Introduction to the Psalms (Psalm 1)
Truth and Beauty:
An Introduction to the Psalms
A Sermon by Rev. S. Randall Toms, Ph.D.
St. Paul’s Anglican Church, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Many of us love the arts because we find them to be irresistibly beautiful. I suppose it is obvious that I love the arts since I got my Ph.D. in English. But I love more than great literature. I love paintings, especially the artistic works of the Victorian Pre-Raphaelites. I took art lessons for a while, and I have been able to create some works that I am proud of, but it is obvious that I am no artistic genius. I am also profoundly moved by the beauty of music. I suppose I could listen endlessly to Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony (“The Pastoral”), or to Franz Liszt’s “Mephisto Waltz.” I have been playing piano since I was 14, but it became evident pretty quickly that I was never going to be Van Cliburn.
As much as we may appreciate the beauty of the arts, the most beautiful of all artistic expressions is our Bible, the Holy Scriptures. You may think it strange that I refer to the Bible as a work of art, but the more you study it, the more you see it as a work of incredible beauty. After all, the Bible was written by God himself. As we look around us at the creation, we see that God is an amazing artist, filling his universe with so much beauty that, with every new discovery we make, we see the glory of his beauty in ever more marvelous ways. If God created the universe as a thing of beauty, then we shouldn’t be surprised that when he gave us his word that he would make this gift to us a work of unfathomable beauty. The more you study the Bible, you discover that the writers of Scripture were conscious literary artists, because the one who inspired them to write his word is an artist.
The whole Bible is the beautiful story of what God is doing in the world. He created the universe out of nothing. He created man and put him in a garden paradise to have fellowship and communion with him. But man rebelled against God, and he was cast out of that beautiful garden paradise. Human beings continued in their rebellion against God, but He determined that he would save humanity from their misery. Out of his great love for us, He sent his only son, Jesus Christ, into the world to die in our place, bearing the penalty of our sins so that all who believe in him would have everlasting life. It is the most beautiful, moving story ever told. No wonder, then, that we find the Bible to be the greatest work of art.
All of us have favorite books of the Bible. I often play the game with people: “If you were on a desert island and you could have only two books of the Bible, which two would you choose?” The interesting thing for me is that my two choices change over time. I think that’s because I am constantly evolving, and my needs differ at different stages of my life. The gospel of Luke has always been at the top of my list. The second has varied over time. Sometimes, I choose Ephesians. Sometimes I choose Isaiah, because I think Isaiah is the most beautiful of the prophets. But for many people, one of their books would have to be the Psalms. Throughout the centuries, the people of God have found the book of Psalms to be a source of incredible inspiration and comfort. And I would have to say, it is probably the most beautiful. Whether you are a believer or not, most people would have to take their hats off to the 23rd Psalm and say, “Though I don’t believe a word of it, it is a beautiful composition.”
One reason the Psalms are so beautiful is that they are poetry. Now, I meet people all the time who say, “I don’t like poetry. I just don’t get it.” And I understand that. I think many people have a kind of natural appreciation for poetry. They love different aspects of poetry—things like rhythm, rhyme, and imagery. Many of us don’t look at the book of Psalms as poetry, since it is a kind of poetry that doesn’t bear much resemblance to the poetry with which we are familiar in English. It is poetry, but it is Hebrew poetry. I suppose that the reason we don’t often think of the Psalms as poetry is that most people can’t read Hebrew. But we must hand it to the King James translators. There are parts of the King James Translation, like the 23rd Psalm, that are so beautiful we are tempted to think that surely the original Hebrew could not have been any more beautiful.
The Psalter in our Book of Common Prayer is not from the King James Version but from the 1539 translation by Miles Coverdale, composed some 70 years earlier. I know that some of you get beside yourselves when we read your favorite Psalms in the Prayer Book and they don’t match the King James Version. But we need to understand the difference between the Coverdale version and the King James Version. The King James Version was translated primarily for accuracy. The Coverdale translation was more concerned with the text's musicality. It was written to be chanted. That is one of the reasons why all attempts to produce a modern English version of Coverdale’s Psalter will always be doomed to failure, and they always destroy the beauty of the Coverdale version. In the same way, many modern translations try to remain as true as possible to the King James translation of the Bible. Unfortunately, they often make an aesthetic mess of it. I sometimes wish modern translators would just start from scratch and do their own thing, but leave the Coverdale and the King James translations alone.
But getting back to the beauty of the Psalter, let me emphasize that the Psalter is not only beautiful. It is also truth. In the Psalms, we find the perfect blend of beauty and truth. Every word of the Psalter is beautiful. Every word of the Psalter is truth. The Psalms were written in this poetic form because poetry makes a powerful impact on the human heart and mind. Most people are not sufficiently familiar with Hebrew to appreciate the various aspects of Hebrew poetry. I will try to bring out some of the different poetic techniques as we go through the Psalms, but there is one technique of Hebrew poetry that we find in almost all poetry: imagery. We are all familiar with how poet’s use imagery. Let’s take for example, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
Now, Shakespeare could have just said, “True love lasts through the changes of time.” But how much more powerful it is to say that love lasts through tempests. When Shakespeare writes that love is a star on which we can gaze and find our way, or that rosy lips and cheeks may be cut down by Time’s sickle, but true love never alters because of changes in physical appearance. It’s far more powerful than simply saying, “True love lasts through the changes of time.” The rhythm and rhyme combine with the imagery to move us, to make us see and feel truth as well as hear it.
In like manner, the Psalmist could have said, “God supplies my needs. He gives me guidance. He protects me from my enemies. When I am afraid that I am about to die, He is with me. I know the Lord’s goodness will be with me throughout my life.” All of those statements would be true. But how powerful is it to say, “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. [6] Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.” Doesn’t the poetic imagery make it more meaningful and powerful? When we think of God as a shepherd, the green pastures, the still waters, righteousness being a path, the valley of the shadow of death, the rod and staff, the table, and the cup running over, we are enabled by this artistry to see and feel these truths. Writing about the Lord’s presence with us is always far more powerful when combined with beautiful imagery.
Our hymns are written the way they are for these same reasons. We sing them rather than read them. The Psalms have been called “the hymnbook of the people of God.” They were obviously written to be sung. Some of the Psalms even include instructions on musical accompaniment. Psalms 9, 11, and 14, for example, have headings like: “To the chief Musician.” As we go through the Psalms, we will see headings that indicate which instruments should be used with them and perhaps even the key in which they are to be sung. The Psalms are for singing, and this practice continues in the New Testament where the Apostle Paul admonishes the Ephesians, “Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:19). James said, “Is any merry? let him sing psalms” (James 5:13). God made us with feelings and emotions with the capacity to appreciate beauty. So in the Psalms, we have truth combined with beauty so that it might make the most powerful impact upon us. I will admit that when I first started working on my doctorate in English, I didn’t know much about poetry. I mainly read prose fiction and nonfiction. I really had to work at it to develop an appreciation for poetry, but the effort was worth it because I can now appreciate its beauty. As we go through the Psalms together, I will try to help you understand their beauty so that they make a more powerful impact on you than they ever have before.
One reason I believe the Psalms were written in this poetic manner is that the book of Psalms is very emotional. Almost every human emotion that we can name finds expression in the book of Psalms. In the book of Psalms, we find adoration, anger, anxiety, awe, fear, confusion, pain, joy, sadness, a sense of abandonment, pleasure, loneliness, love, hate, serenity, grief, disappointment, and self-pity. As Martin Luther writes in his Preface to the Psalter: “It is therefore easy to understand why the Book of Psalms is the favorite book of all the saints. For every man on every occasion can find in it Psalms which fit his needs, which he feels to be as appropriate as if they had been set there just for his sake. In no other book can he find words to equal them, nor better words…Place the Book of Psalms in front of you; you will see your own self in it, for here is the true ‘know thyself,’ by which you can know yourself as well as the God who created all things.” Whatever you are going through at any moment in life, there is a psalm for you that can give expression to what you are feeling at the moment.
But the Psalms are more than just beautiful ways of expressing our emotions. The Psalms are also a book of instruction. We don’t sing the Psalms only to move us emotionally. The Psalms also give us instruction concerning the two most essential things in life: worship and how to live in obedience to God. Do you want to know how to pray? Do you want to know how to talk to God? The book of Psalms is your model. One of the simplest ways to learn to pray is to pray the Psalms word-for-word. When you are afraid, pray Psalm 23 or Psalm 27. When you sinned against God, pray Psalm 51. When you are happy and want to praise God, pray Psalm 145. I could go on and on giving examples, but I want you to see how the Psalms are prayers that you can make your own.
Though we can use these prayers in our private devotions, there is no doubt that the Psalms were written primarily for the corporate worship of the people of God. There are too many instructions given to the musicians for us to draw any other conclusion. We know that temple worship involved instrumental music, and the gathered people of God would sing the Psalms to this accompaniment. We must learn to see the Psalms not only as our own personal experience, but also realize that what the psalmists experienced is the shared experience of the entire people of God in all ages. If you want to know how to worship God as a people, study the Psalms. Learn from the Psalms how the people thought about God, how they described him, and how they remembered his mighty acts in creation and in the history of the world. It is interesting that in the Book of Common Prayer, we have various readings from the entire Bible, but there is only one book that we have in its entirety—the book of Psalms. The Book of Common Prayer is primarily a book for the public worship of God- the common worship of God—the corporate worship of the people of God. Therefore, the entire book of Psalms is included in our Prayer Book, for it is here that we learn the appropriate ways to think about God and worship him accordingly.
The book of Psalms not only teaches us how to worship, but also how to live. The first Psalm gives us a flavor of what the rest of the book of Psalms will be like. If you want to live a life of blessing and happiness, then live in obedience to God. If you wish to live a life that will bring ruin upon yourself and others, then live in disobedience to God. Just as the book of Psalms addresses almost every emotion we could experience, it also teaches us how to deal with the most serious situations we encounter in life. The book of Psalms teaches how to deal with blessings, how to deal with times of adversity and pain, how to deal with people who hate us and persecute us, how to deal with treacherous people who betray us, how to live a holy and godly life when surrounded by the ungodly, and how to face sickness, suffering, and death. It’s all written for us hear in this powerful book.
But let me close with the most powerful reason we should be familiar with the Psalms. The Psalms are about Jesus Christ. Remember that after the resurrection, our Lord Jesus Christ told his disciples, “These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me” (Luke 24:44). When all is said and done, the book of Psalms, just like the rest of Holy Scripture, points to Jesus Christ. The book of Psalms is quoted more often in the New Testament than any other Old Testament book, even Isaiah. Jesus, the writers of the gospels, and the epistles often quote from the book of Psalms and provide examples of how the Psalms point to Christ. How could we forget Psalms 22, with those words, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?... All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head saying, He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him….dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me. They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.” As we know, all of these words were fulfilled in the passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. The New Testament writers also make frequent use of the second Psalm, verse 7: “ I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.” Then, there is Psalm 110:1, “The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.” We find this verse quoted by our Lord in reference to himself in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Peter quotes it in his sermon on the day of Pentecost, and the writer to the Hebrews quotes it. Those are just a few of the direct quotations of the Psalms found in the New Testament, not counting various allusions. To quote again from Luther’s Preface to the Psalter, “The Psalter should be precious to us if only because it most clearly promises the death and resurrection of Christ, and describes his kingdom, and the nature and standing of all Christian people. It could well be entitled a ‘Little Bible’ since everything contained in the entire Bible is beautifully and briefly comprehended, and compacted into…a Manual. It seems to me as if the Holy Ghost had been pleased to take on himself the trouble of putting together a short Bible…touching the whole of Christianity… so that they who are unable to read the whole Bible may nevertheless find almost the whole sum comprehended in one little book…the Psalter is the very paragon of books.” In the Anglican tradition, after we have chanted a Psalm, we always add the Gloria Patri: “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,” to remind ourselves that even the Psalms are, in fact, Christian hymns--a revelation of the Holy Trinity.
I remember when I was a boy that I used to see copies of the New Testament sold without the Old Testament, but many of those New Testaments would have the book of Psalms attached. No doubt the book of Psalms was included because people have found it a source of comfort and praise. Spurgeon once said, “The delightful study of the Psalms has yielded me boundless profit and ever-growing pleasure.” As we go through this study of the book of Psalms, I hope we can say the same. I pray that we will profit from the truths taught in it, see the glory of Christ clearly revealed in it, and learn to live the blessed life described therein. May the thorough study of the book Psalms and the beauty of its truth and poetry be a source of ever-increasing pleasure. Amen.