Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs
December 4th, 2009
Ancient Psalter Illustration Samuel Anointing David
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” Colossians 3:16 ESV
The New Testament encourages us to minister encouragement to one another through our Church Music. Specifically we’re to sing “Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs”.
When it comes to singing in Church, most of us have sung something like the “hymns” mentioned by the New Testament. If “Spiritual Songs” means the Scripture Choruses we’ve sung for years, then we’ve got that base covered.
So what about singing the Psalms? How are we doing on that?
To be sure, people who sing enough of what we call “Hymns” will end up singing music largely based on certain Psalms. “A Mighty Fortress is our God” is based on Psalm 46, for instance. Other “Hymns” in our “Hymnals” are essentially Psalms put into rhyme.
That’s because when Ancient Hebrew people “sang” psalms they actually chanted them. They can be chanted in English too, but in our language and style of music we prefer the words in what we sing to rhyme. The Psalms as they were written in Hebrew don’t rhyme well when translated to English.
That means to actually sing them in English takes some effort. We have to use special versions of the Psalms written to fit the music we’ve learned to sing by singing other hymns written for those tunes. A collection of Psalms prepared for singing or special use in worship is called a “Psalter”. Before there were “Hymnals”, there were only “Psalters” of Psalms only or “Psalter Hymnals” which were mostly Psalms with some other Biblical Songs and other Hymns added. The bulk of the singing in Church was the Psalms.
At times it’s complicated and difficult… that’s probably why most congregations don’t really bother trying to obey this encouragement of Scripture to “Sing Psalms”. That’s odd because we KNOW the Psalms are inspired by the Holy Spirit just like the rest of Holy Scripture. In the South at least we like to call ourselves the “Bible Belt” but tend to ignore the songs that come wrapped inside the Bible!
One of the things we’re learning to do at St. Andrew’s Church is to sing these Bible Songs called the Psalms! We also learn to sing other Bible Songs as well as other great Christian music – the kind whose words bring glory to God!
It’s not always easy. We don’t always get it right the first time. And sometimes learning to sing the Psalms is downright hard.
But isn’t our Heavenly Father worth doing hard things for, out of our love and gratitude? Yes, He is!
