A Better Way Quotes

“He came down all the way to us, saved us by the death and resurrection of his Son, and continues to provide for our temporal and eternal welfare. But that’s not all: After this he still accommodates, coming all the way down to us again here and now as he uses the most everyday and common elements that are familiar to both the uneducated and the academic: water, bread, and wine. Here God even accommodates to our weakness by allowing us to “taste and see that the Lord is good,” to catch a glimpse of his goodness as he passes by. The writer to the Hebrews calls it tasting of “the powers of the coming age” (Heb. 6:5). Isn’t it a bit arrogant, therefore, for us to respond to this gracious condescension by asking, “But what about the teenagers? How can we make the gospel relevant to people today?”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“Notice the integral union of the sign and the thing signified: To sin against the bread and cup is to sin against the body and the blood. In order for that statement to hold up syntactically, one cannot simply dissolve the sign into the thing signified (as in the Roman Catholic view), for they are clearly distinct in Paul’s mind: The bread and wine are one thing, the body and blood are something else. Nevertheless, they are not separated (as in the memorialist view) but are bound by Word and Spirit, so that the physical eating of the bread and wine in an unworthy manner constitutes the eating and drinking of God’s wrath for “not discerning the Lord’s body” (v. 29).”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“Many evangelicals have a problem with sacraments precisely because they regard them chiefly as human works, but Scripture presents them as God’s testimony to his work.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“It is the preaching of God’s commands that brings conviction, while the proclamation of Christ in the gospel creates and keeps on creating faith and its fruit.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“Vagueness about the object of our praise inevitably leads to making our own praise the object.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“It gives us the tempo of belonging to the One by whom we exist and for whom our existence is directed.”
― Michael Scott Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“Having executed its just sentence once and for all on the obedient Son, the law cannot condemn those who are forever safe in Christ from its curses.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“The purity and integrity of the gospel stand or fall with the absoluteness of the antithesis between the function and potency of law, on the one hand, and the function and potency of grace, on the other.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“This is why in religion the appeal to extraordinary visions almost always trumps the preaching of a promise and inevitably leads to idolatry.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“As God’s command brought the world into existence ex nihilo, out of nothing, so too his pronouncement of new creation life.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“The law comprises everything in Scripture which is a revelation of God’s will in the form of command or prohibition, while the gospel embraces everything, whether it be in the Old Testament or the New, that pertains to the work of reconciliation and that proclaims the seeking and redeeming love of God in Christ Jesus.[9]”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“God does not get incorporated into our play but we into his.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“And as Christ is preached each week, through the whole service as well as the sermon, he is as truly present and active by the Holy Spirit as if he were present physically.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“To set forth the God-ordained means by which Christ comes to his people, the Reformed must give visual expression to the importance of both Word and Sacraments. Any architecture worthy of scriptural teaching must start with the Christ who calls men unto himself through the Word and Sacraments.”[”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“Outreach begins with a well-taught laity, stirred by the great truths of Scripture.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“Most Americans—professing Christians—for a fairly long time thought that slavery was simply “where people are these days.” Is it really loving to set aside the truth about sin and judgment and even to downplay the person and work of Christ as its answer simply because these are not the questions that are being asked by unbelievers? Imagine our elementary school teachers deciding that they will no longer teach the alphabet because the children aren’t interested in learning it.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“Genuine relevance is found not when the church tries to be relevant, since repeating what people already think is rather boring. Genuine relevance is found in contradicting the wisdom of the world that we entered the church with on Sunday morning.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“the Sabbath should not be treated as a blank space in the week but as the one space that is filled and overflowing with the richest gifts of divine activity.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“In its character, therefore, the Sabbath is not cessation from activity but cessation from a particular kind of activity—namely, the six-day labor that is intrinsically good but has suffered the curse after the fall. God did not rest because he was tired; rather, it was the rest of completion, the rest of a king who has taken his throne. Representing the consummation, this sabbatical pattern was the way not only of hoping for the new creation but of experiencing it and participating in its peace.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“We do not come to church to affirm our faithfulness, our devotion, our praise, and our up-to-the-minute emotional state but to be addressed, undressed, and re-dressed by God.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“Whether we are “traditionalists” or “progressivists,” the deeper question is whether we regard the service primarily in terms of God’s action and our response or in terms of our action and God’s passive appreciation.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“The choice is not between drama and no drama but which drama? Is it a drama that God is staging for the redemption of a people, or is it a drama that we are staging for God and for each other or for the unchurched? The show must go on, but whose is it?”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“The “unchurching” of the next generation is happening right under our noses, even in the very churches that pride themselves on reaching the unchurched.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“It is important for us to realize that it is not only the message of the Word but the method of preaching that God has promised to use for salvation and growth. It must, therefore, be central in worship.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“As Scripture presents it, the Word itself—wielded by the heavenly agent (the Holy Spirit) and the earthly ambassador (the preacher)—does what it threatens in the law and promises in the gospel. The Word itself does this work, not because it provides an occasion for us to do something but simply by its being used by God according to his own sovereign will.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“sending his emissaries to sinners rather than sinners trying to make their way to God by their own skill, cleverness, imagination, or efforts. God has already accommodated himself to our weakness. He is not far from us, if we will but attend to the ministry of the Word. Therefore, we must resist “the sky’s the limit” when it comes to accommodation. The Bible must be read, sung, and preached in the common language of the people, but when we introduce skits, musicals, and puppet shows on the basis of wanting to bring God down to the level of the people, they can only conclude that God has not already accommodated himself sufficiently through the ministry of the Word.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“We cannot identify with Christ apart from our identification with his church, nor can we truly receive the benefits of this sacrament apart from personal faith in Christ. The communion occurs through the ministration of the church, but it derives its efficacy only through the powerful working of the Holy Spirit.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“Faith is created by the preached gospel and confirmed and strengthened by the sacraments.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“We need to really hear the law in all its threatening power, and then we will be prepared to flee to Christ for safety.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“When the style of our music is always upbeat, loud, and ascending in enthusiasm, we miss the range of biblical teaching about God, ourselves, worship, and the Christian life.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship