Sunday Sermon Quotes: "The Most Important Question in a Pandemic"

4.19.20 featured

“This is not a season for sentimental views of God.” John Piper

“Jesus calls on the crowd to reflect on their skills of discernment. Living in Palestine, they can decipher the weather by checking the wind and the clouds. If the clouds are coming from the west and the Mediterranean, they know rain is coming. If the wind comes from the south off the desert, they know it will be hot. They read and anticipate the weather just by looking around. Yet they are unable to discern the nature of current events that surround Jesus. They do not asses him, his teaching, his miracles rightly. In calling them hypocrites Jesus is trying to shock them into reflection, as if to say, ‘How can you miss all that is happening right in front of you?” Darrell Bock

In his response, Jesus does not denounce Pilate as that ‘fox’ (cf. 13:32), or rail against the Roman occupation of God’s land, or attempt to stir up the crowd to join a Galilean rights movement that should fight to the death to drive the infidel from the land.” David Garland

“Jesus treats wars and natural disasters not as agenda items in a discussion of the mysterious ways of God, but as incentives to repentance. It is as if he is saying that God uses a megaphone to call attention to our guilt and destination, to the imminence of his righteous judgment if he sees no repentance. Disaster is a call to repentance.” Don Carson

“God has a merciful message in all such disasters. The message is that we are all sinners, bound for destruction, and disasters are a gracious summons from God to repent and be saved while there still is time. Jesus turned from the dead to the living and essentially said, ‘Let’s not talk about the dead; let’s talk about you. This is more urgent. What happened to them is about you. Your biggest issue is not their sin but your sin.” I think that is God’s message for the world in this coronavirus outbreak. He is calling the world to repentance while there still is time.” John Piper

“Repentance begins with the knowledge of sin. It goes on to work sorrow for sin. It leads to a confession of sin before God. Above all it is inseparably connected with lively faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.” J.C. Ryle

“Divine love triumphed over divine wrath by divine self-sacrifice.” John Stott

“I would say the greatest and most frequent error that human beings make is the assumption that they are going to survive the judgment of a holy God on the basis of their own performance.” R.C. Sproul