It is a little embarrassing to admit that I once tried to challenge an RP minister about not joining in with the worship at a conference! Why couldn’t he just join in the songs like the rest of us? They were good words, many of them straight from the Bible, what was his problem?! Had this man not read Colossians 3:16, that we should sing “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs”? Well, it turned out he had read that verse, and he graciously explained that those are three headings for the Psalms. I had some more thinking to do!
What if I was wrong in neglecting Psalm singing for so long? Christopher Ash in his commentary on the Psalms argues that the Psalms “ought to have, at the very least, a substantial place in the corporate worship of the church.” In the church I was in at the time, we probably only sang the 23rd and 100th Psalms in our corporate worship, this hardly qualified as “a substantial place.” I had never consciously neglected the Psalms, but just had never realised that these were the songs that God had given His people to sing. I used to choose to sing hymns that contained great truth and were better known, was this wrong? What about the young people, and the newcomers, would they be put off by ancient Psalms?
A matter of the heart
Before getting into any of the arguments, we need to recognise the danger of pride. It is a sign of how wicked our hearts are that we could become proud in worship! That we could think we are better than others because we are getting the outward form “right”. Jesus speaks in the strongest terms against the Pharisees when he says “This people honours me with their lips but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me” (Mark 7:6-7). As we approach the question of worship, we need to come with humble hearts that want to please the Lord.
What does God command?
My wife hates bananas, if I decided to give her a bunch of bananas for our anniversary, it would show that either I had not listened to her, or did not care what she likes. It’s all too easy to make worship about what we like, but what if we begin not by asking what pleases us, but what pleases God? What if God has actually told us what He wants and what is best for us? It turns out that God has done that. In Deuteronomy 12:32, just after God has told His people not to worship like the nations, He says “everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take away from it.” When God’s people ignored this command the results were sometimes devastating (see e.g. Leviticus 10:1-3, 2 Samuel 6:5-9).
But you might be thinking, we are not living in Israel, we are living in the time after Jesus fulfilled the law and died for us so we could be forgiven, surely we have greater freedom now. There are certainly greater blessings and freedoms that we now enjoy, as the writer of Hebrews tells us, we know Jesus, “the mediator of a new covenant” (Hebrews 12:24). What a privilege to be living in this time, and the writer tells us what we should do as a result – we should be grateful and “offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.” (Hebrews 12:28-29). We are to be so grateful for all that Jesus has done for us, but such gratitude doesn’t lead to carelessness in worship. We must still consider what is pleasing to Him in worship, and wonderfully what is pleasing to Him is also good for us! What does He command?
We return to Colossians 3:16 where we are told to sing “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” I had mistakenly thought I was keeping this command by singing hymns and modern songs (and the occasional psalm) with thankfulness in my heart. So why did my friend tell me these were three words for describing the Psalms?
When the apostle Paul was travelling the Greek speaking world and persuading people about Jesus from the Scriptures, he would have been using the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. This is known as the Septuagint (LXX for short), this translation was widely known as it had been around for about 300 years. The word “Psalm” is used 67x in the book of Psalms in the LXX as a title, perhaps that’s no surprise. I was however surprised to discover that “hymn” is also used 6x as a title, and the word “song” is used 35x. What’s more, all three titles are used for the title of Psalm 76 (hymns is normally translated as “with stringed instruments” in our English translations). So when Paul uses these words in Colossians 3:16 and Ephesians 5:19, he is referring to the book of Psalms as a whole. The word “spiritual” probably refers to all three titles, reminding us that these words are inspired, the book of Psalms is from the Holy Spirit. It’s not surprising then that Paul tells us that one of the ways that we will be “filled with the Spirit” is by singing the Psalms of the Spirit (Ephesians 5:19).
I hope we can agree that here we have a command to sing the Psalms, the question is whether there is a command anywhere else in Scripture to sing anything else? Throughout church history the majority of Christians would have answered that there is no command to sing anything other than the Psalms and so that was what they sang. There were some other hymns written but it wasn’t until the 18thC “with the modern hymn writing movement, that an effort to replace Psalm singing emerged.” (Michael Lefebvre “Singing the songs of Jesus” p23).
Whether or not you are fully persuaded of exclusive psalm singing, I hope that you are persuaded that it is good to sing Psalms and that through your experience you may come to discover the blessing of Psalm singing.
The blessing of Psalm singing
Whilst many would freely admit to the blessing of singing Psalm 23, singing other Psalms may sometimes be considered as harder work. More modern hymns or songs may be easier to sing, but what a blessing to know that in the Psalms, the words you are singing are God’s Word given to us. In fact, they are not just God’s Word, but the words God has given us to sing to Him. How gracious of God to give us these words, and who are we to think we can come up with something better! As we sing these words, we will discover as Professor Leahy discovered “they bring comfort in times of sorrow, gratitude in times of joy, hope when tempted to despair, guidance in times of difficulty. They topple pride and promote humility. They strengthen the weakest saint, and shine as a lamp when surrounded by darkness.” (Leahy, “Spiritual songs”)
Sometimes people object to exclusive psalmody on the basis that they want to sing songs about Jesus, but in the Psalms we get to sing the songs that Jesus himself sang, and we get to reflect on what the words meant for Him and how we can sing them as His people. After Jesus had risen from the dead he told his disciples that the Psalms were about him (Luke 24:44). The books of Psalms is the most quoted book in the New Testament with over 100 direct quotations and another 200+ allusions. But as we sing the Psalms, we are not just looking for allusions, but we are meditating on the actual words that Jesus sang, the prayers he prayed. In the gospels we hear what Jesus teaches and does, but in the Psalms we see his heart. See your saviour as you sing these words as he contemplates the cross:
“My heart is broken by reproach;
I’m faint, and looked for one
To pity show; no one was there;
comforters found I none.” (Psalm 69:20)
The book of Hebrews tells us “in the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who has able to save him from death” (Hebrews 5:7), and in the Psalms we have the words that He used. We see more clearly how much it cost our Saviour to endure the cross for our sake and we are left more profoundly grateful.
But we don’t only see Jesus’ agony, we get to rejoice in what He has accomplished for us. Consider Psalm 18:20 “The LORD rewarded me because of my own righteousness.” Perhaps you have turned up to worship feeling burdened by your sin, and you read those words and consider, there’s no way I could sing that. But then you hear that because of Jesus you can sing that! You perhaps feel Jesus putting his hand on your shoulder, reassuring you, “I’ve taken your sin, you belong to me, you are righteous now, you can sing that!” What a blessing!
Perhaps you are facing a hard time, and you are reassured from Psalm 121 that the LORD who made heaven and earth is watching over you, and He is there to talk to day or night because He doesn’t sleep or slumber! You are reminded of Jesus words “I am with you always to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20)
Maybe you are broken hearted, and you are comforted as you sing Psalm 147:3 “Those that are broken in their heart, and grieved in their minds, he healeth, and their painful wounds he tenderly up-binds.” In your minds eye you picture Jesus restoring those he met and hear him saying “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)
Do you see why Paul told us that as we sing the Psalms the Word of Christ will dwell in us richly (Colossians 3:16) and we will be filled with the Holy Spirit as we sing His songs (Ephesians 5:19). As we sing Psalms, “a rich indwelling of the word of Christ takes place and deepens in the life of the church.” (Ash, Psalms book 1, p14)
As we sing the Psalms we also find the accompanied blessing of becoming more like God, for they help us to love what He loves and hate what He hates. In this sense they act as something of a barometer for the soul, when we feel out of step with the Psalmist it’s a good indicator that something is not right. As we sing them, we can be praying that God would give us such desires, so for example, we might be singing Psalm 42 and we realise that our soul has not been longing for God, so we pray that we would! The Psalms help us to be honest with God about how we are feeling. The Psalms give us the words to say, and truths to help us remind ourselves what God is like. What’s more, the Psalms promote Christian unity, they have no denominational bias, they can be sung by all Christians with a clear conscience.
Singing the Psalms may be harder work than singing modern songs, but as we mine for the treasure we will find it’s worth it. Bonhoeffer warns us that “whenever the Psalter is abandoned, an incomparable treasure is lost to the Christian church. With its recovery will come unexpected power.” (Bonhoeffer, Prayerbook of the Bible 162).
We sing the Psalms because we believe this is what God commands us to do, and we find that as we do so we discover great blessing.
Helpful Resources:
Singing the songs of Jesus – Revisiting the Psalms, Michael Lefebvre, available here.
Lots of helpful resources for singing the Psalms from Crown and Covenant here
If you’re in the UK and would like to purchase a Psalter with lots of options for tunes for singing, you can get one here.
Light and Momentary Troubles 
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