Links for the Weekend (4/12/2019)

Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

You Believe the Prosperity Gospel

How’s that for a title?! Jared Wilson is a great writer and this is a great article. I’ve listed it first because if you only have time to read one of these articles, you need to make it this one.

The problem with this, biblically speaking, is that we have numerous examples both in our own lives and in the pages of Scripture of dear saints who were afflicted despite and in their faith. We see in fact that faith is made precisely for the experience of living in a fallen world, where if everything went smoothly and we never hurt, we wouldn’t need reliance on Jesus as much, would we? So when we tell others to trust God in the midst of their suffering, we do well. He is sovereign and he can be trusted to work all things together for our good. But when we tell others to trust God to avoid their struggles, we promise something God himself does not promise.

The Big and Small World of Bible Geography

David Barrett has a guest post at Justin Taylor’s blog about the size of the territory discussed in the Bible. Barrett mentions a paradox he discovered while working on various cartography projects regarding the lands of the Bible: “The world of the Bible was at the same time very small and very large.”

The more I come to understand the world of the Bible, the more I become convinced it was actually not that much different from our own world in some respects. Certainly the world has undergone great changes in technology, communication, and transportation since Bible times, yet at the same time we’re still typically enveloped by a fairly small day-to-day existence.

9 Things You Should Know About Christian Hymns

Joe Carter writes an occasional blog series for The Gospel Coalition all of which begin “9 Things You Should Know About…” In this post, Carter writes about Christian hymns, and he provides some important and fascinating details. He writes about early references to hymns, the relationship between hymns and Psalm singing, and some of the most prolific hymn writers, among other things. It’s good for us to know some of the history of the music we sing every week!

On the WPCA Blog This Week

This week on the blog we published an essay I wrote, titled How Fast Does a Christian Grow? Check it out!

Thanks to Cliff L and Phil A for helping me round up articles this week!

Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here.