Psalms Death Quotes

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever. [Psalms 23]

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

Are you afraid of that?” they asked. “Of death?” “Of course,” Mosscap said. “All conscious things are. Why else do snakes bite? Why do birds fly away? But that’s part of the lesson too, I think. It’s very odd, isn’t it? The thing every being fears most is the only thing that’s for certain? It seems almost cruel, to have that so…” “So baked in?” “Yes.

Environment affects me a great deal. A lot of the songs were written after the sun went down. And I like storms, I like to stay up during a storm. I get very meditative sometimes, and this one phrase was going through my head: `Work while the day lasts, because the night of death cometh when no man can work.' I don't recall where I heard it. I like preaching, I hear a lot of preaching, and I probably just heard it somewhere. Maybe it's in Psalms, it beats me. But it wouldn't let me go. I was, like, what does that phrase mean? But it was at the forefront of my mind, for a long period of time...

I am always hearing. . . the sound of a far off song. I do not exactly know where it is, or what it means; and I don't hear much of it, only the odour of its music, as it were, flitting across the great billows of the ocean outside this air in which I make such a storm; but what I do hear, is quite enough to make me able to bear the cry from the drowning ship. So it would you if you could hear it.' 'No it wouldn't,' returned Diamond stoutly. 'For they wouldn't hear the music of the far-away song; and if they did, it wouldn't do them any good. You see you and I are not going to be drowned, and so we might enjoy it.' 'But you have never heard the psalm, and you don't know what it is like. Somehow, I can't say how, it tells me that all is right; that it is coming to swallow up all the cries. . . . It wouldn't be the song it seems if it did not swallow up all their fear and pain too, and set them singing it themselves with all the rest.

There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention- that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary- the sunshine, the memories, the future,- which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life.

Shakespeare will not allow Falstaff to die upon stage. We see and hear the deaths of Hamlet, Cleopatra, Antony, Othello, and Lear. Iago is led away to die silently under torture. Macbeth dies offstage but he goes down fighting. Falstaff dies singing the Twenty-third Psalm, smiling upon his fingertips, playing with flowers, and crying aloud to God three or four times. That sounds more like pain than prayer. We do not want Sir John Falstaff to die. And of course he does not. He is life itself.

Everyone chats and smiles, chats about nothing, shouts and drinks themselves silly occasionally or all the time. They they die one fine day, old or young, they die, tucked up into the earth. That's what it's like. Swarming lives, with no meaning, no number.

Anyone who prays for the death of his enemy must consider who tempted Jesus Christ, the persecution of the apostles and the Psalm 23 of David

If you cannot pray, simply recite Lord’s Prayer (Psalm 23:1-6):- A psalm of David. New International Version 1 The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, 3 he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. 4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. 5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 6 Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

The three men walked on and were met by ever more new saints. The saints were not exactly moving or even speaking, but the silence and immobility of the dead were not absolute. There was, under the ground, a motion that was not completely usual, and a particular sort of voices rang out without disturbing the sternness and repose. The saints spoke using words from psalms and lines from the lives of saints that Arseny remembered well from childhood. When they drew the candles closer, shadows shifted along dried faces and brown, half-bent hands. The saints seemed to raise their heads, smile, and beckon, barely perceptibly, with their hands. A city of saints, whispered Ambrogio, following the play of the shadow. They present us the illusion of life. No, objected Arseny, also in a whisper. They disprove the illusion of death.

That is, my sin drives me on, it will not give me rest or peace. Neither wine nor bread nor sleep will drive away this feeling of wrath and death.

no sooner do we begin to live in this dying body, than we begin to move ceaselessly towards death.

only humility leads to perfect death; only death perfects humility. Humility and death are in their very nature one: humility is the bud; in death the fruit is ripened to perfection.

Our inclination to explain away suffering is an indication of how reticent we are to simply lament as a society, to admit our weakness. When our understandings of cause and effect, control, and reciprocity are all disrupted, it's humbling. Bewilderment is an experience we aren't accustomed to in our culture. But this humiliation and bewilderment are at the heart of the death wail. They are the ingredients of grief. Death is humiliating. It's mortifying. It's incomprehensible. So many of the psalms of lament begin with the question, 'Why?' And there isn't always an answer.

Experience teaches how amazingly the ungodly and wicked tremble in lightning, pestilence, or other exigency of death, when the righteous, on the other hand, endure everything unafraid and calm.

I was silently reciting to myself the 23rd Psalm, 'The Lord is my shepherd; I shal not want . . .' [. . .] The man with the tinted spectacles and the man from the police department were looking at me thoughtfully. They mistook my silence as a sign of weakening. I knew I had to show courage. In fact, I felt much better for having recited the words of the psalm. I had not been so free of fear the whole evening as I was in that moment standing beside the black jeep, a symbol of repression. I lifted my head and said in a loud and firm voice, 'I'm not guilty! I have nothing to confess.

An honest man's the noblest work of God." Alexander Pope Psalm 23:4 "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.~Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806 - 1861

There is a 'movement' of meditation, expressing the basic 'paschal' rhythm of the Christian life, the passage from death to life in Christ. Sometimes prayer, meditation and contemplation are 'death' - a kind of descent into our own nothingness, a recognition of helplessness, frustration, infidelity, confusion, ignorance. Note how common this theme is in the Psalms. If we need help in meditation we can turn to scriptural texts that express this profound distress of man in his nothingness and his total need of God. Then as we determine to face the hard realities of our inner life and humbly for faith, he draws us out of darkness into light - he hears us, answers our prayer, recognizes our need, and grants us the help we require - if only by giving us more faith to believe that he can and will help us in his own time. This is already a sufficient answer.

Someone once elaborated on each line of the well-known and much-loved Psalm 23: The Lord is my Shepherd — that’s relationship! I shall not be in want — that’s supply! He makes me lie down in green pastures — that’s rest! He leads me beside quiet waters — that’s refreshment! He restores my soul — that’s healing! He guides me in the paths of righteousness — that’s guidance! For His name’s sake — that’s purpose! Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death —that’s testing! I will fear no evil — that’s protection! For you are with me — that’s faithfulness! Your rod and the staff, they comfort me — that’s discipline! You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies —that’s hope! You anoint my head with oil — that’s consecration! My cup overflows — that’s abundance! Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life —that’s blessing! And I will dwell in the house of the Lord — that’s security! Forever — that’s eternity! AUTHOR OF ELABORATED MATERIAL UNKNOWN

If we want to talk about natural powers on the basis of this psalm and on the basis of the Holy Spirit’s manner of speaking, then we should call “natural” the fact that we are in sin and death and that we desire, understand, and long for things that are corrupt and evil.

A day will come when God will set everything right and wipe the tears from our eyes, and in that day death will be no more. But in the meantime, we can take comfort in the fact that God understands our pain. In our moments of immense grief and heartache, God is weeping with us. Scripture says that the Lord is near to the brokenhearted (Psalm 34:18). He has a special place in His heart for hurting people. Therefore, far from being pointless, suffering is an opportunity to worship God and experience His loving presence in a deep and profound way.

He looked at her as if she were already one of the ugly nameless bodies in the mortuary, and with a medical man's sober, somewhat cynical mind, he saw her in front of him, stripped and sliced open. That was his revenge. He caught himself regarding the whole world in that way.

We have to learn that a Christian should walk in the midst of death, in the remorse and trembling of his conscience, in the midst of the devil’s teeth and of hell, and yet should keep the Word of grace, so that in such trembling we say, “Thou, O Lord, dost look on me with favor.

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Moses could not sing this way. He is a minister of prison, a teacher of drudgery, an originator of servitude, or, as Paul usually calls him, “A minister of death, sin, and sadness” (2 Cor. 3:9). In antithesis to him we wish to sing of a kingdom that is delightful, free, and full of joy.

The imperfect, yet very venerable, goodness of Socrates led to the easy death of the hemlock, and the perfect goodness of Christ led to the death of the cross, not by chance but for the same reason; because goodness is what it is, and because the fallen world is what it is. If Plato, starting from one example and from his insight into the nature of goodness and the nature of the world, was led on to see the possibility of a perfect example, and thus to depict something extremely like the Passion of Christ, this happened not because he was lucky but because he was wise.

So if you wish to rejoice in Christ, for His sake you must bear sorrow, confusion, inward and outward vexations. The reason is that you cannot hold to Christ without offending the prince of the world. You cannot hold fast to the God of life without rousing against yourself the author of death.

I am now at a time of life when I can look back on the past, for my soul has been refined in the crucible of interior and exterior trials. Now, like a flower after the storm, I can raise my head and see that the words of the Psalm are realised in me: "The Lord is my Shepherd and I shall want nothing. He hath set me in a place of pasture. He hath brought me up on the water of refreshment. He hath converted my soul. He hath led me on the paths of justice for His own Name's sake. For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils for Thou are with me."[6]

Personally I do not believe in world reform. No. I do not believe in any kind of world reform. Not because I consider that the world is perfect as it is—certainly not, the world is crooked and grim and full of suffering—but whoever comes along to reform it soon sinks in rivers of blood. Now let’s drink a glass of tea and leave aside these obscenities you’ve brought me today. If only all religions and all revolutions vanished from the face of the earth someday, I tell you—all of them, without exception—there would be far fewer wars in the world. (p. 68) Only in one window a feeble light glowed, and he pictured a young rabbinical student sitting there reciting psalms. He said to him in his heart: You and I are both searching for something that has no fixed measure. And for that reason we will not find it even if we search till morning and the next night and every night to come until the day of our death, and maybe after that. (p. 184) “The eyes,” Gershom Wald said, “will never open. Almost everyone traverses their lifespan, from birth to death, with eyes closed. Even you and I, my dear Shmuel. With eyes closed. If we open our eyes for just a moment, a great and terrible cry will burst forth from us and we shall scream and never stop. And if we don’t cry out day and night, that’s a sign that our eyes are closed... ” (p. 192) Anyone willing to change,” Shmuel said, “will always be considered a traitor by those who cannot change and are scared to death of change and don’t understand it and loathe change...” (p. 230)

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. (Psalm 63:1–3) These words might not speak on your behalf, but they can—they must. If you think they can’t, that is not shame talking. It is hopelessness, indifference, and a heart that is getting hard. These are completely understandable, but they are also a whopper of a lie. A warning about “a heart that is getting hard” is not the nicest comment to slip into a book’s final chapter. But please understand why I give it. There is a paralytic quality to shame that leaves you powerless, unable to put up the least resistance. It leads you to believe the lie that Christ’s words to you are mere words, which they are not. They are words of power that heal the sick and raise the dead. When people encounter the gospel, limbs suddenly begin to move and death gives way to life. So, when you hear these deep truths and still think you are paralyzed, understand why. You have been motionless for a while and your muscle memory says you can’t move. But your memory is lying. You can move; you can hear, believe, and declare. If you are passive and hopeless, take a more radical approach. Adopt the topsy-turvy, surprising culture of the kingdom of God. In that kingdom we aren’t shy about looking at our hearts and identifying resistance where we once found only powerlessness. The warning about being hard-hearted can be a reason to hope.

That life is thus created through the cult means salvation from that distress and destruction which would befall, if life were not renewed. For existence is an everlasting war between the forces of life and death, of blessing and curse. 'The world' is worn out if it is not regularly renewed, as anyone can see by the annual course of life and nature. Thus it is the 'fact of salvation' which is actualized in the cult.

Psalm 23 The LORD the Shepherd of His People A Psalm of David. 1The LORD is †my shepherd; †I shall not awant. 2†He makes me to lie down in bgreen pastures; †He leads me beside the cstill waters. 3He restores my soul; †He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake. 4Yea, though I walk through the valley of †the shadow of death, †I will fear no evil; †For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort

the verse that talks about the valley of the shadow of death is movement. The psalmist is passing through the valley; even in the midst of our enemies, the Lord is preparing a feast for us. The movement of the psalm suggests that we move through even our darkest times. We don’t lie down in the valley; we walk through it. We sit at the table God sets in the presence of our enemies, enjoy his feast, and then get up and keep moving. The enemy never has the final word. We move on.

Christ was not crucified so that we wouldn’t have to be. He was crucified so we could be crucified with him. He did not die so that we wouldn’t have to die; he died so we could die with him. In death to self you are crucified with Christ (Gal. 2:20). It might help you to embrace this if you were to imagine Jesus on the cross and then imagine yourself being superimposed on him, hanging with him on the cross. As you do, repeat, “I am crucified with Christ,” slowly several times.

God has a celebration meal with us not after we finally get out of the dark valley but in the middle of it, in the presence of our enemies. He wants us to rejoice in him in the midst of our troubles. Is our shepherd out of touch with reality? Hardly. Jesus is the only shepherd who knows what it is like to be a sheep (John 10:11). He understands what we are going through and will be with us every step of the way, even through death itself, where “all other guides turn back”17 (Romans 8:39).

In his final days Bill Bright gave his staff a charge, which ended with these words: “By faith, walk in His light, enjoy His presence, love with His love, and rejoice that you are never alone; He is with you, always to bless!”3 Bill Bright understood that the good life means accepting that our lives ultimately belong to God. He resisted taking sedatives that would have hastened his death. He also talked with Vonette about the importance of yielding to God’s final call. Perhaps as a result of his attitude (and, I have to think, his godliness), his last moments were not the unmitigated horror his doctor had predicted. Right before Bill died, Vonette leaned close and said, “I want you to go to be with Jesus, and Jesus wants you to come to him. Why don’t you let him carry you to heaven?” She looked away, and when she looked back, her husband was no longer breathing. She saw the last pulse in his neck, and with that he was gone. She thought of the psalm “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints,” and the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi: “For it is in dying, we are born to eternal life.”4 Living the good life means not only living it to the fullest every moment we’re alive but also facing death with equanimity and then dying well. A lot of people have this wrong. They think that you live life to the fullest and enjoy every moment you can, and then when death comes, you simply accept the hard fact. The good time is over. Life is ended. The good life means accepting that our lives ultimately belong to God.

Acts of faithful remembrance reach across the centuries without collapsing them. For example, the last supper is folded on top of the Passover feast, establishing a proximity across the centuries and retroactively reinterpreting the Passover meal itself as the foreshadowing of Christ’s death. Similarly, Psalm 22 is folded into Jesus’s experience and interpretation of the cross as if it had been written for that very moment—which, in fact, it had. In the pages of the Bible and in the Christian experience of time, promise and fulfilment kiss.

King David in Psalm 37 writes "Take delight in the Giver, and He will give you the desires of your heart," intimating that the secret to finding our way in the world is more about cooperating with God than appeasing God. That the Giver of life is also the Giver of our desires, which means that life has an invitational co-creative nature to it... Why do we always believe that the path of our deepest desire would be so far from the path that God would have us walk? How is the path of desire so different from the path to the Giver of that desire?

He’s your hero. Your defender. He’s the mighty Son of God! When you are up against life and death, when your back’s against the wall, when circumstances are poised to take you out, and when the Devil is whispering lies in your ear, you need to know there’s an all-powerful Good Shepherd with a rod in one hand and a staff in the other. That’s the Jesus of Psalm 23. That’s why we find comfort in His presence. With that staff, the Good Shepherd can grab you and pull you to safety. And with that rod, He can crush any prowling lion or raging bear that charges toward you.

Psalm 13a For the director of music. A psalm of David. 1How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? 3Look on me and answer, LORD my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, 4and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall. 5But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. 6I will sing the LORD’s praise, for he has been good to me.

The crucifixion of the self is a cooperative affair between us and the Lord. We cannot die to self without the help of God’s grace, for only God can satisfy our ultimate desire, and only God can convince our hearts that, when we die to self, he will raise us up. Death to self means releasing all our desires, our reputation, our glory, and having our way with other people. Everything. A dead person does not continue to have just a little life left in him. So, when it comes to our death to self, we have to say, “Lord, give it to me. I will take it. I will lay it all down for you.

The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want; He makes me down to lie In pastures green; He leadeth me The quiet waters by. My soul He doth restore again, And me to walk doth make Within the paths of righteousness, E’en for His own name’s sake. Yea, though I walk in death’s dark vale, Yet will I fear no ill; For Thou art with me, and Thy rod And staff my comfort still. My table Thou hast furnished me In presence of my foes; My head Thou dost with oil anoint, And my cup overflows. Goodness and mercy all my life Shall surely follow me; And in God’s house forevermore, My dwelling place shall be.

PSALM 23 The LORD is my  dshepherd; I shall not  ewant. 2 He makes me lie down in green  fpastures. He leads me beside still waters. [1] 3 He  grestores my soul. He hleads me in ipaths of righteousness [2] for his  jname’s sake. 4 Even though I  kwalk through the valley of  lthe shadow of death, [3] I will  mfear no evil, for  nyou are with me; your  orod and your staff, they comfort me. 5 You  pprepare a table before me in  qthe presence of my enemies; you  ranoint my head with oil; my scup overflows. 6 Surely [4] goodness and mercy [5] shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall  tdwell [6] in the house of the LORD uforever. [7]

PSALM 23 The LORD is my  dshepherd; I shall not  ewant. 2 He makes me lie down in green  fpastures. He leads me beside still waters. [1] 3 He  grestores my soul. He hleads me in ipaths of righteousness [2] for his  jname’s sake. 4 Even though I  kwalk through the valley of  lthe shadow of death, [3] I will  mfear no evil, for  nyou are with me; your  orod and your staff, they comfort me. 5 You  pprepare a table before me in  qthe presence of my enemies; you  ranoint my head with oil; my scup overflows. 6 Surely [4] goodness and mercy [5] shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall  tdwell [6] in the house of the LORD uforever. [7] The

Psalm 23 The LORD the Shepherd of His People A Psalm of David. 1The LORD is †my shepherd; †I shall not awant. 2†He makes me to lie down in bgreen pastures; †He leads me beside the cstill waters. 3He restores my soul; †He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake. 4Yea, though I walk through the valley of †the shadow of death, †I will fear no evil; †For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. 5You †prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You †anoint my head with oil; My cup runs over. 6Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me All the days of my life; And I will ddwell in the house of the LORD eForever.

Psalm of David. PSALM 23 The LORD is my  dshepherd; I shall not  ewant. 2 He makes me lie down in green  fpastures. He leads me beside still waters. [1] 3 He  grestores my soul. He hleads me in ipaths of righteousness [2] for his  jname’s sake. 4 Even though I  kwalk through the valley of  lthe shadow of death, [3] I will  mfear no evil, for  nyou are with me; your  orod and your staff, they comfort me. 5 You  pprepare a table before me in  qthe presence of my enemies; you  ranoint my head with oil; my scup overflows. 6 Surely [4] goodness and mercy [5] shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall  tdwell [6] in the house of the LORD uforever. [7] The

PSALM 23 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. 2        He makes me lie down in green pastures.     He leads me beside still waters. [1] 3        He restores my soul.     He leads me in paths of righteousness [2]         for his name’s sake.     4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, [3]         I will fear no evil,     for you are with me;         your rod and your staff,         they comfort me.     5 You prepare a table before me         in the presence of my enemies;     you anoint my head with oil;         my cup overflows. 6    Surely [4] goodness and mercy [5] shall follow me         all the days of my life,     and I shall dwell [6] in the house of the LORD         forever. [7]

10:13 Your situation is not unique! Every human life faces contradictions! Here is the good news: God believes in your freedom! He has made it possible for you to triumph in every situation that you will ever encounter! 10:14  My 1dearly loved friends! Escape into his image and likeness in you where the 2distorted image (2idolatry) loses its attraction! (Dearly loved friends, translated as  1agapetos; to know the agape love of God is to know our true identity! The word, agape, comes from agoo, meaning to lead as a shepherd guides his sheep, and pao, to rest, like in Psalm 23, ”he leads me beside still waters where my soul is restored; by the waters of reflection my soul remembers who I am! Now I can face the valley of the shadow of death and fear no evil!”)

The LORD Is My Shepherd A Psalm of David.     PSALM 23 The LORD is my  d shepherd; I shall not  e want.         2 He makes me lie down in green  f pastures.     He leads me beside still waters. [1]         3 He  g restores my soul.     He  h leads me in  i paths of righteousness [2]         for his  j name's sake.     4 Even though I  k walk through the valley of  l the shadow of death, [3]         I will  m fear no evil,     for  n you are with me;         your  o rod and your staff,         they comfort me.     5 You  p prepare a table before me         in  q the presence of my enemies;     you  r anoint my head with oil;         my  s cup overflows.     6 Surely [4] goodness and mercy [5] shall follow me         all the days of my life,     and I shall  t dwell [6] in the house of the LORD          u forever. [7]

Where shall we find words more adapted to express joy, than what are contained in the Psalms of thanksgiving and of praise? We see here the hearts of saints. Our thoughts are like the flowers of a beautiful and well-cultivated garden, and our gratification consists in a grateful adoration of divine goodness. Again, where do you find more profound expressions of melancholy and of sorrow than are contained in the Psalms of affliction and of mourning? You look, I say, into the very hearts of holy men; you become familiar with death, and the interior of the tomb is opened to you. We see it dead and dark, under a consciousness of the just wrath of God, and we perceive that His countenance is, as it were, turned away from us. In the two great passions of fear and hope, we find them depicted in language which no painter can embody, and which the greatest human actor would ineffectually attempt to transcend.

Jase and I asked Mia what she wanted to do before her surgery. “How about a family party?” she suggested. So the invitation went out. It’s interesting when you mention to family members that they are going to be on TV--schwoom, they are there. As Willie said, “I didn’t know we had this much family.” Mia had always heard the funny stories about Jase wrestling with his brothers and cousins growing up, particularly how cousin Amy beat up Willie, so that’s what she requested for the special entertainment. As Jase said, “It’s the ultimate redneck dinner theater.” A wrestling ring was delivered, and the warmup act was the Robertson boys clowning around, performing their best wrestling moves. Willie surprised everyone with guest professional wrestlers, including Jase’s favorite, “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan. I felt kind of bad for them, wearing only their little wrestling pants, while the rest of us were bundled up in winter coats. Yes, it was January, but it was unusually cold in Louisiana--about twenty degrees. The wrestlers had to keep moving fast; otherwise, they would have frozen to death! At the end of the party, Mia took the stage between Jase and Willie, thanking everyone for coming and then sharing from her heart: “My favorite verse is Psalm 46:10: ‘Be still, and know that I am God!’ God is bigger than all of us, and He is bigger than any of your struggles, too.” I think I can say that there was hardly a dry eye in the crowd. Going into her surgery, Mia was being brave for all of us. In the end, seeing the final version of the episode, I thought the network did a great job of including enough humor to make people laugh but also providing a tender glimpse into the love our family shares with one another and the love we all have for Mia. When Duck Dynasty fans saw it on March 26, 2014, they agreed completely!

But of the many things he did, one of the most striking to me is his forgiving of sin.” “Really?” I said, shifting in my chair, which was perpendicular to his, in order to face him more directly. “How so?” “The point is, if you do something against me, I have the right to forgive you. However, if you do something against me and somebody else comes along and says, ‘I forgive you,’ what kind of cheek is that? The only person who can say that sort of thing meaningfully is God himself, because sin, even if it is against other people, is first and foremost a defiance of God and his laws. “When David sinned by committing adultery and arranging the death of the woman’s husband, he ultimately says to God in Psalm 51, ‘Against you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight.’ He recognized that although he had wronged people, in the end he had sinned against the God who made him in his image, and God needed to forgive him.

Theodore Roosevelt once said, “There has never yet been a man who led a life of ease, whose name is worth remembering. Certainly when the Lord calls us to be His disciples, He does not call us to a life of ease. A missionary whose story has influenced my life greatly is a man mentioned earlier named Henry Martyn. After a long and difficult life of Christian service in India, he announced he was going to go to Persia (modern Iran), because God had laid it upon his heart to translate the New Testament and the Psalms into the Persian language. By then he was an old man. People told him that if he stayed in India, he would die from the heat, and that Persia was hotter than India. But he went nonetheless. There he studied the Persian language and then translated the entire New Testament and Psalms in nine months. Then he learned that he couldn’t print or circulate them until he received the Shah’s permission. He traveled six hundred miles to Tehran; there he was denied permission to see the Shah. He turned around and made a four-hundred-mile trip to find the British ambassador, who gave him the proper letters of introduction and sent him the four hundred miles back to Tehran. This was in 1812, and Martyn made the whole trip on the back of a mule, traveling at night and resting by day, protected from the sweltering desert sun by nothing but a strip of canvas. He finally arrived back in Tehran, was received by the Shah, and secured permission for the Scriptures to be printed and circulated in Persia. Ten days later he died. But shortly before his death, he had written this statement in his diary: “I sat in the orchard, and thought, with sweet comfort and peace, of my God; in solitude my Company, my Friend, and Comforter.” He certainly did not live a life of ease, but it was a life worth remembering. And he’s one of many God used to turn redemptive history.

Under a Torremolinos Sky (Psalm 116)8 For Jim The first thing I notice is not the bed, oddly angled as all hospital beds are nor the pillowcase, covered in love notes. Not the table filled with pill bottles nor the sterile tools of a dozen indignities. I’ll notice these things later, on my way out perhaps. But first, my wide-angle lens pulls narrow, as eyes meet eyes and I am seen. How is it, before a word is spoken, you make me know I am known and welcome? What can I give back to God for the blessings he’s poured out on me? I’ll lift high the cup of salvation—a toast to God! You smile behind the plastic that keeps you alive, and as I rest my hand on your chest we conspire together to break the rules. The rhythm of your labored breathing will decide our seconds, our minutes, our hours. Tears to laughter and back again always in that order and rightly so. We bask under a Torremolinos sky and hear the tongues of angels sing of sins forgiven long before the world was made. I’ll pray in the name of God; I’ll complete what I promised God I’d do, and I’ll do it together with his people. Talk turns to motorcycles and mortuaries, to scotch and sons who wear their father’s charm like a crown, daughters who quicken the pulse with just a glance. Time flies and neither of us has time to waste. I’ll make a great looking corpse, you say because we of all people must speak of these things, because we of all people refuse to pretend. This doesn’t bring tears—not yet. Instead a giggle, a shared secret that life is and is not in the body. Soul, you’ve been rescued from death; Eye, you’ve been rescued from tears; And you, Foot, were kept from stumbling. Your chest still rises and falls but you grow weary, my hand tells me so. It’s too soon to ever say goodbye. When it’s my turn, brother, I will find you where the streets shimmer and tears herald only joy where we wear our true names and our true faces. Promise me, there, the dance we never had. When they arrive at the gates of death, God welcomes those who love him. Oh, God, here I am, your servant, your faithful servant: set me free for your service! I’m ready to offer the thanksgiving sacrifice and pray in the name of God. I’ll complete what I promised God I’d do, and I’ll do it in company with his people, In the place of worship, in God’s house, in Jerusalem, God’s city.

Psalm 56a For the director of music. To the tune of “A Dove on Distant Oaks.” Of David. A miktam.b When the Philistines had seized him in Gath. 1Be merciful to me, my God, for my enemies are in hot pursuit; all day long they press their attack. 2My adversaries pursue me all day long; in their pride many are attacking me. 3When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. 4In God, whose word I praise— in God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere mortals do to me? 5All day long they twist my words; all their schemes are for my ruin. 6They conspire, they lurk, they watch my steps, hoping to take my life. 7Because of their wickedness do notc let them escape; in your anger, God, bring the nations down. 8Record my misery; list my tears on your scrolld— are they not in your record? 9Then my enemies will turn back when I call for help. By this I will know that God is for me. 10In God, whose word I praise, in the LORD, whose word I praise— 11in God I trust and am not afraid. What can man do to me? 12I am under vows to you, my God; I will present my thank offerings to you. 13For you have delivered me from death and my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before God in the light of life.

And I thought, I am riding through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, as it says in the Psalm; and I attempted to fear no evil, but it was very hard, for there was evil in the wagon with me, like a sort of mist. So I tried to think about something else. And I looked up at the sky, which did not have a cloud in it, and was filled with stars; and it seemed so close I could touch it, and so delicate I could put my hand right through it, like a spiderweb spangled with dewdrops. But then as I looked, a part of it began to wrinkle up, like the skin on scalding milk; but harder and more brittle, and pebbled, like a dark beach, or like black silk crêpe; and then the sky was only a thin surface, like paper, and it was being singed away. And behind it was a cold blackness; and it was not Heaven or even Hell that I was looking at, but only emptiness. This was more frightening than anything I could think of, and I prayed silently to God to forgive my sins; but what if there was no God to forgive me? And then I reflected that perhaps it was the outer darkness, with the wailing and the gnashing of teeth, where God was not. And as soon as I had this thought, the sky closed over again, like water after you have thrown a stone; and was again smooth and unbroken, and filled with stars.

My soul hath thirsted after the strong living God; when shall I come and appear before the face of God?' (Psalm 42:2) But the Psalmist also says, 'In death there is no one that is mindful of thee.' So it made me happy that I could be with my mother the last few weeks of her life, and for the last ten days at her bedside daily and hourly. Sometimes I thought to myself that it was like being present at a birth to sit by a dying person and see their intentness on what is happening to them. It almost seems that one is absorbed in a struggle, a fearful, grim, physical struggle, to breathe, to swallow, to live. And so, I kept thinking to myself, how necessary it is for one of their loved ones to be beside them, to pray for them, to offer up prayers for them unceasingly, as well as to do all those little offices one can. When my daughter was a little tiny girl, she said to me once, 'When I get to be a great big woman and you are a little tiny girl, I'll take care of you,' and I thought of that when I had to feed my mother by the spoonful and urge her to eat her custard. How good God was to me, to let me be there. I had prayed so constantly that I would be beside her when she died; for years I had offered up that prayer. And God granted it quite literally. I was there, holding her hand, and she just turned her head and sighed.

The LORD Is My Rock and My Fortress To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David,  f the servant of the LORD,  g who addressed the words of this  h song to the LORD on the day when the LORD delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul. He said: PSALM 18 I love you, O LORD, my strength. 2 The LORD is my  i rock and my  j fortress and my deliverer, my God, my i rock, in k whom I take refuge, my l shield, and m the horn of my salvation, my n stronghold. 3 I call upon the LORD, who is  o worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies. 4  p The cords of death encompassed me; q the torrents of destruction assailed me; [1] 5  p the cords of Sheol entangled me; the snares of death confronted me. 6  r In my distress I called upon the LORD; to my God I cried for help. From his  s temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears. 7 Then the earth  t reeled and rocked; the foundations also of the mountains trembled and quaked, because he was angry. 8 Smoke went up from his nostrils, [2] and devouring  u fire from his mouth; glowing coals flamed forth from him. 9 He v bowed the heavens and w came down;  x thick darkness was under his feet. 10 He rode on a cherub and flew; he came swiftly on  z the wings of the wind. 11 He made darkness his covering, his  a canopy around him, thick clouds b dark with water.

Josephson had died just north of Abd al-Kuri Island, an uninhabited, mountainous desert with, on its eastern side, perhaps the world’s wildest and finest beach. To mollify Holworthy, in a moment of weakness not long after they had departed Lemonnier, Rensselaer had considered leaving a few SEALs there on the way south, to observe traffic, as on occasion irregular forces were ordered to do. But he had decided then that rather than mollify Holworthy, he would keep him down. The rendezvous point with the Puller wasn’t far, and, arriving first, Athena waited. The Puller was out of sight but in radio contact. Eventually they saw her to the west, and she came even with Athena at dusk, although in that latitude, as Josephson had learned, dusk is so short it hardly exists. With the lights of the Puller blazing despite wartime conditions, her vast superstructure, hollow and beamed like a box-girder bridge, was cast in flares and shadows. A brow was extended from a door in the side and fixed to Athena’s main deck. As a gentle swell moved the two ships up and down at different rates, the hinged brow tilted slightly one way and then another. The Iranian prisoners were escorted over the brow and to the brig in the Puller, which would take them very close to their own country, but then to the United States. They were bitter and depressed. The huge ship into the darkness of which they were swallowed seemed like an alien craft from another civilization, which, for them, it was. A gray metal coffin was carried to Athena by a detail from the Puller. This was a sad thing to see, sadder than struggle, sadder than blood. It disappeared below. Josephson’s body was placed inside it and the flag draped over it. Six of Athena’s crew in dress uniform carried it slowly to the brow and set it on deck. After a long silence, Rensselaer spoke a few words. “Our shipmates Speight and Josephson are no longer with us—Speight committed to the deep, lost except to God. And Josephson, who will go home. Neither of these men is unique in death. They are still very much like us, and we are like them: it’s only a matter of time—however long, however short. If upon gazing at this coffin you feel a gulf between you, the living, and him, one of the dead, remember that our fates are the same, and he isn’t as far from us as we may imagine. “At times like this I question our profession. I question the enterprise of war. And then I go on, as we shall, and as we must. In this spirit we bid goodbye to Ensign Josephson, to whom you might have been brothers, and I and the chiefs, perhaps, fathers. May God bless and keep him.” Then the captain read the 23rd Psalm, a salute was fired, and Josephson’s coffin was lifted to the shoulders of its bearers and slowly carried into the depths of the Puller. When he died, he was very young.

But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.” Here He, the holy One, is in contrast to every good man in all past ages. It was never known that God forsook a righteous man. There He is on that Cross, the absolutely righteous One, dying, forsaken of God. Oh, He says, I have gone down lower than any man ever went before, “I am a worm, and no man.” The word He used for worm is the word “tola,” and the tola of the orient is a little worm something like the cochineal of Mexico which feeds on a certain kind of cactus. The people beat these plants until the cochineal fall into a basin and then they crush those little insects and the blood is that brilliant crimson dye that makes those bright Mexican garments. In Palestine and Syria they use the tola in the same way and it makes the beautiful permanent scarlet dye of the orient It was very expensive and was worn only by the great and the rich and the noble. It is referred to again and again in Scripture. Solomon is said to have clothed the maidens of Israel in scarlet. Daniel was to be clothed in scarlet by Belshazzar. And that word “scarlet” is literally “the splendor of a worm.” “They shall be clothed in the splendor of a worm.” Now the Lord Jesus Christ says, “I am a worm; I am the tola,” and He had to be crushed in death that you and I might be clothed in glory. The glorious garments of our salvation are the garments that have been procured as a result of His death and His suffering.

That is exactly what I did once, for instance, when a rabbi from Eastern Europe turned to me and told me his story. He had lost his first wife and their six children in the concentration camp of Auschwitz where they were gassed, and now it turned out that his second wife was sterile. I observed that procreation is not the only meaning of life, for then life in itself would become meaningless, and something which in itself is meaningless cannot be rendered meaningful merely by its perpetuation. However, the rabbi evaluated his plight as an orthodox Jew in terms of despair that there was no son of his own who would ever say Kaddish6 for him after his death. But I would not give up. I made a last attempt to help him by inquiring whether he did not hope to see his children again in Heaven. However, my question was followed by an outburst of tears, and now the true reason for his despair came to the fore: he explained that his children, since they died as innocent martyrs,7 were thus found worthy of the highest place in Heaven, but as for himself he could not expect, as an old, sinful man, to be assigned the same place. I did not give up but retorted, “Is it not conceivable, Rabbi, that precisely this was the meaning of your surviving your children: that you may be purified through these years of suffering, so that finally you, too, though not innocent like your children, may become worthy of joining them in Heaven? Is it not written in the Psalms that God preserves all your tears?8 So perhaps none of your sufferings were in vain.” For the first time in many years he found relief from his suffering through the new point of view which I was able to open up to him.

November 22   |   Matthew 21:33–44 In a parable, Jesus tells the story of a landowner who plants a vineyard, leases it to tenants, and then goes to another country. After a time, he sends servants to the vineyard to collect the fruit. Rather than give the master his profit, the tenants beat one servant, stone another, and kill a third. In response, the landowner sends more servants, only to see the same thing happen to them. Finally, thinking surely they will respect his son, the landowner sends his heir to the vineyard. Believing they will be able to keep the vineyard for themselves, the tenants kill the son. At that point, Jesus asks the Pharisees what the landowner will do in this situation. The Pharisees say what we would all say; they suggest doing what we would all want to do: “He will put those wretches to a miserable death” (v. 41 ESV). In other words, he’s going to turn that place into an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie: no survivors. You see, the Pharisees, like us, are tuned in to the law. They’re thinking in terms of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. They can’t see Jesus’s underlying point: they’re the tenants. Jesus quotes them Psalm 118, saying that the stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. The son sent to the vineyard was rejected by the tenants … but that’s not the end of our story. Jesus says that anyone who comes into contact with this stone will be broken. All of our efforts, whether aimed at rebellion or at righteousness, will cease. The chief cornerstone will break us. There’s one important difference between the heir in the parable and Jesus. Jesus didn’t stay dead! And because Jesus was raised to new life and has given that new life to us, we can leave all our striving behind.

God made His Christ wonderful in a number of ways. First, He made Him do miracles and thus repudiated the Jews who denied that this man was from the Lord. Second, His manner of life was opposed to the whole world, namely, that He would flee what the whole world sought above all and would seek what the world fled above all. Thus in the first place “He made foolish the wisdom of the world” (1 Cor. 1:20) by being Himself made foolish to the world; then “He chose what is weak” (that is, sufferings and punishments) “to shame the strong” (that is, agreeable and peaceful things); hence “what is despised and things that are not” (1 Cor. 1:27 f.), such as poverty, contempt, the cross, death, and in general every opinion and “wisdom of the flesh” (Rom. 8:6) and of the world. Thus He is the “holy temple of the Lord,” that is, His humanity, “wonderful in justice” (Ps. 65:4 f.). These things the world and the flesh marvel at as something to be loved and sought after. So also the Jews, who were again offended at Him, fell into blasphemies, because they thought that such things especially must also be sought according to the Law. It is necessary that the fleshly man blaspheme the spiritual, because he regards spiritual goods as false, as follows below: “There are many who say, ‘who will show us the good?’” (v. 6). Third, He made Him wonderful in a superexcellent way in that He who alone is wonderful and the author of wonders made Him to be God. This is a great miracle, that the same person is God and man, dead and alive, mortal and immortal, and almost every contradiction is here resolved in Christ. Therefore the Jews who wanted to regard Christ as a mere man and not as the One made wonderful were in error and guilty of blasphemy. To one who thinks of anyone no more than what he can see in him no one appears wonderful.

19 “WHEN HE HAS COME” “When He has come, He will convict the world of sin . . . .” John 16:8     Very few of us know anything about conviction of sin. We know the experience of being disturbed because we have done wrong things. But conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit blots out every relationship on earth and makes us aware of only one—“Against You, You only, have I sinned . . .” (Psalm 51:4). When a person is convicted of sin in this way, he knows with every bit of his conscience that God would not dare to forgive him. If God did forgive him, then this person would have a stronger sense of justice than God. God does forgive, but it cost the breaking of His heart with grief in the death of Christ to enable Him to do so. The great miracle of the grace of God is that He forgives sin, and it is the death of Jesus Christ alone that enables the divine nature to forgive and to remain true to itself in doing so. It is shallow nonsense to say that God forgives us because He is love. Once we have been convicted of sin, we will never say this again. The love of God means Calvary—nothing less! The love of God is spelled out on the Cross and nowhere else. The only basis for which God can forgive me is the Cross of Christ. It is there that His conscience is satisfied.     Forgiveness doesn’t merely mean that I am saved from hell and have been made ready for heaven (no one would accept forgiveness on that level). Forgiveness means that I am forgiven into a newly created relationship which identifies me with God in Christ. The miracle of redemption is that God turns me, the unholy one, into the standard of Himself, the Holy One. He does this by putting into me a new nature, the nature of Jesus Christ. November 20 THE FORGIVENESS OF GOD “In Him we have . . . the forgiveness of sins . . . .” Ephesians 1:7     Beware of the pleasant view of the fatherhood of God: God is so kind and loving that of course He will forgive us. That thought, based solely on emotion, cannot be found anywhere in the New Testament. The only basis on which God can forgive us is the tremendous tragedy of the Cross of Christ. To base our forgiveness on any other ground is unconscious blasphemy. The only ground on which God can forgive our sin and reinstate us to His favor is through the Cross of Christ. There is no other way! Forgiveness, which is so easy for us to accept, cost the agony at Calvary. We should never take the forgiveness of sin, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and our sanctification in simple faith, and then forget the enormous cost to God that made all of this ours.     Forgiveness is the divine miracle of grace. The cost to God was the Cross of Christ. To

God’s renown is our first concern. Our task is to be an expert in “hallowed be your name” and “your kingdom come.” “Hallowed” means to be known and declared as holy. Our first desire is that God would be known as he truly is, the Holy One. Implicit in his name being hallowed is that his glory or fame would cover the earth. This takes us out of ourselves immediately. Somehow, we want God’s glory to be increasingly apparent through the church today. If you need specifics, keep your eyes peeled for the names God reveals to us. For example, we can pray that he would be known as the Mighty God, the Burden-Bearer, and the God who cares. “Your kingdom come” overlaps with our desire for his fame and renown. It is not so much that we are praying that Jesus would return quickly, though such a prayer is certainly one of the ways we pray. Instead, it is for God’s kingdom to continue its progress toward world dominion. The kingdom has already come and, as stewards of the kingdom for this generation, we want it to grow and flourish. The kingdom of heaven is about everything Jesus taught: love for neighbors and even enemies, humility in judgment, not coveting, blessing rather than cursing, meekness, peacemaking, and trusting instead of worrying. It is a matter of “righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17). Edward T. Welch February 1 Matthew 18:21–35 People mistreat us, sometimes in horrific ways. Spouses cheat. Children rebel. Bosses fire. Friends lie. Pastors fail. Parents abuse. Hurts are real. But how do all these one hundred denarii (about $6,000) offenses against us compare to the ten thousand talent (multimillion-dollar) debt we owed God, which he mercifully canceled? Since birth, and for all our lives, we have failed to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:37–39). But in one fell swoop—by the death and resurrection of Jesus—God wiped our records clean. Through the cross of Jesus and our faith in him, God removed our transgressions from us “as far as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12); he hurled “all our iniquities into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19). Could it be that one reason you find it so hard to forgive is because you have never received God’s forgiveness by repenting of your sins and believing in Jesus as your Savior? Or maybe you have yet to grasp the enormity of God’s forgiveness of all your many sins. If you dwell on your offender’s $6,000 debt against you, you will be trapped in bitterness until you die. But if you dwell on God’s forgiveness of your multimillion-dollar debt, you will find release and liberty. Robert D. Jones

May God’s people never eat rabbit or pork (Lev. 11:6–7)? May a man never have sex with his wife during her monthly period (Lev. 18:19) or wear clothes woven of two kinds of materials (Lev. 19:19)? Should Christians never wear tattoos (Lev. 19:28)? Should those who blaspheme God’s name be stoned to death (Lev. 24:10–24)? Ought Christians to hate those who hate God (Ps. 139:21–22)? Ought believers to praise God with tambourines, cymbals, and dancing (Ps. 150:4–5)? Should Christians encourage the suffering and poor to drink beer and wine in order to forget their misery (Prov. 31:6–7)? Should parents punish their children with rods in order to save their souls from death (Prov. 23:13–14)? Does much wisdom really bring much sorrow and more knowledge more grief (Eccles. 1:18)? Will becoming highly righteous and wise destroy us (Eccles. 7:16)? Is everything really meaningless (Eccles. 12:8)? May Christians never swear oaths (Matt. 5:33–37)? Should we never call anyone on earth “father” (Matt. 23:9)? Should Christ’s followers wear sandals when they evangelize but bring no food or money or extra clothes (Mark 6:8–9)? Should Christians be exorcising demons, handling snakes, and drinking deadly poison (Mark 16:15–18)? Are people who divorce their spouses and remarry always committing adultery (Luke 16:18)? Ought Christians to share their material goods in common (Acts 2:44–45)? Ought church leaders to always meet in council to issue definitive decisions on matters in dispute (Acts 15:1–29)? Is homosexuality always a sin unworthy of the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9–10)? Should unmarried men not look for wives (1 Cor. 7:27) and married men live as if they had no wives (1 Cor. 7:29)? Is it wrong for men to cover their heads (1 Cor. 11:4) or a disgrace of nature for men to wear long hair (1 Cor. 11:14)? Should Christians save and collect money to send to believers in Jerusalem (1 Cor. 16:1–4)? Should Christians definitely sing psalms in church (Col. 3:16)? Must Christians always lead quiet lives in which they work with their hands (1 Thess. 4:11)? If a person will not work, should they not be allowed to eat (2 Thess. 3:10)? Ought all Christian slaves always simply submit to their masters (reminder: slavery still exists today) (1 Pet. 2:18–21)? Must Christian women not wear braided hair, gold jewelry, and fine clothes (1 Tim. 2:9; 1 Pet. 3:3)? Ought all Christian men to lift up their hands when they pray (1 Tim. 2:8)? Should churches not provide material help to widows who are younger than sixty years old (1 Tim. 5:9)? Will every believer who lives a godly life in Christ be persecuted (2 Tim. 3:12)? Should the church anoint the sick with oil for their healing (James 5:14–15)? The list of such questions could be extended.

We cheat death, not by living forever, but by bearing, raising, and educating children to keep our souls, our values, and even our names alive. One generation, scarred and often embittered by experience, gives way to another, born in innocence and hope.

15Now, there is no comparison between Adam’s transgression and the gracious gift that we experience. For the magnitude of the gift far outweighs the crime.o It’s true that many died because of one man’s transgression, but how much greater will God’s grace and his gracious gift of acceptance overflowp to many because of what one Man, Jesus, the Messiah, did for us! 16And this free-flowing gift imparts to us much more than what was given to us through the one who sinned. For because of one transgression, we are all facing a death sentence with a verdict of “Guilty!” But this gracious gift leaves us free from our many failuresq and brings us into the perfect righteousness of God—acquitted with the words “Not guilty!

4Sharing in his death by our baptism means that we were co-buried and entombed with him, so that when the Father’s glory raised Christ from the dead, we were also raised with him. We have been co-resurrected with him so that we could be empowered to walk in the freshness of new life. 5For since we are permanently grafted into hima to experience a death like his, then we are permanently grafted into him to experience a resurrection like his and the new life that it imparts.

For you, my friend, Christ is your only strength. He alone brought you back from death into his new life. His sacrifice was complete, not yours. His work was pleasing to his Father, not yours. His steady ground is where you now stand, not your own. No matter what comes, little or big, insignificant or tragic, mountains crumbling and floods raging, this peaceful City of God is your sure and solid promise. You will not get there by cleverness or wealth. You will not find it by avoiding the wickedness that crumbles all around. You are promised this everlasting city through death: death and destruction of the earth around us; death and destruction of your own desires; death and destruction of the holy Son of God, who perfectly tottered, sinlessly shook, righteously melted into the sea for you. God truly is your only refuge. Christ Jesus alone is your strength. Therefore, you will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea.

It is no longer I who struggles with sin and death but Christ in me who bears it all for me so that the life I now live, I live by faith in the One who faces off with it all for me.

Our strength to resist, wrestle, and fight against sin and death is not our own. Likewise, our good works, our holiness, our all is from God. The Lord provides our good works to us. He is our holiness because Jesus is all in all for us.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? 2 My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest.[b] 3 Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the one Israel praises.[c] 4 In you our ancestors put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. 5 To you they cried out and were saved; in you they trusted and were not put to shame. 6 But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people. 7 All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads. 8 “He trusts in the Lord,” they say, “let the Lord rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.” 9 Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast. 10 From birth I was cast on you; from my mother’s womb you have been my God. 11 Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help. 12 Many bulls surround me; strong bulls of Bashan encircle me. 13 Roaring lions that tear their prey open their mouths wide against me. 14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted within me. 15 My mouth[d] is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. 16 Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce[e] my hands and my feet. 17 All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me. 18 They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment. 19 But you, Lord, do not be far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to help me. 20 Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs. 21 Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen. 22 I will declare your name to my people; in the assembly I will praise you. 23 You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you descendants of Jacob, honor him! Revere him, all you descendants of Israel! 24 For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help. 25 From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly; before those who fear you[f] I will fulfill my vows. 26 The poor will eat and be satisfied; those who seek the Lord will praise him— may your hearts live forever! 27 All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him, 28 for dominion belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations. 29 All the rich of the earth will feast and worship; all who go down to the dust will kneel before him— those who cannot keep themselves alive. 30 Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord. 31 They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it!

Justification is God’s work, at Christ’s expense, to free you from sin, death, and hell. It is justice done to sin and grace given to you. And God wanted to do this for you.

We must put away a whitewashed Christianity that says that God simply forgives because He is nice, kind, loving, gentle, etc. That is not how forgiveness works. God does not simply ignore our sins, turn a blind eye to them, and perpetuate injustice. No. God has forgiven you for Christ’s sake. It was because Jesus paid your debt, took your penalty, and ransomed you from sin and death that you are forgiven.

For death holds no mention of You. In Sheol who can acclaim You? -Psalm 6:6

You, O LORD, have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. PSALM 116:8

death is the enemy; indeed, it is the “last enemy,” says 1 Corinthians 15:26. When the psalmist, then, prays for deliverance from death, he is talking about a great deal more than a physical phenomenon. Death is the “last enemy,” the physical symbol of our sinful alienation from God: “For in death there is no memory of You; in the grave, who will give You thanks?” Sin

Kilio kikuu cha Yesu, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabakthani?”, yaani, “Mungu wangu, Mungu wangu, mbona umeniacha?”, na “Imekwisha”, vilitabiriwa katika Zaburi 22 ili watu waliompinga Kristo waamini kama Yesu alikuwa Masihi. Zaburi 22 ulikuwa wimbo maarufu katika kipindi cha karne ya kwanza, kipindi ambacho Yesu alizaliwa na kufa, uliotungwa na mfalme Daudi, ulioitwa ‘zaburi ya mateso na matumaini ya mwadilifu’. Kwa hiyo Yesu aliposema maneno hayo yaliwaingia watu akilini, na kuanzia hapo imani hasa ya Ukristo ikachukua kasi hadi leo hii. Zaburi 22 inaanza na “Mungu wangu, Mungu wangu, mbona umeniacha?” na inaisha na “Imekwisha”, miongoni mwa maneno saba aliyoyasema Yesu pale msalabani Golgotha. Kwa hiyo, Zaburi 22 ni utabiri wa kifo cha Yesu.

Who has shed the blood of America’s fifty five million innocent children? Some may say, ‘it’s those abortionists.’ But God says: “Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked” (Psalm 82:4) and “Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter.” (Proverbs 24:11). Many have marched against abortion, picketed abortion clinics and participated in rescue efforts of the unborn. If only more American Christians had taken God’s Word seriously enough to insure that abortion was banned in our land, as it still is in a handful of nations.

They even had wars about monastic books, of all things; in one debacle, called the Battle of the Book, which took place in the kingdom of Cairbre Drom Cliabh in north-west Ireland between 555 and 561, two clans went to war after St. Columba had illegally copied a version of the Psalms belonging to St. Finnian, most likely the only war to even begin over copyright infrigment. The battle between the two groups led to “thousands” of deaths.

Pure and impure--Ritual purity/cleanness or ritual impurity/uncleanness had nothing to do with dirt, grime, germs, and such. Ritual purity/cleaness had to do with boundaries. Such boundaries created order out of chaos (Job 26:10; Psalms 104:9; Proverbs 8:29; and Jeremiah 5:22 among other verses) and so were sacred. Therefore, anything that crossed boundaries threatened order and created impurity/uncleanness. Rituals then must be performed to restore the boundaries and thus order. Such rituals could be as simple as washing with water, or they might be elaborate, involving sacrifices and other ceremonies. Impurity could occur anywhere. Bats, for instance, were in the ancient way of thinking neither bird not mammal. They crossed boundaries and were unclean. Blood should remain within the boundary of the skin. Contact with blood outside the skin created impurity since it had crossed a boundary. Often births and deaths, and always menstrual cycles, created ritual impurity, and that must be rectified by the counter ritual of washing. Nocturnal emissions for men did exactly the same thing, and also required washing.   Back to text

Without freedom, both the possibilities for people to love and to destroy would be eliminated. The problem of evil is the problem of freedom. God is Love incarnate (1), and despite the high amount of choice that He allows, He also is bursting to lavish His Love not merely on the perfect, which existed solely in Christ, but on the imperfect who could never deserve it by virtue of their imperfection (2). He does not completely shield the more deserving, not even the sole perfect One in all of human history, from destruction, yet He loves to redeem and restore, even through death at times as with His only begotten Son (3). His love is completely undeserved for the imperfect, despite their notions at times of amassing karma by their good deeds, yet He loves to pour out grace on the undeserving (4). Everything good in our existence, including the very life that we have, the air that we breathe, and even the good things that we do are by His mercy and grace (5). May all praise be to the One who has lavished loving-kindness on us in times of plenty and in times of want, who even seeks to grow us in the darkest of times when the cost of freedom is most clear, who remains with those who have found Him even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death (6). 1: 1 John 4:16; 2: Romans 3:9-31; 9:16, 23-29; 11:5-6 3. Job, Isaiah 53:3-6, 11 (prophesied centuries before Christ), Romans 3:24-26, 2 Corinthians 5:21 4. Romans 5:6-8; 11: 35-36, Isaiah 64:6, Ephesians 2:7-9, Psalm 50:7-15 5. James 1:17, Romans 2:4 6. Romans 8:28, Ephesians 1:3-10, James 1:2-5, Philippians 4:4-9, Psalm 23, Deuteronomy 31:8

The author of the Twenty-third Psalm makes a similar point. When all is going smoothly in his life, surrounded by green pastures and still waters, the psalmist talks about God, referring to God as He. But when he finds himself for the first time in the valley of the shadow of death and discovers that God has not abandoned him, only then does he say for the first time, “for Thou art with me.

In the second place, if Christ is really the Priest of our souls, let us use Him regularly, and keep back nothing from Him. It is a sorrowful fact that many believers enjoy the Gospel far less than they ought to do, for lack of boldness in using the priestly office of Jesus Christ. They go mourning and weeping along the Way to heaven, perplexing themselves by poring over their infirmities and sins, and carrying ten times as much weight on their backs as Christ ever meant them to bear. Ignorance, sad ignorance, is too often the simple account of the condition of these people. They think only of the death of Christ, and not of the life of Christ. They think of His finished work on the cross, but forget His priestly intercession. If this be our case, let us turn over a new leaf, and change our plan this very day. Let us think of Jesus Christ as a loving Friend, to whom we may go morning, noon, and night, and get relief from Him every day. “Cast thy burden on the Lord, and He will sustain thee.” (Psalm 55:22) Let us live the life of faith in the Son of God, and hold communion with Him continually. Let us use Him every morning as a Fountain of grace and help, and drink freely of that Fountain. Let us use Him every evening as a Fountain of absolution and refreshment, and draw out of Him living water. He that tries this plan will find it for the health of his soul.

Chichester Psalms by Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) Psalm 108, verse 2 Awake, psaltery and harp! I will rouse the dawn! Psalm 100 Make a joyful noise unto the Lord all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before his presence with singing. Know ye that the Lord, He is God. It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, And into His courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him, and bless His name. For the Lord is good, His mercy is everlasting. And His truth endureth to all generations. Part II Psalm 23 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, He leadeth me beside the still waters, He restoreth my soul, He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness, For His name's sake. Yea, though I walk Through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, For Thou art with me. Thy rod and Thy staff They comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me In the presence of mine enemies, Thou annointest my head with oil, My cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy Shall follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the house of the Lord Forever. Psalm 2, verses 1-4 Why do the nations rage, And the people imagine a vain thing The kings of the earth set themselves, And the rulers take counsel together Against the Lord and against His annointed. Saying, let us break their bonds asunder, He that sitteth in the heavens Shall laugh, and the Lord Shall have them in derision! Psalm 131 Lord, Lord, My heart is not haughty, Nor mine eyes lofty, Neither do I exercise myself In great matters or in things Too wonderful for me to understand. Surely I have calmed And quieted myself, As a child that is weaned of his mother, My soul is even as a weaned child. Let Israel hope in the Lord From henceforth and forever. Psalm 133, verse 1 Behold how good, And how pleasant it is, For brethren to dwell Together in unity.

You see, life will never operate the way we want it to. People will not submit to the laws of our kingdoms for long. God will not get up and give us his holy throne. Our reality is irrational and our hope is hopeless. Our dreams are gas (see Psalm 73:18–20). The more we work to fill our hearts, the emptier they become. The more we work to achieve our dreams, the more they vaporize in our hands. The more we live for ourselves, the more envious we become. It is socially acceptable madness. It cannot and will not ever work. This is not the way the world was created, and this is not who we were designed to be. We were designed to live with both King and kingdom consciousness, because we were designed to live for God. The architecture of our lives was to be shaped by all of the plans, purposes, words, and actions that would flow out of these words: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). It is only inside of the boundaries of these words that true and lasting life and peace of heart will ever be found. Inside these boundaries, real wisdom and real love live. Inside of this moral structure, life lives in gorgeous beauty. Outside are frustration, discouragement, anger, disappointment, and doubt. Sure, the temporary pleasures of here and now are enjoyable, but their shelf life is short. Creation has no capacity whatsoever to truly satisfy your heart. Your heart has been wired to find its hope, peace, and rest in God alone. What is spiritual death? It is living as if God doesn’t exist. It is putting yourself where God is supposed to be.

Psalms 151 - One Plus One Equals One You are the bridge that gets me over the low places, what holds me together between the gaps. When I feel like I have lost myself, you are the way and the map. Not all who wander are lost, but I feel like I am wandering in the dark. Traveling blindly down a path that I can’t see, you light my pathway with your spark. I feel unstable, unknowing what’s ahead, you lead me out of the shadow of death. When I’m just holding on by a thread, you are the one who gives me breath. You are my life, you are my truth, you are my wife, you are my root, when times are hard, you help me through. You’re my counterpart, we’ve been fused, now one plus one equals one, not two.

Resurrection is not just another way of talking about Sheol, or about what happens, as in Psalm 73, ‘afterwards’, that is, after the event of bodily death. It speaks of something that will happen, if it does, after that again. Resurrection means bodily life after ‘life after death’, or, if you prefer, bodily life after the state of ‘death’. That is why it is very misleading—and foreign to all the relevant texts—to speak, as does one recent writer, of ‘resurrection to heaven’.106 Resurrection is what did not happen to Enoch or Elijah. According to the texts, it is what will happen to people who are at present dead, not what has already happened to them.

There’s a Psalm that says: Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.1 I struggled recently to understand how anyone’s death could be precious – God had to show me that there are things bigger than this life… eternal things.” I caught mom’s eye, and she nodded slightly in a way that conveyed our shared secret. “I’ve learned lately that God’s plans are much different than ours – His are much bigger… and they lead to the most spectacular outcomes, even when we doubt what He’s doing. I know now that His outcomes are spectacular beyond anything that we could imagine.

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. ROMANS 8:38 NLT There may be something on your mind—a sin, a bad decision, someone’s rejection, or a particular trial—that makes you feel as if the Father does not or could not love you. However, once you believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior, nothing can separate you from His love. Not people. Not circumstances. Not angels, nor demons, nor the enemy’s entire army. Absolutely nothing. Psalm 34:18 is clear, “The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” So when you feel at your most unworthy or defeated is when the Father is closest, tenderly bidding you to return to Him. The most dangerous move you can make is to resist His love. So seek His face. Confess your failings. Ask Him to teach you. Thank Him for inviting you back. Then praise His holy name and love Him in return. Lord, thank You for accepting me. I am so grateful for Your wonderful, unconditional, unchanging love. Help me hear Your voice, amen.

The death of His faithful ones is precious in the Lord’s sight. Lord, I am indeed Your servant; …You have loosened my bonds. I will offer You a sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of Yahweh. I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all His people, in the courts of the Lord’s house. Psalm one hundred sixteen.

And we must lament the brokenness of our lives now so we will be able to lament our broken lives at death—and discover that God’s grace embraces us here too.

And my soul is greatly troubled; but thou, O Lord—how long? 4 Turn again, O Lord, and deliver my soul, O save me for thy mercy’s sake, 5 For in death there is no remembrance of thee, in the grave who will sing praises to thee?

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. —PSALM 23:1–

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

Significantly, the story of Ps 116 closely resembles the story of Jesus as told in Phil 2:6–11. That hymn portrays Jesus as one who emptied himself and took on the form of a “slave” (Phil 2:7),[12] “humbled,” or lowered, himself,[13] and became obedient unto “death” (2:8). And it goes on to declare that God regarded Jesus’ death as precious and thus vindicated him (“Because of this, God greatly exalted him”—2:9). Paul evokes the story of Ps 116 because it resembles the story of Jesus. Thus it is Jesus whom Paul has in mind in quoting the psalm. In Paul’s mind, Jesus is the protagonist of the story told there; he is the one who took on the form of a slave, who humbled himself even more, who gave himself for others, suffered, and offered his life in obedience to God, and who was vindicated and exalted. Thus in Paul’s reading of the psalm, it is Christ who speaks the cited words, which can be rendered: “I have been faithful, therefore I have spoken.”[

If man had kept the law of God, as given to Adam after his fall, preserved by Noah, and observed by Abraham, there would have been no necessity for the ordinance of circumcision. And if the descendants of Abraham had kept the covenant, of which circumcision was a sign, they would never have been seduced into idolatry, nor would it have been necessary for them to suffer a life of bondage in Egypt; they would have kept God’s law in mind, and there would have been no necessity for it to be proclaimed from Sinai or engraved upon the tables of stone. And had the people practiced the principles of the Ten Commandments, there would have been no need of the additional directions given to Moses. The sacrificial system, committed to Adam, was also perverted by his descendants. Superstition, idolatry, cruelty, and licentiousness corrupted the simple and significant service that God had appointed. Through long intercourse with idolaters the people of Israel had mingled many heathen customs with their worship; therefore the Lord gave them at Sinai definite instruction concerning the sacrificial service. After the completion of the tabernacle he communicated with Moses from the cloud of glory above the mercy seat, and gave him full directions concerning the system of offerings and the forms of worship to be [365] maintained in the sanctuary. The ceremonial law was thus given to Moses, and by him written in a book. But the law of Ten Commandments spoken from Sinai had been written by God himself on the tables of stone, and was sacredly preserved in the ark. There are many who try to blend these two systems, using the texts that speak of the ceremonial law to prove that the moral law has been abolished; but this is a perversion of the Scriptures. The distinction between the two systems is broad and clear. The ceremonial system was made up of symbols pointing to Christ, to his sacrifice and his priesthood. This ritual law, with its sacrifices and ordinances, was to be performed by the hebrews until type met antitype in the death of Christ, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. Then all the sacrificial offerings were to cease. It is this law that Christ “took ...out of the way, nailing it to his cross.” Colossians 2:14. But concerning the law of Ten Commandments the psalmist declares, “Forever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in heaven.” Psalm 119:89. And Christ himself says, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law.... Verily I say unto you”—making the assertion as emphatic as possible—“Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” Matthew 5:17, 18. Here he teaches, not merely what the claims of God’s law had been, and were then, but that these claims should hold as long as the heavens and the earth remain. The law of God is as immutable as his throne. It will maintain its claims upon mankind in all ages.

October 1 Only goodness and faithful love will pursue me all the days of my life. Psalm 23:6 God told King Hezekiah he was going to die, but Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and cried out to God. In response, God added fifteen years to the king's life. But no sooner had he recovered than he started sounding as if his close encounter with death came with an automatic doctorate, as if the decision to spare one of God's own has anything to do with loving one person more than another. God cannot love us more or less than He does at this moment. He chooses to heal and not to heal for His own reasons. All His decisions come from His love. But whether He chooses to heal or take us home, His love remains constant.