Quote 607

Truth

The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me.

The Reason for God (181)

Gospel

Idolatry is when you become the source of your own joy. Poverty of spirit is a wonderful thing.

Paul Washer

Faith is not primarily a function of how you feel. Faith is living out and believing what truth is despite what you feel.

Faith

All idolatry tries to minimize the gulf between the Creator and his creatures, in order to bring him under our control.

John Stott

A god who is all love, all grace, all mercy, no sovereignty, no justice, no holiness, and no wrath is an idol.

R.C. Sproul

The covenant is "I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God" (Exodus 6:7). The question is this: In light of the constant failures of the people to live up to their covenant promises to serve God, is the covenant conditional or unconditional? Will God say that it is conditional? ("Because you broke the covenant, I will cut you off, curse you, and abandon you forever.") Or will he say it is unconditional? ("Though you have rejected me, I will never wholly abandon you, but I will remain with you.") Which is it?....then Jesus comes, and as we see him crying "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" we realize the answer. Is the covenant between God and his people conditional or unconditional? Yes. Yes. Jesus came and fulfilled the conditions so God could love us unconditionally.

Preaching, 72

Covenants

In our culture, divine judgement is one of Christianity's most offensive doctrines.

The Reason for God (69)

Judge

When a Russian cosmonaut returned from space and reported that he had not found God, C.S. Lewis responded that this was like Hamlet going into the attic of his castle looking for Shakespeare. If there is a God, he wouldn't be another object in the universe that could be put in a lab and analyzed with empirical methods. He would relate to us the way a playwright relates to the characters in his play. We (characters) might be able to know quite a lot about the playwright, but only to the degree the author chooses to put information about himself in the play.

The Reason for God (122)

Unbelief

However men may contrive to cheat themselves, God is not truly great in the soul till all other things become as nothing; neither doth the soul rightly converse with His infinite fullness so long as anything stands in opposition to it or competition with it.

Samuel Shaw

All images and idols are set up for no other end but to feign the presence of what really is absent.

John Owen

have not other things a stronger influence into our actions then God, we will doe more for them then him;

A Glimpse of God\'s Glory

Thomas Hodges

there is nothing so mean that a carnal heart will not Idolize, and advance in affection above the Highest

A Glimpse of God\'s Glory

Thomas Hodges

moralistic application doesn't work in the long term. I'm afraid a sermon that just tells people they should be generous because they have to is not dealing with the fears, false hopes, and lusts for approval and control that make people unwilling to give more. So they might give more once or twice but not actually become more generous... Unless you get to Jesus, you are just beating on their wills

Preaching, 240

Without the help of the Holy Spirit, I believe all of us tend naturally toward being mainly warm and gentle or mainly forceful and authoritative in the pulpit. We must recognize our imbalance and seek the Lord for growth into the fullness of his holy character.

Preaching, 200

the Achilles' heel of [the harm principle] is the assumption that we all know what "harm" is or that it can be defined without recourse to deep beliefs about right and wrong. One person says that it harms no one for a man to consume pornography privately in his own home. Others counter, however, that pornography will shape how he talks and acts with others, especially with women.

Preaching, 141

Secularism Morality

Western secularists insist that their view of equal rights is simply self-evident to any rational person, but non-Western cultures do not agree... Because truly secular people can't admit the source of their main moral values in their Christian history, it makes them imperialistic.

Preaching, 151

Secularism Morality

Another important grace-event pattern is the "order" of the Exodus and the lawgiving. God did not first give the law and then deliver the people. He first delivered the people and then he gave them the law. Thus we are not saved by the law but saved for the law.

Preaching, 83

Law

Mark is intentionally recapping the Jonah episode in Mark 4. He uses nearly identical words and phrases. Both Jesus and Jonah are in a boat. Both are in storms described in similar terms. Both boats are filled with others who are terrified of death. Both groups wake the sleeping prophets angrily, rebuking them. Both storms are miraculously calmed and the companions saved. And both stories conclude with the men in the boats more terrified after the storm is stilled than they were before.

Preaching, 78

Gospel of Mark

Hughes Old shows us that the original preaching of the church in its first five centuries used the lectio continua method - consecutive, verse-by-verse exposition through whole books of the Bible, taking years to bring the congregation through great swaths of biblical material.

Preaching, 39

[Hughes Oliphant Old] names five basic types of sermons that he discerns over the centuries, which he calls expository, evangelistic, catechetical, festal, and prophetic.

Preaching, 29

In the course of expounding a biblical text the Christian preacher should compare and contrast with the foundational beliefs of the culture, which are usually invisible to people inside it, in order to help people understand themselves more fully. If done rightly it can lead people to say to themselves, Oh, so that's why I tend to think and feel that way. This can be one of the most liberating and catalytic steps in a person's journey to faith in Christ.

Preaching, 19-20

Nothing, indeed, can be more preposterous than to enjoy those noble endowments which bespeak the divine presence within us and to neglect him who, of his own good pleasure, bestows them upon us.

Institutes, Book 1 Chapter 6

John Calvin

the essence of sin- that we don't "give thanks"? Is that such a big deal? Yes, it is. Think about plagiarism for a moment. Why is plagiarism taken so seriously? It is claiming that you came up with an idea yourself when you did not. It is not acknowledging dependence, that you got the idea from someone else. Plagiarism is a refusal to give thanks and give credit and is, therefore, a form of theft... Cosmic ingratitude is living in the illusion that you are spiritually self-sufficient.

Prayer, 196

Thankfulness

The term describes the direct sight of the glory of God. This is what the redeemed will have in heaven fully, by sight, and what believers have now on earth partially, by faith and not yet with our literal eyes. While Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas made this the centerpiece of his thought, very few Protestant theologians have touched on it at all.

Prayer, 176