The Psalter has been the church’s primary songbook from the beginning. In Acts, Christians pray Psalms. The liturgies of East and West are packed with Psalms. Monks chanted through the entire Psalter every week, and the Reformation spread on a wave of metrical Psalms.

There are no hymns like the Psalter. Where else are you going to find blistering honesty like Psalm 6: “I am weary with my sighing; every night I make my bed swim, I dissolve my couch with my tears”? Psalms train us not to hold back or play the cheery hypocrite when we talk to God.

What hymn gives vent to righteous outrage as relentlessly as Psalm 94: “They crush Your people, O Lord. . . . They slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless. And they say, ‘The Lord does not see, nor does the God of Jacob pay heed’”?

Where else can you find songs that mention Sihon and Og (Psa 135:11; 136:19-20), or Sisera, Oreb, and Zeeb (Psa 83:9-11), or the battle of En-dor? What hymns tell the story of Israel as truthfully as Psalms 78 and 106?

The Psalms give us words for every situation and emotion, words to articulate our sorrow, fear, despair, joy, confusion, exultation, gratitude, praise, awe, doubt, anger, pain, relief, hope, dismay, trust, surprise, love – and to transform them all to prayer. No wonder Athanasius calls the Psalter a “mirror of the soul.”

But there’s a deeper reason we sing Psalms. The Psalms are about Jesus. They’re His songs. He’s the righteous man of Psalm 1, the enthroned King of Psalm 2, the suffering exile of Psalm 3. As Augustine said, the words of the Psalms are the words of Christ – sometimes of Jesus the Head, sometimes of us the body, but always Christ.

Music sets the tone for the church. We become attuned to what we sing. We sing Psalms because they’re the songs of Jesus, and in singing them we become attuned to Him.

Blessings,
Pastor Leithart