Christ’s Psalms, Our Psalms – Study Resource

The four-volume, hardcover Study Resource is a Reformed commentary on the Psalms that does two things differently than other commentaries:

1. While explaining each psalm in its context, the Study Resource shows how all the psalms reveal the Savior Jesus Christ;

2. Each chapter provides rich commentary in an accessible and efficient format. In very little time, the reader can find what he/she needs. The busy adult, parent, teacher, deacon, elder, or pastor can utilize it quickly for devotional insights, teaching points, or exegetical issues by navigating through any of sixteen headings.

16 HEADINGS

It’s this handy feature that busy readers will especially appreciate and helps set the Study Resource apart. In most commentaries, you have to read through almost the whole chapter on a given psalm before you come to the details you are looking for. That can be time-consuming. In the Study Resource, all you have to do is glance over the bolded headings and zero-in on the parts that you need. While a person can certainly read the whole chapter with much profit, the busy reader looking for one or two things in or about a psalm can find them here very quickly.

For example, if you’re a pastor researching a psalm’s important terms, you’ll find them listed and explained under Key Words. If you’re a Christian teacher looking to explain to your students an odd or difficult expression, just skip down to Unusual Words and Expressions. Not interested in Poetic Elements or the psalm’s Structure? Simply pass over those rubrics on to Main Message and Application. Want to know how the psalm connects to the rest of the Old Testament? Try Old Testament Links. Is your psalm quoted or referred to in the New Testament? You’ll find it explained under New Testament Links. Whatever you hope to find in any psalm can be quickly located by navigating through the headings which are used throughout the volume.

Click here for a list of all 16 heading along with a brief explanation of each.

CHRIST IN THE CENTER

Perhaps the most unique feature of Christ’s Psalms, Our Psalms – Study Resource and certainly its most important is that the lines and links to the coming Messiah are carefully fleshed-out under the heading Christ Connection. Each of the sixteen pastors who contributed to this work believes that the entire Old Testament, including the Psalms, is inspired by Christ’s Spirit and all of it points forward in some deliberate and meaningful way to the coming of God in the flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ.

To be sure, each psalm has its own immediate context and meaning connected to the human author and his experiences. These are taken seriously and explained in the Study Resource. Yet because of the Spirit’s inspiration, there is much more going on than just human events and emotions. The Bible is God’s self-revelation and the arrival of the Lord Jesus is the pinnacle of that revelation, the wonderful event anticipated throughout the Old Testament period. For that reason, the authors set out to find the connection to Christ in every psalm. This effort finds support in the fact that the book of Psalms is the most-quoted and alluded to Old Testament book by New Testament writers, many times in direct connection to the Savior.

CHRIST IN EVERY PSALM

This is the one aspect that is lacking in many works on the Psalms. Most explainers stay in the Old Testament world of the human writer; only a few make a passing reference to the New Testament and fewer still to the psalms’ relationship to Christ. While some quality studies go out of their way to speak of Christ, they are limited to a small number of psalms. There appears to be no work which makes a point of bringing out Christ in each of the 150 psalms and that is one of the main motivators behind our work.

While not wanting to jump to Christ too fast (thus bypassing the human author’s first meaning) or in a fanciful way, yet in each of the 150 psalms the contributor has labored to find the legitimate Spirit-given pointers to the coming Savior who is both God and Man. We hope you will find these connections soundly text-based, in agreement with all of Scripture, enlightening and faith-building.

Peter H. Holtvlüwer is the pastor of Ancaster Canadian Reformed Church and a co-editor of Clarion magazine.