“Where there is true grace, there is an insatiable desire of more.” – Andrew Bromhall
“Faith without righteousness is presumption; righteousness without truth is hypocrisy.” – William Gouge
“A heart full of grace is better than a head full of notions.” – Thomas Goodwin
“There is more mercy in Christ than sin in us.” -Richard Sibbes
Presbyterian theologian Gresham J. Machen is generally connected with the various theological controversies in Princeton in the early 1900′s and the founding of Westminister Theological Seminary and the OPC.
However, there is another aspect to his thought, specifically relating to politicial issues. Was he a libertarian? George Marsden, The Freeman, and other sources believe so!
Historian George Marsden called him “radically libertarian” and stated that he “opposed almost any extension of state power and took stands on a variety of issues. Like most libertarians, his stances violated usual categories of liberal or conservative.”
Daniel Walker said the following of him: “Machen is one of many prominent American defenders of political liberty and economic freedom who have been largely forgotten by a people intent on abandoning its heritage of freedom.”
Machen opposed the military draft during World War I and also opposed prohibition, two stances that might not seem to jive with the common caricature of how a theologically conservative Christian would think, especially in the early 1900′s.
Here are a few quotes right from Machen:
“Personality can only be developed in the realm of individual choice. And that realm, in the modern state, is being slowly but steadily eradicated.”
“Everywhere there rises before our eyes the specter of a society where security, if it is attained at all, will be attained at the expense of freedom, where the security that is attained will be the security of fed beasts in a stable, and where all the high aspirations of humanity will have been crushed by an all-powerful state.”
On education, he said “If you give the bureaucrats the children, you might as well give them everything else as well.” He also said: “Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the intimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist.”
I’d like to point out a new blog on my blog roll: Pondering Christ. It’s a blog that my good friend Matt runs. He has a very interesting and amazing testimony of God’s grace in coming out of the Jehovah’s Witness organization into evangelical Christianity and eventually arriving at Reformed Baptist convictions. He also is starting a You Tube channel. So, you might want to check that out once he starts posting videos to it!
In the frequent conflicts that arise in the church over worship and which songs are appropriate, it is often forgotten that we have an hymnal with indisputable and God-inspired lyrics–the book of Psalms. And we have a COMMAND from God to sing them. If you walked into your average church and suggested they sing 5 modern praise choruses, nobody would bat an eye. However, if you suggested that they sing Psalms 42-44, you would likely get quite a few odd looks. “You mean, psalms are, like, actually for singing?”
I do not believe in Exclusive Psalmody (the belief that the church should only sing Psalms). I believe the church can and should make use of the rich history of non-inspired hymns in their worship. However I love the Psalms and I believe, in some ways, a rediscovery of the Psalms is one of the principle ways in which the Church can avoid the trends toward shallowness, hallowness, flippancy, and false doctrine in worship. If the Church wants to be vibrant and healthy, it should frequently read, pray, and sing the Psalms. Ironically, some of the people who are most vocally against the use of human-authored creeds have no problem whatsoever departing from the God-inspired Psalms and focusing exclusively on human-authored songs. There is no problem with human-authored songs, but they should be Biblically faithful and they should not eclipse the Psalms or cause us to neglect them completely.
Here are some REASONS WHY WE SHOULDN’T NEGLECT THE PSALMS
1. They are God-inspired. They perfectly express the mind of God. They are undisputible in their Biblical accuracy and their emphasis. And they form a perfect cohension with the rest of the Bible, as Athanasius said they “[enjoy] an affinity and fellowship with the other books [of the Bible] which can not be equalled in any human-authored document”.
2. The Bible (even the New Testament) instructs us to sing them, by command and example. Eph.5:19, Col.3:16, and Jam.5:13. On reflecting on how to improve church worship services, Don Whitney stated “I had neglected a clear scriptural command. I’d been involved in the leadership of worship services for more than fifteen years before I realized what many Christians have long understood and entire denominational traditions have known for centuries: God commands us to sing psalms.”
3. They teach us how to pray, plead with God, and be earnest in our pursuit of God’s presence and godliness.
4. They reflect an amazing diversity and unity. They reflect different authors, many differing moods, differing emphasises, different historical contexts, and many topics. And yet there is a great unity of theme in them. They cover emotions, please, and aspects of worship that are rarely touched on in BOTH contemporary songs and old hymns.
5. The rich spirituality, devotion, wholeness, and insight into the human condition are rarely duplicated well in hymns new or old. The Psalms are unique, and one would expect them to be unique as God-inspired songs. They are also
lyrically amazing, well-adapted to melody and what not. They are amazing, poetically speaking.
6. The vast number of Psalms and their richness provide a great pattern for godly hymns. But if we are not familiar with the Psalms, we will not understand this matter and consequently will not be able to apply these lessons into our own hymn writing and/or our evaluation of songs/hymns.
7. They serve to unite the people of God. When we sing the Psalms, we New Covenant believers are singing the very same songs that the Old Covenant believers sang. And when we sing the Psalms in the contemporary church, we are singing the very same songs as the Ancient Church. It helps us to see the unity and universality of the people of God throughout all ages. The singing of Psalms is historically grounded in the early church, the Reformation, and onwards.
8. They speak as loudly and clearly to New Covenant believers as they did to Old Covenant believers. The first proof for this are the NT commands mentioned in point #2. The second proof is fact that “all scripture” is inspired and profitable, and the Psalms are Scripture. The third proof is the extensive use of the Psalms by the New Testament authors. The NT authors quote Psalms more than any other Old Testament book, with probably around 100 direct quotations–and thats not including indirect references! It was been estimated that about 7% of the New Testament is actually quotes from the Psalms! It’s almost as if you can’t read the New Testament without reading the book of Psalms. The fourth proof is the inherently Messianic nature of many of the Psalms. It is totally inaccurate to say that Christ is not in the Psalms! Johnathan Edwards once said “The main subject of these songs [are] the glorious things of the gospel…the use that is made of them in the New Testament…Here Christ is spoken of in multitudes of songs.” Matthew Henry further said “In the book of Psalms there is so much of Christ and His gospel, as well as of God and His law, that it has been called the abstract or summary of both Testaments.”
9. They are versatile. Because they have been around so long, many time-tested methods of singing them and arranging them have developed, with a surprising amount of diversity. They also are versatile in that they can be used in all sorts of circumstances. And they can be used in various ways, prayed, read, and sung.
10. They are a vital reminder of our need to be grounded Biblically as we worship, we are not worshiping on a whim and what we sing must carefully reflect Biblical truth. This rootedness is very easy to forget when focus 100% on non-inspired songs.
Here are some PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS
1. Read the Psalms straight through as soon as you can and as often as you can. And pray through them. Learn from it how to express yourself to God, and many other lessons about spirituality and godliness. Learn what God loves and what God hates through the Psalms. Let the cries for deliverance and mercy and God’s presence become yours. Since there are so many Psalms, you could probably continually cycle through the Psalms and hardly notice the repetition.
2. Use the Psalms as the standard for Christian worship! Hymns appropriate for church worship should follow the pattern and have similar aims, emphasis, and approach to the Psalms. Hymns do not have to necessarily quote verbatim from the Psalms, but all good hymns should show the *influence* of the Psalms upon them.
3. Do not let old or new hymns completely crowd out the Psalms in worship! Any song book worth its weight should (a) have a lot of Psalms and (b) have a lot of hymns that are very Psalm-like or quote frequently from the Psalms. If there aren’t many Psalms in the hymn book, a Psalter designed for singing could also be used, like the one published by Crown & Covenant (http://www.crownandcovenant.com/) and there are many others.
4. Get some recordings of the Psalms being sung. Its a good way to listen to and remember God’s Word. There are a lot of good recordings. Wordmp3.com has “Cantus Christi Hymnal Collection”, which has acappella 4-part-harmony recordings of most of the Psalms. Crown & Covenant (http://www.crownandcovenant.com/) is also great for these sort of audio resources.
I hope that this has whet your appetite for the Psalms!!! I hope and pray that the church of today will have a deep appreciation of and love for the Psalms–in singing them, praying them, and reading them! And, having gotten that taste of the majesty of the Psalms, will not settle for any sort of flippant, hallow, or shallow worship.
In commenting on the “springs without water” metaphor in II Peter 2:17, Michael Green says:
“Heterodoxy is all very novel in the classroom; it is extremely unsatisfying in the parish.”
(2 Peter and Jude, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, p.126)
If you are looking for a P.G. Wodehouse audio book, let me recommend any of the narrations by Jonathan Cecil. He’s got an excellent knack for capturing the voices of Wodehouse characters, and his audio books are really entertaining! There are other good narrators (ie. Ian Carmichael or Martin Jarvis), but in my opinion, none of them even come close to Cecil.
Cecil is an actor with an extensive resume (link to imdb) and has actually appeared in a number of Wodehouse adaptations. If you are going to purchase a Wodehouse audio book, I strongly recommend you look for the name Jonathan Cecil. You will not be disappointed.
“In my ethics lectures, I indicate that biblical eschatology is much misused today. Although in Scripture, it functions mainly as an ethically purifying doctrine, in evangelical theology and preaching, it often serves mainly as a pretext for speculations about the order of events in the end-times, so that the ethical focus gets lost.”
John Frame in Ethics and the Millenium
Human life has always been busy. It’s always been very much about juggling priorities, trying to keep one’s head above water, and trying to provide for oneself and others. Merely providing the necessities is hard enough, but getting ahead is even harder. No era is exempt from being busy, but our current era is especially a busy era since we are dealing with amazing amounts of information, distractions, and pressures. Being busy is not a bad thing, but being badly busy is not good, and hence we need rest. If we get too much rest, it is not good. But if we get no rest, it is equally not good.
When God created, He also rested, and thus He instituted the Sabbath. Humans was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made to be a blessing to humans. This Sabbath was right at the core of how we count time, it became a reminder of the cycle of weeks. It was a regular rest for our good and for God’s glory. It wasn’t ever intended to be a burden or a restrictions, it was intended to be a delight. Do you have a delightful rest to look forward to every week?
The 4th Commandment, the Sabbath commandment is probably one of the most controversial of the ten commandments. Some Christians now believe the Sabbath has been canceled out in the New Covenant. Others still hold to the old Saturday Sabbath. Still others hold to a Christian Sabbath, which occurs on Sunday. I fall into the later group, I consider myself a non-grumpy Sunday Sabbatarian. There are strong Biblical reasons for this view, though of course the Christian Church is not at all unanimous on how to handle the Sabbath. To get to the heart of Biblical teaching on this subject, one has to address when exactly the Sabbath was instituted, what type of law it was, what is the role of the moral law in the New Covenant, how Christ handled the Sabbath, and whether or not there was a day change. Also, one would need to deal with a few passages in the New Testament which might suggest to some that the Sabbath was cancelled out in the New Covenant. These are matters which I may address at some other time, but are beyond the scope of this post.
In my view, the Sabbath never has been, and still isn’t a day in which we should be grumpy and look down our noses at other people. You can not keep the Sabbath well if you are grumpy while keeping it. Instead, the Sabbath or The Lord’s Day is a day of worship, joy, and delight. If breaking the Sabbath is a sin, then so is not delighting in it! It’s a day that is to be different than the other six. God didn’t give this day so He could enslave us with restrictions, but instead He gave it so we could be spared from being enslaved to our work. We spend it worshiping, rejoicing, feasting, and resting, not sitting on our porch and staring and grumbling at our neighbors. It is moreso a Wedding Party than a Funeral Dirge.
In observing the rest that God gave us in the Sabbath via the Christian or New Covenant Sabbath, I strive to:
A. Delight in and worship God (individually and collectively).
B. As implied in section A, make myself available for the worship services of the church.
C. Cease from things I normally do for the rest of the week. And forget my work and the hurried pace of life.
D. Enjoy food, fellowship with God’s people, and find some time to be contemplative and relax
I do not do these perfectly, but I’m increasingly aware of how this sort of a good rest impacts the very rhythm of life. I don’t know how I would make it through the years without this sort of rest every week.
As a good political libertarian, I do not believe in using state laws to enforce the Lord’s Day or Sabbath on others in our day and age (now that those laws have been struck down, its not likely that this issue will come up again). Neither do I believe in judging others in how they keep or do not keep this law. That said, from what I understand from the Scriptures, I see a moral obligation for believers to honor the Lord’s Day based on the 4th commandment. Even those who believe the Sabbath has been canceled in the New Covenant tend to draw some lessons from the 4th Commandment, and apply it to the Lord’s Day.
The Christian Sabbath is not just an abstract item on a checklist. It’s made for your benefit by the One who knows all things and knows you better than you know yourself. He gave it to you not to enslave you, but rather to liberate you.
“…call the Sabbath a delight..” – Isaiah 58:13
“…The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath…” – Jesus in Mark 2
What is this world coming to? A Tennesse woman was arrested for doing a Facebook “poke”.
According to the news article, “According to an affidavit filed with the Sumner County General Sessions Court on Sept. 25, Shannon D. Jackson of Hendersonville, Tenn., allegedly violated a legal order of protection that had been previously filed against her when she sent a virtual “poke” to another woman on Facebook”.
Puritan One
Puritan Two
Puritan Three
Since I’ve been using LibraryThing, I’ve kept track of which books I’ve read. And I’ve also went back and tagged some books I’ve formerly read. And I’ve just recently read my 700th book!! Well, sort of. The number remains symbolic, since I don’t have a log of most of the books I’ve read as a child. 700 books would mean 2 books per month, and I think I’ve always clipped along at a pace greater than that, even as a child.
The 700th book was A Few Quick Ones by P.G. Wodehouse. A good read, indeed….even though one of the characters appears to be of the Supralapsarian persuasion, or at least prone to conversations on the topic 
.
While 700 books is a fairly large stack and probably more than your average person would read (especially when we hear that 1 in 4 adults have not read a book in the last year), it’s only a small sliver of what’s out there!! And I’m still “in-the-dark” in regard to some of the most renowned classics.
But I’m thankful for what I have gleaned in those 700 books. Some were not worth reading, but many were! In fact, out of the 200-300 books that I’ve rated over at LibraryThing, a whopping 80-something are 5 star books!
Here are some interesting statistics. Out of the books I’ve read:
You are not unacquainted with the day of our Communion.
I entreat, therefore, the aid of your prayers for that great work, which is one of our feast days, wherein our well-beloved Jesus rejoiceth and is merry with his friends.
Good cause have we to wonder at his love, since the day of his death was such a sorrowful day to him, even the day when his mother, the kirk [church], crowned him with thorns, and he has many against him, and appeared his lone in the fields against them all; yet he delights with us to remember that day. Let us love him, and be glad and rejoice at his salvation. I am confident that you shall see the Son of God that day, and I dare in his name invite you to his banquet.
- Samuel Rutherford in “A Letter to Marion M’Naught”, May 7, 1631 (from Letters of Samuel Rutherford, Puritan Paperbacks, p.20-21)
Puritan One:
Puritan Two:
Puritan Three
Puritan Four
Take a guess.. If you get one, you will be congratulated and get an honorable mention on this blog