Praying the Psalms

Praying the Psalms

Written by Daniel McDonald

 

            I want to acknowledge my indebtedness to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book Life Together, which aided me immensely in developing the understanding I now have and share concerning the advantages inherent in the Christian’s praying of the Psalms.  Bonhoeffer wrote this book after he returned to Germany.  He had been an outspoken critic of both Hitler and Nazism and had fled for safety to the United States.  But as the war clouds began to gather over Europe Bonhoeffer decided he must return to Germany.  He felt that if he were to be able to have a voice to speak in a post-Hitler Germany that he would need first to suffer with the German people under Hitler’s rule.  He would work to keep a portion of Germany’s Christian church out of Nazism’s influence, and had made contacts within Germany’s military to work towards a time when perhaps Hitler might be ousted from within.  Under Hitler his ideas regarding his own understanding of Christianity had taken further shape.  The reality of Hitler and Nazism impressed upon Bonhoeffer that there was real evil in the world that had to be taken seriously.  He found increasingly that what made sense in his Germany were those teachings found in the Holy Scriptures and the doctrines he had learned from the German Reformation.   Following quickly upon his return to Germany, he began to influence a number of young German pastors devoted to the establishment of an underground Christian church that made no compromises with Nazism.  Bonhoeffer showed an immense pastoral heart in the simple lessons he taught these ministers towards their pastoral work in providing the foundations for solid Christian ministries where weak and strong Christians would experience together the rule of Christ and the love and fellowship of Christian union with God in Christ.  Bonhoeffer’s involvement with those who tried to overthrow Hitler from within Germany led to his arrest, sentencing, and execution days before Hitler’s death and Nazi Germany’s defeat.  It might seem to mere human intelligence that Bonhoeffer lost his opportunity to speak to a post-Hitler Germany because of his return to Germany.  But I think the opposite may well be true.  It is because Bonhoeffer returned to Germany, worked to secure a German church not compromised with Nazism, and died in his efforts that millions of people to this day both within and outside of Germany continue to turn to his beautiful little book entitled Life Together to have their thoughts reshaped and influenced by Bonhoeffer’s very Biblical and pastoral advice given in its pages.  I dedicate this article to Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  He helped grow my humanity as well as my understanding of the faith.

In the second chapter of Life Together, Bonhoeffer seeks to encourage the development of Christian fellowship in accord with St. Paul’s admonition expressed in Colossians 3:16 where the Apostle says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.”  In Bonhoeffer’s mind the use of the Psalms in a prayerful Christian worship of God is central to the Church’s work of creating a place where fellowship in Christ will serve the three-fold purposes St. Paul describes in Colossians 3:16.  This sort of worship is to teach Christians.  They are to learn the truth necessary to understand their lives as believers in Christ living in this world.  They are through the Word of Christ to be admonished in their behavior as Christians, and thirdly but primarily rather than lastly this is the Word of God which is to be turned heavenward in the praise of God from Christian hearts and souls filled with grace.  Bonhoeffer would have found his thinking in this regard common with that of the ancient church and the understanding of the Church Fathers.  For the early church the central element that had to be used to determine Christian truth from errors and heresies that threatened the church was whether or not a proposed teaching was proper to be used in leading the church to praise God.  We often think of the word “Orthodoxy” as meaning right doctrine, but literally the word means “right praise.”  To the early church the adoption of right praise would enable the church to rightly instruct the people of God and to rightly admonish the brethren to behavior which would honor and glorify God.  All of this is suggested by St. Paul who proposes that in Christian worship the goal should be to “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.”

Why would our praying and praising of God from the Psalms be so important in this endeavor to establish the word of Christ in a congregation and in the hearts and lives of the believers assembling in such a congregation?  I believe that we may gain insight into this matter by trying to focus on a sobering event in the life of ancient Israel.  We try, as best we can to return to a time when Israel had been blessed under the rule of King David.  It is the evening of the great king’s long rule.  There have been great triumphs against enemies, and also sadly great sins that have marred David’s life and rule, but also genuine repentance so that David may leave a strong kingdom to his son Solomon.  We are brought into a room and asked to be quiet as we are visitors to the ancient palace.  We are brought to a doorway and then peer in to a chamber where King David is resting on his bed.  He has reached the last hours of his great life.  Everyone in the room knows his last breath is near.  He seems about to speak.  He is feeble.  But he has something to say.  Someone in that room told us what happened next, what he said.

The written testimony is given in II Samuel 23:1-2.  The writer seems to be grieving even as he writes what he writes because he starts to tell us what David says and then backtracks and tells us more about David and then finally says what the great king said.  The writer writes, “Now these be the last words of David.  David, the son of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet Psalmist of Israel, said ‘The Spirit of the Lord spoke by me and his word was in my tongue.”  Do you see how the writer starts by simply saying a normal introduction to an ancient obituary?  This is the name, the son of such and such.  “This David, the son of Jesse said.”  But this man speaking of the last words of David, as if speaking of a common man’s death in an ancient obituary cannot contain himself and must interrupt his own statement of what David’s last words were.  He decides in this case he must add the things that everyone in this room knew and loved about King David.  He tells us in addition to this being David, the son of Jesse; that he was the man God raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet Psalmist of Israel.”  In this man’s estimation it was not killing Goliath or defeating the Philistines that required something to be added to his obituary notice, but how this man was the sweet Psalmist of Israel.  David’s greatest work as King was the psalms he sang on his harp and taught to Israel that established the foundation for Israel’s prayer book unto God, the Psalms.  It is the sweet Psalmist of Israel who is on his bed dying, and he is about to share some final words by which we might remember him and remember what was important and cherished by him of all the things he did in life.  David says to those near his bed yearning to hear his words of wisdom, of admonition, and perhaps his final praise to God.  He says, “The Spirit of the Lord spoke by me and his word was in my tongue.”  Let that sentence of David on his deathbed be our instruction unto understanding the importance of the Psalms.  David said, “The Spirit of the Lord spoke by me and his word was in my tongue.”

David was giving his praise to God.  He was thanking God for allowing him a special privilege of being an instrument of the Spirit of God and a mouthpiece uttering the word of the Spirit of God upon his tongue.  One can see David reminiscing of a moment when he was playing his harp and a song began to raise to God.  David understands that while he was playing the notes he chose to play on his harp, God was somehow by his spirit picking up David as his own instrument and bringing David as a musical instrument to sing the song of the Spirit of God with the words of the Spirit of God expressed from within David’s own tongue.  As David chose to play music on a harp, he had received the privilege of the Spirit of the Lord choosing David to be an instrument by which the Spirit of God sang his song and David’s tongue became an instrument by which the Spirit of God uttered his own words.  This said David dying.

David must surely have been humbled by what God had done in his life.  Was he worthy of such an honor?  He was a man after God’s own heart, but also a murderer and adulterer.  David had been through enough to realize two things.  He had sinned grievously.  There was no denying his sin.  Yet the Word of God was spoken in and through him.  “The Spirit spoke by me, and his word was in my tongue.”  A little here and a little there and God had revealed his word unto Israel from the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to the days of Samuel and now David.  It would be centuries before this process would reach its glorious conclusion.  David, the sweet Psalmist of Israel had played his part.  He could only praise God for such a wonderful privilege so largely undeserved.  “The Spirit of the Lord spoke by me.  His word was in my tongue.”

In David’s last words we have the necessary instruction to understand the centrality of the Psalms, Israel’s hymn-book, prayer book, and Israel’s devotional to guide one’s spirituality to the heavenly throne upon which sits not David, but David’s Lord who said unto David’s lord, “Sit thou at my right hand until I make thy enemies thy footstool.” (Psalm 110:1)  David, the king of Israel, the anointed of God, saw in his own psalm that there was another unto whom the Lord was making Lord over Israel.  We don’t know how much David understood.  But he understood that by him the Spirit was speaking and by him the Word of the Lord was being spoken.

It is sometimes a taboo in Christian circles to speak of a word uttered in the Bible.  The word is “predestination.”  Most of us don’t exactly know what to make of it.  But I wonder if we don’t see in David’s words something most central to the Bible’s talk about predestination.  We know that the Bible’s talk of predestination doesn’t mean that God causes any man to sin, nor that God desires the death of the ungodly.  He desires their redemption and salvation.  But there is this word predestination describing how we were thus saved in Christ wholly by grace.  Surely it is better to hold our tongues and not try to explain too much of this mystery but it is in numerous passages of Holy writ.  Perhaps David gives us insight into this doctrine of predestination in this passage.

How does David give us insight into the Biblical doctrine of predestination?  He does so by telling us that the Spirit spoke by him and that God’s word was on David’s tongue.  For centuries God had been speaking his word through the weakness of sinful flesh in his chosen instruments among the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  No man who ever spoke such a word by the spirit and had God’s word on his tongue ever deserved to be granted such a privilege.  But do you see what was happening in those centuries of God’s word being given to Israel.  Israel was being granted to have the word of God spoken through the Law, Prophets, writings, and the Psalms in varied ways and means.  But this was all towards a future goal of God’s greatest revelation.

The Christian sees the whole process of God revealing his word from a different vantage point than even King David could see.  The Christian understands that for several centuries, even thousands of years God was revealing his word.  This was all for a purpose, for a predestined plan.  Here then we may see predestination in its most perfect expression.  God revealed the Word of God that in the fullness of time the Word of God become flesh might utter this word as his own and thus bring the whole of the revealed Word of God to fulfillment in his own person and work of redemption.  That is the doctrine of predestination most perfectly understood.  For millennia God was depositing his word through the Law, Prophets, writings, Psalms, etc. for the purpose of its being there when the Word of God become flesh dwelt on the earth.  David uttered the words of Christ in God’s predestining grace that those words would flawlessly guide the Son of God born into the world in human flesh unto maturity without sin that he might save his people from their sins.  God planted his word into Israel, even though these were men with the stains and scars of sin; so that when he who was to come born of a virgin he might be the first born fruit of that planted word of God.  This is the doctrine of predestination in what I understand to be the way that every Christian may appreciate.  Predestination when spoken of in the New Testament always contains the phrase “in him.”  He is our predestination.  The Word of God revealed for hundreds and thousands of years before the coming of Christ became the fulfilled word of God when that word revealed was spoken upon the tongue and across the lips of the one who was the Word of God become flesh.

This is surely how we must appreciate the Psalms.  Consider two Psalms.  Surely there were those who could pray Psalm 22 and Psalm 88 metaphorically before Christ’s coming.  But they do not appear to have been prayed literally until they were voiced in the prayers of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Psalm 22 begins with the words, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”  Jesus prayed them on the cross as if to lift this whole Psalm up to God in his final hour.  The Psalm describes one whose hands and feet were pierced, and how men gambled for his cloak and divided his garments among themselves, and how men gazed upon him in his weakness and how the wicked surrounded him.  I have little doubt that this prayer, this psalm was lifted up metaphorically but its full meaning was never voiced for more than a thousand years until one Friday afternoon when darkness covered the land, a precious Lamb of God dying for our sins cried out the substance of this prayer for the first time in its literal fulfillment.

The same is surely true of the 88^th Psalm.  Here the Psalmist describes being given over to the pit, to the depths of hell from which men do not rise.  The Psalmist speaks of being covered and imprisoned in the darkness.  He has been brought down to the pit.  He asks, “Wilt thou show wonders to the dead shall the dead arise and praise thee?” (Psalm 88:10)  Such a haunting question is asked in varied ways for several verses.  This goes on throughout the end of the Psalm except for one moment of hope expressed in Psalm 88:13 where the Psalmist says, “But unto thee have I cried, O Lord, and in the morning shall my prayer prevent (come before) thee.”  Was ever this prayer prayed literally before that Saturday following Good Friday when our Lord’s precious body lay lifeless in a borrowed tomb?  Our Lord’s body lay in the depths and darkness of the earth.  He awaited his body to be sprung from this grave, from this tomb, from this prison where souls go but until now none have returned.  In the midst of darkness, one sliver of hope extends from the darkness; “I have cried” and “in the morning my prayer shall come before thee.”  That Saturday did come to an end.  Sunday morning, the first day of the week came as promised the next day.  The tombstone was rolled away and our Lord arose.  His prayers came before the Almighty God.  He had conquered sin and death.  He had gone down to the pit and had returned victorious.

Do you see how our lives as Christians have been predestined in Christ?  What hope have we for the grave?  Is the grave to be our prison where men go and never escape?  Are we in Christ?  Have we become connected to him by faith?  He who knew no sin became sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”  The plan of God from before the foundations of the earth has gradually taken shape.  God’s word came through varied sinful men until the Word of God become flesh spoke the words of God revealed and fulfilled them in his own life and experience.  God planted his word into the soil of Israel that the seed of Israel, the son of Israel’s handmaiden, even our Lord Jesus Christ might fully enact and fulfill that word of God.  God planted the Word of God into the life of Israel because God had determined to send his son, the Word of God become flesh to bring that Word of God to completion and fulfillment.  Let this understanding be part of your meditation when you hear that strange biblical word “predestination.”  The Word of God was revealed in ancient times, that it might be there to shape, explain, and be the words of the Word of God become flesh.  God created man in his image, that God might later enter that image as the God become flesh, bringing in and with him grace and mercy to Adam’s race.

For the Christian believer, our lives are hidden in the predestined life of Jesus Christ.  Our connection to the Word of God is mediated in and through the person and work of Jesus Christ; who is the word of God become flesh.  Because he died for our sins, our sins are to be forgiven.  Because he was buried in the tomb and rose bringing his prayers to God, the grave will not hold us forever.  In this way we may begin to understand how the Psalms could be given to us as prayers to sing and use in our praises to God, as truths to understand our places in this world, and as admonitions by which to reform our behavior so as to live in a way honoring and pleasing to God.

The Psalms became the prayer book of Israel by which Israel learned how to pray to God.  We understand that Christ was born of a virgin and was a baby, a toddler, a young child, a teenager, a young man, and then he went into the wilderness to be tested and to pray and he stood firm where every other man had fallen.  The Law of God looked upon every soul that ever lived and reviewed the substance of our lives with words such as “sinner”, and “fallen short.”  Then the Law reviewed Jesus by its high standard and made no charge.  The word of God which had been uttered throughout the ages at last was matched by one who spoke it worthily.  In the mouths and persons that spoke the word of God before there had been something missing.  But when Jesus Christ read the Scriptures to a synagogue for the first time, he could say to that synagogue that in his reading of the word of God it was fulfilled in their hearing.  This is what happened when the Word of God become flesh owned the revealed word of God as his own word.  This revealed word of God was meant forever to be his word.

Let us think about the Psalms.  There are Psalms we find difficult to pray.  We question if we have any right to pray an imprecatory Psalm where the Psalmist prays for God’s wrath against someone.  We think of the New Testament and the Lord’s Prayer and we imagine that somehow we should not pray in this fashion for we have been taught to pray “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others.”  Someone says, “O those imprecatory psalms are merely Old Testament prayers, we are part of the New Testament.”  I do not think that is correct.  We must learn that the Psalms exceed each of our individual experiences but they do not exceed the experience of our Lord Jesus Christ or of the Church which is the body of Christ on earth.

The truth of Christian prayer is that we never pray alone.  We have been taught to pray to God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.  We always pray to God in and through and with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Let us not forget the Garden of Gethsemane.  Jesus asked his disciples to stay with him and pray, but although their spirits were willing their bodies were weak and they fell asleep.  Jesus prayed though on their behalf.  So let us imagine that in a Psalm we hear and read this petition which calls for vengeance against God’s enemy.  We don’t know what to do.  Remember that you are not praying alone, rather Christ has invited you to pray with and alongside him.  Be silent but do not abandon the prayer that has an imprecatory vengeful petition.  Perhaps as you have begun to pray this prayer, there is an evil man somewhere about to harass and destroy God’s people because of such an evil in this enemy’s heart.  You need not try to find a name to put into an imprecatory psalm, but as St. Paul elsewhere says, “leave room for the vengeance of God.”  It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of God.  We are reminded of these things and our great high priest, the Lamb of God, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and the guardian of the sheep is on the watch for enemies.  If he asks us to pray along, we pray in silence and awe.  This is his strange work.  When he has finished we give our very quiet Amen and we beg for mercy for we too have sins.  When we pray the Psalms we like David are not praying merely our own words or our own experiences but are being invited into the prayers of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who has asked us to join him in his prayers as much as he has asked us to pray our own prayers initiated from our own hearts and souls.  Prayer is not just an activity we do, but a calling into which we are invited to participate alongside our Lord and Savior.

Of course other Psalms are similar.  How can we who know our sins pray as innocent men and women?  We surely cannot do so alone before God, but we are not alone, we come to the Father through his son with a righteousness based not in our merits but in his grace and loving-kindness.  So as we pray alongside Christ claiming his own innocence or praying on behalf of someone suffering for righteousness’ sake.  We join in his prayer and we likewise pray furthermore a prayer of thanksgiving for our past growth in grace and sanctification and for further cleansing that we might grow in grace as we grow in age.

There is an attitude towards praying known historically as pietism.  Pietism places the emphasis on the individual who prays.  Pietism teaches us that unless we feel something in our hearts we shouldn’t pray that prayer.  But perhaps Jesus is saying to us that he already knows we are weak and often cold and dull.  So he says, join me in my prayers.  The Psalms were Israel’s prayer book and Jesus’ also.  We perhaps join him in his prayers with coldness in our hearts.    Ashamed we ask for a better spirit, we struggle as we pray alongside him.  We discover prayer is often something we do because he bids us to pray with words already formed for his people written long ago by the sweet Psalmist of Israel.  We begin to realize that we pray because he bids us join him in his prayers and not because our hearts are so full of glory that we cannot contain our desires to pray.  That is wonderful also, but it is good enough we pray because he bids us to pray and even gives us words to pray that were prayed and used by him when he came upon the earth.  So we hear a simple admonition; “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.”  May this meditation be pleasing to God and a blessing to all who read it!  Amen.