Guide on How To Sing The Psalms (Book of Study Notes)
We are currently studying the book of Psalms in our through the Bible Study. Is it not obvious that the book of Psalms is not only to be preached and studied but it is written to be sung and set to music? Yet who does that? There are some that have re translated the Psalms and made them metrical so they can be sung to our hymn style of singing. We do have some Scripture Choruses based off of select verses of the Psalms. But, who just sings the Psalms verse by verse line by line as written in our KJV Bible and as David wrote them?
Why do people not sing the Psalms directly out of the Bible today? Is it not because they do not know how to? Yet when preachers preach and teach through the Psalms how can we do that without teaching people how to sing the Psalms. Are we not commanded to sing Psalms, Col. 3:16, Eph.5:19. Have you ever heard a Bible study on how to sing through the Psalms? Why not? Is it not obvious that the Psalms were not written in our style of music. So unless people use the ancient form of chanting no one that I know just sings the Psalms as written. But, David was called "The sweet Psalmist of Israel." How is chanting sweet music? God called his music sweet. I do not find chanting the Psalms sweet. Maybe this is why singing the Psalms as written in Scripture has faded away from church use. Our goal is to find a sweet way to sing the biblical text of the Psalms. So in this study we are not only preaching the Psalms but exploring possible ways that David and the Israelite's sang the Psalms.
Each week we give the meaning of the Psalms and we practice singing the Psalms straight through without paraphrasing, repeating words, changing words or making them fit our form of music or forcing our style of meter or Rhyme on them.. If we as Bible believing Christians believe in Biblical inerrancy and preservation, then why do we accept changing the words of the Psalms to fit our music biblical? Why do we call that singing the inspired Psalms? Should we not change our music to fit the inspired words?. Sometimes we can use our style of music without changing the text, other times we need to bend our style of music to conform to the text as written in the inspired Word of God. We are praying and asking God to show us how to sing the inspired Psalms without changing them. This is a PDF download file of our study notes from Sunday School, Wednesday night, and Sunday night Bible studies. We are hoping to come up with a ways to sing all 150 of the Psalms in the Bible. We will update these notes from time to time as we progress in our study.
COL 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
Sincerely
Pastor Frank Bissol