Of all the Old Testament books, the Psalms are perhaps the most read and beloved. Calvin writes of the Psalms, “I have been accustomed, I think not inappropriately, to call this book ‘An Anatomy of all the Parts of the Soul’ for there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror.” It is for this reason that believers from every age have found them appropriate expressions of their various responses to God and his actions.

They have not only served as spiritual expressions of the individual, but have been called the prayerbook of the Old Testament church. For many centuries they also served the Christian church as a rich contribution to her worship. More recently, their use in most worship contexts has diminished. That has been a significant loss for God’s people individually and corporately. Bonhoeffer wrote, “Whenever the Psalter is abandoned, an incomparable treasure vanishes from the Christian church. With its recovery will come unsuspected power.” Christoph Barth reinforced this with his comment that “the renewal and reunion of the church for which we are hoping cannot come about without the powerful assistance of the Psalms—without the support of their incomparable words and above all of their imperishable message” (Barth quoted in Anderson, 16)

This course is designed to help us reconnect to the psalter as we learn to read the psalms and to rediscover the message and the intention of the Psalter as resource for the worship of God’s people individually and corporately.