[T]here is a profound sense in which excellent worship cannot be attained merely by pursuing excellent worship. In the same way that, according to Jesus, you cannot find yourself until you lose yourself, so also you cannot find excellent corporate worship until you stop trying to find excellent corporate worship and pursue God himself. Despite the protestations, one sometimes wonders if we are beginning to worship worship rather than worship God. As a brother put it to me, it’s a bit like those who begin by admiring the sunset and soon begin to admire themselves admiring the sunset. – D.A. Carson in Worship by the Book
If the dynamic concept of the Kingdom is correct, it is never to be identified with the church. The Kingdom is primarily the dynamic reign or kingly rule of God, and derivatively, the sphere in which the rule is experienced. In biblical idiom, the Kingdom is not identified with its subjects. They are people of God’s rule who enter it, live under it, and are governed by it. The church is the community of the Kingdom but never the Kingdom itself. Jesus’ disciples belong to Kingdom as the Kingdom belongs to them; but they are not the Kingdom. The Kingdom is the rule of God; the church is a society of men.
In summary, while there is an inseparable relationship between the Kingdom and the church, they are not to be identified. The Kingdom takes its point of departure from God, the church from men. The Kingdom is God’s reign and the realm in which the blessings of his reign are experienced; the church is the fellowship of those who have experienced God’s reign and entered into the enjoyment of its blessings. The Kingdom creates the church, works through the church, and is proclaimed in the world by the church. There can be no Kingdom without a church – those who have acknowledged God’s rule – and there can be no church without God’s Kingdom; but they remain two distinguishable concepts: the rule of God and the fellowship of men. – George Eldon Ladd
Here is the ad I have referenced a few times and asked for people to hunt for in magizines. Now I at least have a digital copy thanks to Dane Ortlund for guest posting it on Justin Taylor’s blog. I would still like a paper copy if you happen to find one.
From page 5 of September 2007 issue of Backpacker; ad referenced by John Piper in a 2008 ETS talk in Providence, Rhode Island.
When The Times invited several famous authors to write an essay in response to the question, “What’s wrong with the world?” G.K. Chesterton responded with a simple letter.
Dear Sirs,
I am.
Sincerely Yours,
G.K. Chesterton
As we begin our study in Matthew consider the following quotes.
If we figure that Jesus was about thirty-three years old when He died, He lived around 1,700 weeks. And His four biographers spend a third of their time on only one of those weeks. Have you ever read a three-hundred-page biography where one hundred pages dealt with the subject’s death? Not even for Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy, or Martin Luther King Jr. do we have such lopsided attention paid to the end of the story. But for Jesus, the ending of His life is the story. – Kevin DeYoung
Nothing is more central to the Bible than Jesus’ death and resurrection. The entire Bible pivots on one weekend in Jerusalem about two thousand years ago. – D.A. Carson
A Christless cross no refuge is for me;
A Crossless Christ my Savior may not be;
But, O Christ crucified! I rest in thee.
- B.B. Warfield
And consider now not only the life that Jesus sacrificed for us, but consider also what the sacrifice involved. To get to the point where he could die, Jesus had to plan for it. He left the glory of heaven and took on human nature so that he could hunger and get weary and in the end suffer and die. The incarnation was the preparation of nerve endings for the nails of the cross. Jesus needed a broad human back for a place to be scourged. He needed a brow and skull as a place for the thorns. He needed cheeks for Judas’ kiss and soldiers’ spit. He needed hands and feet for spikes. He needed a side as a place for the sword to pierce. And he needed a brain and a spinal cord, with no vinegar and no gall, so that he could feel the entire excruciating death—for you. – John Piper in a sermon entitled The Depth of Christ’s Love: Its Cost
Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the cross a pike
Did set again abroach, then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.
– From The Agony by George Herbert
Ceremonial symbolism in the Old Testament uses the fundamental distinction between the clean and the unclean. The comparison of sin to filth is linked with the need for cleanness to approach holy things of the holy Lord. The prevailing power of sin is shown in the fact that the unclean pollutes the clean, never the other way round. Haggai’s message focuses on this feature (Hag. 2:10-14). In fulfillment, the prevailing power of Christ reveres this principle. When Jesus touches a leper, Jesus is not defiled, the leper is cleansed… – Edmund Clowney in Preaching Christ in All of Scripture
I am 258 years removed from Joanthan Edwards sermon, “There Never Was Any Love That Could Be Paralleled with the Dying Love of Christ”, on Romans 5:7-8, and it came on me ministering great grace. It ministered Christ to me in a fresh way. Meditate on these five reasons he gives why the love of our Lord is unparalleled.
- Never was there a love that fixed upon an object so much below the lover.
- Never was there any instance of such love to those who were so far from being capable of benefiting the lover.
- Never was there any who set his love upon those in whom he saw so much filthiness and deformity.
- Never was there anyone who set his love upon those who were so far from loving him and so unreasonably averse to him as Jesus Christ in his dying love to sinners.
- There never was any love that appeared in so great and wonderful expressions
- And lastly, never was there any love that was so beneficial to the beloved.
