by Matthew Bassford
Synopsis: Popular praise songs are often of the “Seven-Eleven” variety, i.e., containing only seven words that are sung eleven times! Brethren, we can do better. The pattern one observes in Psalms points the way.
For years, brethren have been concerned with the scripturality of hymns. Obviously, this is an important consideration; none of us wants to be singing false doctrine in worship! However, over time, “It’s scriptural” has become shorthand for “It doesn’t teach false doctrine,” and “It doesn’t teach false doctrine,” has become a sufficient justification for singing a song.
Sadly, too often, this mindset has led to the song worship of the church being less than it ought to be. The most vacuous hymns usually don’t contain false teaching because they don’t contain anything that would teach anyone over the age of three. This may be “scriptural”, but it does not adequately instruct the faithful, nor does it glorify God as He deserves. When our singing expresses our love for Him over and over and over again, but does not proclaim the wonderful works of the Lord, who is that singing really about?
It’s time for churches and their leadership (God surely will hold elders to account for what is sung as well as what is preached!) to invest some thought in what a truth-focused, God-focused worship repertoire looks like. In this inquiry, the Bible gives us considerable guidance, though not in a place we usually look. If we desire to know how God wants to be worshiped, we ought to consider the Psalms.
One of the most striking characteristics of the Psalms is their rich, complex content. This is a far cry from the denominational praise songs of our day that have filtered into the worship of the Lord’s church, too. Lyrical repetition frequently characterizes praise songs. This allows for musical repetition, too, which makes them easier to sing, but such ease comes at the expense of content. It’s hard to convey a complex thought in a repeated eight-word sentence!
When asked about this problem, praise-song advocates commonly will reply, “The Psalms were repetitive!” In this, they refer to the great responsorial psalm, Psalm 136. Indeed, Psalm 136 is repetitive in a way that no other psalm is. Every other line says something like “His faithful love endures forever.”
However, this repetition is nothing like the repetition of the praise band. If every one of those repeated lines is removed from Psalm 136, we are left with a twenty-six-line narrative psalm (by comparison, the standard three-verse single-page hymn has twenty-four lines). It praises God in detail for creating the cosmos, rescuing the people from Egypt, giving them the promised land, and continuing to care for every living thing. To describe the psalm as content-rich hardly does it justice!
To this narrative, the refrain (probably sung by a congregation of Israelites in response to a cantor singing the rest) adds another level of content. It emphasizes that everything He has done, from making the stars to killing Sihon and Og, reveals His faithful love for His people. Indeed, this is nothing less than the central concept of the Old Testament.
By all means, let us use repetition in our assemblies today—but only when the repetition creates content as powerful as Psalm 136!
Similarly, the Psalms are focused on God. This does not surprise anyone. However, the way in which they are focused on Him is as noteworthy as the focus itself.
One might argue that any hymn is by definition God-focused. Yet, too many of the songs that we sing together are God-focused in the way that an infatuated teenager is crush-focused. They talk about Him a lot, but they reveal a shallow awareness of who He is and what He has done.
It is not so in the Psalms, which paint a portrait of God that is subtle and profound. Psalm 148 exalts Him as the Creator and King of the natural world. Psalm 82 reveals His dominion over a spiritual realm we can see only dimly. Psalm 105 describes His faithfulness to the patriarchs and the awesome power He displayed in rescuing Israel from Egyptian servitude. Psalm 78 relates Israel’s unfaithfulness in the wilderness and during the time of the judges, contrasting it with His faithfulness and mercy.
Psalm 94 calls upon God to judge the kings who oppressed the poor with unjust laws. Psalm 89 contrasts the covenant He made with David with the downfall of the Davidic dynasty. Psalm 79 pleads for His mercy after the destruction of the temple, and Psalm 137 begs Him to requite the cruelties of captivity. Psalm 126 rejoices in the return of captives from bondage.
In short, the Psalms tell the entire story of God’s relationship with His people, dwelling particularly on the way all those interactions reveal His nature and character. All of us have heard whole sermons with less meat than any historical psalm, which was part of the repertoire that God’s children sang.
Finally, the Psalms teach us what a genuine relationship with God looks like. All of us who have been Christians for longer than two weeks know that our walk with God is not an unending mountaintop experience. We experience sorrow and tragedy. Some whom we love betray us. We struggle with illness. We suffer, and we cry out to God from the midst of our suffering.
However, the reality of our spiritual experience too often is not reflected in the songs we sing. Our current repertoire is relentlessly upbeat, even in the way it handles the Psalms. Either it cherry-picks the most positive psalms, or it plucks positive verses from psalms that aren’t. Take, for instance, “As the Deer.” The first two lines of the hymn come from Psalm 42:1, but where the hymn is warm and comforting, the psalm is an expression of loneliness and sorrow.
There’s nothing wrong with rejoicing before the Lord, of course, but if rejoicing is all we ever sing about, our worship neither meets us where we are nor prepares us for the reality of life under the sun.
The Psalms are much more honest in worship than we are, sometimes shockingly so. Would we feel comfortable with a hymn that accused God of abandoning us even though we were faithful to Him? Psalm 44 does. How about one that cried out to Him from the depths of depression and despair? Psalm 88 does. How about one that chronicled our struggles with faith when He appeared indifferent to our prayers? Psalm 77 does.
Similar examples abound. Indeed, there may be more psalms about the darkest times of human existence than about its brightest moments. Confronting such things makes many Americans, even many American Christians, uneasy. After all, isn’t worship the time when we are supposed to “lay aside the thoughts and the cares of the world”?
The Psalms imply that it isn’t. Rather, we are supposed to come before the Lord with our whole lives and our entire selves, even the ugliest parts. Worshiping in spirit and truth doesn’t have to do only with the truth about the word. It has to do also with the truth about ourselves.
If the Psalms are the measuring stick for truth in worship, many churches will have to put in a lot of work to measure up. The right repertoire can help here. Though I may be biased (having helped edit the hymnal), I believe that Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs, along with its associated slide program, contains hundreds of worthy hymns and a gratifyingly low number of stinkers.
However, the true work must be done within our hearts. We must reject the trendy and musically appealing in favor of the timeless and profound. Only when we embrace this goal will the song worship of God’s people do justice to God’s truth.
