Introduction to Reflections on the Psalms

One of the more remarkable claims made in Chapter 1 of the Westminster Confession of Faith is this:

"The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture..."

The phrase in this perhaps most neglected in our day is the "...an life" - a phrase repeated in the chapter's discussion of what the Scriptures are good for. In other words, the Bible sets out what is necessary to know in all things. This is a universal claim. It applies not only to piety, to some religious sphere, but to worship, work, parenting, and politics - to everything under the sun. In the church we have, for too long neglected the Psalms as a songbook and an instruction manual. There is a whole world in these prayers and songs that the church has simply ignored. To sing all the Psalms in the gathered worship of the church does more than simply provide an emotional outlet for God's people (which is what, it seems, we've made worship to be), it is instruction in how to think and act in the world in addition to singing the songs God has instructed us to sing.

At Trinity our hope is to reclaim the Psalms as a songbook for the church in our gathered worship, and we also want to understand what it is we are singing. The Psalms regularly conflict with our assumptions about how the world works and our place in it. The Psalms regularly conflict with our assumptions about what God is up to in our lives and in the world. Therefore we should sing them, and we should think about what we're singing. To that end, not only will we continue to sing the Psalms on Sundays when we gather, but we are going to offer weekly reflections on the Psalms and encourage you to spend time each week reading through and observing what the Psalms actually say. The hope is that our singing on Sundays will be filled with clear thinking about the words God has given us to sing.

Each week we'll be posting a reflection on a single Psalm here. We'll have a written blog, a video and a podcast episode. We'll post these on Mondays starting with Psalm 1. The goal is that you'd spend that week reflecting on the Psalm we post about and we'll be trying to sing those Psalms in worship when we can. Our hope is that the Spirit of God would be building in us a faith that trusts these songs and prayers and that he might teach us to believe every word of them and obey every word of them. God has been kind to give us this song book, not leaving us to our own whims in worship, but graciously calling us to worship Him and to show us how to worship Him.

We'll see you here every Monday, and feel free to share these posts and talk about them with your family, your roommates and others in the church.