“The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

“No man,” Wilberforce wrote, “has a right to be idle.” “Where is it,” he asked, “that in such a world as this, health, and leisure, and affluence may not find some ignorance to instruct, some wrong to redress, some want to supply, some misery to alleviate?”

“O, Lord, how devious we can be! Our hearts are deceitful, and we look quickly for reasons to believe that our disobedience is not serious. Humble us before the truth that there is one Judge and one God whose fellowship and fatherly delight is more precious than all the pleasures of sin. Forbid that we would forfeit this fortune -- even for a season -- while justifying our sin by thinking that it is small and partial surrounded by other good deeds.”

“Cuando eres discípulo de Jesús no te conviertes en Su ayudador. Él se convierte en tu Ayudador. No te conviertes en Su benefactor. Él se convierte en tu Benefactor. No te conviertes en Su siervo. Él se convierte en tu Siervo. Jesús no necesita tu ayuda; Él demanda tu obediencia y te ofrece Su ayuda. La Navidad significa que Jesús vino a servir, no a ser servido. Vino a ayudarnos a hacer todo lo que nos manda a hacer.”

“The key that unlocks the treasure chest of God’s peace is faith in the promises of God.”

“The new covenant is purchased by the blood of Christ, effected by the Spirit of Christ, and appropriated by faith in Christ.”

“Abre tu corazón para recibir el mejor regalo imaginable: Jesús se ha dado a Sí mismo por ti, muriendo y sirviéndote, para estar contigo por toda la eternidad. Recibe esto. Aléjate de tu pecado y de tu propia justicia. Hazte como un niño. Confía en Él. Confía en Él. Confía en Él con tu vida.”

“The magnifying of Christ in the white-hot worship of all nations is the reason the world exists.”

“praise comes from God as we renounce the pursuit of praise from others.”

“The aim of the climb is not intellectual satisfaction. The aim is worship. God gets more honor when we worship on the basis of what we know about him than he gets if we worship on the basis of what we don’t know.”

“. . . the story of Ruth . . .was written to give us encouragement and hope that all the perplexing turns in our lives are going somewhere good. They do not lead off a cliff. In all the setbacks of our lives as believers, God is plotting for our joy.”

“Which means, therefore, that our Bible reading is never just for seeing, never just for learning and doctrine. It is not even just for savoring, if that savoring is thought of in a private way that leaves us unchanged in our relationship with others. No. We read the Bible—we always read the Bible—for the kind of seeing and savoring Christ that transforms us into his likeness.”

“This is how God has designed the Scriptures to work for human transformation and for the glory of God: the Scriptures reveal God’s glory. This glory, God willing, is seen by those who read the Bible. This seeing gives rise, by God’s grace, to savoring God above all things—treasuring him, hoping in him, feeling him as our greatest reward, tasting him as our all-satisfying good. And this savoring transforms our lives—freeing us from the slavery of selfishness and overflowing in love to others. This joy-sustained, God-exalting transformation of love is then seen by others, who, by God’s grace, glorify God because of it.”

“What this means for our reading the Scriptures is that seeing the glory of God may not always awaken, first, the sweetness of his worth and beauty. It may awaken the sorrows of remembered sin and remaining corruption in our hearts. “Savoring” this painful truth would mean welcoming it rather than denying it or twisting it. It would mean being thankful and letting the rebuke and the correction have their full effect in contrition and humility. And it would mean letting it lead us to the mercies of God and the sweet relief that comes from his saving grace in Christ.”

“Cancer does not win if we die. It wins if we fail to cherish Christ.”

“The second clarification is that God’s great end—grand design—in creation is not only to glorify himself but to communicate himself. This has always been implicit in my understanding of how God is glorified by our being satisfied in him, but it has become clearer to me that God’s self-glorification is properly emphasized when we keep it connected to his self-communication. God’s end in the creation of the world consists in these two things, viz. to communicate himself and to glorify himself. God created the world to communicate himself, not to receive anything.6 These two things ought [not] to be separated when we speak of God’s end in the creation of the world. . . . Indeed, God’s communicating himself and glorifying [himself] ought not to be looked upon as though they were two distinct ends, but as what together makes one last end, as glorifying God and enjoying [God] make one chief end of man. For God glorifies himself in communicating himself, and he communicates himself in glorifying himself.7 The reason this clarification matters is that it protects God’s self-glorification from being disconnected with his self-giving. Almost no one finds fault with saying, “God gives himself to us.” Few people find fault with saying, “God gives himself to us for our enjoyment.” But many people find fault with saying, “God glorifies himself.” Nevertheless, it is clear from the whole scope of Scripture that he does.8”

“In all his self-glorifying acts in the world, God is revealing and giving himself to all who will receive him as their portion and their treasure. His self-glorifying is not only a “show,” but a gift of himself.”

“Commenting on John 17:20, Calvin wrote, Woe to the Papists, whose faith is so far removed from this rule, that they are not ashamed to vomit out this horrid blasphemy, that there is nothing in Scripture but what is ambiguous, and may be turned in a variety of ways. The tradition of the Church is therefore their only authoritative guide to what they shall believe. But let us remember that the Son of God, who alone is competent to judge, does not approve of any other faith than that which is drawn from the doctrine of the apostles, and sure information of that doctrine will be found no where else than in their writings.1”

“One of the main points of this book is that people are starving for the grandeur of God. Most of them don’t know that this is what their hearts are longing for. It is the great work of the preacher to show them the greatness of God, Christ, salvation, life, death, heaven, hell, and the ways of God in the world. It is our job to help them see that their addiction to entertainment is like addiction to sugar. It gives ever-shorter highs and then lets you fall lower and lower. But a steady diet of Bible-saturated truth and wonder enlarges the soul and strengthens the heart, and makes Jesus precious beyond words.”

“became clear to me, as never before, that as we think seriously about contextualizing the message of the Bible we must also labor to bring about, in the minds of our listeners, conceptual categories that may be missing from their mental framework. It may be that if we only use the thought structures our audience already has, some crucial biblical truths may remain unintelligible, no matter how much contextualizing we do. This work of concept creation is harder than contextualization, but just as important. We must pray and preach so that a new mental framework is created for seeing the world. Ultimately, this is not our doing. God must do it. The categories that make the biblical message look foolish are deeply rooted in sinful human nature.”