Your Custom Text Here
The Merciful:
“[those] who come to the aid of others” — St. Augustine
“[those] who are not only prepared to put up with their own troubles but who also take on other people’s troubles.” — John Calvin
“The Gospel Merciful are the understanding; those who under-stand; those who put themselves under others to support them.” — Frederick Dale Bruner
“High King of heaven, my victory won
May I reach heaven’s joys, O bright heaven’s sun
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall
Still be my vision, O ruler of all”
—Be Thou My Vision
“The divine covenant partner commits himself to be present with, to preserve, and to protect his pilgrim-saint until he returns safely to the Promised Land. … The pilgrim obligates himself to come to God’s house and worship him with tithe in hand. These commitments commence the plot of [Jacob’s sojournings]. Jacob sets out to find a wife, but first God finds him.”
—Bruce Waltke
“And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
—Matthew 28:20b
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
—Deuteronomy 6:4–9
“‘Wilderness’ is a place, in biblical rhetoric, where there are no viable life support systems. ‘Grace’ is the occupying generosity of God that redefines the place.”
—Walter Brueggemann, Journey to the Common Good
“The terrible, tragic fallacy of the last hundred years has been to think that all man’s troubles are due to his environment, and that to change the man you have nothing to do but change his environment. That is a tragic fallacy. It overlooks the fact that it was in Paradise that man fell.”
—Martin Lloyd Jones
Please note: due to a microphone issue, the last several minutes of the sermon were not recorded.
“There are no natural guarantees for the future and no way to secure the inheritance of the family. It must trust only to the power of God. Period. Period promise requires an end to grasping and servitude and an embrace of precariousness. It is only God who gives life. Any pretense that the future is secured by rights or claims of the family is a deception.”
—Walter Brueggemann, Commentary on Genesis
God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling. …
“Be still, and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!”
The LORD of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.
—Psalm 46:1-3, 10-11
“The love and power of God must address not only the sin of individuals but also the strife and striving of nations; not only the need of human beings but also the suffering of animals and the curse of the ground…What can God do next? Something that only God could have thought of. He sees an elderly, childless couple in the land of Babel and decides to make them the fountainhead, the launch pad of his whole cosmic redemption. We can almost hear the sharp intake of breath among the heavenly hosts when the astonishing plan is revealed.”
—Christopher Wright, The Mission of God
“Listening… means real listening, intense listening, listening which hurts. It means attentive straining after what is said, giving ourselves wholly to the task of attention to Jesus. Why? Because he is God’s Word, he is what God says to us. …It is a way–the way–of being human. Listening means obedience… the lifelong task of giving my consent to the shape which God has for my life. Obedience is letting God put me in the place where I can be the sort of person I am made by God to be. I come to see what kind of person this is when I stop trying to be in charge of myself, and instead acknowledge that God is my Lord, that I can only be myself if I walk in his ways. So listening to Jesus is always a practical matter…”
—John Webster