How are martyrs made, and how do the memories of martyrs express, nourish, and mold the ideals of the community? Sanctifying the Name of God wrestles with these questions against the background of the massacres of Jews in the Rhineland during the outbreak of the First Crusade. Marking the first extensive wave of anti-Jewish violence in medieval Christian Europe, these "Persecutions of 1096" exerted a profound influence on the course of European Jewish history. When the crusaders demanded that Jews choose between Christianity and death, many opted for baptism. Many others, however, chose to die as Jews rather than to live as Christians, and of these, many actually inflicted death upon themselves and their loved ones. Stories of their self-sacrifice ushered the Jewish ideal of martyrdom—kiddush ha-Shem, the sanctification of God's holy name—into a new phase, conditioning the collective memory and mindset of Ashkenazic Jewry for centuries to come, during the Holocaust, and even today. The Jewish survivors of 1096 memorialized the victims as martyrs as they rebuilt their communities during the decades following the Crusade. Three twelfth-century Hebrew chronicles of the persecutions preserve their memories of martyrdom and self-sacrifice, tales fraught with symbolic meaning that constitute one of the earliest Jewish attempts at local, contemporary historiography. Reading and analyzing these stories through the prism of Jewish and Christian religious and literary traditions, Jeremy Cohen shows how these persecution chronicles reveal much more about the storytellers, the martyrologists, than about the martyrs themselves. While they extol the glorious heroism of the martyrs, they also air the doubts, guilt, and conflicts of those who, by submitting temporarily to the Christian crusaders, survived.

Worship is not a trite act. It is the life of the Christian. When the Christian hears God in his word, or from the mouth of the biblical minister, and is pressed to obey him in all things as exemplified in his word, such obedience is for his very life. “For it is not a vain thing for you; because it is your life,” (Deut. 32:47). In this obedience, God has not left his ordinances of worship to the inventions of men. God has set down certain specific requirements which are to be followed. It was a hallmark of the Reformation that God alone determines the manner in which sinners approach him. God’s will, in this way, has reference to the regulative principle of life as well as to the Laws which God has made known and prescribed to man in order that his walk might be regulated accordingly. So, God regulates his worship with the intention of allowing fallen, sinful people to come before him and sanctify his name in a manner that God requires: in holiness. This is the substance of Burroughs’ treatise Gospel Worship. Worship is for God, not for us. Sadly, that simple statement is foreign to our day. Yet God is as clear today as He was to Nadab and Abihu in the Old Testament: He will be treated as holy by those who come into His presence (Lev. 10:1-3). In this treasured work, Jeremiah Burroughs masterfully provides guidelines to facilitate the reader to move closer to God in worship. Through 14 sermons, Burroughs carefully explains the right manner of worshipping God in general, and the three great ordinances of hearing the Word, receiving the Lord’s Supper, and prayer. Burroughs demonstrates that true worship is reverent, focused on the holiness of God. This work is not a scan or facsimile, has been carefully transcribed by hand being made easy to read in modern English, and has an active table of contents for electronic versions.

Sanctification | noun | sa(k)-t-f-k-shn : a big word for the little-by-little progress of the everyday Christian life Fighting sin is not easy. No one ever coasted into greater godliness. Christian growth takes effort. But we are not left alone. God loves to work the miracle of sanctification within us as we struggle for daily progress in holiness. With contributions from Kevin DeYoung, John Piper, Ed Welch, Russell Moore, David Mathis, and Jarvis Williams, this invigorating book will help you say no to the deception of sin and yes to true joy in Jesus.