By: Phillip Howell, TGC.
Our church’s pastors are currently preaching through all 150 psalms, and we’ve surpassed 100 sermons. Some godly preachers have expressed concern that preaching all the psalms might be too repetitive or take too long. But I haven’t found this to be the case.
After preaching most of this sermon series, I’m not tired of Psalms at all. Here’s why I’ve found preaching through the entire Psalter rewarding.
1. Psalms is God-centered.
Every sermon, every study, every reflection on Psalms draws our congregation deeper into God’s majesty and glory. Psalms is rich with themes that showcase God’s attributes—his holiness, righteousness, justice, mercy, and love. It’s far from dull to explore and proclaim the grandeur of God’s majesty, to unfold the beauty and glory of his covenant faithfulness. The God-centered content refreshes me and helps me to nurture a deep, abiding faith in my congregation.
2. Psalms counteracts our culture’s expressive individualism.
A few weeks ago, I told a group of pastors that I’m preaching through the entire Psalter and thoroughly enjoying the experience. One pastor asked why I was enjoying it so much. My immediate response was that the psalms uproot the weeds of expressive individualism and replace those weeds with God’s words and actions, and with clear instructions for how to express ourselves in corporate prayer and worship.
Psalms shifts us from exclusively expressing ourselves from the inside out; it instead cultivates emotions shaped from the outside in. It offers a profound antidote to the individualism and isolation that plague our age. When I shared this with that fellow pastor, he immediately said, “I’m sold; you don’t need to tell me any more reasons.”