Exhortation

The Psalter is the church’s primary Hymnal, and what do we find when we pick up the Psalter?

We learn that God establishes the righteous man like a tree, but drives the wicked away like chaff. Then we learn that God has installed His Son as King of kings, and that the kings of the earth had better beware His rod of iron. Then David, fleeing from Absalom, cries out for God to deliver him from his adversaries, smiting the enemies on the cheek and shattering the teeth of his enemies.

Skip a Psalm, but then David is back at it, asking God to bring his enemies down and rejoicing that God has set a shield about him. Then he hope that Yahweh will shame and confuse his enemies. Then he asks that the Lord to sharpen His sword and bend his bow to take down the wicked.

So far, we’re only at Psalm 7, and many of the really militant Psalms are a long ways off. Of course, there are many other things in the Psalms. Yahweh is the one who satisfies David’s longing soul, the father of the fatherless, the Giver of all good, and the kind and compassionate and forgiving father.

But if you were to characterize the tone of the Psalter in one phrase, you couldn’t have a better phrase than “War Songs.” And if we ask about the portrait of Yahweh in the Psalms, we would do worse than saying He is above all a Warrior.

Now, this raises some questions: If the Psalter is our song book, shouldn’t our worship sound a bit like the Psalms? Shouldn’t there be, among other things, a regular militancy to our worship? And, of course, the main question: Is there? If there isn’t, you can be sure the flaw is in our worship, and not in the Psalter.