Don has a post titles 10 Tough Psalms for Worship Songs that deserves some serious thinking. I relate it to my recent post Psalm 95 and 81: Interrupting Praise with Prophecy?. Do we tend to censor the more challenging material in our worship?
I’m continuing to read from the commentary on Hebrews by David L. Allen (Hebrews in the New American Commentary). I’m bound to get way ahead in my reading but I want to make a few remarks about the prologue, which both Dr. Allen and I would say goes through verse 4. I have written on…
Baker takes a series of short sections here, and I’m not grouping them into any larger passage, because I’m under some pressure and these short sections are working for me right now. Let me note also that while the electronic edition of Rahlf’s LXX that I’m using today (GnomeSword) follows the English verse divisions, the…
While there is much violence in the Old Testament (and a certain amount in the New), the basic ideas of grace are still expressed regularly. Nowhere is this clearer, in my opinion, than in the appeal to salvation history in passages of judgment and of exhortation. The Old Testament passage and the Psalm for Proper…
When my mother passed away in April, my brother and sisters and I chose a text for her grave marker: “I will content with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children” (Isaiah 49:25, KJV). It was one of mother’s favorite texts, and her concept of “children” was broad. She was a…
The man was a good Christian. Any of us would be quite pleased to have his reputation for faith and Christian charity. He was part of a study group I led, and we were discussing witnessing. “I’m afraid to put a fish symbol on my car,” he said. “I might do something that’s not Christlike,…
In the way of your testimonies I rejoiceAs over great wealth. Teachers and preachers often say that Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, was moving the law inside and making it of the heart. And that is certainly a theme of that sermon. But the fact is that the heart was always the object…
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As I mentioned before, there was a strong tendency in the Church of England at least in the 1970s to sing only the first seven verses of the Venite, Psalm 95, which was supposed to be sung or said daily at Morning Prayer, at least according to the 1662 prayer book. One updated prayer book had the last part of the psalm printed in brackets with a note suggesting it was optional. I am not sure about more recent liturgies because my current church doesn’t sing or read psalms at all, unless this happens to be the Bible text for the service.