The psalms have been part of the collective worship of both the Jewish and Christian faiths for thousands of years. They cover a great range of themes that have been a powerful vehicle for both worship and prayer down the centuries. At times the psalmists expressed exuberant joy and at times they plumbed the depths of despair. Yet even in their worst moments there was a stubborn hope that God would come through for them and a refusal to stop praising Him.

The psalmists were filled with wonder at creation and they were overwhelmed by the beauty and the wisdom found in God’s law. They wrote songs of thanksgiving for prayers answered and songs that simply praised God for who He is or that declared that He is King. They wrote songs of deep trust in the face of trouble and songs of lament full of questions that only God can answer. Perhaps most mysterious of all are the songs that spoke on one level of a Davidic king but that would have a greater, prophetic fulfilment in His descendant Jesus.

Their songs helped the psalmists to express what they were going through and to frame that experience within their covenant relationship with God and their knowledge of his character. These ancient songs give us one side of a conversation between a people and their God and we can learn much from studying, praying and worshipping through the psalms.

However, just as you would not expect to understand what the writer is trying to communicate by reading only part of a song or a poem it is important to read the whole of the psalm that you are discussing. For this reason, we will be studying four of the shorter psalms that illustrate aspects of God’s character expressed by the psalmists.

‘The Psalms were the prayer book of Israel; they were the prayer book of Jesus; they are the prayer book of the church. At no time in the Hebrew and Christian centuries (with the possible exception of our own twentieth century) have the psalms not been at the very center of all concern and practice in prayer.’ 1 Eugene Peterson

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:
• How to read the Psalms – Tremper Longman III
• The case for the Psalms – NT Wright
• Tyndale OT Commentaries: Psalms – Tremper Longman III
• Encountering the book of Psalms – C.Hassell Bullock

1 Eugene Peterson Working the Angles Eerdmans USA 1987 p.50