The Joy of Psalm Singing
By Gene Helsel
"Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let
him sing psalms." (James 5:13)
In this verse we have two positive commands: to pray when suffering, and to
sing psalms when cheerful. Today, most Christians would agree that to neglect
prayer in time of affliction would be thankless disobedience. But what about
psalm-singing? Given that joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, and that we are
commanded to "rejoice in all things", you would think that Christian
households and churches would fairly well reverberate with the singing of
psalms; but strangely they do not. How then can we account for this sinful
neglect? As usual, we have simply failed to enter in to the joy of doing what
God commands us to do.
In his epistle to the Colossians, Paul commands the church to "Let the
word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one
another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs...". Some modern teachers
have speculated that Paul is instructing us here to "sing a few verses from
a psalm, a Fanny Crosby hymn and a Maranatha praise chorus." But to
correctly discern the Apostle’s intent, we must first ask, "What did ‘psalms,
hymns and spiritual songs’ mean to Paul?". For in Paul’s Bible (the
Septuagint), these terms were the subtitles preceding the individual psalms, in
the book of Psalms. So what was Paul commanding the Colossians (and us)
to sing? Psalms. And what is most absent from our singing today? Psalms.
Granted, the modern church does sing a lot of "psalm-ettes" (a few
inspirational verses lifted out of the context of the whole psalm), but it does
not sing psalms in the way that Paul plainly intended: in their entirety.
And while it is true that the scriptures do not forbid the addition of psalm-ettes,
or even non-psalms to our repertoire, that in no way negates the positive
command for us to worship God singing psalms; all of them (even Psalm
88.)
So enter into the joy of psalm singing. Joy? Yes, joy. Purchase a good
psalter, start at the beginning of Psalm 1 and sing your way through to the last
verse of Psalm 150. Sing them at home, and sing them at church. Park your
man-made hymns and choruses for a season and enter into the supreme joy of
singing divinely inspired lyrics, sung in their entire context. Addict yourself
to the sublime joy of worshipping God with the whole range of human emotions
perfectly disciplined and expressed by the Holy Spirit himself. Enter into the
solid joy of those who understand and obey God’s perfect Word. Are you
cheerful? Find a psalter and start singing. I’ll join you.
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