Psalm singing / ninth of several

[Spurgeon -- whose hymnal began with a rich and complete psalter]

The fifth of eight reasons why we should sing the psalms regularly, intentionally and methodically.

When you sing the psalms you praise the person and work of Jesus Christ.


I'm taking the liberty of quoting directly from Joe Holland (a PCA church-planting pastor in Virginia). See his discussion here.

One of the most ignorant statements a Christian can make against psalm singing is, "I don't sing psalms because they aren't about Jesus." Too many evangelicals--having unwittingly drunk deep of the Marcionite heresy--have ceased to see the Old Testament, and especially the psalms, as a masterpiece of redemptive history telling in types, shadows, and rituals the person and work of Jesus Christ. When the earliest Christians wanted to sing praise to God for the redemption wrought by Jesus' atoning death they turned to the psalms. It is sheer biblical ignorance and chronological snobbery to assume we can write better songs about Jesus than are provided in the psalms through the lens of the New Testament. To sing the psalms is to sing of the person and work of Christ.

[An added clarification or two to Holland's fine words: We use the psalms, not only to sing of Christ in the promise of redemptive history -- but we also take the psalms as a touchstone to inform us how to sing of Christ now, in the new covenant, now in the time of "better promises" (acc. to Hebrews). In other words, we should also sing hymns now that speak overtly of Christ, his person and work. And so -- to stir a nest, perhaps -- I believe it is appropriate for us to sing the psalms in New Testament paraphrase.

Consider Isaac Watts' treatment of Psalm 72. The psalm speaks, of course, of the coming king. Watts merely makes this Christological grasp explicit. Yesterday we sang "Jesus shall reign," and I titled it, "Psalm 72."

So we sing the psalms because they are, in this sense, "trans-covenantal," songs appropriate to the people of God under old and new covenants. And we also sing hymns (human-composed praise), under the pattern given us by the psalter, in the light of our New Testament. I remember Vern Poythress arguing somewhere from Hebrews 2:12 of the legitimacy of singing overtly New Covenant hymns -- that the text suggests our Lord himself now sings in the fulfillment language of the New Testament. We now sings psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with our Brother.

I'm not sure what Pastor Holland's position is, but to be clear: While I do want us to recover regular psalm-singing, I am not arguing for exclusive psalmody.}