A little structure from Ps 103, a great poetic Psalm

Bless the LORD, O my soul------vv1,2
(sentence)
Bless the LORD
(sentence)

Who pardons------------vv. 3-5
Who heals
Who redeems
Who crowns
Who satisfies

(my words, building from the words in the Psalm) He does all this because He is compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness. He has not dealt with us according to our sins. Then you see the height and the breadth of God's lovingkindness and compassion in vv. 11,12

Then listen to this: "As a father pities his children,
So the LORD pities those who fear Him.
¹⁴ For He knows our frame;
He remembers that we are dust.

¹⁵ As for man, his days are like grass;
As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
¹⁶ For the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
And its place remembers it no more.^a]">[a]
¹⁷ But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting
On those who fear Him,
And His righteousness to children’s children,
¹⁸ To such as keep His covenant,
And to those who remember His commandments to do them."

Then the Psalm ends with the same structure with which it begun:

Bless the LORD, you His angels
(explanatory sentence-2)
Bless the LORD, all you His hosts,
(explan. sentence)
Bless the LORD, all you works of His,
(explan. sentence)
Bless the LORD, O my soul!

a rich Psalm, part. vv. 13-18

Psalms Bible Grammar

I have been creating a "Bible Grammar" for the Psalms--a one sentence summary of each Psalm so that I can study and memorize as many Psalm topics as possible.. This study of the Psalms has been incredible for my meditation and communion with the living God, I highly recommend it!

Also, at ordination examinations, the Q. has been asked, "Name the topic of each Psalm in the book of Psalms going as far as you can beginning with chapter 1." I would like to go as far as I can beyond the first 5 chapters!

Filling out ethnicity

I had to fill in my ethnic origins the other day. After seeing all the options, I was weary of the tired and overly general "White-Caucasian" box. Esp. after seeing the box entitled "Pacific-Islander." So I rebelled. In the "Other" category, I filled in "English, German, Irish, and Dutch," all of which is quite true, thank-you very much.

The Princess and the Goblin

"I am very old indeed. It is so silly of people to fancy that old age means crookedness and witheredness and feebleness and sticks and spectacles and rheumatism and forgetfulness! It is so silly! Old age has nothing whatever to do with all that. The right old age means strength and beauty and mirth and courage and clear eyes and strong painless limbs."

The little princess then said to her grandmother,

"I wish I were as old as you, grandmother. I don't think you are ever afraid of anything. 'Not for long, at least, my child. Perhaps by the time I am two thousand years of age, I shall, indeed, never be afraid of anything.....'"

From Ecclesia Reformanda-http://www.ecclesiareformanda.org.uk/

The Maximalist Hermeneutics of James B. Jordan

R. S. Clarke

Abstract

James B. Jordan's maximalist hermeneutic seeks to read the Bible in a way that allows the depth and richness of its meaning to be discerned. The relationship between special and general revelation is important, as the world teaches us how to understand the Bible, and the Bible shows us how to interpret the world. The reader of the Bible should learn to be sensitive to all its literary tropes, in particular its rich symbolism and typology. Controls on this maximalist hermeneutic are not found in externally imposed rules but in theological and ecclesiastical traditions which themselves derive from the Bible.

Stuffing people in corrugated boxes and climbing up on them

EXHORTATION

PIGEON HOLES AND BOXES.... A friend of mine mentioned to me how sometimes others can put us in a box of their assessment of us and then keep us there. I think I agree with him, sometimes that does happen.

Do you feel like this has ever happened to you? Someone else sized you up entirely to quickly without even really getting to know you? Most of us have probably felt this way at one time or another. And why, why do we do this?

I think we do this because we want to make things easier for ourselves and our egos. If we can put someone in a box as it were, or in a nice compartmentalized pigeon hole, then it gives our sense of mind a nice tidy way to manage people. It's just too much work and energy in sizing up folks to allow for little mysteries and questions of other's character to let dangle around in our minds. It's too messy that way. And we don't like not being able to figure someone out. (Of course it doesn't help if we don't allow people to get to know us by keeping others guessing with riddles.) but we'll get to that in a second.

For now, can I encourage us to not feel the need to one-up each other? To stack up all the people that we have put in nice 4x4x4 boxes so that we can in turn climb up over everyone to be "King of the Hill." We desire to do this because we make up for what lacks in our own discipline by pushing the other down and exalting our superiority over them. "Yeah, she's pretty, but I'm taller." "Okay, he makes more money than I do, but let's face it, I'm more intelligent." "Alright, alright, (our mind tells us) he's a better athlete than I, but I know the intricacies of what is really cool." "She's better than me at sewing, but I could do that too, if I wanted to, I just don't." We search for excuses to justify ourselves better... "My intellect is sharper, I'm more beautiful, I'm more creative, at least I don't do THAT! and that is why I am a little better than him, a little better than her. Only in Christ of course....." Right....... isn't that how it goes my brothers and sisters?

Instead, what needs to happen, is we need to take that evil competition and boasting and put that in a box! Don't be selfish and make others have to do complex character riddles to know you. We want others to seek us out like lost treasure, but we aren't as willing to seek after others.

Brothers and sisters, do not do this. Replace the desire to position yourself more righteous with the greater desire to be humbled by one another and to be each other's best supporters, your neighbor's best fan. Stick up for one another, give the benefit of the doubt because the people around you this morning are YOUR people,

This is one clear way we can increase in love for one another more and more, as Paul says in I Thess. 3:12

This reminds us of our need to confess our sins,

Annelise Pipkin!

Ripping out a page in my Bible that I don't like

Yes, I confess. I don't like a certain page in my Bible. I don't agree with it theologically. I ripped it out. I feel so much better...

It was the page that tends to divide and space out psychologically the OT from the NT, the blank page that says, "New American Standard Bible-----------------------The New Testament"

thanks Foundation Publications for trying to lay things out clearly so I can read better, but we already have enough problems with not seeing the organic unity of redemptive history and the centrality of the Torah for the 1st Cent. context.

Other People

If I was a good writer and one of the chosen few, "Other people" is the article I would have written for the cultural magazine called "Credenda Agenda." Hopefully the latest Credenda will be accessible via the web before too long, but don't count on it as the Credenda before last hasn't even been promoted to the web yet. credenda.org is their website but you'll probably want to just sign up to get it at Christ Church 208.882.2034

But, the article is fantastic...Good job Toby. Peter Leithart's "Making Room" goes hand in hand with it too, excellent.

Lost femininity

I saw a purple Chevy today hiked up on its axles. On the mudflaps were the silhouettes of a naked male in silver. This is a sad and ironic example of a woman who truly has given herself over to a masculine problem with sexual lust in a masculine way. Whether she realizes it or not, her message is saying, "I have no femininity, I lust for men just like men tend to lust for women. To me, this is a very low position for something so glorious as a--woman... To be so degraded in one's sexuality that she would adopt the very form that degrades her very sex... Some man out there in her life, ought to be shot in the thigh..

But then, maybe what looked like a woman in the cab, maybe was a man.

Billy Sunday

I'm not fond of Billy Sunday, but this was good,

Jesus was "no dough-faced, lick-spittle proposition" but "the greatest scrapper that ever lived." Sunday (apparently my words) offered followers a "hard-muscled, pick-axed religion," not some "dainty, sissified, lily-livered piety."

Thomas Wentworth Higginson "Saints and Their Bodies" cited in Kimmel, Manhood in America.

Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth.

This is excellent-C.J. Mahaney on "Roles, Goals and Scheduling"

"Currently Amazon.com lists 90,864 books under the topic of “time management.” Titles range from Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen, a helpful book I recommend, to Time Management for Dummies, a book I have not read, although it appears I represent the target audience.

“Time management” books are hot and it’s obvious why—we all want to discover some previously unknown secret that will enable us to become more productive. Yet in this series we have discovered that getting more things done does not mean we are getting the right things done.

Or to put this in a little triad: busyness does not mean I am diligent; busyness does not mean I am faithful; busyness does not mean I am fruitful.

In the past several posts in this series, we looked at procrastination: putting off until the last moment tasks that are important (and presumably most difficult), and instead devoting ourselves to what is easy and urgent, but not as important.

My busyness may be procrastination in disguise.

But today we transition in this series from discussing the hindrances to biblical productivity (procrastination, laziness, and the tendencies of the sluggard) to looking at how we can effectively plan and prioritize.

From my study of this topic and my observation of those I admire (and desire to emulate), it appears to me that being faithful, productive, and fruitful for the glory of God requires that I accomplish three things:

1. define my present God-given roles,
2. determine specific, theologically informed goals, and
3. transfer these goals into my schedule.

Over the next several posts we will develop these three in some detail.

But you may be thinking to yourself, why go through the trouble of determining these roles, creating goals, and fitting all this into my schedule? Why not take life as it comes?

Perhaps you dislike—or even despise—all things related to planning. Perhaps you, like me, can identify with my friend Michael McKinley when he recently wrote: “I would rather stick a fork in my eye than sit in a planning meeting.” Mike has painfully and creatively captured my tendency to postpone planning, and if possible, avoid planning altogether. But while I think of myself as an all-about-the-moment guy, my avoidance of planning is to the detriment of my schedule and (more importantly) to the detriment of my service to my family and church.

Here’s why.

The problem for those of us with this fork-in-the-eye approach to planning is that during each day the most urgent requests will compete with and distract from the most important goals and priorities of our lives. Each day the number of requests we receive normally outnumber the time allotted for the day. My experience confirms that if I fail to attack my week with theologically informed planning, my week attacks me with an onslaught of the urgent. And I end up devoting more time to the urgent than the important.

And at the end of the week there is a low-grade guilt and dissatisfaction in my soul, because I’ve neglected to do the truly important stuff. I want to have as few weeks like this as possible in whatever time remains for me to serve the Savior. I’m thinking you do as well."

How to give the perfect man hug

First attempt with new camera of great news

The farthest depravity

Today I hear that a person reached the farthest depravity of materialism.  Not in a third-world country, no, but in NY.  A Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death by a mob trying to bust in the store.  

Wow.

BAM

"The Roman authorities found the Christians (as they found the Jews) a social and political threat or nuisance, and took action against them. The Christians, meanwhile, do not seem to have taken refuge in the defence that they were merely a private club for the advancement of personal piety. ((which is modern Chty in America!))They continued to proclaim their allegiance to a Christ who was a 'king' in a sense which precluded allegiance to Caesar, even if his kingdom was not to be conceived on the model of Caesar's. This strange belief, so Jewish and yet so non-Jewish (since it led the Christians to defend no city, adhere to no Mosaic code, circumcise no male children) was...a central characteristic of the whole movement, and as such a vital key to its character."

BAM.

Pillars

I Timothy 3:15
“but if I am delayed, I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.”
The Church is the pillar and ground of the truth, not the state. The state has a viable place. It is indeed a noble place for a Christian to “bring in the kingdom, but the Church is the house of God. The Church, the New Testament says, has the keys of the kingdom.
To think that democracy and having with it a slick president can save us and fix all our problems is blasphemous. This error is strong in our country. We must repent of our almost messianic and religious fervor for the impotent American political system to save and to do much real good.
The Ephesian Christians that received this letter from Paul would get Paul’s point exactly when he wrote that the Church is the pillar and support of the truth. Why would they? Because when Paul mentioned the words “pillar” and “support” of the household of God it most likely would have reminded them of their own city, Ephesus, where the Roman Empire had put huge pillars of the goddess Artemis. Her image was carved into the pillars that supported the temple. There were six pillars their where in Acts 19 the people cried out for at least two hours, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” It is obvious that they would be passionate about voting in Artemis, were she on the ballot in the local temple! Rome, her Caesar and her gods were quite methodical and careful to make sure that the whole world knew that she was the true truth and power of the world. Rome was very much a religious state of nationalistic fever. Paul is saying to them, Jesus’ kingdom is the true truth and you believers are the true pillars of this truth being the pillars of the household of God, not the giant and magnificent 6 pillars of Artemis holding up that idolatrous house.
May we always remember that Jesus is Lord over all spheres of power in the world, including the American Empire. Some would protest that we are not anywhere close to that of the brutal empire of Rome. That may be true, but the time to recognize our swift movements to more and more evil empire are never greater than now. The Church is the household of God and those pillars and supports of the truth are those members of His body, you, the Church. Let us ask God for forgiveness for our own idolatries and our nation’s idolatry of the state over Christ. Let us kneel before our King confessing our sins, our nation,

The Q. the LORD and the world, ask every prosperous American:

How are you investing your blessed access and prosperous advantage of knowledge, money, and time for the Kingdom to come on earth as it is in Heaven?

Get ready!

It seems very clear that our fellow Americans are determined to make our lives a little worse.

We are all familiar with how incredibly annoying it is to have to run the guantlet of dealing with government institutions like the local "Dpt. of Licensing" just to get your tags, and license. There is no competition for business there, and they know it. So therefore, the norm is for the employees to glare at you and show visible signs of great annoyance that you are actually there and will likely intrude upon their mandatory break in 2 minutes and-counting!

At the post office, the employees are quick to talk about their "salvation" breaks too, largely because they are so tired of having to deal with all the rules they have to explain to people. With government jobs like that, there just seems to be a lack of personal zest in the employees who are not in an exciting job that is competitive and that offers great profit.

And then there is the doctor's and dentist's offices. Need I explain the dysfunction there? "Oh, you have a snuffle Jim? Well, why don't we do an MRI and an EEG just to make sure that you don't sue me, for improper medical care. Woops, did I say that?!"

I guess we as a nation just want more annoying and bureaucratic agencies and institutions to deal with!

Man, aren't we bright!

Maybe it is a good thing that Osama Bin Biden Hussein Obama has won the election. At least it might help wake up some Christians that thought that Bush's dynasty was Christian. We have a lot of antithesis now. Maybe it will spurn us on more to study the basics. The basics like personal liberty, and competitive capitalism. The basics like healthy economics and the Constitution.

And we'll need to. We have now a pretty boy "in the pulpit." And he is going to use that pulpit to shame all us Christians and how we aren't "coming together" with the world and how mean we are to the poor etc. etc.,

We have a black nationalist now, and a soft communist. Oh, for Alan Keyes!

Well, I'll be reading Ron Paul, how about you?

A Shepherd has to be simultaneously strong and gentle

Strongly reminded today about the great sin of not rebuking a sheep when it is necessary. It is not actually, the sin of being "overly gracious" when a pastor fails to rebuke, it is actually not loving them at all. In order for a pastor to deal with sin rightly sometimes, he needs to be quick to rebuke someone in the middle of someone's sin. Oh! for the wisdom to know how and when to firmly rebuke another, and when to keep quiet... Lord help..