The Psalms in their entirety speak of God’s promised Messiah-King. He is the “blessed man” who exemplifies the righteous life that Psalm 1 portrays. He is the King whose enemies will become His footstool (Pss. 2; 110:1). He is the righteous sufferer who epitomizes trust in the Lord (Ps. 22).  They poignantly remind us that the pattern of death and resurrection that was etched into the holy humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ is the pattern that the Holy Spirit seeks to replicate in the lives of all God’s children.

The book of Psalms was the songbook our Lord Jesus Christ sang from every Sabbath. In today’s church we have a myriad of songbooks; in Jesus’ day there was but one songbook: the 150 songs contained in the Psalter. How well do we know the Savior’s songbook?

1. The book of Psalms was written over a period of one thousand years.

Psalm 90, a psalm of Moses, was probably the earliest psalm, written around 1500 BC. It is difficult to know when the last psalm was composed, but Psalm 126, which begins, “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream,” probably refers to Israel’s return from exile in 537 BC. 

2. Approximately 40 percent of the psalms are laments.

Out of the 150 psalms, fifty-nine are laments, songs composed in a spiritual and theological minor key. There are psalms of unqualified joy and delight, such as Psalm 47. But why so many laments? The life of faith, personal and corporate, is lived in a fallen world and opposed by the flesh, the world, and the devil. Jesus told His disciples, “In the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33). The Psalms give heart expression to the struggles, sorrows, weariness, perplexities, and failures that are the daily experience of every believer. Think of these words from Psalm 44:

In God we have boasted continually,
and we will give thanks to your name forever. Selah

But you have rejected us and disgraced us
and have not gone out with our armies.
You have made us turn back from the foe,
and those who hate us have gotten spoil.
You have made us like sheep for slaughter
and have scattered us among the nations. (Ps. 44:8–11)

Jesus would have sung these words as He stood before His Father representing His people. Or think of these words from Psalm 51, King David’s song of repentance after the tragedy of his sin with Bathsheba:

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!

For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me. (Ps. 51:1–3)

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