Psalm 45 Publications

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Hypocrites Beyond All Hope of Cure – Hosea 6:4-11

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The first three verses of Hosea chapter six, as we discovered last week, provide for all the elect remnant a most hopeful and comfortable promise of the mercy and life which will certainly follow all of God’s righteous tearing and breaking down of his people. This sure promise of grace, to which the faithful clung for many generations, finally received its full vindication and ultimate fulfillment on the third day after the death of Christ, the last legitimate Seed of Abraham and true Israel in himself, when, true to the prophecy, God raised him from the dead, and in him, all of his people as well, who had been broken down by exile, plague, captivity, and many other such things. This final confirmation of God’s promise of grace was so great beyond all expectation, that even today, we who are in any distress whatsoever, if we belong to Christ, may look to his resurrection and consider it a seal and pledge that God will work everything, even the most difficult of things, for our eternal good, just as the apostle later assures us at the end of Romans chapter eight. Continue Reading

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Breaking Us Down to Bind Us Up – Hosea 6:1-3

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Context of the Prophecy

The prophet Hosea, as indeed all the other prophets in some manner or another, was concerned most especially with the terrible coming exile first predicted by Moses, which would actually be brought about because of the people’s hardheartedness and impenitent breaking of the Law; and yet, as strongly as Hosea thundered his threatenings of this fearful judgment of exile against the people, God did not leave them entirely without hope, but by many strong and sure consolations promised to them a later restoration which, however his Law may have been broken, was nevertheless promised by the Gospel, which from the beginning assured the elect remnant of God’s free mercy and salvation, and which the Law, coming four hundred and thirty years after, could never abrogate (Gal. 3:17). Continue Reading

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Christ the Breath of Our Nostrils – Lamentations 4:20-22

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This text comes at the conclusion of the fourth chapter of Lamentations, which is a difficult and enigmatical book in some respects, containing five songs of lament over the destruction of the people of God that are nearly unparalleled in their vivid and gruesome presentation of the terrible judgments and miseries that God was pleased to bring upon them, in accordance with what he had first threatened in the books of Moses, of which we can read in Deuteronomy 28:15-68. The exile and captivity of which God had forewarned in many different ways, for many years sending the people prophets to show them their grave and imminent danger, had now been accomplished in very fact; and the writer of this book, who is very likely the prophet Jeremiah, is now detailing and mourning the shocking extent of this promised judgment of exile. Continue Reading

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Kiss the Son – Psalm 2

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It is a commonly accepted notion, and doubtless true, that the first and second psalms stand together as an introduction to the entire psalter, and provide all the information necessary to interpret and make sense of all which follows. Thus, there is contained in these two psalms every major doctrine that the remaining one-hundred forty-eight unfold so variously and wonderfully, from the lives of so many different psalmists, in so many different conditions. But not only is there a true summary of all the major heads of the psalter; there is contained in the first two, moreover, the very root from which those doctrines all spring, the one immovable foundation upon which the entire house is built. So that, if one were to attempt to interpret the things contained in the one-hundred and forty-eight without first being familiar with the two, he would doubtless cast himself into many needless snares and discover certain foolish and dangerous doctrines, that ought not at all to be derived from the psalms, when they are treated of as they should be. Continue Reading