“Preaching is not merely the minister’s talk about God but God’s talk — and not just any talk. It’s the kind of talk that produces new people” (Michael Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship, 38).

The following excerpt from George Herbert’s The Temple – The Church-Porch, Perirrhanterium (the 15th stanza):

Art thou a magistrate? then be severe:

If studious; copy fair, what time hath blurred;

Redeem truth from his jaws: if soldier,

Chase brave employments with a naked sword

     Throughout the world. Fool not: for all may have,

     If they dare try, a glorious life, or grave.

“Mysticism is esoteric atheism. But atheism still carries the banners and laurels of the work of liberation which is their common purpose” (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. I.2, 322).

“Now, what righteousness is equal to the justification of sinners? The only righteousness conceivable that will meet the requirements of our situation as sinners and meet the requirements of a full and irrevocable justification is the righteousness of Christ. This implies his obedience and therefore his incarnation, death, and resurrection. In a word, the necessity of the atonement is inherent and essential to justification. A salvation from sin divorced from justification is an impossibility and justification of sinners without the God-righteousness of the Redeemer is unthinkable” (John Murray, Redemption–Accomplished and Applied, 16-17).

An illustration from one of C. H. Spurgeon’s sermons: a high-view of Scripture in a nutshell.

“I believe in the Bible,” said one. 

“How can you do that?” sneered another. 

“Because I know the Author,” was the fit reply.

“He who supposes that Jesus Christ only lived and died and rose again in order to provide justification and forgiveness of sins for His people, has yet much to learn. Whether he knows it or not, he is dishonouring our blessed Lord, and making Him only a half Saviour. The Lord Jesus has undertaken everything that His people’s souls require; not only to deliver them from the guilt of their sins by His atoning death, but from the dominion of their sins, by placing in their hearts the Holy Spirit; not only to justify them, but also to sanctify them. He is, thus, not only their “righteousness,” but their “sanctification” (1 Cor. 1:30)” (J. C. Ryle, Holiness, 16).

“The union with Christ which produces no effect on heart and life is a mere formal union, which is worthless before God. The faith which is not a sanctifying influence on the character is no better than the faith of devils. It is a “dead faith, because it is alone.” It is not the gift of God. It is not the faith of God’s elect. In short, where there is no sanctification of life, there is no real faith in Christ” (J. C. Ryle, Holiness, 17).

Spurgeon describing how “wise men deal with the great doctrines of the gospel” — “they will not make them the themes of angry controversy, but of profitable use. To fight over a doctrine is sorry waste of time, but to live in the quiet enjoyment of it is the truest wisdom” (Ed. David Otis Fuller, Spurgeon’s Sermon Illustrations, 32).

The book cited below was originally published in 2001. I don’t know whether or not the statistics have remained the same. I have read that 9-11 temporarily bumped-up these type of statistics. My hunch is that in the past handful of years that throttling has subsided. However, either way, the statistics cited below are disconcerting.

Only 41 percent of Americans attend church services on a typical weekend [Barna Research Online, 1999]. Each new generation becomes increasingly unchurched. . . . Our recent research on the younger generation, the bridgers (born 1977 to 1994), indicates that only 4 percent of the teenagers understand the gospel and have accepted Christ, even if they attend church. Of the entire bridger generation, less than 30 percent attend church. America is clearly becoming less Christian, less evangelized, and less churched. Yet too many of those in our churches seem oblivious to this reality. . . . The percentage of adults attending church on a given weekend in 1999 was the same level it was in 1986.

Despite a plethora of resources on reaching those who do not attend church, the population of the unchurched in America continues to increase. Noted one Christian researcher, “At the same time that in America a multitude of new churches are being launched, and the mass media continues to report on the impact of megachurches, the number of unchurched adults is also on the rise.” . . . And as noted earlier, only one person is reached for Christ for every 85 church members in America” (Thom S. Rainer, Surprising Insights from the Unchurched and Proven Ways to Reach Them, 33-35).

 The implications are disturbing for said statistics. The “unchurched adults” of the “bridger generation” are a growing, rising, and flourishing segment of contemporary entrepreneurs, lawyers, politicians, medical physicians, day laborers, musicians, and artists, and when they marry or cohabit they form second generation unchurched-families.

In a section examining Martin Luther’s Lectures on Hebrews (April 1517), Thomas J. Davis discusses how Luther began to mature theologically by working “extensively through the concepts of personal faith and the word of testament (the promise) and how the two are related in such a way as to portend his mature beliefs.” To that point, Davis observes:

Faith is a clinging to the Word of God for Luther. It is the only work of the Gospel, and it is internal. In a telling passage, Luther declared, “Without faith it is impossible for God to be with us.” Why is this so? Because God “does everything through the word.” For that Word to bear fruit for the believer, there must be faith. One can ties this arrangement to the incarnation. If Christ is God incarnate, as Luther certainly affirmed, the way one possesses that incarnate Word is through faith. The union of believers with the incarnate Word, a union so real that Luther speaks of Christ as the Christian’s substance, is achieved only through faith. If the Sacrament is a visible word, as Augustine of hippo taught and Luther accepted, then the Word itself is an audible body, Christ’s substance, possessed through the hearing and believing of it–through faith” (Thomas J. Davis, This is My Body: The Presence of Christ in Reformation Thought, 33).