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“For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”
—Romans 8:15-17
“Draw me from created good,
From self, the world, and sin;
To the fountain of Thy blood,
And make me pure within.
If Thou hast drawn a thousand times (Oh draw me Lord again)
Around me cast the Spirit’s bands (Oh draw me Lord again).”
—“If Thou Hast Drawn a Thousand Times,” John Rippon and Benjamin Beddome
“… the wonder that draws Moses aside, and opens his ear, is not the seeming impossibility of a fire that is not fiery, nor a bush that is not God being yet at once divine. The wonder is that the Lord God draws near and the creature does not die away.”
— Katherine Sonderegger, Systematic Theology, Vol. 1: The Doctrine of God, 84
“Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance. It is laying hold of God’s willingness.”
—Julian of Norwich
“Though there be no light for us, but in the beams, yet we may by the beams, see the sun, which is the fountain of it. Though all our refreshment actually lies in the streams, yet by them, we are lead up onto the fountain. Jesus Christ, in respect of the love of the Father, is but the beam, the stream; where in, though actually all our light, our refreshment lies. Yet by him we are led to the fountain, the sum of eternal love itself. Would believers exercise themselves here in, they would find it a matter of no small spiritual improvement in their walking with God.”
—John Owen, Communion with God
“The conclusion affirmed by the narrative is that wherever YHWH governs as an alternative to Pharaoh, there the restfulness of YHWH effectively counters the restless anxiety of Pharaoh. In our own contemporary context of the rat race of anxiety, the celebration of Sabbath is an act of both resistance and alternative. It is resistance because it is a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods.”
—Walter Brueggemann
“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’”
—Genesis 12
“Neither the nature of any created thing, therefore, nor the weakness of the flesh, can prevail against the will of God. For God is not subject to created things, but created things to God; and all things yield obedience to His will.”
—Irenaeus
Due to technical issues, Seven Hills Presbyterian Church shared a copy of their recording for this sermon.