Sunday Post for Shepherds - When You're Not Singing the Psalms on Sunday

Unlike some, I do not advocate Psalms-only singing. But when we're not singing them, they do still remain the standard and should set the trajectory for what we are singing and what we commend to our people as worthy to be employed in biblical worship and in teaching Bible truth. God defines His relationship to us. We are idolaters by nature, meaning that we imagine what kind of relationship we want with God and then imagine that's the one we have. It isn't. You and I are not sovereign. The congregation is not sovereign. Your people's feelings and likes are not sovereign. Your church's traditions are not sovereign. Your denominational leaders are not sovereign. So let's trust God enough to sing the Psalms and songs like them.

Sunday Post for Shepherds - Sing the Psalms with Your People

Every church, when she gathers on the Lord's Day, should be singing the Psalms, because the Apostle Paul says so (Ep 5:19; Col 3:16), and because it was the hymnbook of Jesus, and because the Psalms are the word of God sung and teach us much about Him, and because they express real Christian life under the sun, and because they call us to reality, and shape our expectations as they work against our modern day joy joy-all victory-yeah rah- pure happiness false theology in this broken world where the devil is the prince of the power of the air and almost nothing functions as it should. Hardship is real. Depression is real. Pain is real. Loss is real. Suffering is real. Perplexity is real. Death is real. Failure is real. Agony is real. And their reality in the believer is often not the result of personal sin. And all of these have their rightful place in the Christian experience. God, by the Psalms, teaches us to relate rightly to Him in our genuine struggles and losses. He shows us how to worship Him in our pain. And as Carl Trueman so rightly puts it, He shows us what miserable Christians can sing.

Carrying Our Bibles to Church Gatherings - A Counter Argument

As follow-up to a recent post (from Aug 14), and as a consideration I had not considered, I rush to mention that in a recent hearing of Alistair Begg preach, he urges us to carry our Bibles with us to church gatherings so that we may follow along in the text to be certain that what the preacher and/or teacher claims the Bible says is in fact what it says.

Leave Your Bible at the House

As a follow-up to my previous post, I suggest that on Sundays when you head to your church building, that you leave your Bible at your house. There are multiple reasons for this. One is that, it seems to me, the Bible might be better heard than read. For most of church history folks knew their Bibles by listening to and concentrating on and giving attention to what they were hearing. They were not following along in their own Bible copy while their pastors and teachers read the text. I think there's something to this.

Second, we need to practice the art of listening and then thinking about what we hear. This is a form of biblical meditation. Personally, I find that an effort to hear well helps with this. I learn more by listening thoughtfully than by perusing the text while my pastor preaches.

Third, perhaps looking at and listening to our pastors and teachers is better for our learning than having our noses in our Bibles laying in our laps. It's good for us to be read to by another, to have the very words of God wash over us audibly.

And fourth, "Faith comes by hearing the word of Christ" (Ro 10). This is not only true for the lost who hear the gospel and believe. It is true for God's children whose faith is fed by their Father's words (Jesus says we should abide in them). As I remember hearing John Piper say, "Faith comes by hearing until you're dead."