Psalm 85 presents us with a community lament. God’s people have experienced some kind of hardship and in this song they are confessing that the cause of their suffering is sin.
It’s important to note that sin is not always the cause of…
A great deal of New Testament imagery assumes a knowledge of Old Testament narrative. In a sense, the New Testament is like a painting painted in colours lifted directly from Old Testament canvases and therefore you have to read the Old Testament –…
The current psalm recounts historical points in the life of Israel in order to pass them on to the next generation. The sinfulness of man, the patience of God, and the shadows of future hope were to be sung so that the next generation…
What we find in verses 1-3 of Psalm 77 is nothing short of alarming. The Psalmist is distressed, and he is crying out to God in prayer – and it is not working! Look again at verse 2:
In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord; in the night…
It would be difficult to think of a word that is more central to our identity as Christians than the word “repentance”. According to Matthew it was the theme of the first sermon every preached by Jesus. Jesus was travelling around Galilee and saying:…
While both are individual songs of lament, the first Psalm only consists of a few verses. Two sets of people are contrasted with different requests for each. The first three verses pertain to the enemy that has come against and the last…
It describes with poetic beauty the journey of God’s people out of Egypt, through the wilderness and into the promised land. This journey, of course, was treacherous. The Israelites were pursued by…
When we are meditating upon the agonies of Christ upon the cross it may be helpful to revisit the narratives of judgment upon Israel that are found in the Old Testament.
One of the things we say (quite rightly) is that Jesus suffered the punishment…
I am 45 years old, so that really doesn’t qualify as young. I’ve never self-identified as restless and I’m not entirely comfortable referring to myself as “reformed”.
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Psalm 58 could rightly be called a corporate lament. It reflects the same kind of language as Jeremiah 23 and Ezekiel 34. The context rests on the leadership that has acted contrary to their mandate to rule according to God’s statues in…
