An act of holy heroism? No! It was an act of arrogance, a sin of presumption. Uzzah assumed that his hand was less polluted than the earth. But it wasn't the ground or the mud that would desecrate the ark; it was the touch of man. The earth is an obedient creature. It does what God tells it to do. It brings forth its yield in its season. It obeys the laws of nature that God has established. When the temperature falls to a certain point, the ground freezes. When water is added to the dust, it becomes mud, just as God designed it. The ground doesn't commit cosmic treason.

–R.C. Sproul 

Order of Worship • Kids' Guide

Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight, 
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more, 
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death, 
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again. 

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe 

Order of Worship • Kids' Guide

 Christ’s reign in His Church is that of a shepherd-king. He has supremacy, but it is the superiority of a wise and tender shepherd over his needy and loving flock. He commands and receives obedience, but it is the willing obedience of the well-cared-for sheep, rendered joyfully to their beloved Shepherd, whose voice they know so well. He rules by the force of love and the energy of goodness. 

C. H. Spurgeon 

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Learn much of the Lord Jesus. For every look at yourself take ten looks at Christ. He is altogether lovely. Such infinite majesty, and yet such meekness and grace, and all for sinners, even the chief. Live much in the smiles of God. Bask in his beams. Feel his all-seeing eye settled on you in love. And repose in his almighty arms. . . . Let your soul be filled with a heart-ravishing sense of the sweetness and excellency of Christ and all that is in Him. 

– Robert Murray M’Cheyne 

Order of Worship • Kids' Guide

From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.

– J. R. R. Tolkien

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For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another.

– Psalm 75:6, 7

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And so the story ends. Israel wanted a king. But, Saul, the best example they could produce, is dead — his very death surrounded by scandal, coming at the hands of an enemy he once rebelled against God to remove. Because Saul would not kill sin, sin had killed him. And now Israel’s hopes for a king lie as lifeless as Saul, as cold as his corpse. Who will be the next king? Who will be the king they need but have shown they have no business picking? Who will be king? That is the story of 2 Samuel. And of our own lives, too. 

Order of Worship • Kids' Guide

 Some wish to live within the sound of Church or Chapel bell; I want to run a Rescue Shop within a yard of hell. 

— C. T. Studd

Order of Worship • Kids' Guide

If we but knew a fraction of the future God is making for us; if we could begin to feel that all our deepest longings will be satisfied, that every beauty of this world will be preserved and heightened, that every good affection will soar, that every proper relationship will be restored forever, that all pain and frustration and ugliness will vanish, . . . and Jesus will fill the world with golden light—if we could believe what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him (1 Corinthians 2:9), our hearts would be freed from the greed and fears that cause us to sin.

— John Piper

Order of Worship • Kids' Guide

The nature of the Christian life is corporate, because the body of Christ is a corporate entity. While our individual walks are crucial, we are impoverished in our personal pursuit of God if we do not avail ourselves of the help that is available through mutually edifying relationships in our covenant church family. . . . The corporate life of the congregation should be central to the life of the individual believer. . . . We can't live the Christian life alone. We are saved individually from our sins, yet we are not saved into a vacuum. We're saved into a mutually edifying community of believers who are building each other up and spurring each other on to love and good deeds.

— Mark Dever and Paul Alexander

Order of Worship • Kids' Guide

Redemption is the means; worship is the goal. In one sense, worship is the whole point of everything. It is the purpose of history, the goal of the whole Christian story. Worship is not one segment of the Christian life among others. Worship is the entire Christian life, seen as a priestly offering to God. And when we meet together as a church, our time of worship is not merely a preliminary to something else; rather, it is the whole point of our existence as the body of Christ. 

— John Frame

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Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lack'd any thing.

— George Herbert

Order of Worship • Kids' Guide

The gospel is boldly advancing under the contested reign and inevitable victory of Jesus the king. This side of Jesus’ death and resurrection, all of God’s sovereignty is mediated exclusively through King Jesus. . . . Christ “must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet” ([I Cor.] 15:25). That presupposes the reign is still contested, and still advances. This is of a piece with Jesus’ claim, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt 16:18). But one day, the final enemy, death itself, will die, and Jesus’ mediatorial kingship will end. God will be all in all.

— D. A. Carson

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“One generation . . . believed the gospel and held as well that there were certain social, economic, and political entailments. The next generation assumed the gospel, but identified with the entailments. The following generation denied the gospel; the ‘entailments’ became everything.”

— D. A. Carson

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The [scenes] throughout [Revelation] not only have a judicial effect on the unbelieving but are meant also to shock believers caught up in the church’s compromising complacency by revealing to them the horrific, beastly nature of the idolatrous institutions they are being tempted to identify with and trust in. Use of the various pictures and images throughout Revelation — beasts, dragons, harlots, horsemen, strange creatures, plagues, and so on — is meant to shock believers out of their complacency and the danger of compromising with the idolatrous culture in which they live.

— G. K. Beale & David Campbell

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Necessity is laid upon us. We must fight. There are no promises in the Lord Jesus Christ's epistles to the seven churches, except to those who “overcome.” Where there is grace, there will be conflict. The believer is a soldier. There is no holiness without a warfare. Saved souls will always be found to have fought a fight. 

—J. C. Ryle 

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“Suffering then is the badge of the true Christian. The disciple is not above his master . . . . Luther reckoned suffering among the marks of the true church . . . . Discipleship means allegiance to the suffering Christ, and it is therefore not at all surprising that Christians should be called up to suffer. . . .”

—Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Order of Worship • Kids' Guide

“Even though [we] love Jesus, [our] love threatens to grow cold when the familiar becomes taken for granted and neglected.”

— Greg Morse

Order of Worship • Kids' Guide

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“This Gospel [of John] is no fanciful speculation, no whimsical, inspired redrawing of Jesus’ portrait. It is an account of what happened, given by a man who had seen it.”

— Gary Burg

Order of Worship • Kids' Guide

“It is the error of our times to separate evangelism from discipleship and to center on winning the lost rather than building up the church; the best means of reaching the lost is to develop excited Christians who will take the gospel to others.”

— Grant Osborne

Order of Worship • Kids' Guide