The Psalms teach us to be deeply occupied with our God. They magnify and exalt Him as the Sovereign Creator and Ruler of the universe. What is it to be much occupied with God? It is to treasure His Word, to delight in His worship, to reflect on His glorious attributes, to rehearse His great acts in history, to trust in His care, to glory in His gospel and to anticipate His final victory. The more we are occupied with God, the more strength we find for living.
The Psalms teach us to praise our God and also show us how to praise Him. There are few lessons that we need more. So very often we mumble mechanical praise from hearts that are crowded with unworthy loves and occupied with earthly concerns. The need is for robust praise from hearts that are deeply schooled in the stunning truths of the Sovereign Lord who not only made us but pours from his bounty countless blessings, the chief of which is eternal salvation through his Son.
The Psalms teach us how to trust our God during afflictions and how to receive comfort from Him. They express every human emotion and address every human need. John R. W. Stott writes: “The reason why Christian people are drawn to the Psalms is that they speak the universal language of the human soul … Whatever our spiritual mood may be, there is sure to be a psalm which reflects it—whether triumph or defeat, excitement or depression, joy or sorrow, praise or penitence, wonder or anger.”
We might say the Psalms show us how to respond to every conceivable situation that life throws at us. In the Psalms we can pour out our hearts before Yahweh. Examples of repentance, communion, hope, faith, love, and lament abound. There are psalms for every occasion in life and for every spiritual condition in which we find ourselves. The Psalter is simply universal in its appeal to believing hearts.
The Psalms show us how to be zealous for the cause of our God. From hearts flooded with love for God, the various psalmists expressed fervent desires to see the advancement of God’s truth, the vindication of His name, the acknowledgement of His glory and the triumph of His kingdom. All of this requires, as the imprecatory psalms so wonderfully comprehend, the defeat of evil and the judgment of evil-doers.
The Psalms show us how to worship our God both publicly and privately. The Psalms throb with both kinds of worship. The former is vigorously endorsed in the pilgrimage psalms, as well as in other types. And the latter is modeled by individual psalmists who, even in the midst of heart-wrenching circumstances, find their hearts going out after God in praise and adoration.
The Psalmists have learned in the midst of life’s distractions that security comes from fixing our eyes on our Sovereign Lord and making God the exclamation point at the center of our lives.