PREACHING

'There is always a bit of agony in preaching...'
Dale Ralph Davis, Faith of Our Father: Exposition of Genesis 12-25, p.7. 

GOD'S LOVE

'The maker of heaven and earth refused to walk away from Eden, shrugging his shoulders and muttering, "You win some and you lose some." No, he is the stubborn God who will set all creation ablaze with holy war in order to have a seed and people for himself.'

Dale Ralph Davis, Judges, p.183.

PRAYER

'We...trivialize prayer whenever we forget the repeated miracle it involves, the gracious condescension of the King of glory, who stoops down to listen to our verbs and nouns, our adverbs and questions, our groans and tears.'

Dale Ralph Davis, Judges, p.163.

SUFFERING

'"But I will be with you." Basically, God has nothing else or more to offer you. You can go through a lot with that promise. It does not answer your questions about the details. It only provides the essential. Nothing about when or how or where or why. Only the what, or better, the Who. "But I will be with you." And that is enough.'

Dale Ralph Davis, Judges, p.95.

GOD

'Omnipotence delights in encores.'
Dale Ralph Davis, Judges, p.84.

SIN

'Sin is not simply an action you do or fail to do, that you can choose to do or not to do. Sin is a power that holds you in its grip. That is precisely what the apostle meant when he averred that all - both Jew and Gentile, both religious man and pagan man - are "under sin" (Rom. 3:9), by which he means "under the power of sin" (RSV). And until the church gets a proper view of sin, we will never see salvation as much more than a moving religious charade rather than as an act of holy, vicious violence by which Christ wrenches his people out of the clammy clutches of the prince of darkness (cf. 1 John 3:8).'

Dale Ralph Davis, Judges: Such a Great Salvation, p.43.

GOD

'The God of the Bible is not a formless blob of celestial protoplasm, not some form of cosmic jello with a sickly smile. He has a nature, a character, positive and negative. He is not the grand relativist but the living extremist.'

Dale Ralph Davis, The Way of the Righteous in the Muck of Life, p.130.

PREACHING CHRIST FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT

'From Jesus' statements I make an inference and form a corollary: the whole Old Testament bears witness to Christ; and, the Old Testament does not bear witness only to Christ. Why this corollary? Because I agree with making an extensive inference from Luke 24:27 and 44 but hold that an intensive inference is illegitimate. What on earth does that mean? It means I think Jesus is teaching that all parts of the Old Testament testify of the Messiah in his suffering and glory, but I do not think Jesus is saying that every Old Testamnet passage/text bears witness to him. Jesus referred to the things written about him in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms - he did not say that every passage spoke of him (v.44). Therefore, I do not feel compelled to make every Old Testament (narrative) passage point to Christ in some way because I do not think Christ himself requires it.

Not every Old Testament exposition then must end up speaking directly of Christ, because (1) Jesus does not demand it, and, in addition, (2) such a regimen impoverishes Old Testament exposition. How would the latter happen? Well, if Old Testament exposition must in some way speak of Christ and if the textual theology of an Old Testament passage does not (seem to) do so, will that not be eliminated as unworthy exposition?'

Dale Ralph Davis, The Word became Fresh: How to preach from Old Testament narrative texts, p.134.