I just got Matthew Smith’s latest CD “All I Owe” because I preordered it. It was signed and numbered. He only did the first 300 and I got number 13. :) Also got a great looking t-shirt.

But forget the signature and the t. The songs are great. Two have captured my heart early on. First, consider these closing lyrics from “The Lord Will Provide”:

When life sinks apace,
And death is in view.
This word of His grace
Shall comfort us through.
No fearing or doubting,
With Christ on our side.
We hope to die shouting,
‘The Lord will provide!’

Oh, it gets me all teary-eyed. The rest of the song is equally as wonderful. It is really hard to resist posting the entire lyric.

The other one that got me is “My Lord, I Did Not Choose You”. Obviously it is strongly Calvinisitic (aka ‘Biblical’) but that isn’t the only reason I love it. Here’s a sample

My heart knows none above you.
For your rich grace I thirst.
I know that if I love you,
You must have loved me first.

My Lord, I did not choose you
For that could never be.
My heart would still refuse you
Had you not chosen me.

But beyond the lyrics, Matthew has set these hymns to some beautiful music and he does a wonderful job singing them. One little aside, I like the title track better on his CD “Even When My Heart Is Breaking”. Then again, I prefer Derek Webb’s unplugged version of “I Want A Broken Heart” to the version on “I See Things Upside Down”.

At any rate, I do recommend the CD. We need the hymns back in our churches and Matthew Smith and Indelible Grace are one way that can happen.

Darned Paulo!! First it was Linerider and now its Double Wires. How am I supposed to ever get any work done???

We sing it all the time. Hallelujah. But what does it mean? Well, first I want to do a little easy Hebrew and then some comments.

The word in Hebrew (see Ps 106:1 for example) is הללויה (without the vowel dots). Don’t let that weird you out, it is pretty straight forward and I’ll unpack it for you. First, the root of the word is הלל halel meaning “to praise or worship”. The second part of the word is ×™×” Yah is the short version of God’s name Yahweh. ¹Jehovah is not and never was God’s name. Jehovah is “Yahweh” with the vowels for Adoni (Lord) transliterated through Latin. Don’t call God Jehovah, it isn’t his name. The root הלל halel is in the imperative form, it is a command. It has the suffix (don’t forget, Hebrew is right to left) of ו which is second person. Literally, it would be “you (plural) worship” and the suffix “God”. So “hallelujah” literally is “You (all) praise Yahweh!” as a command. When it is used in Psalm 106 it is directed to the people commanding them to praise God, not directly to God as a form of praise.

Have you ever sung “hallelujah” over and over again as a form of worship? There is an “updated” version of “All Creatures of Our God and King” which has a bridge inserted that simply repeats “Alleluia” over and over again. But if you consider the hymn in context, the original alleluia portion is connected to the title: all creatures of our God and King, praise God.

It is easy to repeat a word or phrase over and over and have it feel like a form of worship. Our feelings may indeed be worshipful, but let’s consider what we’re repeating.

This video got me thinking about this subject.

Harold Camping is insane. He is a false teacher. He just is. If I’m not mistaken, this is his third prediction of the end of the world. He has also stated that the Holy Spirit has departed from the Church and that believers are to abandon them and spread the gospel through other means. I simply cannot believe that anyone listens to this guy any more. What is it going to take to convince some people that the man is a false teacher?

I would have to say that that was the best Desiring God Conference my wife and I have been to so far and, I would have to say, probably the best conference I’ve ever been to. Every speaker was fantastic and relevant and helpful and challenging. Didn’t make it? The audio is posted here. Let me give you my take on each one.

David Wells – Wells really set the stage for the discussion that followed. His book “Above All Earthly Powers” was the impetus for the conference and we all got a free copy.

Voddie Bauchman – I’d never heard of Bauchman before but I was immediately impressed with him. Very articulate. The only hesitancy I had with his talk was that he tended to address secular humanism and that really isn’t an issue in Post-Modernism. Still, what he said was very good and to the point.

Tim Keller – My favorite speaker of the bunch. His approach to evangelism in a post-modern setting is something we all should be paying attention to. We won’t duplicate it, we’re not ministering in Manhattan, but we can get some clues as to how to reach post-modern, post-Christian minds. I want to be Tim Keller.

Mark Driscoll – Piper said that he had gotten more heat for inviting Driscoll to the conference than anyone else. Ever. I know I had heard murmurings and hesitations and some folks who just didn’t go. By the way, the conference sold out. Anyway, I like Mark Driscoll. He is able to reach the people he’s reaching because of the way he preaches. I expected to be offended at some point by his talk but what bothered me was not what I was expecting. He was making a comparison between Jesus in an Emergent approach and Jesus in a Reformed approach. The Emergents focus too much on his humanity. Probably. But then he said that some Calvinists focus too much on his divinity. “Like who?” I asked myself. My wife said it out loud. I think he did it for the sake of symmetry in the lecture more than because it is an issue we Reformed have to wrestle with. Other than that, his talk was very good on Jesus in a post-modern world. Worth the bandwidth to download.

D.A. Carson – Carson could read instructions for setting up a VCR and make it interesting. He spoke on post-modernism and love from John 17. He was in his element. His commentary on John is the best today and John was what his PhD was on. He knows that book.

John Piper – This year John only spoke once, the closing session. He took John 17:13 and talked about Jesus’ joy in God being ours. He prefaced his talk with some kind words to any post-moderns in the audience and some kind words to Mark Driscoll who had left the day before. There has been some discussion about some tension between John and Mark but that is not so. They respect and admire each other and I admire and respect them both.

My sweetie and I are jumping in the Buick and heading north for the weekend. North and west to the 2006 Desiring God Conference. It looks like it will be an excellent conference and is already sold out. We can’t wait. Not only do we get the great speakers, but we get a weekend alone together! Don’t get much better than this.

I guess you would call this a “Productivity Enhancer.”

[HT: Paulo]

Derek Thomas has a brief but helpful article about The Didache at reformation21. The Didache is an ancient Christian document that I have to admit a fascination with. In beginning Greek, our final was to translate a piece of it having never seen it before. That was a challenge but a fun one.

In the past, I have used The Didache to argue that baptism’s mode is not of paramount importance. Chapter seven is about how to baptize and it lists some options for acceptable modes. Included is pouring water over the head of the one being baptized. This doesn’t always persuade others since the document is not inspired scripture and there has been debate over the dating of the document. I would never give any document other than Scripture a place of authority on practice and belief, but if this is a first century document (more about that in a moment) then it shows the lexical range of the word baptizo within the Christian community. Baptizo does not always and only mean immersion, it came to take on a more elastic meaning within the ecclesial community.

Read On…

As I’ve mentioned, EM Bounds’ book Power Through Prayer has really been affecting my thinking and, more significantly, my praying. Here are some significant sections that stood out for me. I’m sure that these kinds of things have been mentioned during homeletics classes, but I didn’t hear them and I should have been made to hear them. It isn’t that I didn’t already know them, but Bounds puts them in a strong and memorable tone.

Ones I will hold on to and hopefully learn from:

Volumes have been written laying down the mechanics and taste of sermon-making, until we have become possessed with the idea that this scaffolding is the building. The young preacher has been taught to lay out all his strength on the form, taste, and beauty of his sermon as a mechanical and intellectual product. We have thereby cultivated a vicious taste among the people and raised the clamor for talent instead of grace, eloquence instead of piety, rhetoric instead of revelation, reputation and brilliancy instead of holiness. By it we have lost the true idea of preaching, lost preaching power, lost pungent conviction for sin, lost the rich experience and elevated Christian character, lost the authority over consciences and lives which always results from genuine preaching. (Chapter 12)

Devotion to God—there is no substitute for this in the preacher’s character and conduct. Devotion to a Church, to opinions, to an organization, to orthodoxy—these are paltry, misleading, and vain when they become the source of inspiration, the animus of a call. God must be the mainspring of the preacher’s effort, the fountain and crown of all his toil. The name and honor of Jesus Christ, the advance of his cause, must be all in all. The preacher must have no inspiration but the name of Jesus Christ, no ambition but to have him glorified, no toil but for him. Then prayer will be a source of his illuminations, the means of perpetual advance, the gauge of his success. The perpetual aim, the only ambition, the preacher can cherish is to have God with him. (Chapter 10)

It may be put down as a spiritual axiom that in every truly successful ministry prayer is an evident and controlling force—evident and controlling in the life of the preacher, evident and controlling in the deep spirituality of his work. A ministry may be a very thoughtful ministry without prayer; the preacher may secure fame and popularity without prayer; the whole machinery of the preacher’s life and work may be run without the oil of prayer or with scarcely enough to grease one cog; but no ministry can be a spiritual one, securing holiness in the preacher and in his people, without prayer being made an evident and controlling force. (Chapter 6)