Quotes – Page 5 – No Other Boast

Hebrews 9:1-14 & Conscience

The conscience should be both convicted by the word and convicted of the word. To illustrate both I will simply repeat Luther’s words that I shared last night.

I greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, “the justice of God,” because I took it to mean that justice whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust. My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him. Yet I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant.

Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that “the just shall live by his faith.” Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open door into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the “justice of God” had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven….

If you have a true faith that Christ is your savior, then at once you have a gracious God, for faith leads you in and opens up God’s heart and will, that you should see pure grace and overflowing love. This it is to behold God in faith that you should look upon his fatherly, friendly heart, in which there is no anger or ungraciousness. He who sees God as angry does not see him rightly but looks only on a curtain, as if a dark cloud had been drawn across his face. – From Here I Stand by Roland Bainton

Afterwards on April 18, 1521 at the Diet of Worms when Luther was asked whether or not he would recant of the errors contained in his books he replied:

Since then Your Majesty and your lordships desire a simple reply, I will answer without horns and without teeth. Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason – I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other – my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen. – From The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul

All gloriaDEI Girls PLEASE Inject Yourselves With This!

A girl should get so lost in God, that a guy has to seek God to find her! – Dannah Gresh

HT: Desiring God

Secret Sin is Social

Sin is social: although it is first and foremost defiance of God, there is no sin that does not touch the lives of others, since by subtly changing me, they change my relations with others. Secretly nurtured lust, for instance, soon affects a man’s or woman’s relations with the spouse and with other human beings. —D.A. Carson in Christ and Culture Revisited

His Suffering and Ours

During the Napoleonic period in Europe some of the emperor’s soldiers opened a prison that had been used by the Spanish Inquisition. There were many dungeons in the prisons, but in one of them the soldiers found something particularly interesting. They found the remains of a prisoner, the flesh and clothing all long since gone and only an ankle bone in a chain to tell his story. On the wall, however, carved into the stone with some sharp piece of metal, there was a crude cross. And around the cross were the Spanish words for the four dimensions of Ephesians 3:18-19. Above was the word “height.” Below was the word “depth.” On one side there was the word “breadth.” On the other there was the word “length.” Clearly, as this poor, persecuted soul was lying in chains and was dying, he comforted himself with the thought that God who in himself contains the breath, length, depth, and height of all things was able to satisfy him fully. – James Montgomery Boice in The Gospel of John Volume 1

Distinguishing Saint and Sinner in Relation to Sin

The difference between an unconverted and a converted man is not that the one has sins and the other has none; but that the one takes part with his cherished sins against a dreaded God, and the other takes part with a reconciled God against his hated sins. – William Arnot

Hebrews 4:14-5:3 & Our Two Handed Savior

Short and sweet; here is the quote I butchered last night. Don’t settle for a one handed savior.

O sinner, look into the face of the man of sorrows and you must trust him. Since he is also God, you therein see his power to carry on the work of salvation. He touches you with the hand of his humanity, but he touches the Almighty with the hand of his Deity. He is man, and feels your needs; he is God, and is able to supply them. Is anything too tender for his heart of love? Is anything too hard for his hand of power? – Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Humility Diagnostic

Are you more amazed that you are saved than that they are lost? – John Piper

Sermon Quotes from More than Slavery

No matter how well we speak of Jesus as a pattern we have done nothing unless we point him out as the substitute and sinbearer. – C.H. Spurgeon in Death for Sin, and Death to Sin

He himself dying while he made our sins to die; Himself crucified while He crucified our sins once for all. – C.H. Spurgeon in Death for Sin, and Death to Sin

What looked like (and indeed was) the defeat of goodness by evil is also, and more certainly, the defeat of evil by goodness. Overcome there, He was himself overcoming. Crushed by the ruthless power of Rome, He was Himself crushing the serpent’s head (Gen 3:15). The victim was the victor, and the cross is still the throne from which He rules the world. – John R.W. Stott in The Cross of Christ

Enjoy your spiritual food.

Here is the quote David passed along to me that I shared last night. Don’t scarf…savor.

Remember, it is not hasty reading, but serious meditating upon holy and heavenly truths, that make them prove sweet and profitable to the soul. It is not the bee’s touching of the flower that gathers honey, but her abiding for a time upon the flower that draws out the sweet. It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most, that will prove the choicest, sweetest, wisest, and strongest Christian. – Thomas Brooks

HT: Challies

The Lamb and Unicorn

A little lamb was born all wooly-white with skinny legs and a wet nose, pretty much like all the other little lambs. But as the lamb grew into a sheep, the other sheep began to notice a difference. This sheep had a strange lump on his forehead. At first they thought he’d been hit, but the lump never went down. Instead, a large pad of deep, white wool grew over the lump and made it very soft and firm. And even that might have stopped attracting attention except for the fact that this sheep began to use the lump on his head in very strange ways. For one thing, the lump seemed to weigh down his head so that he always looked like he was bowing and showing reverence to some invisible king. Then he began to seek out other sheep that were sick or wounded. He would use the firm, soft lump on his forehead to help the weak onto their feet and to wipe away tears.

Whole flocks of sheep started to follow him around, but the goats laughed him to scorn. Sheep were disgusting enough, but a sheep with a queer lump on his forehead was more than they could take. They harassed him all the time and made up jokes and taunts: “How come you hang your wooly head? Your lump made out of woolen lead?” And it just infuriated them that he would walk away from them and keep on doing his quiet works of mercy.

So one day the goats surrounded him and rammed him with their horns until he died, and they left him alone in the field. But as he lay there something very strange happened. He began to get bigger. The bloody wool fell away and revealed a sleek, white, horse-like hair. The soft pad of deep white wool dropped off his forehead and straight out of the merciful lump grew a mighty horn of crimson steel unlike any horn that has ever been or will be again. And then as if by command the massive Unicorn leaped to his feet. His back stood eight feet above the ground. The muscles in his shoulders and neck were like marble. The tendons in his legs were like cables of iron. His head was no longer bowed, and when he looked to the right or to the left, the crimson horn slashed the air like a saber dipped in blood.

When the sheep saw him, they fell down and worshiped. He bowed and touched each one on the forehead with the tip of his horn, whispered something in their ear, and soared away into the sky and hasn’t been seen since.

Do you remember the last meeting between the magnificent Unicorn and the worshiping sheep? He bowed and touched each one on the forehead and whispered something special in their ear. This is what he said:

I touch you with my crimson horn,
And raise my lump upon your head
To signify you are new-born
With power that raised me from the dead.
I send you now as I was sent
To fan the wick and heal the reed,
Take mercy to the world’s extent
And you will reign with me indeed.

From The Spirit is Upon Him Gentle for Now by John Piper