The Amazing Truth at the Heart of the Psalms
What Is the Message of the Psalms?
The message of the Psalms is really sophisticated and hard to capture, but I'll try to do it. The message of the Psalms is: God loves you.
God loves you.
That needs a thousand footnotes. It needs to be filled out in all different kinds of directions, clarified, and deepened—but that is the message of the Psalms.
The Lord is my shepherd. (Psalm 23:1)
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases. (Psalm 103:2–3)
The resounding theme is God's tender care and his heart of love for you. "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases"— in fact, that language of "steadfast love," which comes up dozens of times in the Psalms, is translating the same Hebrew word hesed, which refers to God's covenant love. It means is he's bound himself to us. He can't not love his people.
That is what the Psalms drives home for us, reassures us of, and calms us down with, time and time again. That's the message of the Psalms: He loves you.
Related Articles
Introducing the 'ESV Devotional Psalter'
The devotional content of the ESV Devotional Psalter is intentionally designed to point to and highlight the biblical text, and to build bridges from the Psalms into the reader's heart.
Why Devotional Bible Reading Is Good Bible Reading
The purpose of reading the Bible devotionally is to commune with God and grow closer to him.
Apart from God, man gets himself into all sorts of spiritually dangerous and eternity-threatening situations.
