In this series of essays pastor Keith will seek to explain aspects of our ministry at Trinity Chapel. May the Lord use these to give you greater clarity about our work and encourage you to participate further in this gospel ministry!
Why Do We Sing Psalms?
Anyone who has ever visited Trinity Chapel, watched one of our livestreams, or even heard us talk about worship will quickly learn something: we love the Bible! We recognize the Bible as God's precious word to His people, warning sinners toward repentance, and assuring us of all His promises in Christ. At Trinity Chapel we love the Bible so much that we are not content to simply read a verse or two before the preacher launches into a 15-20 minute spiritually-ambiguous TED talk. NO! We DEMAND the Bible, from start to finish.
That means we don't just preach and read the Bible, we also pray and even sing the Bible! Every Lord's day, in morning and evening worship, two books are made available to all worshipers at Trinity Chapel: the Trinity Hymnal and the Trinity Psalter. While the Hymnal consists of many wonderful God-honoring hymns and spiritual songs, the Psalter alone contains the very words of God, translated straight out of Scripture and set to a singable pattern.
One blessing of singing these songs is that they are incapable of being untrue. Because they are the very words of God, taken straight from the source of Scripture, they are inspired, God-breathed, and inerrant (incapable of being in error). Many times, even with old hymns, we might rightly ask, "Are these words true? Is this song reflecting something true about God?" With psalms, we never have to ask that question. We know these are Spirit-inspired songs, and therefore always relevant to all of life, no matter how far removed from the original context we might be.
The psalms also give voice to the full range of human emotion and experience. Many modern praise songs only focus on the same pre-conceived selection of "appropriate" feelings and experiences. How many contemporary Christian worship songs focus on the destruction of enemies, the experience of being betrayed, or feeling abandoned by God? The psalms have highs and lows, peaks and valleys, and, if we sing them all, we find we have an applicable song to sing no matter how we are feeling in the moment.
We sing psalms because Jesus sings psalms! As a Jew, from His earliest days, our Savior would have learned to sing the psalms in His family home, in the synagogue worship, and at the temple in Jerusalem. Psalm-singing was ingrained into Him from day one, as with all people of the Book. Jesus almost definitely prayed and sang the Hallel Psalms (Psalms 113-118) when He instituted the Lord's supper (Matthew 26:26-30). When we sing the psalms, we don't just sing about Jesus, but with Jesus. We join Him as our elder brother and High Priest, singing praise with Him to God the Father.
Above all, we sing psalms because the Bible commands us to sing psalms! "And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord." (Ephesians 5:19, also Colossians 3:16) "Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms." (James 5:13) The Lord is always infinitely more pleased with our simple obedience than our most outlandish, extravagant displays of external worship. (1 Samuel 15:22)
So, with renewed zeal and trust in the Lord, let us take up our psalters and sing praise to God! Many of our neighbors, even our Christian brothers and sisters, have never known the blessing of singing God's word in the Psalms. May we grow to love the Psalms more in 2023 and share this wonderful treasure with the world around us. To God be the glory!
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