Sunday Song: Praise to the Lord, the Almighty

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty (based Psalm 103/150), 1680 Praise to the Lord, the Almighty is one of the very best hymns (thinking of the combination of text and tune) written in the last three hundred fifty years, and it is no surprise that it is a favorite of our congregation. The text of the song is based on Psalms 103 and 150. In the Scottish Psalter and Church Hymnary of 1929, it finds itself aptly located in the section delineated “God: His Being, Works, Word.” The song’s author was Joachim Neander, the grandson of a…

Sunday Song: All People That on Earth Do Dwell (Psalm…

One of the best-known and loved metrical psalms still in wide use today is this setting of Psalm 100. Metrical psalms used to be the core of what was sung in Protestant worship services (by Presbyterians, Anglicans, congregationalists and others). Metrical psalms are biblical psalms that have been versified to fit the various standard meters of tunes in common use for singing in congregational worship. The Protestant reformers wanted to restore congregational singing to the worship of the church, and they wanted Christians to know and sing the…

Commending and introducing Martyn Lloyd-Jones’…

I received my first copy of D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones “Preaching and Preachers as a gift from a family in my home church as I was just beginning my studies in seminary. My copy was from the 14th printing of the first edition. I had been introduced to Lloyd-Jones before, as a teenager, through his Studies in the Sermon on the Mount (my mother had worn bare a copy of the old original two volume edition) and through the preaching ministry of my boyhood pastor who (along with so many other evangelical ministers of his day) had been deeply edified…

The Joy of Sanctification: God is at work in you by…

The doctrine of sanctification is back on the frontburner of discussion in the Bible-believing Christian community. We live in a time of happy renewal of the Gospel accent, grace focus and Christ-centeredness of the preaching in our theological neck of the woods. This is a wonderful thing, for which we rejoice. The superficial practicality and ossified moralism that this emphasis replaces has been a plague on the well-being of Christians and churches. But this new emphasis brings its own…

The Reformed Doctrine of Baptism & New Testament…

If you have your Bibles, I would invite you to turn with me to Colossians chapter 2, Colossians chapter 2. We will begin reading in verse 8. “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority; and…

Covenant in Hebrews

As we have already mentioned, Hebrews has more occurrences of diatheke than in the rest of the New Testament. This relative prominence of the covenant conception in Hebrews may be attributed to the authors’ preoccupation with the comparison with the old and with the new religious systems of Judaism and Christianity. I mean it is natural that you would revert to the covenant concept to help you describe the distinctives of the era brought about by the advent of Christ. In Hebrews 7:22,…

Covenant in the Synoptics, Acts and Pauline Writings

We have already looked at definitions of covenant and we have, or definitions of diatheke and berith, and the arguments over that translational controversy. And we have looked at one passage in the New Testament in some detail, the passage in Hebrew 9, which is difficult to translate. Many Bible translations will start in 9:15, with the word covenant, and they will switch to testament and then back to covenant again by the time they get to verse 18. But we have really not done a New…

OT Prophecies of the New Covenant

I want to look at Jeremiah 31, because that is obviously the only passage in the prophetic literature which uses the terminology New Covenant. That terminology of New Covenant becomes very, very significant in the New Testament itself. It is picked up by the author of Hebrews, but it is also mentioned in the Last Supper narrative by the Lord Jesus Himself, as He explains the meaning of His death. And if that alone had occurred in the New Testament, that would indicate the extreme…

The Davidic Covenant

If you have your Bibles, I would invite you to turn with me to 2 Samuel 7. We are going to rapidly overview to the Davidic Covenant and especially the establishment of the house of David in II Samuel 7 The Davidic Covenant Robertson says that the climax of the Old Covenant is found in the coming of the kingdom in David’s day. When the king sits on his throne, the kingdom has come. That principle holds true for both the Old and the New Covenant eras. To understand this, we will first…

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