This is a striking psalm, and is listed among the penitential psalms. It begins with virtually the same words as Psalm 6, the first of the penitential psalms. But the repentance shown by David here is quite distinct from what many Christians call repentance, and this is something we really need to deal with. The …
And the Foundation of Their Art
“We want, above all, to know what it felt like to be an early Protestant. One thing is certain. It felt very unlike being a ‘puritan’ such as we meet in nineteenth-century fiction. . . In the mind of a Tyndale or Luther, as in the mind of St. Paul himself, this theology was by …
And the Name of the Disease is Sin
“The symptoms may vary tremendously from case to case, but the business of the preacher is not to medicate symptoms, it is to to treat the disease” (Lloyd-Jones, Preachers and Preaching, p. 134).
Actually the Muslims Were the Ones on a Crusade
“While the Europeans occupied themselves with hysterical speculative eschatology, the Ottomans expanded their conquests. Sultan Selim called for a renewed Ji’had and added Greece, Macedonia, and the Balkans to his empire. His son, Suleiman, swept into Belgrade in 1521, expelled the Templars from Rhodes in 1522, and conquered Hungary in 1526. Then in 1529 he …
A Sexual Haunting
“As syphilis spread all over Europe, the horror at its unprecedented virulence spread with it. It was the sexual version of the black plague. As the descriptions of the doctors who first diagnosed the disease make clear, the advent of syphilis had much to do with the iconography of horror. The horrible faces in horror …
When Accusers Name
“Such men are accused under such a name, but when things come to be examined their name is all their crime” (Burroughs, Irenicum, p. 248).
Sprawl With Pall!
Correction: I have been informed that my example of the gays or lesbians below was misinformed. The proposed law allows everybody up to one boarder and this allows for the scenario I described. My apologies for the bum dope. The law, however, does discriminate against a bisexual with three kids. It has been a while …
Marking 911
Today marks the sixth year since the 911 attacks. This is just a brief post to remember those who died, and to express the fervent wish that my grandchildren will not have to deal with the same sort of threat from international terror, domestic erosions of their liberty, or both. It is easy in the …
The Pope’s Easter Hat
Scott Clark has had some more to say, and he says it here. As part of his conclusion, he says: So, let the covenantal moralists, the New Perspectivists, and Federal Visionists (and related folks) have their semi-Pelagian grace and cooperation with grace system. If they want to try to stand, on the basis of grace …
Can’t Even Find the Stump
One of the temptations that the righteous have to deal with is the temptation of envying the unrighteous. This is a psalm to set that temptation in its proper context, and so to help us deal with it. Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity. For they …