The Psalms: An Anchor To Keep Us From Going Adrift

I thank God for the gifts he has given to many saints throughout church history who have produced truthful, Scripture-based songs of reverent worship which have edified the hearts of God’s beloved people. One of my favorite hymns of all time is called “God Moves in a Mysterious Way”. The lyrics were originally written in 1774 by William Cowper. Each line reads like a miniature sermon containing powerful poetic expressions of the precious truths of our faith. If you are unfamiliar with this hymn, I encourage you to open your family’s Trinity Hymnal to #128 and read through it, or to search for the lyrics online. May God be pleased to raise up many more saints to serve him faithfully in this wonderful capacity!

And yet, notwithstanding my deep appreciation for many man-made Christian songs from throughout church history, I want to help us consider one way that singing only man-made songs in public worship inevitably proves detrimental to the Church. That is to say, as we are learning to re-introduce the psalms into our public worship at Covenant Grace, I want to help us consider one particular reason that the inclusion of the psalms is of critical importance to the spiritual formation and maturity of God’s beloved people.

Singing the psalms helps us learn to sing to our God concerning the whole scope of Christian theology.

While not intending to throw stones in any particular direction, it is no secret that most man-made Christian songs, (especially the more modern ones), tend to only express the “soft” side of Christian theology. They tell us of the wonders of God’s love and mercy, of the comforts we enjoy as his children, and of the hope which belongs to each of God’s people in Christ, etc. Perhaps right now you are beginning to feel a question form in the back of your mind: “What could possibly be wrong with that?!” Well, let me be very quick to comfort you and put that question to rest by saying that absolutely nothing is wrong with us singing about these wonderful truths of our faith! May we continue to sing them with great joy and fervor always! Indeed, the very song of heaven is “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain!” (Rev. 5:12). My point is not to suggest in any way that we should cease singing about these precious truths! Rather, my point is to help us recognize that we should also sing about much more than ONLY this small array of precious truths.

Many hymns and modern songs—or at least the ones which are most commonly sung—tend to have no sharp edges, no cutting truths, no urgency concerning the condition of the lost or threatenings for those wandering in sin and unbelief. They do not remind us of God’s hatred of evil or of the just judgments of destruction which God has powerfully worked against the wicked throughout history. Furthermore, most hymns and modern songs do not openly exclude anyone from the blessings stated. Instead, they deceptively give the impression that anyone can join in and sing along, applying the comfort of the promises stated to themself regardless of the state of their soul before God. When you really stop and think about it, the truth is, there are a great many theological truths which are essentially absent from the man-made songs we tend to sing in modernity. And even where those truths are present, they are often stated in startlingly shallow terms with too heavy of a focus on our personal feelings (as opposed to truth) and on the fleeting things of this present life (as opposed to eternity).

However, in contrast to this, when we read the psalms of Holy Scripture we find that the breadth and depth of theology expressed within them far exceeds that which is typical of man-made songs in our modern times. The psalms teach us to sing to our God throughout every season of life and in every emotion we face. They invite us to see God’s hand in all things and to express our hearts to him at all times—whether in seasons of joy or sorrow, victory or defeat, confidence or uncertainty. While containing deeply personal expressions of the whole spectrum of human experiences, the psalms nevertheless teach us how to lift up our eyes to God in the midst of these things. As we journey like pilgrims toward the Celestial City, the psalms consistently remind us of the true treasure Whom we should long for and seek. They do this by pointing out not a few of God’s characteristics, but rather by holding up the brilliant multi-faceted diamond of God’s ineffable glory into the light so that its refracting rays continually illumine the path before us with truth, hope, and purpose. Indeed, when you begin learning to sing the psalms there will even be occasions when you will actually feel downright uncomfortable with how openly and forcefully some aspects of God’s holy character are expressed. This is especially true when the psalms call us to publicly put to voice the realities of God’s righteous judgment against the wicked, or of the hideousness of sin in God’s sight, etc.

I do not bring all of this up as a cheap straw man argument against the use of man-made songs. As I said earlier, I praise God for the gifts of faithful saints who have helped us offer truthful and reverent songs of praise to our Triune God. My reason for bringing this up is because I believe that this contrast between the typical content of man-made songs and the typical content of the inspired psalms of Holy Scripture has something important to teach us. In most circles of Christianity the psalms have been almost entirely removed from the singing aspects of public worship for quite some time. Snippets of inspirational portions may still be read or included in the lyrics to a song, but the full and robust content of the psalms has been decidedly edited out of modern worship. I think this has had a significantly negative impact on the spiritual health of the Church, and that there is an important lesson for us to learn from this mistake.

In my opinion, here is that important lesson:

The psalms of Holy Scripture serve as an anchor for the singing aspects of our worship as God’s covenant people. And without that anchor, we will inevitably go adrift.

Think about it for a moment. What happens to a boat that is out on the open seas without an anchor? A boat that is not tethered to an anchor will inevitably drift. The crashing of the waves and the pull of the current will inescapably begin to cause that boat to conform to their pressures. The anchor is what allows the boat to have a fixed point of security and strength to resist those pressures. An anchored boat will still face the same crashing waves and the current will still tug and pull at its hull. But the heavy anchor which has been sunk down to the depths of the seabed will successfully keep that boat from being at the mercy of those pressures and drifting off course.

I believe the inspired psalms of Holy Scripture are such an anchor for the Church. Without the strong anchor of the inspired psalms to tether us to the whole scope of biblical truths—even the uncomfortable truths—the theology of the Church’s songs will go adrift from the pressure of the currents of this fallen world that continually bombard us, as well as from the remaining corruptions within our own sinful hearts. By God’s wise design, the psalms give us the foundational pattern upon which all our musical expressions of worship are to be reverently based. And when we neglect to remember our rich heritage in the psalms, we are a like a boat without an anchor. We are untethered from the fixed point which God has given to hold us fast in the way of truth, and are, instead, set adrift into the murky and unstable seas of fickle human preferences.

Beloved, we need the psalms to be included in our corporate worship because they help us learn how to praise God according to the full scope of our relationship to him, and his to us. They help us enjoy, adore, and honor all of who our God is, rather than praising him only for a select few of his more palatable attributes. They teach us to interpret the unfolding events and circumstances of life according to the realities of God’s omnipresence, God’s indomitable sovereignty, God’s covenant faithfulness, and God’s intimate providence. And in this way, the psalms serve to promote spiritual maturity among us, to help us see and understand all of life according to who our God is, and to prevent us from allowing the powerful currents of our own times or of our own preferences to pull us too far adrift.

This Lord’s Day we will be introducing Psalm 9. There are many lines in this inspired psalm that would almost certainly never be chosen for inclusion in most modern Christian songs. That is because they contain pointed biblical truths which the pressures of this world would rather silence. For example, one of the inspired lines that we will sing back to our God this Lord’s Day says:

“You chided the nations,
the wicked destroyed;
Their names You erased and
forever made void.
The foe is consumed, is
completely erased,
Their cities destroyed and their mem’ry effaced.”
(Psalm 9:5-6 from the Trinity Psalter)

The fact that singing words like these will feel strange to many of us, and perhaps even uncomfortable to our sensibilities, is not a sign that something is wrong with God’s holy and inspired Word. Rather, it is a sign that we have indeed been untethered from the anchor for far too long, and that a serious drift has most assuredly taken place. By faith, let us begin the journey back to the center of Christian worship. Let us endeavor to return to the place wherein we are overjoyed to praise and adore our God not merely for a narrow selection of his attributes and works, but for the full scope of who he is, what he has done, and what he promises still to do for his people in Christ. I, for one, look forward to growing in spiritual maturity with you as we learn to praise our God according to the inspired psalms which the Holy Spirit has ordained for our progress and joy in the faith.

Your servant for Christ’s sake,

Pastor Tom