2022s

“But listening to preaching is something you do, and it is an act of worship when you listen with an eager mind and responsive heart. The reason it is an act of worship is that you are listening to God speak (through His Word). That’s why author and theologian J. I. Packer in The Preacher and Preaching: Reviving the Art in the Twentieth Century states, “Congregations never honor God more than by reverently listening to His Word with a full purpose of praising and obeying Him once they see what He has done and is doing, and what they are called to do.” 5 This echoes the conviction of the great church reformer of the 1500s, Martin Luther, who wrote: “The highest worship of God is the preaching of the Word.” 6 So don’t think of preaching as merely a time to learn about the Bible or to be galvanized to live more Christianly. God is speaking! Honor Him with your ears and soul as well as with your mouth.”

— Spiritual Disciplines within the Church: Participating Fully in the Body of Christ by Donald S. Whitney a.co/dRynBaG

For if the days of a person should be as many as all the days of the world from Adam to the end of the ages and he should sit and meditate on the holy Scriptures, he would not comprehend all the force of the depth of the words. Aphrahat, Demonstrations 22:26

To understand the message of Christ, you have to understand Israel. Christian interpretations of Scripture should begin with Jesus’ self-declaration that the Scriptures speak of him.
Generalized hermeneutics are not enough. They provide a safe guard from willy nilly postmodern interpretations for sure, but left as the sole determiner of meaning they leave us not with Christ revealed but a modern materialistic undertaking that would more than please the positivists and skeptics of the Enlightenment.

A new progressive religion exists with a liturgy of new, removed, redefined words. Described best as Word Porridge: a ground up, unintelligible hash; quick to grow cold. This is best spit out into the trash, it is not even fit for dogs.

What comes into our minds when we think about God is largely demonstrative of who we are and where we are. While all of life is theological, it is what God thinks - not what you think - that’s most important. Therefore, being a follower of Christ and sitting, walking, and standing with Him are the fundamental ways in which one might begin to think about Him rightly. Orthodox theology cannot be separated from living the Christian life under the Lordship of Christ. It is illegitimate to separate theology from being a Christian, therefore the wisdom of Christ is possible, if still elusive, only for those who are in Christ. Theology, properly defined, is knowing God in the relational sense; this is only possible if He knows you.

“It is not, I say, by any new revelation that the Spirit comforts. He does so by telling us old things over again; he brings a fresh lamp to manifest the treasures hidden in Scripture; he unlocks the strong chests in which the truth has long lain, and he points to secret chamber filled with untold riches; but he coins no more, for enough is done. Believer! there is enough in the Bible for thee to live upon forever. If thou shouldst outnumber the years of Methuselah, there would be no need for a fresh revelation; if thou shouldst live till Christ should come upon the earth, there would be no need for the addition of a single word; if thou shouldst go down as deep as Jonah, or even descend as David said he did into the belly of hell, still there would be enough in the Bible to comfort thee without a supplementary sentence.” - Spurgeon

If we are to say that anyone is free to accept or reject God, then we carry with that an assumption that human beings have within them the ability to make such a choice and we further presume that some human beings will make that choice. I have no problem asserting that human beings have free will in that they make choices each and every day- even unregenerate man can make the choice to do some good thing on any given day. In the end, I think the question that needs to be asked is, would a human being who is in bondage to sin have the desire to choose God? In my analysis and the description of fallen man in Scripture, I don’t think so. How prevenient grace is applied to mankind (whether conceived from a Wesleyan or Calvinistic model) is, to me, still a mystery; but I think the Bible is clear that it is the work of God and not man.