One of the unfortunate by-products of coming off most social media platforms is that questions I once would have asked there and received some help with are no longer available to me. So, I hope you will forgive me using this forum to essentially ask for some help. Perhaps you would be kind enough – if you have some help to offer – in the comments. My question is this: how do you preach a series in the Psalms?
Now, let me be clear specifically what I am not asking here. I am not asking how does one preach from the Psalms. I am not asking about how to get to Jesus from the Psalms or how to apply individuals Psalms to your church. Not that they’re unhelpful or unnecessary questions, just that they’re not specfically the ones I need help thinking about.
What I want to know is not how does one preach from a Psalm, but how does one do a series in the Psalms? Unfortunately, whenever I google ‘how to preach a series in the Psalms’ or anything like that, what I get is lots of articles concerned with how to preach Psalms generally. But there seems to be very little of use about how to preach a series in the Psalms.
I have seen that Jim Hamilton (for example) has preached a series through every Psalm. So, it does seem that one way is to just preach every one of the Psalms, one after the other. He did sometimes group one or two together, preaching two in the same sermon, but then he also spent some time preaching a few sermons through Psalm 119 (for obvious reasons). So, I recognise this is one way. But even if we managed to preach two Psalms in every sermon, we’re still looking at 75 sermons, which is nearly 18 months of Psalms. I’m not saying we couldn’t do that, but equally wondering whether we should do that.
But that still begs the question, if we don’t preach Psalm-by-Psalm through the whole book, how else would you do it? I know it’s possible to take the five books into which the Psalms have been edited and preach through one and have a break before moving onto the next one. But even then, the way those books have been edited means we’re going to have some pretty gloomy months – that will feel a little repetitive at times – before we get to a break. Part of me wonders whether that is ideal. Another part of me wonder whether, if that’s how we have it, that is how we should preach it.
As you can probably see, I’m just not sure how to go about working out a series in the Psalms. And I’m asking this now when I don’t have a specific plan to preach the book at all because I think a helpful series will take some planning. So, we’re finishing Jeremiah right now, will move into a short series in Titus through December, will have a one-off sermon from Obadiah in the New Year before jumping into a longer series in 1 Corinthians. All that is to say, we’ve got a fair amount of time before we even get to thinking about what we might study next.
Nevertheless, I am conscious that we want to preach the whole counsel of God. I am conscious the Psalms are a pretty significant chunk of that counsel. I don’t want to be put off by the sheer size and the awkwardness of it not being a fairly straight Pauline epistle. But the question remains, what is the best way to preach through the Psalms?
I have little to no insights of my own here. So, I’m hoping some of you might be able to help. Whether you have preached them yourself, or you have used particularly helpful commentaries that laid out a reasonable plan or you have just heard a decent series from somebody else. At this point, I’d be interested to hear in the comments about any of the ways you’ve heard the Psalms preached because – I don’t mind admitting – I frankly have no idea!
I have actually preached all the way through but during COVID when we were doing something daily. I think there is a lot to be said for helping people see the Psalms fitting together as a book. So options might be 1. Just go for it over 18 months noting some churches spend that long in bigger books! 2. Divide it into mini series around the books within Psalms and intersperse with other series. 3. Preach the “book amends” and show how they shape the sections 4. Preach thematically through showing how a few Psalms pick up the theme 4. Take a specific section such as Psalms of Assent 5. Preach on one in seven Psalms and then ask the church to use study notes you prepare to work through the other six individually in the week. Get them to feedback at community group.
That’s really helpful.
Part of me is minded to just go for it and preach them all over 18 months. I’ve spent a year in John before, so it’s not hugely different. Only, I’m conscious there is more changing of scenes in a gospel than would happen in the Psalms. But I do wonder whether that might be what we do.
At the same time, I’m open to doing it other ways. I am conscious it might be because *whispers* I don’t really like the Psalms that much. Which makes me more inclined to not let that prejudice matters and just do the whole thing.
Always the temptation. But I think there is a balance. I like looking at whole books but you can tire people out. I remember being a church member where we went painfully slowly through Deuteronomy. I came away at the end wondering if Moses was getting a little weary too.
One church I attended would take a break each summer from whatever book they were currently preaching through in order to preach through the Psalms over the summer months. They called it the “Psummer of Psalms” 🙂 I don’t think they went straight through every single one, but I do remember thinking that the Psummer of Psalms served as a nice break from the regular series.
Thanks for sharing that. I can see this might be a good way to handle them.
When I preached in the Psalms I did a series of 30 sermons, being a bit of a sample, or overview, including what one might consider the ‘major’ psalms, like 1, 23, 46, 51, 100 and 150. I excerpted 119, taking just one of its sections. I included psalms from each of the five divisions of the psalter. I also included each type of psalm, and I will say that in that regard, preaching an imprecatory psalm, which was 58, was quite a challenge. But the task is to preach the whole counsel of God, and one truth is that there is good news in the Bible from beginning to end, even when in our human understanding and at first glance that may not appear to be the case.
Thanks for sharing that. I think a ‘selected example’ approach is a good way to handle it. Perhaps you could share your full breakdown with me of how ordered your series?
When I was in psalms I preached these passages, in this order, Psalm 1, 11, 19 (Palm Sunday), 46 (Easter Sunday), 24, 32, 34, 39, 51, 58, 67, 76, 81, 84, 87, 88, 91, 93, 100, 110, 112, 117, 119:153-160, 121, 130, 139 and 150. I’m well aware of the fact that some preachers, such as Mark Dever, have done 119 in its entirety, but I’m no Mark Dever and to borrow from a certain movie, a man’s got to know his limitations.
We do the summer of Psalms thing and each week take one from each of the 5 books so 1, 42, 73 etc…and then back to 2, 43, 74 & so on. That way there’s some variety.
But if I was to preach all of them all the way through I don’t think, nor do I see it as necessary, to go from 1-150 in that order. No one thinks of singing their way through a hymn book like that. I think there are more interesting, creative ways that would avoid the inevitable sense of repetition if you did that.
The other idea I’d consider is to map some of the Psalms to the life and history of Israel – inevitably that means a lot of David & Solomon but not entirely as there are exile Psalms and Moses and so on, so you can go through the themes of say Creation, Fall, Covenant, Exile, Messiah, Church, Revelation or however you might do it.
That’s really helpful. I’d have to do a lot of work thinking about the flow of the book (or find someone who has done a good job of that already) but I can see either of those being a helpful approach.
From one who sits in the pews……A few years ago I was going through a Bible study covering the life of David. At appropriate times in his life, the study pointed out the Psalms that David wrote at that period in his life. I would read the Psalm and so often say, “Oh, now this Psalm makes more sense,” since it was given context. Perhaps the same would prove true for the other Psalms, if when teaching them, there is known historical context to the life of Israel. So, if the Psalms can be chronologically taught along with the timeline of the nation of Israel might make sense. I do listen to the sermons of Downtown Presbyterian Church in Greenville, SC each summer as they have for the past few years preached through various Psalms. On a related note, I read your blog from Prescott, AZ. Appreciate your work.
Thanks Pia.
Yes, I think putting the Psalms in their appropriate historical and biblical context can be exceptionally helpful and worthwhile.
Great question. Never really considered a series on ALL the Psalms. For several years now, we’ve tried to cover 3-5 Psalms in the summer, and if we have a thematic series (which might be roughly 1 in 3 for us) I will try to include a range of genres and parts of scripture, including a Psalm.
Not the same topic but I’ve also taken a Psalm each Wednesday as the basis for a ‘thought for the day’ to share with the church, which ensures every Psalm gets shared and connected with, and helps to teach the ‘how to’ aspect of reading and hearing the Psalms over our lives.
This seems to be a common approach – taking some of the Psalms over the course of several summers. I can see the sense in this, though one pastor who does this said he is now committed to doing it over the course of 15 years or so if he is going to finish the book!
I think understanding the context of the Psalms in the life of Israel is really helpful as a church member and I have also appreciated a thematic approach. One way to approach this is looking at Psalms of lament, Psalms of thanksgiving, Royal Psalms etc.
I come from a church tradition where singing the Psalms is a regular part of a service so that is also another thing to consider-is there a way of incorporating Psalms (or versions of Psalms) in the sung praise? This may not be possible in every setting but I have certainly found it beneficial.
That sounds like a helpful approach
At the moment, we are taking on one Psalm per month (on the first Sunday of each month). I’ve picked some of the more familiar Psalms to get us into them, for us that has been: 1, 8, 16, 19, 23, 24, 32, 36 so far.
We have done the summer Psalms thing that others have mentioned, too. But our summer services are also where we experiment and train new leaders/preachers, so that has been a little up and down.
Thanks for sharing this 👍
I’m facing this same problem. What I’m planning at the moment is to choose a selection of psalms, say 12 or 15, of varying genres — praise, lament, meditation, thanksgivings, etc. We’ll incorporate them as regular parts of the sung worship of the church for 6 months or a year (we’re not exclusive psalmody, but we draw from the Free Church of Scotland’s ‘Sing Psalms’ and the Praise! hymnbook to supplement our other songs). Then I’m going to work through the selection as a way of expounding homiletically what we’ve already internalised liturgically.
I’m glad I’m not the only one! But yours sounds like an interesting approach