Quite frankly, the excuses I have heard for why Christians don’t read or study the Old Testament are laughable. My goal is to persuade you to read, study, and even teach the Old Testament, but in order to accomplish this goal I must first deal with some of the most common excuses that are offered for ignoring this part of the Bible.
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The Poetic Structure of the Psalms Recently, a young preacher tasked with preaching his first psalm asked me, “How do I preach the Psalms?” One of the tips I gave was to ask and answer the question, What is the poetry doing? If you fail to understand poetic structures and literary devices, you will preach the Psalms improperly. So, for example, Psalm 46 is structured in three parts, and the author (one of “the Sons of Korah”) provides a cue (Selah is used three times, perhaps as a musical interlude) to his original audience (“the choirmaster”) on how to divide this “song” into three stanzas.
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We Need the Church The church is the second most foundational source of truth that can make us wise. Some might scratch their heads at this, especially in post-Christian Western cultures where the church feels unnecessary and irrelevant at best. Can’t we have Jesus without the church, adopting some aspects of spirituality without institutional religion?
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The fear of God is not a state of mind you can guarantee with five easy steps. It is not something that can be acquired with simple self-effort. The fear of God is a matter of the heart.
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Do God’s attributes matter to Christians today? Most of us take them for granted and seldom think about them specifically. Does anybody seriously discuss why God’s invisibility is important? Theologians may argue over things like impassibility and eternity, but most people do not. They assume that God is eternal and that he cares about us, but they do not puzzle over whether he himself suffers.
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It’s the age of the tattoo, isn’t it? It has become something of a rite of passage for older teenagers or younger adults to get inked. Whatever we parents think about this trend, I expect we’re unanimous in at least wanting our children to wait until they are old enough to count the cost—to grow up enough to have some sense of what it will meanhttps://www.challies.com/
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