The joys of singing God's Word!

Status
Not open for further replies.

Rom

Puritan Board Junior
Hello fellow PB members, and lurkers. Brothers, and Sisters in Christ.

For the last couple of months we've been Exclusive Psalmody at home. I wanted to say that it has been a tremendous blessing, and probably the most important thing we've done in Family Worship since ... starting to read the Bible together!

Singing God's Word has become addictive, especially to the Children who walk around with their mini psalters looking for psalms to sing. My youngest daughter who cannot yet read (3yr old) has already memorized the words to Psalm 23 and sings it all the time.

I was home sick on Thursday and to my pleasant surprise I heard the children sing Psalm 23 from memory in the kitchen - completely without any prodding.

When I heard them do that, all I can think of was Col 3:16, which caused me to give thanks to God:
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.

My prayer is that some day when trials come, the words of these Psalms come to my children by God's Spirit.

Diving deeper into the psalms has been a great blessing, seeing the gospel in them, seeing our Lord's humiliation in them, His exaltation, his sufferings, his glory, his grace to us sinners, the joys of his law, etc., etc. Singing about being cast down has been great, so many of the hymns that we have been singing in the Church are so 'positive' to the point that they feel a bit superficial in comparison to the gamut of emotions in the psalter.

BTW, our Church is not EP by any means, though we are blessed to usually have a psalm sung in each service. I will forever be thankful to them that they introduced me to singing psalms, even though they are not EP.

I told a dear brother in Christ (who is also a coworker, and a member here on the PB) the following about my first experience singing psalms:
When I was presented a hymn that I found to not line up with my current understanding of Scripture, I would challenge it. When I sing a psalm that challenges my current understanding of Scripture, IT challenges me.

There has been much growth in my understanding of our Lord, and an intimacy that I feel with Him when singing His songs. I remember - my Lord sang all of these songs in his humiliation on earth. Our Lord inspired them as well. I am united to Christ. He has promised to sing in the congregation with us. His sufferings are our sufferings. My life is hid with Christ. God promises us many things in the psalms that no hymn writer dare to promise, and he will keep them - and it is important that I KNOW them.

These are remarkable things, and singing God's Word with Him is incredible when you realize these things - and I am but a babe, there is much to know and learn about this.

This is not a post to deride, denigrate or despise uninspired hymns. This is a post to show how many are the blessings that have come to this sinner and his family from singing God's Word. I pray that there will be a great revival of Psalm singing in God's Church. I have heard it said that the abandoning of God's Word in sung worship has led to a weak Church, and I'm inclined to believe it after the last couple of months.

And what a great application of the sufficiency of Scripture! Sadly, I had no idea that people made psalters for singing until I entered the PCA.

Forgive my rambling, I am just overflowing with joy and am so grateful that God has shown me that His psalms can be sung! I also want to thank the PB for really rigorously challenging all that I thought I knew about singing praise to God. This board has been such a blessing.
 
How do you figure out which tune to sing with each Psalm?

Do you play the melody online, piano, etc in order to get it down first?

What is your source for the melody?
 
Dear Jeff - there are quite a few great psalters out there. I use the Book of Psalms for Worship from Crown and Covenant (the RPCNA psalter).

The Book of Psalms for Worship

The tunes for all of the selections are available as MIDI here - Psalter Tunes: index

There also are iOS and Android apps that have the entire psalter + tunes. Very helpful.

We sing with the MIDI tune at first to get used to them.

Hope this is of help, brother :)
 
Dear Jeff - there are quite a few great psalters out there. I use the Book of Psalms for Worship from Crown and Covenant (the RPCNA psalter).

The Book of Psalms for Worship

The tunes for all of the selections are available as MIDI here - Psalter Tunes: index

There also are iOS and Android apps that have the entire psalter + tunes. Very helpful.

We sing with the MIDI tune at first to get used to them.

Hope this is of help, brother :)

I use the iOS app and love it. It has been a real blessing to me. That website is great too. One question I have is why can't I view any of the tunes past Psalm 97?
 
Zach - you are right, the website seems broken... It used to work. We might need to let them know tomorrow.
 
The PCA also publishes in its joint venture with the OPC, a nice size handy Psalter:
CEP Bookstore - TRINITY PSALTER

Is this at all related to the "Book of Psalms for singing"? The PCA church I attend uses this book along with a Trinity Hymnal and I confess I know little about it.

From the PCA [CEP Bookstore] web site
Publisher: Crown & Covenant
ISBN: 9781884527074
Item #: 3704

Binding: Paperback
Chapters:
Page Count: 130

"This metrical, words-only Psalter is complete-every verse of every psalm-yet sleek (3/8"" thin!) After each metered selection is a suggested tune for singing (all but 4 found in the Trinity Hymnal) or match meter to meter of your favorite tunes."

Publication Date: 1994
 
The Trinity Psalter was produced in conjunction with the RPCNA and is based upon their Book of Psalms for Singing. I do like having the variety of tunes and the sheet music in the full psalter however. There is a slim version of the Book of Psalms for Worship that is about as thin as the Trinity Psalter. BarryR showed me his copy last night - it is printed on Bible Paper so is very slim.

Either route you go you cannot go wrong. I really enjoy singing from the Trinity Psalter at our Church :).
 
Is this at all related to the "Book of Psalms for singing"? The PCA church I attend uses this book along with a Trinity Hymnal and I confess I know little about it.

That would be the RPCNA's Psalter, which is not the same as the Trinity Psalter.
 
Is this at all related to the "Book of Psalms for singing"? The PCA church I attend uses this book along with a Trinity Hymnal and I confess I know little about it.

That would be the RPCNA's Psalter, which is not the same as the Trinity Psalter.

From what I understand the RPCNA created the Trinity Psalter for the PCA - but you are correct, they aren't the same. The PCA wanted something a bit more slimmed down and without multiple versions.

We just used Book of Psalms for family worship tonight and have to say it is such a blessing to sing from the Psalms - they really are amazing to sing. The kids have really gravitated to them too. I do love the fact that teaching them to sing the Psalms is making my job easier as well - they do double duty by growing the words of Christ in their hearts! We have 23A and 46C on rotation for the month of October.
 
I would recommend The Psalms of David in Metre (the Scottish Psalter of 1650). Every Psalm is set to common meter. You could sing every verse of every Psalm to the tune for Amazing Grace, if that's all you know.

My wife and I will be singing Psalm 150 tomorrow night. She commented to me a couple nights ago that if we had been singing from any other Psalter, we could not have just sung straight through it.

Vendors « The 1650 Psalter
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top