by Eric Holter on September 1, 2009
Psalm 50 is a sobering Psalm. Right off the bat it positions the Lord as judge over all the earth. In the first 15 verses God summons his people and delivers a surprising rebuke. They had been offering sacrifices rightly enough, according to God’s own statues. So his rebuke is not so much for that. Yet in another sense it was–for even when sacrificing properly, they were not honoring God. He reminded them that he owns all the cattle on a thousand hills. Therefore, they couldn’t give to God anything that He did not already own. And in receiving these sacrifices, which were already his, he does not receive them as though he needed them–he wasn’t hungry for meat and blood.
[click to continue…]
by Eric Holter on April 25, 2004
“Praise the Lord!
How blessed is the man who fears the Lord,
Who greatly delights in His commands.”
Psalms 112:1
When I think of the blessedness of fearing the Lord I think of Jesus’ words in Mark 9 after he warns that it is better to remove a hand or an eye, if it causes us to stumble, than to enter hell with two hands, or two eyes. He concludes His warning with an analogy of salty fire. Ultimately, for those who do not flee from sin, they will encounter the unquenchable fires of hell. Such thoughts are, and should be, maximally disturbing to us. They should produce a deep dread and fear of hell – and of Him who puts people there. Ultimately, the fires of hell are an awful, dreadful, horrifying thing to contemplate. However, they can also bring a blessing. Jesus equates the fires of hell with salt. He says everyone, in a sense, will be “salted with the fires of hell.” For those who end up in hell, such salting will be an unimaginably and excruciatingly eternal reality. But for those who are turned away from sin by such thoughts, the salt is good, and it is good that we should have such salt in us. He warns that if this salt becomes un-salty that it would be no use to us. This salt, the salty fires of hell, are good for us – they can actually produce a blessing that makes us happy; abundantly happy, as this verse concludes.
[click to continue…]
