1. Nothing moves or drives Paul more than preaching about “Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2).
  2. We don't make Church "happen." Only Christ can do so. It's his happening.
  3. I hate to break it to you, but "are" is not an action verb. "Are" is a being verb.
  4. Even if the numbers are bad, the news about Jesus crucified for sinners and raised to new life hasn’t become any less good.
  5. There is a revival, no less real and even more definitive, taking place in every church, every weekend, where God’s people gather around his gifts.
  6. Reading includes, on some level, striving. Hearing, on the other hand, remains passive.
  7. Zephaniah has given us something more visceral to help us understand the love of God: the sound of salvation.
  8. This sermon was originally given at Luther Seminary chapel on May 20, 1986.
  9. We too are God’s baptized, beloved, blood-bought believers. And no one can ever take that away from us.
  10. Hidden beneath the sinner is a glorious saint. Jesus has declared it to be so in your baptism.
  11. Predestination, Jim knew, is no longer a frightening doctrine of mystery when you understand that God makes his choice about you in the simple word of God, given from one sinner to another.
  12. The sign of the cross, according to the earliest centuries of Christians, is “the sign of the Lord,” and every baptized Christian was “marked” with it.