What are some types of psalms in the Bible?

• Psalm 1, wisdom psalm
• Psalm 8, praise psalm
• Psalm 13, disorientation psalm
• Psalm 30, reorientation psalm
• Psalm 51, confessional psalm
• Psalm 67, benediction psalm
• Psalm 80, intercession psalm
• Psalm 95, call to worship psalm
• Psalm 103, thanksgiving psalm
• Psalm 119, ministry of the word psalm
• Psalm 145, offering psalm
• Psalm 146, orientation psalm

Sermon ideas about the Psalms

Location - Dislocation - Relocation

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann teaches that there is a cyclical nature to the psalms that mimics the cyclical nature of faith and discipleship. First, we affirm what is true about God. This is our starting point, our "location." Second, our experience of life proves discordant to our starting point. Wrestling with what we know to be true and what we know we are experiencing is our "dislocation." Third, our trouble resolves in some fashion. We are able to affirm, again, what we believed in the beginning, but we do so bearing scars. Offering our thanksgiving for rescue and redemption is "relocation." The psalms give us language of truthful affirmation, injured doubt, and recovering reorientation.

Worship words

The book of Psalms is the earliest compiled hymnbook of the worshiping people of God. Claimed by Jews and Christians alike, these words have shaped the imaginations, emotions, minds, and volitions of believing people since the beginning. They are "worship words," which is to say that they belong to a community gathered. The psalms — and, in fact, all that we do in worship are not simply entertainment for the elect. What we say in worship shapes and forms us as the people God uses in the world. If you have the occasion to spend more than one week with the psalms, consider crafting a series around the various elements of your worship service (call to worship, praise, confession, ministry of the Word, dedication, offering, and blessing), finding the connection between worship in your context and worship at all times and in all places.

Holding our troubles before God

"Come you sinners, poor and needy, weak and wounded, sick and sore . . . if you tarry til you're better, you will never come at all." ("Come, Ye Sinners." Joseph Hart (1712-1768), Public Domain.) One-third of the psalter is comprised of lament psalms. Some are prayers of confession over personal sin and its consequences. Some are cries over injustice in the world and injury done to us through no discernible fault of our own. Though these sentiments show up all over the psalter, they are rare in our worship services. Perhaps it feels illicit to talk to God this way. But the lesson of the psalter is that God cherishes us — even when we're bedraggled, impertinent, and raw — and longs to hear from us as we are. God does not operate under the dictates of etiquette that remonstrate, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." Prayer, worship, and church are not benefitted by polite pieties. Church is not the place we go to forget the troubles of the world. Church is the place that we go to hold the troubles of the world before God and demand, "Please fix this." Thus we would be well-served to tell the whole truth of psalter in regular rotation.

Tell the truth

Pastor and theologian Eugene Peterson writes of the psalms, "It is easy to be honest before God with our hallelujahs; somewhat more difficult to be honest in our hurts; it is nearly impossible to be honest before God in the dark emotions of our hate." (Peterson, Eugene.Answering God: the Psalms as tools for prayer.HarperCollins, 1991.) The psalms are a gift to the worshiping community in order that we might tell the truth. Not a spiritual, Sunday-go-to-meeting truth, but a Monday morning, work-a-day-world truth. There is not an emotion we've experienced — even the ones we don't talk about at cocktail parties — that falls outside the bounds of the psalter. Surely the psalms teach us to pray in hallelujahs and in laugher but also in tears and in tantrums.