Sermon Quotes: "How to Be Human"
Here are some quotes that were cited in the August 26, 2018 sermon on Ecclesiastes 12:9-14 entitled "How to Be Human" (plus a couple bonus quotes that didn't make it into the sermon).
“In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that--and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison--you do not know God at all.”
— C. S. Lewis
“It is one of the defining marks of our time that God is now weightless. I do not mean by this that he is ethereal but rather that he has become unimportant. He rests upon the world so inconsequentially as not to be noticeable. He has lost his saliency for human life.Those who assure the pollsters of their belief in God’s existence may nonetheless consider him less interesting than television, his commands less authoritative than their appetites for affluence and influence, his judgment no more awe-inspiring than the evening news, and his truth less compelling than the advertisers’ sweet fog of flattery and lies. That is weightlessness.”
— David Wells
“Whatever I trust the most to satisfy me, I desire the most; and whatever I desire the most, I obey.”
— Steve Fuller
“The fear of the Lord is another way of describing trust in the Lord. But the word fear adds connotations of reverence and awe. The fear of the Lord is the opposite of a glib shallowness.”
— Ray Ortlund
“The servile fear is a kind of fear that a prisoner in a torture chamber has for his tormentor, the jailer, or the executioner. It's that kind of dreadful anxiety in which someone is frightened by the clear and present danger that is represented by another person. Or it's the kind of fear that a slave would have at the hands of a malicious master who would come with the whip and torment the slave. Servile refers to a posture of servitude toward a malevolent owner ... [Filial fear] refers to the fear that a child has for his father. In this regard, Luther is thinking of a child who has tremendous respect and love for his father or mother and who dearly wants to please them. He has a fear or an anxiety of offending the one he loves, not because he's afraid of torture or even of punishment, but rather because he's afraid of displeasing the one who is, in that child's world, the source of security and love … The focus here is on a sense of awe and respect for the majesty of God. That's often lacking in contemporary evangelical Christianity. We get very flippant and cavalier with God, as if we had a casual relationship with the Father. We are invited to call him Abba, Father, and to have the personal intimacy promised to us, but still we're not to be flippant with God. We're always to maintain a healthy respect and adoration for him.”
— R. C. Sproul