Wed, 27 September, 2006: Today’s Bible readings.

2 Samuel 23:1-7

¹ Now these are the last words of David:

The oracle of David, the son of Jesse,
the oracle of the man who was raised on high,
the anointed of the God of Jacob,
the sweet psalmist of Israel:

² “The Spirit of the LORD speaks by me;
his word is on my tongue.
³ The God of Israel has spoken;
the Rock of Israel has said to me:
When one rules justly over men,
ruling in the fear of God,
⁴ he dawns on them like the morning light,
like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning,
like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth.

⁵ For does not my house stand so with God?
For he has made with me an everlasting covenant,
ordered in all things and secure.
For will he not cause to prosper
all my help and my desire?
⁶ But worthless men are all like thorns that are thrown away,
for they cannot be taken with the hand;
⁷ but the man who touches them
arms himself with iron and the shaft of a spear,
and they are utterly consumed with fire.”

We have here the last words of David. David wrote many of the psalms we are privileged to have preserved for us in the book of Psalms. He here tells us the source of these psalms: They are from God.

What do we learn from this?

The psalms are God’s gift to us. Like the rest of scripture, God has verbally inspired the psalmist (His word is on my tongue) to record these songs for posterity.

God has given us a song book for us to use in our worship of Him. It is located right in the middle of our Bibles. We need not look any further for what to sing in worship than His own word.

What does it say about our view of the sufficiency of scripture if we reject God’s song book and write our own? How could we ever hope to, of our own accord and by our own abilities, write a songbook superior to what God has already provided?

When we sing the psalms, we are singing the very words of God back to Him. Why would we want to sing anything less?

Where is Christ in this passage?

One argument I’ve heard against singing the psalms and in favor of singing man-made hymns is that in hymns we sing of Christ. We don’t sing of Christ in the psalms, according to this argument.

That argument is wrong because the premise that Christ isn’t in the psalms is a false premise. The main point of these meditations is to find Jesus Christ in whatever the daily passage happens to be. As we go through all of the scriptures, New Testament, or Old Testament, and Psalms included, we find Jesus Christ presented to us.

When we sing the psalms, we are singing of Christ, for the word of God is all about Jesus Christ and it points us to Him. Jesus Christ is in the psalms!