As we have noted a number of times, the psalmist had adversaries, men who were antagonistic toward him. God wants us to have much experience in bringing our adversaries before Him, and in His Word, He teaches us how to do this. We need to learn how to pray about our enemies. “Hear the right, …
Lift Up Your Heads
The earth belongs to God! All it contains is only His And all who breathe are His as well. What is His right to speak this way? He fashioned all that is, He placed it on the seas. Who can ascend before His throne? Who can come before His face, Or stand within His holy …
Counting Your Shekels
The kingdom of heaven is like this. A certain merchant established his business, and he thought that God had an obligation to bless it. He took great care to do everything that he was supposed to do. He made sure the business was closed on Sunday, and he made doubly sure to tithe his profits …
What God Is Like
The way God reveals Himself in time and history is a revelation in some way of His eternal nature. As God created the world, He was not composing some sort of ultimate free verse. We look at the world, and unless we are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, we see His eternal power and majesty. …
This Coming Week
Our Lord and God, we come before You now in the great name of Jesus Christ. Your provision for us this last week has been bountiful, and we glorify You for it. We look forward in faith and gratitude for what you will supply to us in this coming week, built on the foundation of …
A Vietnam War Crime
Well, it seems that Vietnam is not only back in the news, but is back in a visceral way. Since we are all reliving this, and I had no real outlet for addressing any of it at the time, allow me just a few thoughts. I watched a few minutes of John Kerry’s 1971 Senate …
Show Me a Token
Nothing reveals a person’s approach to epistemology more rapidly than trouble-shooting in conflict does. “What’s the trouble here? How did the trouble start?” Almost always the way this kind of question is answered serves to extend and continue the trouble. When Ahab decided to start worshiping Baal, the end result of this was a drought …
Images in Worship
The human heart is naturally prone to idolatry, and this is especially the case with the religious heart. Never forget that the religious heart is not the same thing as the gracious heart. What is the second commandment? “You shall not make for yourself a carved image — any likeness of anything that is in …
Hunger and Thirst
We must begin by noting that the Beatitude we are considering here does not say, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after blessedness . . . “ We all want to be happy, blessed, and we are tempted to make that state of blessing our goal. But the spiritual irony is that such blessings …
Lift Up Your Heads/Psalm 24
INTRODUCTION The psalter contains all of human experience. In Psalm 22 we saw faith in agony and conflict. In Psalm 23, we saw pastoral peace and trust. Here we see the majesty of triumph. THE TEXT The earth is the LORD’S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. For he …