Psalm 32 (ESV)

A Maskil [1] of David.

¹ Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
2 Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

3 For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up [2] as by the heat of summer.

Selah

5 I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.

Selah

6 Therefore let everyone who is godly
offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found;
surely in the rush of great waters,
they shall not reach him.
7 You are a hiding place for me;
you preserve me from trouble;
you surround me with shouts of deliverance.

Selah

8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
9 Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding,
which must be curbed with bit and bridle,
or it will not stay near you.

10 Many are the sorrows of the wicked,
but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.
11 Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous,
and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!

You wouldn’t be so surprised by your sin if you didn’t think so highly of yourself.

- Steve Brown

I know things in the inner world which are like babies; the infantile beginnings of small indulgences, small resentments, which may one day become dipsomania or settled hatred, but which woo us and wheedle us with special pleadings and seem so tiny, so helpless that in resisting them we feel we are being cruel to animals. They begin whimpering to us “I don’t ask much, but,” or “I had at least hoped,” or “you owe yourself some consideration.” Against all such pretty infants (the dears have such winning ways) the advice of the Psalm [137] is the best. Knock the little bastards’ brains out. And “blessed” is he who can, for it’s easier said than done.

C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

as quoted in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Wisdom, Psalms, and Writings, eds. Longman and Enns.

An idol is something you rely on instead of God for your salvation. One of the religious idols is your moral record: “God accepts me because I’m living a good life.” I’m a Presbyterian, so I’m all for right doctrine. But you can start to feel very superior to everyone else and think, God is pleased with me because I’m so true to the right doctrine. The right doctrine and one’s moral record are forms of power. Another is ministry success, similar to the idol of achievement. There are religious versions of sex, money, and power, and they are pretty subtle.

- Rev. Tim Keller, author of Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters, from an interview with Christianity Today (complete interview at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/november/1.71.html)

Quote quoted from here.

One of the things that has become clearer to me over this summer is the fact that each of us is always declaring some gospel - with our words, with our actions, with our tone of voice, etc… Whenever we interpret (to ourselves or to others) the significance of the circumstances of life (our personal lives, politics, relationships, etc.) and set a value on those circumstances (”good”, “bad”, “hopeful”, “hopeless”) we are locating those circumstances within a larger narrative - a big picture story of how we understand life in general and our own lives in particular.

For instance, if Laura and I come home from the grocery store and she runs in the house carrying one little bag and leaves me to carry in the rest, and then on the way up the stairs I badly stub my toe and trip and spill all the groceries I am carrying down the stairs, I am now presented with a set of life circumstances which I now have to (and will) interpret, and I will most likely proclaim my interpretation of these circumstances right then and there. If I am angry it is because I have opted for a particular interpretation of the events, not because I have simply responded to circumstances in the only way conceivable. From one perspective, my plight is morally neutral - you could say that nothing more is involved than bodies and matter in motion, and such things merit neither a positive or negative response. But as Cornelius Van Til has helpfully pointed out, for us, there are no “brute facts” - all facts must be and are interpreted in some way.

So then, why do I choose anger as the “appropriate response”? The answer to that question will extend far into the way I understand thing like the meaning of life, God’s sovereignty and attitude toward me, what people are for, justice and fairness, and so on. Likewise, my response to these circumstances will proclaim or “preach” the answer to these questions to myself and to those around me. If I let loose a string of profanity and complain to Laura that she hasn’t helped me like she should, or if I just quietly pick up the mess and am cold to her for the next couple of hours, I have just declared to her and myself what I believe to be the significance of what has just happened in the grand scheme of things.

The painful conviction that has struck me more and more is that the “gospel” I preach to Laura and to my friends and family by the way that I choose to interpret and respond to the circumstances of life is usually either the antithesis of the real gospel or some deceptive and twisted perversion of that gospel. I am rightly (albeit insufficiently) ashamed of this fact and brought once more to the place where I must say, “I am way worse than I thought, and way more in need of God’s grace and help to change than I thought”. Praise God for his merciful provision through Jesus Christ, who not only freed me from the eternal consequences of my sin, but has also set his Holy Spirit to the work of transforming me to the likeness of his Son!

I have observed a dual pair of critical impulses in my thinking when I am bothered by someone else’s interpretation of a passage of Scripture. On the one hand, I may question whether their interpretation can be derived from the immediate Scriptural context in the way that they have suggested. But then on the other hand, I may then question whether their interpretation is consistent with the testimony of Scripture as a whole.

Now obviously, both of these are valid and legitimate questions, which always ought to be asked about any interpretation. But it is significant to note that while anyone can easily make either of these two hermeneutical errors, logically they mutually exclusive. In other words, if you are paying very careful attention to the immediate context of a passage and making the mistake of not heeding its significance within its larger canonical context, it is impossible to simultaneously make the mistake of reading that same interpretation into the passage by not paying careful enough attention to the immediate context. It is of course possible that you could come to one mistaken conclusion that is based upon the first error, and then immediately come to a second mistaken conclusion based upon the second error, but this does not seem very likely. Most of the time we tend toward a pattern of one extreme or the other, either reading too much into a text, or blinkering ourselves to the interpretive significance of the larger context.

But what I find disturbing is the fact that when I encounter a bothersome interpretation of a text, I am often suspicious of both errors. I may first say, “I don’t see how he’s getting that out of this text!” And when he shows me how it is a legitimate interpretation within the context, I may then think, “Well, he’s probably just not paying enough attention to the larger context of this passage (or chapter, or book, or Scripture as a whole, etc…)”.

While it makes sense to be alert for either of two of the most common hermeneutical errors, the fact that I suspect these two mutually exclusive errors, one on the heels of the other, suggests that another motive is at work in me. It suggests that I have the tendency to challenge and discount any interpretation that makes me uncomfortable, for whatever reason that might be. I might be able to come up with a seemingly valid critique of the person’s hermeneutical method, but the fact is, I was looking for a reason to discount their interpretation because its implications were bothersome to me.  This is not a healthy tendency, and it is good to be wary of it whenever I evaluate another’s interpretation of Scripture. The goal of exegeting Scripture should always be to better understand and come to grips with what it is really saying, not being comfortable with what we think says.

It’s a real test of what you are as a preacher and minister whether you’re better at showing people their own sin or at showing people Jesus Christ; and the former is far easier than the latter because most of us are much more familiar with our sin than we are with the riches of the glory of the gospel. Which means that, even in the Reformed world, our ministry can be very subjectively oriented and not Trinitarian centered and Christ centered.

- Sinclair Ferguson (from a class lecture at WTS)

We love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows us that we are of enough importance to be courted.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts…perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

- John Steinbeck

Revenge has no more quenching effect on emotions than salt water has on thirst.

- Walter Weckler

Temptations, by giving us a painful sensibility of the weakness of our graces, and the strength of our inward corruptions, tend to mortify the evil principles of self-dependence and self-righteousness, which are so deeply rooted in our fallen nature; to make Christ, in all his relations, offices, and characters, more precious to us; and to convince us, that without him we can do nothing.

- John Newton

Whatever it be that makes us trust in ourselves that we are comparatively wise or good, so as to treat those with contempt who do not subscribe to our doctrines, or follow our party, is a proof and fruit of a self-righteous spirit. Self-righteousness can feed upon doctrines, as well as upon works; and a man may have the heart of a Pharisee, while his head is stored with orthodox notions of the unworthiness of the creature, and the riches of free grace. Yea, I would add, the best men are not wholly free from this leaven; and therefore are too apt to be pleased with such representations as hold up our adversaries to ridicule, and by consequence flatter our own superior judgments. Controversies for the most part, are so managed as to indulge rather than to repress this wrong disposition; and therefore, generally speaking, they are productive of little good. They provoke those whom they should convince, and puff up those whom they should edify. I hope your performance will savour of a spirit of true humility, and be a means of promoting it to others.

- John Newton

There is a principle of self, which dispses us to despise those who differ from us; and we are often under its influence, when we think we are only showing a becoming zeal in the cause of God.

- John Newton

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to ‘another due,
Labor to ‘admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly ‘I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, ‘untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you ‘enthrall me, shall never be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

- John Donne