Quotable Quotes for the Weekend
Friday, January 19, 2024
Happy is the man who possesses a Bible! Happier still is he who reads it! Happiest of all is he who reads it and obeys it!
-- J.C. Ryle
Mingled vanity and pride appear in this, that when miserable men do seek after God, instead of ascending higher than themselves as they ought to do, they measure him by their own carnal stupidity, and, neglecting solid inquiry, fly off to indulge their curiosity in vain speculation. Hence, they do not conceive of him in the character in which he is manifested, but imagine him to be whatever their own rashness has devised.
-- John Calvin
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
-- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
If the Word of God isn't the loudest thing in my life, Satan’s whispers will be all I hear.
— Samuel Sey
“People desperately seek the things that only God can give them while at the same time run away from Him.”
– R.C. Sproul
The emphasis on the Lord God as Shepherd communicates his presence, care, nurture, comfort, protection, guidance, leadership, and provision. Any future use of the shepherding metaphor for those serving his flock must connect these characteristics to pastoral ministry. With the NT pastoral office in view, Yahweh’s appointed “shepherds were not expected simply to tend a flock; they were serving its Owner.” Pastors, consequently, must reflect the model of the Lord God as Shepherd over his flock.
— Phil Newton, 40 Questions About Pastoral Ministry