selected passages
May 12, 2024
preached by Abrm McQuarters
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Time of Reflection Quotations

“God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them.”

~ Augustine

“Nothing can be more consoling to the man of God, than the conviction that the Lord who made the world governs the world; and that every event, great and small, prosperous and adverse, is under the absolute disposal of Him who doth all things well, and who regulates all things for the good of his people.”

~ Jerry Bridges

“What is ‘good?’ ‘Good’ is what God approves. We may ask then, why is what God approves good? We must answer, ‘Because He approves it.’ That is to say, there is no higher standard of goodness than God’s own character and His approval of whatever is consistent with that character.”

~ Wayne Grudem

“To question the goodness of God is, in essence, to imply that man is more concerned about goodness than is God… To suggest that man is kinder than God is to subvert…the very nature of God… It is to deny God; and this is precisely the thrust of the temptation to question the goodness of God.”

~ Philip Hughes

“Men are afraid to have good thoughts of God. They think it is a boldness to eye God as good, gracious, tender, kind, loving. I speak of saints. They can judge Him hard, austere, severe, almost implacable, and fierce (the very worst affections of the very worst of men, and most hated by God). Is not this soul-deceit from Satan? Was it not his design from the beginning to inject such thoughts of God? Assure yourself, then, there is nothing more acceptable to the Father than for us to keep up our hearts unto Him as the eternal fountain of all that rich grace which flows out to sinners in the blood of Jesus.”

~ John Owen

Sermon Passage

selected passages (ESV)

Genesis 1:31

³¹ And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Genesis 2:15-17

¹⁵ The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. ¹⁶ And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Mark 10:17-22

¹⁷ And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” ¹⁸ And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. ¹⁹ You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” ²⁰ And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” ²¹ And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” ²² Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.