By Pastor Benjamin Glaser - Posted at Thoughts From Parson Farms:
The Place of Unique Ways to Assist Our Common Praise to GodAs I noted last week this will be our last regular post from the Westminster Directory of Public Worship. The rest of the month of August will be some clean up and close out. In September we’ll switch gears to the Directory of Church Government. However, before we do all that we have the third of three messages on the singing of the psalms to get to. Seeing the Lord’s gift in the Psalter at some times in the history of the church of Jesus Christ has been less clear than others. Yet, there has not been a moment since Moses wrote Psalm 90 that the people of God have been without the psalms in their worship. Interestingly enough today’s entry, while certainly touching on the singing of the word of God in the congregation of the holy, is as much a look into the pastoral love and care of the writers of the DPW as anything else.
Some people will tell you that the Puritans, the Scots, and/or the Presbyterians of this period of history, the Seventeenth Century, when the DPW was written were cold, unfeeling, killjoys who looked and sounded more like modern-day Pharisees than those who bore the peace and comfort of men witnessing the heart of Jesus. J.I. Packer and Leland Ryken both wrote books that sought to put to death that misguided idea. The Quest For Godliness and Wordly Saints respectfully are both worth reading to get a real sense for how the Puritan desire to see Jehovah honored in heart and mind was born out of a benevolent grace for the sheep, not a callous prissy submission to the law. As we look at today’s section it is important for us to put ourselves in the shoes of these men. They had in interest in seeing the whole community worship of God. They wanted every member to have and know their right to be a part of the life of Christ and to receive the spiritual mercy available in corporate Lord’s Day worship.
Let’s read the last portion of the Singing of the Psalms together:
That the whole congregation may join herein, every one that can read is to have a psalm book; and all others, not disabled by age or otherwise, are to be exhorted to learn to read. But for the present, where many in the congregation cannot read, it is convenient that the minister, or some other fit person appointed by him and the other ruling officers, do read the psalm, line by line, before the singing thereof.