Songs God Put in Our Mouths

O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. PSALM 95:1

People who think of Calvin as a man without joy should spend an evening with the Genevan Psalter. It is one of the great treasures of Christian worship, and Calvin laboured over it for more than twenty years. The tune many English-speaking Christians know as the Old Hundredth, sung to All people that on earth do dwell, first appeared in a Genevan edition of the Psalms. Wherever Calvin’s teaching went — to France, the Netherlands, Hungary, Scotland — congregations went singing the Psalms.

Giving the people back their song

In the medieval church the people rarely sang. The choir and the clergy sang in Latin; the congregation watched and listened. The Reformers wanted to give the whole people of God their voice. Luther did it with hymns. Calvin did it with the Psalms.

His very first attempt came early. In the Articles he and Farel drew up for Geneva in 1537 they asked that psalms be sung in church. During his exile in Strasbourg, where he heard German congregations singing, he gathered a small book of metrical psalms in French for his refugee congregation in 1539, including a few of his own versions. Back in Geneva he worked with the poet Clément Marot, and after Marot’s death with Theodore Beza, until the complete Psalter, all one hundred and fifty psalms set to singable tunes, was finished in 1562. Musicians, of whom Louis Bourgeois is the best known, wrote melodies of great dignity and strength.

Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. EPHESIANS 5:19

Why the Psalms

In his preface to the Genevan form of prayers and psalms, Calvin explains why he chose the Psalms above all. Singing, he says, has great power to move and inflame the heart to call upon God and praise Him with more zeal. But because it has such power, it must be used rightly. We should sing songs that are not merely decent but holy. And where shall we find such songs? Nowhere better than in the Psalms, which the Holy Spirit Himself made. When we sing them, he says in substance, we can be certain that God puts the words in our mouths, as if He Himself sang in us to exalt His glory.

I will sing of the mercies of the LORD for ever: with my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness to all generations. PSALM 89:1

He also asked that church singing have weight and majesty, fitting for the presence of God and His angels, not light or frivolous. And he wanted the Psalms sung not only in church but at home and at work, so that ordinary life would be filled with praise. He hoped they would replace the careless songs of the street.

An anatomy of the soul

Calvin loved the Psalms as a teacher as well as a worshipper. In the preface to his commentary on the Psalms, the same preface in which he speaks of his sudden conversion, he calls the book an anatomy of all the parts of the soul. There is no emotion anyone can feel, he says in effect, that is not represented there as in a mirror. The Holy Spirit has drawn out all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities and stormy passions by which our minds are commonly troubled.

Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD. Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. PSALM 130:1–2

This is why the Psalms are such a gift. They give us words for every condition of the heart, and they teach us to bring every condition to God. The lament is not less holy than the song of praise. The one who prays the Psalms learns that nothing needs to be hidden from God, and that every feeling can be turned into prayer.

He saw himself in them, too. In the same preface he compares his own trials to David’s, and says that David’s experience helped him understand his own. The man who rarely spoke about himself found his inner life written out in the Psalter.

Singing with understanding

For Calvin, the heart of all this was that worship must be understood. He was insistent that prayers and songs be in the language of the people. A songbird or a parrot may sing well, he says in the same preface, but it does not understand what it sings; it is the proper gift of human beings to know what they are singing. God is honoured when His people sing with the mind as well as the voice.

I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also. 1 CORINTHIANS 14:15

A word of balance

Calvin’s concern for the purity of worship led Geneva to sing the Psalms without instruments and, for the most part, to set aside other songs. Many in the Reformed tradition kept to psalm-singing alone for centuries. Others, including Isaac Watts and many who share Calvin’s theology, came to believe that the church may also sing hymns that speak openly of Christ, since the New Testament itself is full of songs to Him. The reader may honour Calvin’s love of the Psalms without concluding that nothing else may be sung.

What should not be lost is his conviction that the Psalms belong at the centre of Christian song and prayer. Churches that have let them fall silent have lost the widest, deepest and most honest school of prayer God has given.

Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD. Praise ye the LORD. PSALM 150:6

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Find a metrical psalm, perhaps the Old Hundredth, and sing or say it aloud this week.

2. Name the feeling that is strongest in you today. Find a psalm that expresses it, and pray it back to God.

3. Read Psalm 130 slowly as a prayer, whether or not your circumstances match it, and let it teach you.

4. Consider whether the songs you sing in worship are rich in Scripture. Ask how you might bring more of the Psalms into them.

5. Sing something to God at home or at work, not only in church.

A PRAYER

Lord, You have put songs in our mouths, and given us in the Psalms words for every condition of the heart.

Teach me to sing with understanding, and to bring my griefs and fears as well as my joys to You.

Fill my home and my work with praise, and let my whole life become a song to Your glory.

Let everything that has breath praise You, and let me be among them. Amen.