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Ironically, the insistence that doctrines do not matter is really a doctrine itself. The Reason for God (8)
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)
Faith is not primarily a function of how you feel. Faith is living out and believing what truth is despite what you feel.
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
In our culture, divine judgement is one of Christianity's most offensive doctrines. The Reason for God (69)
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)
Therefore this is the first point concerning the law, that it must be used to deter the ungodly from their wicked and mischievous intentions. For the devil, who is an abbot and prince of this world, allures people to work all manner of sin and wickedness; wherefore God has ordained magistrates, elders, schoolmasters, laws and statutes, to the end, if they can do no more, that at least they may bind the claws of the devil, and hinder them from raging and swelling so powerfully in those who are his, according to his will and pleasure.Table Talk, 218
What we typically call the moral norms of the law are fulfilled, at least in some measure, in the lives of believers. Nevertheless, they are not normative merely because they appear in the Mosaic covenant, for that covenant has passed away. It seems that they are normative because they express the character of God. We know that they still express God's will for believers because they are repeated as moral norms in the New Testament. It is not surprising that in the welter of the laws we find in the Old Testament (613 according to the rabbis) that some of those laws express transcendent moral principles. Still, the mistake we make is trying to carve up neatly the law into moral and nonmoral categories. Many of the so-called "ceremonial" laws have a moral dimension that cannot be jettisoned. They are not applicable to believers today because we live in a completely different cultural situation.
The distinction between the moral, ceremonial, and civil law is appealing and attractive. Even though it has some elements of truth, it does not sufficiently capture Paul's stance toward the law. As stated earlier, Paul argues that the entirety of the law has been set aside now that Christ has come.
Paul conceives of the Mosaic (old) covenant as fundamentally non-eschatological in contrast to the eschatological nature of the new covenant. Paul declares that the Mosaic covenant is now old because it belongs to the old age, whereas the new covenant is new because it belongs to the new eschatological age.The End of the Law (New American Commentary Studies in Bible & Theology) (Kindle Locations 334-336). B&H Publishing Group
The law drives people to the promise, so that they are righteous by faith in Jesus Christ.Galatians Commentary, 245
seeing that, the effect, the work, and the office of the law, is to be a light to the ignorant and the blind; such a light, as discovers to them disease, sin, evil, death, hell, and the wrath of God, though it does not deliver from these, but shows them only.Bondage of the Will, Section 145
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 willsPreaching, 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
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
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
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
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
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
Without Jesus Christ, talk about the "depth of God's love" would be simply an abstraction. Without Jesus Christ, God could send you sixty volumes, with every page saying, "I love you deeply, I love you deeply, I love you deeply," but it would still be an abstract concept, not a life-changing reality. To genuinely understand the depths of God's love you must know the depths to which Jesus Christ went in order to love you.Prayer, 174
Christian meditation, however, is quite rational, even argumentative. "Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?" David says in Psalm 42, literally contending with his own heart. Mantra meditation seeks to suppress the analytical side of the mind. Christian meditation, however, stimulates our analysis and reflection- and centers it on the glory and grace of God.Prayer, 150
The Psalms are the prayer book of the Bible, but it is noteworthy that the first Psalm is not a prayer per se but a meditation- in fact, it is a meditation on meditation. This Psalm's prime place is not an accident.Prayer, 146
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2. J.C. Ryle (108)
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