MINISTERIAL IDOLATRY

'I take it as a given that all of us would prefer to be our own gods than to worship God. Th Eden story is reenacted daily, not only generally in the homes and workplaces of our parishioners but quite particularly in the sanctuaries and meeting rooms in which we do our work. The only difference in the dynamics of the serpent's seduction in the explicitly religious workplace is that when pastors are seduced, our facility with language provides us with a thesaurus of self-deceiving euphemisms. Our skill in handling religious concepts gives us above average competence in phrasing things in such a way that our vocational shift from tending the Garden to running the Garden, our radical fall from vocational holiness to career idolatry, goes undetected by all but the serpent.' 

Eugene H Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness, p.7.

OBEDIENCE MATTERS

'Let us learn from the divine principle lived fully and perfectly in Jesus's life that God will not fail to honor those who honor him, that he will exalt those who are humble, that he will reward obedience in ways beyond our comprehension. Oh, how our obedience matters! So, how wrong it is of us to appeal to our obedience as the basis for our right standing before God. If we could just get Ephesians 2:8-10 (i.e., not just vv.8-9) all together, we would be in such better shape as Christian people. Yes, we are saved by grace, through faith, fully and completely apart from works. But our salvation apart from works breeds a life filled with good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. May God grant us longing of heart to live more fully as Jesus lived. May we see that just as his relentless and perfect obedience, rendered in the power of the Spirit and in faith, brought him the full approval of his Father and the reward of his exaltation, so our obedience, rendered in the power of the Spirit and in faith, likewise will be seen and rewarded by our gracious and benevolent God. Let us learn from Jesus that obedience matters.'

Bruce A Ware, The Man Christ Jesus, p.146.   

HUMILITY

'Let us take this truth to heart: Christ was exalted to the right hand of the Father and given his place of authority over all creation because he was "obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Phil.2:6-11). What we see here is, no doubt, the most glorious illustration ever lived out of the principle articulated in James 4:10: "Humble yourselves before God and he will exalt you."'  

Bruce A Ware, The Man Christ Jesus, p.146. 

CHRISTMAS & ADVENT

'In his first coming the wideness of God's mercy is manifest as his Son dies for the world and offers salvation to any and all who believe. But in his second coming the fury of God's judgement is manifest as his Son - the one and very same Son who died for the nations - now takes up his sword and smites the nations in their ongoing idolatry and rebellion against their creator God. Although God announces the certainty of this coming judgment, he does so in part to persuade rebels to drop their arms and bow to Jesus as their personal Lord and King. What mercy preceded such horrific destruction. How infinitely kind of of God to plan the first coming of Christ rather than to move directly to the substance of the second.' 

Bruce A Ware, The Man Christ Jesus, p.136. 

GOD'S LOVE

'I do not think that what the Bible says about the love of God can long survive at the forefront of our thinking if it is to be abstracted from the sovereignty of God, the holiness of God, the wrath of God, the providence of God, or the personhood of God - to mention a few non-negotiable elements of basic Christianity.' 

DA Carson, The difficult doctrine of the love of God, p.11. 

JESUS' OBEDIENCE

'If anyone might be thought to have lived on auto-pilot, it would be Jesus. After all, along with his true and full humanity, he was fully God; and although he had the nature of a man, his human nature was totally sinless. You would think such a person (unlike any of us!) could coast. To have a divine nature and a sinless human nature would seem to make obedience easy. Well,  look again at Jesus. What you see is a man who labored to obey, who agonized in the testings the Father designed for him, who fought through the trials of life to maintain his integrity and obedience before his Father.

In the light of this, it should be certain that we who are not God, we who do not have sinless natures, will find it necessary also to fight for faith and labor for obedience.' 

Bruce A Ware, The Man Christ Jesus, p.70. 

THE IMPRECATORY PSALMS

'Where everything speaks against God, those who pray them attribute everything to God.' 

Erich Zenger, A God of Vengeance?, p.88.

THE IMPRECATORY PSALMS

'...the psalms of vengeance are a passionate clinging to God when everything really speaks against God. For that reason they can rightly be called psalms of zeal, to the extent that in them passion for God is aflame in the midst of ashes of doubt about God and despair over human beings. These psalms are an the expression of a longing that evil, and evil people, may not have the last word in history, for this world and its history belong to God. This, to use the theological terminology, these psalms are realized theodicy. They affirm God by surrendering the last word to God. They give to God not only their lament about their desperate situation, but also the right to judge the originators of that situation. They leave everything in God's hands, even feelings of hated and aggression. 

These psalms do not arise from the well-tempered psychological state of people from who every scrap of sensitivity and emotion has been driven out. On the contrary, they are serious about the fundamental biblical conviction that in prayer we may say everything, literally everything, if only we say it to GOD, who is our father... We have, in the meantime, learned from psychology that suppressed fears and repressed aggression do not overcome violence, but multiply it. What is necessary is that we learn to live with fears and aggressions by bringing them to consciousness and acting against their destructiveness. The psalms do not repress all this; they express it before GOD and place it in GOD'S hands.'

Erich Zenger, A God of Vengeance?, p.79.

PREACHING

'One of the biggest dangers in preaching - one of the main reasons that Bible teachers fail to engage their listeners - is this: the preacher assumes that their listeners want  to go to the same destination as them. They think that by simply announcing their topic - or reading their Bible text - or even by opening the scriptures - their congregation will be salivating at the mouth with excitement - thrilled beyond measure to be taken into the wonderful destination that has been announced by the hard-working and faithful preacher.' 

Tim Hawkins, Messages that Move: How to give Bible talks that challenge and inspire, p.83. 

THE PSALMS

'Biblical poetry is a living space into which you can enter, as you might pass into the shade of a primeval olive tree that speaks with the winds of heaven.' 

Ludwig Strauss in Erich Zenger, A God of Vengeance: Understanding the Psalms of Divine Wrath, p.1.