Sing a New Song

Anything from Reformation Heritage Books publishers is worth buying. This recent volume edited by Joel Beeke and Anthony Selvaggio is a fantastic book designed to stimulate the recovery of psalm singing in the twenty first century. The book comprises eleven chapters each written by a different writer. There are some big hitters in the list of writers - Beeke, Johnson and Murray to name but a few. Some of the chapters have an historical flavour, others on the blessing of singing psalms, and one or two from a more technical side. Malcolm Watt's defence of exclusive psalm singing is a belter.

I simply cannot recommend this book highly enough. Every right minded RP should fork out the fourteen quid and delight in the privilege of psalm singing. Any reader who imagines that there is just not enough weight to the exclusive psalm singing argument needs to read this too. And not for the chapter by Malcolm Watts but for the other ten chapters that speak so highly of singing the psalms. The only possible conclusion someone could come to is - why would I want to sing anything else.

Sad Day for Scotland

Many mornings I feel like weeping when I tune in the to BBC4 news and so was the case today. I woke to hear that the Free Church of Scotland is changing their position on worship. According to the highest court of their church each session is now at liberty to use materials other than the psalms for use in worship and also allowed to use instruments in public worship if they so wish. Why would the BBC cover such information? Like many across the land they think that this is a nice movement with the times. Personally I would be very afraid if the BBC commented with even the slightest tone of favour of anything that I did. What the public wants seems to have won again - after all one of the arguments of the men for change was that somehow singing psalms was keeping people away.
When the church develops a loose approach to what should happen in public worship history seems to show that this is the beginning of times of decline. I trust and pray that this is not the case for the Free Church, but only time will tell.
So very quickly changing to letting a session chose for itself could become a total abandoning of the book of praise (no matter what is presently placed in church order) that Christ has commanded for the exclusive use of His church. Soon the people of God may not know these words that Christ Himself sang knowing that they were filled with Him. Soon the people of God may not know the joy of having these words embedded in their minds for the day of trouble.
What a sad day for Scotland. Thank God some still hold to the Biblical teaching of non accompanied exclusive psalmody. And those who do stand firm - don't ever feel ashamed or that somehow Christ is limited by the singing of psalms - you stand with the vast majority of the history of the church of Jesus Christ.