The opening verses of John’s Gospel introduce to us the unspeakably glorious reality of God’s Triune being, and to its unfathomableness. Before all worlds existed, before anything was, God was! And staggeringly, he was a community, a fellowship: ‘and the Word was with (“face to face with”) God’! The Father was with the Son, and the Son was with the Father. And together they were with the Holy Spirit. 

What would you say is the fundamental doctrine of the Christian Faith? For many of us, the instinctive answer would be, ‘justification by faith alone, in Christ alone’. There is no doubt, or should be no doubt, that this is a biblical and evangelical fundamental. Didn’t Martin Luther describe justification by faith alone, in Christ alone, as ‘The article of a standing or falling church’! We surely understand what Luther is saying. Could anything be more important than knowing how God brings judgment-deserving sinners into a right and reconciled relationship with himself?
Equally surely, however, we cannot say that justification by faith alone is the fundamental doctrine of the Christian Faith. That honour rightly and surely belongs to the doctrine of the Trinity. God himself is the fundamental truth of the Christian Faith. He is Truth itself. He is the Creator, Sustainer, Initiator and Sovereign Lord of all that is. God does not exist for us, we exist for him. Paul’s declaration in Romans 11:36 wonderfully makes the point: ‘For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory for ever! Amen.’
The pre-eminence of God’s Triune being is heralded in a number of ways in the Scriptures. In Genesis l we see the Triune God in creation: God, his Word, and his Spirit, together bringing into being worlds and star systems out of nothing, and creating man and woman in their own image. Who we are is a personal and visual reminder to us every moment of our existence, of the priority of the Triune God. It is surely not without significance, to say no more, that God should disclose the Triunity of his being to us in the Bible’s opening chapter. All that is has its being from, and is a reflection of the Triune God. In the New Testament, we see the Triune God working in harmony to effect the salvation of sinners: The Father purposing, the Son saving and the Spirit applying (though all actively at work at every moment and at every phase of redemption).
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The Psalms in their entirety speak of God’s promised Messiah-King. He is the “blessed man” who exemplifies the righteous life that Psalm 1 portrays. He is the King whose enemies will become His footstool (Pss. 2; 110:1). He is the righteous sufferer who epitomizes trust in the Lord (Ps. 22).  They poignantly remind us that the pattern of death and resurrection that was etched into the holy humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ is the pattern that the Holy Spirit seeks to replicate in the lives of all God’s children.

The book of Psalms was the songbook our Lord Jesus Christ sang from every Sabbath. In today’s church we have a myriad of songbooks; in Jesus’ day there was but one songbook: the 150 songs contained in the Psalter. How well do we know the Savior’s songbook?
1. The book of Psalms was written over a period of one thousand years.
Psalm 90, a psalm of Moses, was probably the earliest psalm, written around 1500 BC. It is difficult to know when the last psalm was composed, but Psalm 126, which begins, “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream,” probably refers to Israel’s return from exile in 537 BC. 
2. Approximately 40 percent of the psalms are laments.
Out of the 150 psalms, fifty-nine are laments, songs composed in a spiritual and theological minor key. There are psalms of unqualified joy and delight, such as Psalm 47. But why so many laments? The life of faith, personal and corporate, is lived in a fallen world and opposed by the flesh, the world, and the devil. Jesus told His disciples, “In the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33). The Psalms give heart expression to the struggles, sorrows, weariness, perplexities, and failures that are the daily experience of every believer. Think of these words from Psalm 44:
In God we have boasted continually,and we will give thanks to your name forever. Selah
But you have rejected us and disgraced usand have not gone out with our armies.You have made us turn back from the foe,and those who hate us have gotten spoil.You have made us like sheep for slaughterand have scattered us among the nations. (Ps. 44:8–11)
Jesus would have sung these words as He stood before His Father representing His people. Or think of these words from Psalm 51, King David’s song of repentance after the tragedy of his sin with Bathsheba:
Have mercy on me, O God,according to your steadfast love;according to your abundant mercyblot out my transgressions.Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,and cleanse me from my sin!
For I know my transgressions,and my sin is ever before me. (Ps. 51:1–3)
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