The book of the Psalms has been called the heart of the Bible. It expresses sentiments produced by the Spirit of Christ, whether of prayer, sorrow, confession or praise in the hearts of God’s people, in which the ways of God are developed and become known with their blessed results to the faithful.
The book is distinctly prophetic in character, the period covered by the language of the Psalms extending from the rejection of Christ (Psa. 2) to the hallelujahs consequent on the establishment of the kingdom. The Psalms never go on into the millennium, but only up to it. Prophecy will not be needed when that time has arrived.
The writers do not merely relate what others did and felt but express what was passing through their own souls. And yet their language is not simply what they felt but that of the Spirit of Christ that spoke in them, as taking part in the afflictions, the grief and the joys of God’s people in every phase of their experience. This accounts for Christ’s being found throughout the Psalms. Some, like Psalm 22, refer exclusively to Him. In others, though the language is that of the remnant of His people, Christ takes His place with them, making their sufferings His sufferings and their sorrows His sorrows. In no part of Scripture is the inner life of the Lord Jesus disclosed as in the Psalms. Sometimes the heading of a psalm tells us the occasion on which the psalm was written, but it does not hinder the Spirit of God from leading the psalmist to utter things that would be fully accomplished in Christ alone. As David said, “The Spirit of Jehovah spoke by me.”
David’s experience could not have caused him to compose Psalm 22. But being a prophet, it was clearly the Spirit of Christ that was in him that furnished words which would be uttered by Christ on the cross. We have in it a plain instance of a prophetic psalm, and doubtless the spirit of prophecy runs throughout the Psalms.
The piety that the Psalms breathe is always edifying, and the deep confidence in God expressed in them under trial and sorrow has cheered the heart of God’s saints at all times. But the Psalms are not a book of Christian experience. What Christian could take up as his own language the statement, “Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones” (Psa. 137:99Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. (Psalm 137:9))? Such an appeal is only intelligible in regard to a future day, when, apostasy being universal and opposition to God open and avowed, the destruction of His enemies is the only way of deliverance for His people.
The Psalms apply directly to souls under the law. The Christian’s relationship with the Father is not — cannot be — introduced in the psalms, and we live out of that relationship practically if we live under the law as those in the Psalms. As Paul said, “Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law.” However, like those in the Psalms, our right path is ever one of obedience and confiding dependence.
Unless the difference of the spirit of the Psalms from that of Christianity be observed, the full light of redemption and of the place of the Christian in Christ is not seen and the reader is apt to be detained in a legal state. His progress is hindered, and he does not understand the Psalms nor enter into the gracious sympathies of Christ in their true application. When the attitude of the Jews at the time the Lord was here is remembered and their bitter opposition to their Messiah, then light is thrown upon their feelings when, under tribulation, their eyes will be opened to see that it was indeed their Messiah that they crucified. Into all their sorrows Christ enters, and He suffers in sympathy with them. The true place and bearing of the Psalms must be seen before they can be rightly interpreted. The writers were not Christians and could not express Christian experience, though their piety, confidence in God and the spirit of praise may often put a Christian to shame.
A striking characteristic of the Psalms is that all through them the power of evil is rampant. Even when God is praised and He gives songs of hallelujahs to His people, evil is there. It supposes all the evil to be in power unto the end. It is the power of good in the midst of evil, and not the reign of good. It is analogous to our present position. The Lord says, “I have overcome the world,” yet still the world goes on, and we have the power of Christ in the midst of it.
In the Psalms the godly remnant is often distinguished from the rest of the people. The sins of the people would morally hinder the remnant from having confidence in God in their distresses. Yet God alone can deliver them, and to Him they must look in integrity of heart. So in seeking deliverance the distresses are laid before God, while at the same time both sins are confessed and integrity of heart is pleaded. Christ, having come into their circumstances and having made atonement, can lead them, in spite of their sins and about their sins, to God.
In the Hebrew Bible the 150 psalms are grouped into 5 distinct sections or books. Each book has its own scope and marked conclusion. Within each book related psalms are grouped together as a series. This outline highlights each series by marking it with three asterisks ( ============================= ). Often a series begins with some great truth or historical fact presented as to Christ or the remnant or both. Then the psalms that follow express the feelings and sentiments of the remnant in connection with that truth or fact.
The titles, which appear above the individual psalms, are a part of the inspired Word and should be read and studied along with each psalm.