1. Reading includes, on some level, striving. Hearing, on the other hand, remains passive.
  2. To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.
  3. His love for you is so deep that in his mercy, while you were yet a sinner, God sent his only begotten Son to die for you.
  4. “So loved,” then isn’t about how much but instead simply how.
  5. Zephaniah has given us something more visceral to help us understand the love of God: the sound of salvation.
  6. This sermon was originally given at Luther Seminary chapel on May 20, 1986.
  7. Love is pointing to Jesus who said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
  8. 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.
  9. Christ our Word, as with a two-edged sword, burst the devil's belly.
  10. 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.
  11. The answer to our messages is God's "yes," Jesus, who sends his preachers to proclaim that there's no place for us now other than in the grip of our God and Savior.
  12. As the writer to the Hebrews affirms, what makes the Christian gospel so much better is that we are no longer dealing with “types and shadows."