"The Psalms: Our Prayer Book and Hymnal" FPC Sermon Series

Sermon Series

The Psalms: Our Prayer Book and Hymnal

January 19 Psalm 2 and Psalm 23 The Psalms in Worship

January 26 Psalm 73 and Psalm 80 Restore Us!

February 2 Psalm 22 and Psalm 27 My Confident Cry

February 9 Psalm 30 and Psalm 66 My Dancing Joy

February 16 Psalm 100 and Psalm 150 Y’all Praise!

February 23 Psalm 18 and Psalm 19 Our Sun and My Shadow

“My child, all the books of Scripture, both old and new, are inspired by God and useful for instruction, as it is written. But to those who really study it, the Psalter yields especial treasure. Each book of the Bible has, of course, its own particular message... Each of these books, you see, is like a garden which grows one particular kind of fruit; by contrast, the Psalter is a garden which, besides its particular fruit, grows also those of all the rest.”  Athanasius (c. 295-373) to Marcellinus

The Psalms are both the Bible’s prayer book and the Bible’s hymnal. The Psalms have consistently been recognized by the church as Jesus’ own prayer book and hymnal. For Presbyterian and Reformed Christians, our understanding and appreciation of the Psalter has a three-fold foundation: David (and others in ancient Israel) prayed the Psalms, Jesus prayed the Psalms, and we pray the Psalms (after, with, and through Jesus). For Martin Luther and others, the association with Jesus was so strong that they would frequently identify the psalmist as Christ without any forewarning. Today we might prefer to say, "the psalmist says here", but for Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others, "Christ says here" just made more sense. They would heartily endorse Augustine's statement:

It is Christ's voice which ought by this time to be perfectly known and perfectly familiar to us in all the Psalms—now chanting joyously, now sorrowing now rejoicing in hope, now sighing in its present state, even as if it were our own. We need not then dwell long on pointing out to you who the speaker here is. Let each one of us be a member of Christ's body and he will be a speaker here.

In the Psalms we learn to recognize and imitate Christ’s voice. Besides singing these songs together with Jesus, we also sing them together with all the people of God through time and space. Psalms were chanted or sung by the apostles and early believers, and by Christians through two millennia. These songs are “the only shared public square of Christian worship that spans throughout time and across the globe.” [Julie and Timothy Tennent, A Metrical Psalter]

For Presbyterians, Metrical Psalters, in particular, have been around for almost five hundred years. They were produced as part of the Protestant commitment to making the Scriptures available in the common language of the people, as well as the renewal of congregational participation in worship, not reserving singing to a professional choir. Some examples include the Genevan Psalter (1562); the Scottish Psalter (1564 and 1650); the Sternhold and Hopkins Psalter in England (1562); and the Bay Psalm Book in America (1640). The reformers recognized that chant was not the common musical form of ordinary people, any more than Latin was their common language. Since the Reformation, many metrical Psalters have been produced, revised, and reprinted for use in the church so that psalms can be easily accessed and freely sung by congregations and families.

Our six-week winter sermon series (January 19-February 23) will invite FPC to join David, Jesus, and all the saints with heart and voice in singing and praying the psalms. When you sing the psalms, you never sing alone. 

Whether you sing with the Holy Spirit in a private place, or sing with others in the midst of congregational worship, the voice of Jesus is always singing alongside your voice. We are also joined together in a spiritual sense with believers throughout time who have sung these songs of worship from the Scripture's hymnal. David, Asaph, the sons of Korah, and countless other Old Testament saints poured out their souls through these psalms. First-century believers and medieval monastics, Benedictine monks and Puritan saints, Protestants and Catholics and Orthodox, Calvin and Luther and Wesley, all loved and sang the psalms. When we sing these psalms, we are joining together in songs of worship that have been sung by the people of God for three thousand years and all across the globe. And they are still God's means of grace for the Christian church today. [Julie and Timothy Tennent, A Metrical Psalter]