in control and recalling how he saved them in the past. While in exile, it seems God’s people grow in CONFIDENCE that the Lord will restore his king and kingdom. And that that is exactly what the first and last psalms of Book 4 asks God to do. Psalms 90 and 106 are both cries to God for him to bring his people back and restore his kingdom. See this so clearly in Psalm 106:47, where after recounting how God brought his people out of Egypt in the Exodus, the Psalmist writes:[…]
This request sets us up perfectly for Book 5, the last, largest, and longest, which we see immediately begins with God answering that request to restore his people in Psalm 107:1-3. If you had to summarise Book 5 in a single word, it would be CORONATION, for in we have the enthronement of God’s king and the establishment of his kingdom across the whole earth. It is here we have the most quoted psalm in the whole Bible, Psalm 110, which speaks of God setting up his anointed, victorious son, as king over all the nations of the world. A psalm that the New Testament repeatedly applies to the risen and ascended Jesus Christ. As you move towards the end of the book, hymns of praise increase in number, until, with a final burst of five praise songs, it comes to a close. In Psalm 146-150 we have five psalms that all begin and end with the phrase ‘Praise the Lord’. The last, Psalm 150, is a call for the whole earth to praise God with everything they have. And do you see that unlike the other books, Book 5 doesn’t have a doxology, there is no amen marking the end of this collection. Instead, simply an instruction for us all to praise God, and so the compiler seems to suggest this continues forever and ever, as the whole earth praises God throughout all eternity for all the wonderous things he has done.
Friend, do you see that how the Psalms tell us a story? Indeed they tell us the story, the great narrative of all time. Reflecting on this, Martin Luther, the German Reformer of the 16th century, said, ‘The Psalter ought to be a precious and beloved book, if for no other reason than this...that it might well be called a little Bible. In it is comprehended most beautifully and briefly everything that is in the entire Bible.’ Psalms tells us a story. However, as we close, we see it also teaches us to sing. As an aside, I could have said that it also trains us in prayer, for it certainly does that. For thousands of years, men and woman have used the Psalms to prompt and shape their prayers to God. We see that in the New Testament, where both Jesus on the cross and the disciples in the book of Acts pick up and pray psalms. And this continued into the early church, for example the early Church Father Ath-an-asius, in the 4th century, pointed out: ‘most of Scripture speaks to us; the Psalms speak for us....Whatever your particular need or trouble, from this same book you can select a form of words to fit it...’. Friend, if you want to work on your prayer life, then using the psalms to train you in that is possibly the most helpful thing you can do. I’d be happy to chat to you about that later. However, as we close, I want to instead focus on how the Psalter...
2. TEACHES US TO SING
As much as there is a narrative running through the entire Psalter, we must remember that it is a hymnbook, not a history book. This is a music album, not an audiobook. The author tells a story not so we can sit and listen to it, but so we can join him in singing it. The Psalms are written for us to be able to participate, to take the complaints and confessions, praises and thanksgivings, of the authors onto our own lips and say them for ourselves. The Psalms teach us to sing. And it teaches us to sing for at least two reasons: (1) Singing instructs our minds; (2) Singing influences our hearts. We have all seen that first one in action, how singing instructs our minds, helps us to remember and retain certain things. Many of you can perhaps still hear the opening beats of that first music album you bought, mouth out all the words when you hear those songs on the radio, list the tracks in order because you have listened to them over and over again. From our earliest days, we use the power of music to impact our memories, instruct our minds. For example, when we learnt our ABCs we all used a song, put the letters to a tune to help us remember them. Singing instructs our minds. This is why at Grace Church, when we gather together, we sing songs that contain substantial truths, that are not just theologically accurate, but also theologically full, for we recognise that we are not only being taught in the sermon, but also through the singing. And this is true of the Psalms, which are not only full of devotional language, but also doctrinal language. When Jesus wants to prove his deity he turns to Psalm 110, or Hebrews the incarnation and atonement it turns to Psalm 30, or Paul Christ’s ascension he turns to Psalm 68. The New Testament repeatedly takes up proof texts not from the prophets, but from the psalms. These are songs that have no shortage of theological substance. However, perhaps the most valuable way that the Psalter instructs our minds is that it not only teaches us generic truths that we can sing all the time, but that it also teaches us specific truths we can sing in certain situations. As we seen in our overview of the book, there are a variety of genres: songs of praise, of lament, of confession, of thanksgiving. And so, there are psalms that we can sing when our heart is bursting with joy, and others we can sing when it feels like darkness is our closest friend. The Psalms teach us what we can sing even during the darkest days of our lives. The Psalms provides a soundtrack for every situation. Songs not just for when you walk down the aisle, but also when you stand by the graveside. Songs not just for when you bring the new baby home from the hospital, but also for when you don’t get to bring them home. Whatever situation you find yourself in, there is a psalm that can teach you what truth you should trust in and how you can talk to God. The Psalms teach us to sing to instruct our minds.
They also teach us to sing, because singing influences our hearts. Reflecting on this Luther, commented, ‘Music is to be praised as second only to the Word of God because by her all the emotions are swayed. Nothing on earth is more mighty to make the sad [happy] and the [happy] sad’ than music. Music can have a powerful positive effect on us, I’m sure you have all experienced being emotionally lifted by a favourite song when you feel down. However, music can also have a negative effect. The stories we sing shape us, they mould our morals and affect our emotions. Back in 1704, the Scottish politician Andrew Fletcher famously said, ‘Let me write the songs of a nation, and I care not who writes its laws.’ That is if you can control what society sings, you can control what they celebrate, control what they do. Songs shape those who sing them. We don’t need to look far to see an example of this. Anyone who studies the sexual revolution of the swinging sixties and the decades since knows that those seismic moral changes were driven not through legislation by politicians, but through songs by musicians. Music was the tool that was used to reshape society. To influence our hearts and thereby change our minds. And this is the still the case today, with our music charts full of songs that sell us stories of finding fulfilment through sexual freedom. What we sing shapes us, influences our hearts. And this is true not just of secular songs, but also of the Psalms. They teach us to sing, not only to instruct our minds, but also to influence our hearts. They teach us to sing the great story of Scripture so that we are shaped by it, rather than by the stories that we hear in this world. Singing the psalms helps to ensure that we do not succumb to the songs of this world. And what a joy this is, for the story of the psalms is a far greater story than any that this world can come up with. In the Psalms we are called to sing about a God who loves us and sent his Son to die in our place. About king who came to save us and who promises to care for us all of our days. In the Psalms, we see that have a better story to sing than any story that this world can ever offer. Of all the people on earth, surely we Christians have something to really sing about.
I hope you now begin to understand why Colossians 3:16 tells us to ‘teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit’. For singing not only instructs our minds, it also influences our hearts. In Merrow Fellowship Group earlier this week, we were reflecting on this and thinking about how some have seen this power of singing demonstrated in a very personal way. Perhaps you have had a Christian relative or friend who has suffered from Alzheimer’s or dementia. If so, it is not uncommon that even after they forget important events from their life and the names of their loved ones, they can still remember hymns that they have heard over the years. Through years of opening their mouths to sing songs to others, and their ears to hear others sing songs to them, certain truths have become so deeply embedded, that even those terrible diseases struggle to remove them from their hearts and minds. Friends, do you see that when we sing to each other, we are unleashing God’s Word like a mighty river through the minds and hearts of those around us, causing God’s truths to slowly and steadily cut deeper and deeper into the bedrock of their souls. Brothers and sisters, part of what we are doing here when we gather together to sing to each other is preparing someone for such a day, that day when they can neither remember who their husband nor children are, they can remember who their God is. Remember that he will hold them fast. Know that their hearts should be filled with thankfulness. Still sing and say that it is in Christ alone that their hope is found. Brothers and sisters, does that not encourage you to come along and sing even when you don’t feel like it – for someday some of us may sit in hospital beds, and while we might not be able to remember the story of our lives, we might remember the story of Christ’s life. We can still smile when hear the name of Jesus. That we might still be able to sing praise to the God of Heaven, for our brothers and sisters sung us that same story every week at Grace Church, and we have never stopped singing about it in our hearts since.
ALEXANDER ARRELL