How Israel and Christ Prayed: The Psalms as the School of Prayer

Come Follow Me 2026 — Combined Lesson C17 | Weeks 33–34 | Psalms 1–2; 8; 19–33; 40; 46; 49–51; 61–66; 69–72; 77–78; 85–86

The Psalms Are Prayers That Teach Us to Pray

The disciples came to Jesus with a single request: “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples” (Luke 11:1). It is a striking request. They had heard Jesus preach and teach. They had watched him perform miracles. They had seen him drive out demons and heal the sick. But what they asked for was not power or knowledge — it was prayer. They wanted to know how to talk to God the way he talked to God.

Jesus answered by giving them what we call the Lord’s Prayer. But the deeper answer to their question was already given in the book they all knew by heart: the Psalms. The Psalms are the master class in prayer. They model every form of human approach to God: praise, lament, confession, thanksgiving, intercession, trust, complaint, wonder, and surrender. They demonstrate that the covenant relationship with God is wide enough to contain every human experience.

The Psalms also reveal something about Jesus himself that the Gospels sometimes leave implicit. He prayed the Psalms. He sang them at Passover (the Hallel, Psalms 113–118), quoted them in the synagogue, cited them in debate with the Pharisees, and prayed them on the cross. The Psalms were the language of his inner life with the Father. To study the Psalms is, in a real sense, to overhear the conversations Jesus had with God throughout his mortal ministry.

This combined lesson draws together the major themes of Psalms 1–86 to give an overview of what the Psalms teach about prayer, about God’s character, and about the Messiah who is the Psalter’s central subject.

The Messianic Psalms: Christ Written in Prayer

The most important interpretive key for reading the Psalms as Latter-day Saints is recognizing that the Psalter is pervasively christological — it anticipates, describes, and celebrates the Messiah on nearly every page. The New Testament writers understood this clearly; they quoted the Psalms as messianic prophecy more than any other Old Testament source.

Consider the range of Christ’s life that the Psalms prophetically describe: His divine Sonship (Psalm 2:7 — “Thou art my Son”). His incarnation (Psalm 40:6–8 — “a body hast thou prepared me”, applied in Hebrews 10:5). His triumphal entry (Psalm 118:26 — “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the LORD”). His betrayal (Psalm 41:9 — “mine own familiar friend...hath lifted up his heel against me”, applied in John 13:18). His crucifixion (Psalm 22 — cry of dereliction, pierced hands and feet, parting of garments). The vinegar at the cross (Psalm 69:21). His resurrection (Psalm 16:10 — “thou wilt not leave my soul in hell”, quoted in Acts 2:27). His ascension and exaltation (Psalm 110:1 — “Sit thou at my right hand”, the most quoted OT verse in the NT).

This comprehensive prophetic portrait means that reading the Psalms is not merely an exercise in Old Testament piety. It is encounter with Christ himself, seen through the lens of Israel’s prayer, spoken in the language of human longing and divine promise. Every psalm that cries out for a deliverer is a cry that Christ answered. Every psalm that speaks of a coming king is a portrait of the One who is King of Kings. Every psalm that describes the suffering of the righteous is a shadow of the suffering of the Righteous One.

Major Messianic Psalms in Weeks 33–34

• Psalm 2 — Divine Sonship — Acts 13:33; Heb 1:5; 5:5
• Psalm 8 — Incarnate Son of Man crowned with glory — Heb 2:6–9
• Psalm 22 — The crucifixion in detail — Matt 27:46; John 19:24
• Psalm 40 — The Incarnation as obedient offering — Heb 10:5–7
• Psalm 69 — The suffering servant: zeal, reproach, vinegar — John 2:17; 19:28–29
• Psalm 72 — The universal messianic kingdom — the Abrahamic blessing fulfilled

The Forms of Prayer the Psalms Teach

One of the most practically important things the Psalms teach is the full range of legitimate prayer. Many people, especially in formal religious contexts, have a narrow sense of what prayer should look like: grateful, reverent, positive, ending on a note of submission and trust. The Psalms expand this dramatically.

Praise — The Psalms teach that praise is not a spiritual obligation performed for God’s benefit but a practice that transforms the one who prays it. Psalm 8’s wonder at the heavens, Psalm 23’s confidence in the Shepherd, Psalm 46’s declaration of God as refuge — these are not just nice sentiments. They are reality-shaping declarations that reorient the worshiper toward the true order of things.

Lament — More than a third of the Psalms are laments — prayers that complain, accuse, grieve, and demand. Psalm 22 (“Why hast thou forsaken me?”), Psalm 69 (“the waters are come in unto my soul”), Psalm 77 (“Will the Lord cast off for ever?”). The presence of lament in the canon is a theological statement: this kind of prayer is legitimate. God can handle our grief, our anger, our questions. He does not want performance; He wants presence.

Confession and Repentance — Psalm 51 is the supreme model: complete, honest, asking for transformation not just forgiveness, culminating in the offering God actually wants: a broken and contrite heart. Repentance in the Psalms is never merely behavioral; it always involves the interior — the heart, the spirit, the innermost being.

Meditation on the Law — Psalm 1 and Psalm 19 both celebrate the Torah — God’s revealed word — as the object of delighted, constant, transformative reflection. This is not rote scripture-reading; it is the kind of deep, repetitive, daylong engagement with sacred text that shapes the character over time.

Trust in Crisis — Psalm 46’s “Be still and know that I am God,” Psalm 62’s “My soul waiteth only upon God; from him cometh my salvation,” Psalm 63’s “My soul thirsteth for thee.” The Psalms model what it looks like to choose trust deliberately, against the tide of circumstance, through the act of prayer itself.

Historical Memory — Psalm 78 retells the story of Israel’s wilderness failures not as condemnation but as instruction: “that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children: That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.” Remembering God’s works is itself a form of prayer, an act of covenant faithfulness.

The God the Psalms Reveal

The Psalms are not merely about human experience — they are a sustained revelation of who God is. Read across this two-week section, a portrait of the divine character emerges that is comprehensive and personally compelling.

God is the Shepherd who provides, protects, and guides (Psalm 23). He is the Refuge and Fortress whose strength is available in the most extreme crisis (Psalm 46). He is the Creator who regards human beings with a love that exceeds all proportion to their smallness in the cosmos (Psalm 8). He is the Righteous One who will vindicate the suffering servant and not ultimately leave the faithful in darkness (Psalm 22, 69). He is the God of chesed — covenant love that outlasts every human failure and every dark night (Psalm 51, 86). He is the Coming King whose reign will be perfectly just, universally acknowledged, and permanently established (Psalm 72).

This is not a distant, abstract deity who sets creation in motion and then withdraws. The God of the Psalms is engaged, relational, responsive, and personally invested in the lives of those who call upon Him. He is disturbed by their suffering, pleased by their trust, delighted by their praise, and responsive to their repentance. He can be “found” — sought, met, encountered — by those who “draw near to him with full purpose of heart” (as the Book of Mormon puts it).

Making the Psalms Personal: A Practice for Families and Individuals

The Psalms were not meant to be studied from a distance; they were meant to be prayed. One of the most ancient practices of the Christian tradition — still maintained in monastic communities and many liturgical churches — is the regular praying of the entire Psalter, cycling through all 150 psalms over a period of weeks or months. This practice is less common in Latter-day Saint culture but deeply consonant with our theology of personal, fervent, honest prayer.

For families and individuals studying these chapters, consider a simple practice: choose one psalm from this week’s reading and pray it — read it aloud as a prayer, inserting your own name and circumstances where the psalmist uses “I.” Psalm 23 prayed in the midst of a valley experience; Psalm 46 prayed in a moment of anxiety; Psalm 51 prayed after a specific failure; Psalm 8 prayed while standing outside under the night sky. Allow the ancient words to become your words, and discover that the same God who heard the psalmist will hear you.

The great sixteenth-century reformer John Calvin called the Psalter “an anatomy of all parts of the soul.” Whatever you are feeling — whatever your situation — somewhere in the Psalms, someone has prayed it before you, and God answered them. The Psalms are the record of that conversation; and the same invitation stands: “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you” (James 4:8).

Discussion Questions

• Which psalm in this week’s reading speaks most directly to your current experience? Why?
• How does reading the Psalms as prayers of Jesus change how you read them?
• Psalm 51 asks for a “clean heart” — not just forgiven actions. What is the difference, and how does this shape your understanding of repentance?
• Which messianic psalm from this reading surprised you the most with its christological precision?
• How do the lament psalms (22, 69, 77) change your sense of what is appropriate to bring to God in prayer?