The Big Read – Psalms

Powerpoint Pictures: The Beatles; Adele; Elvis; One Direction; Colin Buchanan

Listen to the following clips of some famous songs, and the question I want you to answer is simple: Who’s Singing?  Can you name the person singing? [Play a clip of a song by The Beatles; Adele; Elvis; One Direction; Colin Buchanan]

Who’s singing is an important question to ask when reading one of the books we find in the Bible.  The book of Psalms.

The book of Psalms is a book of songs, 150 of them.

When we read the psalms, a question we need to ask is ‘Who’s singing them?’

For a lot of the Psalms, the answer appears to be King David.  A number of the Psalms begin with the words, “A Psalm of David” (Psalm 23:1).

Many of the Psalms were written by him, or for him by special men he had the job of song writing to.  On a number of occasions, King David would have led the people of Israel in singing the Psalms.

But whilst David and other leaders of God’s people (like Moses and Solomon) may have led Israel in singing the Psalms, there was a sense in which they were unable to sing these songs.

Like they couldn’t hit the high notes.  The songs were too big for them.

That’s because only one person could truly sing them.  The Lord Jesus.  The Psalms are His songs.  But wonderfully He invites us to sing them with Him.  He wants us to join Him in singing these songs.  But we can only do that if we have put our trust in Him; we have taken refuge in Him (see Psalm 2:12).

Then when we sing the Psalms with Jesus, we discover that we are singing about Jesus – what He did, how He thinks and feels and acts – because these 150 psalms teaches us about Him and show us how to live like Him.  So we should read them and pray them and definitely sing them!