Why is Psalm 100 included in Scripture when we don’t know who wrote it?

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent sermons. This last week, we finished up our mini-series in the Psalms, looking at when and how to pray. And this final week, we talked about Psalm 100, which is a psalm of thanksgiving. Um, in the psalm, his thankfulness isn’t tied to any specific set of circumstances directly happening in his life, but his thanksgiving is much more tied into generally and completely being included with God’s people, uh, free from guilt, because he’s giving thanksgiving in the courts. And we said that’s beneficial that his thanksgiving isn’t really tied to something specific happening in his daily life because it gives us a model for, um, praying with thanksgiving at all times, kind of regardless of our circumstances. Um, but the question comes in this week asking, uh, this Psalm 100, you may notice in your Bible, it probably says anonymous, which it is. Um, and, and we, because he doesn’t really give us any clues about what’s happening in his daily life, we, we have no idea when, when this was written. We don’t know who wrote it. Um, we don’t, you know, we, we don’t know at what point in the biblical timeline somebody wrote this down. It’s just there. It’s just in our scriptures. And so somebody must have made the decision at some point to include this in holy scripture without even really knowing much about it. Uh, so how did that happen?

Why would we include, uh, passages of scripture that we don’t know who wrote it, we don’t know when they wrote it, we don’t know much other than it’s been included. Why is it included? Um, so I’ll respond to that in kind of two different ways. Why it was probably included to start with, and then why we as Christians want to include it today. Um, so first, why, why it was included to start with.

A lot of these psalms, as we’ve said, it’s like a prayer journal. It’s also like a hymn book because they would sing these prayers. Um, and so they would have collections of hymns that they would sing together. They would have collections of prayers that they would read together. And over time, um, the, the leadership and the community found resonance with them. Uh, uh, when they’re reading them, they know that is true.

It is in accordance with the rest of our scriptures. It doesn’t say anything false. And the more they leaned into them, the more they included them in their scriptures. It’s similar to today, we might have a creed, uh, that we agree with that, uh, correctly articulates the faith. We might have a hymn that we’re like, that is, that is 100% true. Uh, there’s nothing false in that hymn at all.

And over time, those were, uh, incorporated into what they believed was actually scripture. Um, it was so true that it came from God, basically. Um, so that’s probably why it began to be included to begin with. Uh, but why we should take stock in it today, uh, is, is really because Jesus did. Uh, you know, we don’t have to trust those leaders long ago, uh, for, for, for whatever reasons they decided to include it.

And we, you know, we’ve lost track of them. We don’t even know who they are. But we do know that Jesus included the Psalms, uh, as holy scripture. He’s, um, you know, when he meets with his disciples on the road after his resurrection, Luke 24, and he’s showing them how it says, you know, like, law, prophets, and psalms all point to him. Um, you know, Jesus said something similar, Matthew 5. He’s like, I didn’t come to, um, to destroy the law or the prophets.

I came to fulfill them. Um, and, and in Jesus’ day, when you referred to the Old Testament, you of course didn’t say, in the Old Testament, because there was, they only had the one testament. But they broke the Old Testament kind of into three sections: law, prophets, and writings, or law, prophets, and psalms.

And you could, you could, uh, you know, shorthand, say, law and prophets to mean the whole thing. And so when he says, um, uh, I didn’t come to abolish the law and the prophets, I came to fulfill them, most likely he’s including the psalms in that as well. Um, and then finally, Jesus, I, quoted the psalms all the time. You know, maybe most identifiably when he’s on the cross and he says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

That’s from Psalm 22. But he quoted the psalms many other times in his life. He, he, uh, acted like, he referred to the psalms as if they were scripture. Um, he, he gives them credibility for how he talked about them, uh, both in reference to himself and, you know, more largely in his ministry overall.

So the reason that we would put faith in the psalms and say, this, these, these really are divine writings, uh, from God or should be included in holy scripture, the, the real reason that we include it is because Jesus included them. Um, even if they’re anonymous, even if we don’t know who wrote them, even if we don’t know exactly what point that they started being used, uh, as scripture from all those, uh, ancient saints who originally included them. Uh, so thanks for the question.

We’ll see you next time.