INTRODUCTION: This is the first of twelve psalms ascribed to Asaph. Mostly likely this is the Asaph who lived at the same time as David (2 Chron. 29:30), although that name does appear later (2 Kings 18:18). This psalm is a wonderful illustration of how thoroughly the godly saints of the old covenant understood true …
Ride Us Like a Nightmare
“Some seem to think that we poor souls, who are the Puritanic school, are ‘cabin’d, cribb’d, confined’ by harsh dogmas, from which we would gladly escape. They imagine that we have to check every rising aspiration of our nobler selves, so as to preserve the tyranny of a certain iron system. John Calvin is supposed …
Fifth Decade of Psalms/Psalm 49
INTRODUCTION: We come now to a very potent expression of the biblical take on blind wealth in the face of inexorable death. As we treat the subject of our riches, let us take care, first, to remember the whole counsel of God on this subject, and let us take even greater care to not allow …
And Where Is He In Your Preaching?
“In forming your system of astronomy, where do you put the sun? If you are not clear on that cardinal matter, your scheme will be a failure. If you have not found out the true ‘tabernacle for the sun,’ I am not very particular as to where you put Mars or Jupiter. Where is Christ …
Holiness
Holiness is a glorious perfection belonging to the nature of God, hence he is in Scripture styled often the Holy One, the Holy One of Jacob, the Holy One of Israel, and oftener entitled Holy than Almighty, and set forth by this part of his dignity more than by any other (Stephen Charnock) In a …
Dried to Death
“So long as the life of the sermon is strengthened by preparation, you may prepare to the utmost; but if the soul evaporates in the process, what is the good of such injurious toil? It is a kind of murder which you have wrought upon the sermon which you have dried to death” (Charles Spurgeon, …
Vocation and Spiritual Gifts
What do you want to be when you (finally) grow up? If you’ve had trouble figuring out your gifts and what God has called you to do and to be, you aren’t alone. The Lord enjoins every one of us, in all the actions of life, to have respect to our own calling . . …
Sermons, Not Essays
“Do you not think that many sermons are ‘prepared’ until the juice is crushed out of them, and zeal could not remain in such dry husks? . . . You will never get a crop if you plant boiled potates. You can boil a sermon to a turn, so that no life remaineth in it …
What Balance Means
Balance is very difficult for us as Christians to maintain. But balance in worship, balance in doctrine, balance in good deeds, and balance in individual practice, are nevertheless required. At the same time, balance is to be defined according to the Word, and not according to the moderate nervousness the world has about religious things. …
Ah, for a Vertebrate Ministry!
“This suspicion is born of want of fidelity in ministers. I saw, just now, outside the shop of a marine-store dealer, a placard which runs thus: ‘Fifty tons of bones wanted.’ ‘Yes,’ I said to myself, ‘mostly backbones.’ Fifty tons of them! I could indicate a place where they could take fifty tons, and not …