Dr. Joel R. Beeke

THE EXPERIENTIAL BENEFITS OF SINGING THE PSALMS

Singing psalms is our biblical duty, but we may also rejoice that it is for our good. All of God’s Word aims at our profit, and there is much profit in singing psalms. It is good for our hearts to be enlarged (Ps. 119:32) and our faith and minds to be established and strengthened by God’s grace (Ps. 42:5, 11; Heb. 13:9; 1 Peter 5:10). Singing psalms, or psalmody, is a precious means of grace that, under the Spirit’s blessing, do much good for our souls.

Singing the Psalms Causes the Word of Christ to Dwell in Us Richly

Let us return to Colossians 3:16: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” The construction of this sentence shows that Paul equates these “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” with “the word of Christ.”

Few activities stir up our hearts more than singing. Music engages the affections and imprints words on the memory. What better way, then, to stir up our hearts with the Word of God than by singing it? William Ames wrote that singing psalms has the following advantages over merely reading them: (1) “it brings a kind of sweet delight to godly minds”; (2)  it enables “a more distinct and fixed meditation”; and (3) it results in more “mutual edification.”¹

Singing psalms will enrich our hearts with the truth of God. John Calvin said that “we should sing with voice and heart” with our minds focused on “the spiritual meaning of the words.”² What better way to do this than to sing God’s own words? Calvin quoted Augustine: “When we sing these songs…we are certain that God puts the words into our
mouths as if he were singing in us to exalt his glory.”³

Furthermore, Christ Himself leads His people in offering praise to God. Hebrews 2:12 calls attention to the prophecy of Psalm 22:22, in which Christ says, “I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee.” As those who by faith are grafted into Christ and filled with His Spirit, we never sing alone. According to His promise, Christ is present in our assemblies for worship, and He assists us by His Spirit in offering the sacrifice of praise to God (Heb. 13:15). Surely the more we fill our worship with psalms, which were inspired by the Spirit of Christ (1 Peter 1:12–14), the more we take hold of the means Christ has given us to be true worshipers of God. The word of Christ dwells in us richly as we sing psalms.

Singing the Psalms Helps Us to Be Filled with God’s Spirit

Earlier I quoted Ephesians 5:19, and now I want to put it in its context with verse 18: “And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.” The contrast is between drunkenness and the filling with the Spirit. Some sinners give themselves over to the control of mind-altering substances in search of momentary euphoria. Saints must give themselves over to the control of the Holy Spirit, who alone gives real comfort and joy (Acts 9:31; Rom. 14:17; Gal. 5:22). We must let the Spirit be the wine of our souls. Thomas Ford wrote, “The Spirit is not only water to cleanse and wash, but wine to cheer and refresh.”⁴ We drink this
refreshing wine of the Spirit as we sing these inspired words
of the Spirit.

Practically speaking, how do people experience the fullness of the Spirit? The apostle goes on to tell us how in what follows: “speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” Paul Bayne said, “The exercise of Psalm-singing is a means of increasing in us the Spirit.” Just as singing the devil’s songs fills people with immorality, Bayne wrote, “so God’s song is of great force to make us be filled of his good Spirit,” for psalms are “from the Spirit.”⁵ This is another way of saying that they are truly spiritual songs.

Do you want the Holy Spirit to fill you? Do you desire to give young people an alternative to immoral music and substance abuse? Use the means of grace. Sing psalms. Singing psalms with grace in the heart helps us to be filled with God’s Spirit.

Singing the Psalms Enables Us to Worship God in Every Experience

We do not come to the worship of God as blank slates, but full of thoughts and feelings from the days of the preceding week. We should not view worship as a form of escapism where for a little while we can pretend that none of the evil and grief in the world is really there. Instead, we should come to worship bringing all that we are to God, and, as Psalm 62:8 says, “pour out your heart before him.” Paul not only spoke of the Spirit moving us to praise the Lord (Eph. 5:19) and rejoice in Him (1 Thess. 1:6), but also of the Spirit moving us to cry out to the Father (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6), even with groaning (Rom. 8:23; 2 Cor. 5:2, 4).

Psalms are immensely helpful to us in this work of pouring out our hearts before God. Calvin said, “I have been accustomed to call this book, I think not inappropriately, ‘An Anatomy of all the Parts of the Soul’; for there is not an emotion of which one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror.”⁶ Certainly many psalms are full of exultation and joy, but that is not all.

• Are you deeply convicted of sin? Follow the counsel of Psalm 32:5: “I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.”

• Are you persecuted? Psalm 3:1–3 says, “LORD, how are they increased that trouble me! many are they that rise up against me. Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God. Selah. But thou, O LORD, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.”

• Are you depressed? Psalm 42:11 says, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.”

• Do you feel forgotten by God? Psalm 13:1 asks, “How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me?” Faith’s answer is at hand: “But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart will rejoice in thy salvation” (v. 5).

• Are you in danger of thinking that it is better to sin than to obey? Psalm 73 says, “But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked…until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end…. How are they brought unto destruction, as in a moment!” (vv. 2–3, 17, 19).

• Are you troubled by the sinful attitudes of those around you? Take comfort in the words of Psalm 120:5–6: “My soul hath long dwelt with him that hateth peace. I am
for peace: but when I speak, they are for war.”

• Are you fearful of the times and dismayed by current developments that pose a threat to the well-being of God’s people? Psalm 56:3 says, “What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee. In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me.”⁷

Worship is shallow if it constantly projects a happy face. But the Psalms wear no such mask. They deliver us from such hypocrisy. Yet they also deliver us from self-absorption by lifting our gaze from ourselves and our troubles to the Lord. They are a model for our personal and intercessory prayers and a comfort for our souls, especially in times of temptation and adversity.⁸ Cotton says singing the Psalms “allayeth the passions of melancholy and choler, yea and scattereth the furious temptations of evill spirits, 1  Sam. 16:23.”⁹ Robert Sanderson (1587–1662) called the Psalms “the treasury of comfort.” He certainly knew whereof he spoke. Once the bishop of Lincoln, Sanderson was ejected from his professorship at Oxford and imprisoned by Parliament, but he continued to find precious comfort in the Psalter. He described the Psalter this way:

[It] is fitted for all persons and all necessities; able to raise the soul from dejection by the frequent mention of God’s mercies to repentant sinners: to stir up holy desire; to increase joy; to moderate sorrow; to nourish hope, and teach us patience, by waiting God’s leisure; to beget a trust in the mercy, power, and providence of our Creator; and to cause a resignation of ourselves to his will: and then, and not till then, to believe ourselves happy.¹⁰

The Psalms link our subjective experience to the reality of God. We are compelled to look at our own circumstances from the vantage point of God and His power to save. As Geerhardus Vos says, the Psalms “voic[e] the subjective response to the objective doings of God for and among his people.”¹¹ They show us the depth of communion we may enjoy with our covenant-keeping God as we worship Him privately and corporately, committing our all to Him. They prompt reliance on God’s promises, promote zeal for Him and His house, and move us to love Him as God’s children, God’s flock, and God’s bride. They enable us to pray against God’s and our enemies and find comfort under the shadow of our Savior’s wings.

In this connection, it should be noted that there is no problem in singing the so-called imprecatory psalms which, as Johnston says, “call for God to blot out, desolate, and utterly destroy the wicked. It is important to remember that each of these psalms utters to the Lord a cry for justice that places the problem of evil in the hands of the Lord and then waits upon his vengeance.”¹² These psalms do not, as has been said, express unchristian sentiments. They are not mere expressions of personal pique or resentment. Rather, they are a solemn acknowledgment that we live in a fallen world among people who fight against God and His Christ and that such people’s doom, except they repent, is both just and sure. Consequently, in the imprecatory psalms we do not pray for personal vengeance but for God’s glory and the good of the church.

Moreover, the imprecatory psalms are consistent in praying for the salvation of the church’s persecutors. But if the church’s persecutors who lash out against God and the church with vehement hatred and anger refuse to repent of their sin, these psalms teach us that the righteous may, with fear and trembling, exercise a godly anger against those who blatantly defy God and His law and gospel. Such cries are “really the outpourings of a heart provoked by evil, righteously indignant, and zealous for God and righteousness (Rom. 12:19; Eph. 4:26).”¹³ Thus, “these psalms demonstrate faith in the Lord from within the trauma of real-life situations and teach us to express a holy, moral indignation toward those who would set themselves against God’s King and his kingdom.”¹⁴

There are rich experiential benefits of singing psalms. It is a means by which the word of Christ dwells richly in us and by which the Holy Spirit fills us. Singing psalms also imparts an authenticity to our worship, for the Psalms reflect every dimension of human experience. No matter what our state or condition, we can find a starting point in the Psalms for finding our way back to God and to the riches of His grace. In fact, sometimes when believers have been in a very low condition spiritually, emotionally, and physically, finding it difficult to read or pray, God has lifted them up by bringing the Psalter back to their memory with little effort.
______________

1. William Ames, Conscience with the Power and Cases Thereof (London: by E. G. for I. Rothwell, T. Slater, L. Blacklock, 1643), 2:43.
2. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 3.20.32. Cf. Charles Garside Jr., The Origins of Calvin’s Theology of Music (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1979), 10.
3. Cited in Ross J. Miller, “Calvin’s Understanding of Psalm-Singing as a Means of Grace,” in Calvin Studies VI, ed. John H. Leith (Davidson, N.C.: Colloquium on Calvin Studies, 1992), 40.
4. Thomas Ford, Singing of Psalms: The Duty of Christians under the New Testament (1659; repr., Burnie, Australia: Presbyterian’s Armoury Publications, 2004), 2.
5. Paul Bayne, An Entire Commentary upon the Whole Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians (London: by M. F. for R. Milbourne and I. Bartlet, 1643), 633.
6. John Calvin, preface to the Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, trans. James Anderson (repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 1:xxxvii.
7. See Johnston, 150 Questions, for a helpful summary of how “we ought to meditate upon the author’s use, the original use, the Christian use, and the personal use of each psalm” (41–42).
8. Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, Pss. 5:11; 118:5.
9. Cotton, Singing of Psalmes, 4.
10. Cited in Rowland E. Prothero, The Psalms in Human Life (1903; repr., Birmingham, Ala.: Solid Ground Christian Books, 2002), 176.
11. Geerhardus Vos, “Eschatology of the Psalter,” in The Pauline Eschatology (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R, 1994), 324.
12. Johnston, 150 Questions, 74. The imprecatory psalms include 35, 58, 69, 79, 109, and 137.
13. The Reformation Heritage KJV Study Bible, gen. ed. Joel R. Beeke (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2014), 762.
14. Johnston, 150 Questions, 74. Cf. James E. Adams, The War Psalms of the Prince of Peace: Lessons from the Imprecatory Psalms (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R, 1991).

Published by The Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth, used with permission.