Sermon Quotes: "The Depths of Sin and Salvation"

“GUILT. What a horrendous burden. Sometimes people carry a tremendous weight of subjective guilt-i.e., of felt guilt-when they are not really guilty. Far worse is the situation where they carry a tremendous weight of objective guilt-i.e., they really are guilty of some odious sin in the eyes of the living God-and are so hardened that they do not know it.” D.A. Carson

“David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the Lord.’ And Nathan said to David, ‘The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die.’” 2 Samuel 12:13-14

“For about three thousand years now David has been teaching sinners the ways of God’s forgiveness and mercy through this written lament. Although it was an intensely personal prayer, it was deposited in the sanctuary to be used by others also in need of forgiveness…Christians have made use of this psalm in their confessions of sin, and rightly so.” Allen

“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, keeping steadfast love to thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin.” Exodus 34:6-7

“On the personal level, David is forgiven. Repentance brings immediate remission-both the burden (“taken away your sin’) and the penalty (‘you are not going to die’) of sin are gone straight away. But on the public level, consequences must, in this case, follow: the Lord has been brought into contempt before those who oppose him, and there must be a public display of hostility to sin and of his justice in dealing with it. Forgiveness is not favoritism.” Alec Motyer

“God has many instruments to serve as prophets through which light dawns on us and we see ourselves as we really are. As with David, it may be through a sermon God speaks to us or through a painful providence by which God awakens our conscience. The specific instrument is less important than its effect-bringing us to say, ‘Lord, I have sinned against you.’” Sinclair Ferguson

“The deep cultural animus against the category of sin means that many preachers much prefer to talk about weaknesses, mistakes, tragedies, failures, inconsistencies, hurts, disappointment, blindness-anything but sin. The result is that the biblical portrayal of God is distorted, as is his plan of redemption.” D.A. Carson

“Sin is so serious and so pervasive in the world that God’s redemptive work is the only antidote for it…I strive not to minimize sin, in part because I honor God’s sacrificial plan for removing it.” Paul House