The Psalter Reclaimed (eBook)

CHAPTER 2

Praying the Psalms1

In the previous chapter I focused on the origin of the Psalter and the impact of speech-act theory for understanding it. But if we stop there, we miss the main point of the Psalms: they are designed to be prayed. This has been recognized down the ages, but let me just give the opinion of two well-known European theologians. John Calvin wrote, “Here is prescribed in the most exact manner how we may offer acceptably the sacrifice of praises, which God declareth to be most precious in his sight.”2 And more recently Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “The only way to understand the Psalms is on your knees, the whole congregation praying the words of the Psalms with all its strength.”3

I am sure if one searched further one could find exhortations to pray the psalms from many more great theologians, but despite this, in many parts of the church the Psalms are woefully neglected. At one seminary in Britain that I visited, they were not even on the syllabus to be studied. So in this chapter I will offer some reasons for praying all the psalms regularly.

I should like you to travel in your imagination to Jerusalem. When you arrive there in the Old City of Jerusalem, there is one place you cannot miss: the Dome of the Rock with its shiny golden dome and beautiful mosaics. It stands where the Jewish temple stood until its destruction by the Romans in AD 70. It is still a most sacred place for the Jews, and devout Jews will not walk on the temple mount, but in peaceful times Christian pilgrims are allowed to visit it. As you walk among the beautiful buildings, you can picture all those who worshipped there before you, from Abraham and Isaac to Jesus and Paul. But the two biblical figures we most associate with the Jerusalem temple are David and Solomon. Solomon of course built the first temple, while David wrote many of the psalms that were used there.

For nearly a thousand years the priests and the Levites and lay people too sang the psalms in the Jerusalem temple. The Jews also used them in their synagogues and homes. It was traditional to sing Psalms 113–18 at the Passover meal. We know that Jesus used these psalms at the Last Supper, for the Gospels mention it in passing. Matthew 26:30 says “And when they had sung a hymn they went out to the Mount of Olives.” The hymn Jesus and his disciples sang at this point, just after the meal, comprised Psalms 115–18. When you next pray Psalm 118, remember that Jesus prayed it just before he went out to face his death. Here are a few verses:

Out of my distress I called on the LORD;

the LORD answered me and set me free.

The LORD is on my side; I will not fear.

What can man do to me? . . .

I shall not die, but I shall live,

and recount the deeds of the LORD. . . .

Open to me the gates of righteousness,

that I may enter through them

and give thanks to the LORD. . . .

The stone that the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone. (Ps. 118:5–6, 17, 19, 22)

It is quite likely that Jesus and his disciples knew the psalms by heart, for we next hear Jesus reciting them on the cross. He quoted Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” A bit later, just before he died he quoted Psalm 31:5, “Into your hand I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46). It has been suggested that our Lord was just praying his way through the Psalms as he hung on the cross. As I shall say later, this would have been a very appropriate thing to do, for so many of the early psalms are the prayers of a good man suffering and crying to God for help.

The early church continued the practice of praying and singing the psalms. St. Paul tells the Ephesians, “Be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms . . . , singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart” (Eph. 5:18–19). The apostle says much the same to the Colossians (3:16). If we turn to the book of Revelation, we are privileged to hear some of the songs of the saints in heaven, which too seem to be based on the Psalms.

Move on a couple of centuries and meet Athanasius, the great African theologian who saved the church from denying the divinity of Christ. He wrote a marvelous letter about the Psalms to a man named Marcellinus. The gist of the letter is that the Psalms are the best part of the Bible, and we should use them for our prayers whatever our situation may be because there is a psalm that suits our every need. Below are a few sentences from this wonderful letter:

Whatever your particular need or trouble, from this same book you can select a form of words to fit it, so that you do not merely hear and then pass on, but learn the way to remedy your ill. . . . The Psalms . . . show you how to set about repenting and with what words your penitence may be expressed. . . . The Psalms not only exhort us to be thankful, they also provide us with fitting words to say. We are told, too, by other writers that all who would live godly in Christ must suffer persecution; and here again the Psalms supply words with which both those who flee persecution and those who suffer under it may suitably address themselves to God, and it does the same for those who have been rescued from it. We are bidden elsewhere in the Bible also to bless the Lord and to acknowledge Him: here in the Psalms we are shown the way to do it, and with what sort of words His majesty may meetly be confessed. In fact, under all the circumstances of life, we shall find that these divine songs suit ourselves and meet our own souls’ need at every turn.4

The later church took Athanasius’s advice to heart. When Saint Benedict set up monasteries in about AD 600, he prescribed the reciting of psalms at the eight times of prayer each day. In this way the monks prayed every psalm at least once a week. As noted in chapter 1, in the Middle Ages, before the age of printing, the only piece of the Bible a lay person was likely to have was a copy of the Psalms. I am told that is still the case in southern Ethiopia today.

The Protestant Reformers were just as keen on the use of the Psalms. Again, Luther described the Psalter as a mini-Bible, which sums up the whole message of the Scriptures. John Calvin wrote, “Whatever may serve to encourage us when we are about to pray to God, is taught us in this book.”5 In many Reformed churches that followed Calvin’s teaching, only the psalms, or hymns that were a close paraphrase of the psalms, could be sung in church. Other songs or hymns were forbidden. In the Church of England prayer book the Psalms are divided up so that, on average, five may be said or sung each day and every psalm is thereby prayed once a month.

But from the eighteenth century this use of the Psalms in English-speaking Protestant churches began to decline. Men like Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, John Newton, and others in the evangelical revival wrote very good hymns that were easier to sing than the psalms. In their day of course people continued to pray and sing the psalms, but as time went on, the use of the Psalms began to die out. So today many churches in Britain and America never use the Psalms at all, and some seminaries do not even make study of the Psalms part of their curriculum.

Now I am not against hymns or modern worship songs. Some of them are great, but if we sing only them, we will have a very limited experience of worship, indeed a harmful imbalance in our praying and singing. So in the rest of this chapter I want to offer some reasons why we ought to pray the psalms regularly as Jesus and the apostles did, and as the Christian church did as well for about eighteen centuries.

Psalms of Praise

First of all, the Psalms teach us to praise God. The Hebrew word which is translated “Psalms” is tehillim, which means “praises.” The Psalms show us how to praise God for all his goodness to us.

Praise for Creation

Psalm 104 praises God for his wisdom in creation.

Bless the LORD, O my soul!

O LORD my God, you are very great!

You are clothed with splendor and majesty,

covering yourself with light as with a garment,

stretching out the heavens like a tent. (vv. 1–2)

He set the earth on its foundations,

so that it should never be moved. (v. 5)

The psalmist goes on to mention the creation of the seas, the mountains, the birds, the plants, man, the moon, and the sun, and then he exclaims,

O LORD, how manifold are your works!

In wisdom have you made them all. (v. 24)

Praise for Salvation

The Psalms praise God for salvation. God’s rescue of his people from slavery in Egypt through the exodus was the supreme saving act in the Old Testament, and many psalms celebrate that: for example, 105, 106, 115, and 136. You may be tempted to say that praising God for the exodus is not relevant to us, but of course it is. The New Testament sees Christ’s death on the cross for us as the new exodus. So when we praise God in these psalms, we remember not only the first exodus from Egypt but, moreover, the second exodus whereby we were saved from the slavery of sin.

Praise for Answered Prayer

The Psalms give us words to praise God when our prayers are answered. Like the nine lepers in Luke’s Gospel it is easy for us to...