Building on the Foundation

We have two Psalms left in this series, but that's not the end of our journey through the Psalms. We have another one hundred and forty two psalms to go once we finish with these first eight, and I fully intend to make it through them all by the time I finish. As I said in my first post on the Psalms, the Psalms are some of my favorite writings in the Bible. They are full of prophecy, poetry, pain, courage, worship, and love, with many of them being written by a man who God said was a man after His own heart. A man who loved God with everything he had and followed Him clear to the end because of that utter devotion. We are blessed that God preserved his writings for us today because there is much that we need to learn from them. I'm under no illusion that I am bringing you everything contained in these Psalms, but perhaps there will be one thing that you did not see before that is brought to light by my thoughts.  The seventh Psalm nicely corresponds to the first day of the Fea...

As we prepare to get into the third Psalm, I would like to revisit the first two briefly and introduce something that just jumped out at me as I was reading the third Psalm. David is a type of Christ, and His writings heavily point to God and His plan for us. As I read through the third Psalm, it seemed very connected to the first two, so I was going to group them together, but then I read further. It’s not just the first three that seem like they go together; it’s the first eight.  Then I kept reading, and what I seem to have stumbled onto is a series of eight groups that lay out the plan God has for us, His people, in poetic form! Naturally, I am super excited to share what I have learned with all of you, so I would like to introduce the first series here and briefly revisit it from the first two Psalms. I hope it gives extra meaning to the Psalms for you as it has for me! The first series, which contains the first eight Psalms, is a mini overview of the overall series and it als...

  In the course of studying Biblical covenants these past months, I became a little puzzled by the story of the Gibeonites. As you may recall, when Israel invaded the Promised Land, the people of Gibeon dispatched ambassadors to the Israelites and asked Israel to make a covenant with them (Josh. 9:3-6). Knowing that Israel’s Divine mission required destroying every nation in that land, the ambassadors pretended to have journeyed from another land far away (v. 6). As we’re told in v. 14, Israel didn’t seek God’s advice in this matter. They simply believed the Gibeonites and made a covenant with them (v. 15). Though obtained by fraud, this covenant held fast. Many generations later, God punished Israel because King Saul had violated the covenant and murdered some of the Gibeonites (2 Sam. 21:1-3). Now, this raises some eyebrows. Number one, this covenant had been obtained by deceit. Number two, God had explicitly commanded Israel to make NO covenant with the peoples of the land (Ex. ...

  A fun catchphrase going around the various churches goes something like this: "Are you saved, brother?” “I am saved!” The word “saved” gets thrown around with great abandon in the churches; in fact, it is taken straight out of the Bible. It seems like a very spiritual thing to say, and it certainly sounds like something that we should be. The problem is, saved from what? What are we, or have we been saved from? In your average church, it’s taken to mean that all you need to do is just believe, and you will be saved, no baptism, repentance, or anything else necessary. Well, saved from what? What is it that I even need saving from? The popular idea is the law of Moses—that oppressive, old-fashioned creation of a human that failed in its very purpose. There are a couple of problems with this line of thought that should be obvious straight away. First, the law wasn’t from Moses; it was from God. Second, since it was from God and everything created by Him was excellent and perfect, t...

Just around the corner Always lurking behind Dripping with inky blackness Hungry lust forever in his mind His eyes glowing out of the darkness Bony fingers aching to embrace my soul He lies in wait for when I am weakest Oh, what a cowardly ghoul When I least expect him, on me he leaps He slashes and bites deep before I can rise With a desperate cry, I draw my sword The Word flashes forth  Once more, darkening his eyes I lay there bloody and torn as he dies My wounds are as deep as the night I pray for healing and forgiveness once again My Father hears my cry and pools me in His light “How long will I battle this Old Man?” I cry out When will victory come? “My beloved son,” I hear my Father say “Don’t you know? In the fight, victory is already won” I will praise the Lord who delivers my soul He has saved me out of the thick darkness My God who loves me has forgiven me again Once more He has liberated me from that Old Ghoul He is my rock and my shield I need fear no man or spirit The...