Apostate Children

February 22, 2016 in Children, Discipline, Parents, Quotations, Ten Commandments

Note, The gross misconduct of wicked children is the grief and shame of their godly parents. Children should be the joy of their parents; but wicked children are their trouble, sadden their hearts, break their spirits, and make them go mourning from day to day. Children should be an ornament to their parents; but wicked children are their reproach, and are as dead flies in the pot of ointment: but let such children know that, if they repent not, the grief they have caused to their parents, and the damage religion has sustained in its reputation through them, will come into the account and be reckoned for.

Matthew Henry (1994). Matthew Henry’s commentary on the whole Bible: complete and unabridged in one volume (p. 74). Peabody: Hendrickson.

Schools can be the Very Gates of Hell

January 21, 2016 in Children, Church History, Education, Politics, Quotations, Reformation

Among a series of great quotations on Scripture from Martin Luther (found here) was this stirring one on education:

“I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labour in explaining the Holy Scriptures, and engraving them on the hearts of youth. I would advise no one to send his child where the Holy Scriptures are not supreme. Every institution in which men and women are not unceasingly occupied with the Word of God must be corrupt.”

The Wicked and the Good

September 18, 2015 in Coeur d'Alene Issues, Election, Homosexuality, Martyrdom, Politics, Postmillennialism, Quotations

Proverbs 16:4
4 The LORD has made all for Himself, Yes, even the wicked for the day of doom.

“How then do the wicked serve the good? As persecutors serve the martyrs; as a file or hammer, gold; as a mill, wheat; as ovens, the baking of bread: those are consumed, so that these may be baked. How, I say, do the wicked serve the good? As chaff in the furnace of the goldsmith serves gold…. Therefore the wicked should not boast or extol themselves when they send tribulations to the good. For while they are persecuting the good in their bodies, they are killing themselves in their hearts.”
Caesarius of Arles (c. 468-542)
In Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Vol II: Genesis 12-50, p. 148.

Law and Gospel

February 4, 2015 in Holy Spirit, Justification, Law and Gospel, Mosaic Law, Quotations, Sanctification

“It makes sense to say that we should not confuse God’s demands with his promises. Nevertheless, the kind of sharp distinction that Luther proposed [between Law and Gospel] is not biblical. for one thing, biblical proclamations of gospel include commands, particularly commands to repent and believe (Mark 1:15; Acts 2:38). And God gave his law to the children of Israel in a context of gospel: he had delivered them out of Egypt; therefore, they should keep his law (Ex. 20:2-17). The law is a gift of God’s grace (Ps 119:29)….

We are not saved by keeping the law, but we are always obligated to keep the law, and once we are saved and raised from death to life, we desire to keep the law out of love for God and for Jesus. The law not only is a terrifying set of commands to drive us to Christ, but also is the gentle voice of the Lord, showing his people that the best blessings of this life come from following his will.”

John Frame, Systematic Theology, pp. 96-97.

Thought and Tears

January 19, 2015 in Quotations, Sanctification

“Tears displacing thought is objectionable, when thought was called for, but similarly, thought instead of tears is objectionable, when tears were called for.”

N.D. Wilson & Douglas Wilson, The Rhetoric Companion, p. 55.