Dale Ralph Davis > Quotes

“The Bible is clear: amnesia produces apostasy.”
― Dale Ralph Davis, Judges: Such a Great Salvation

“To be the man after God’s own heart is not to be sinlessly perfect but to be, among other things, utterly submissive to the accusing word of God.”
― Dale Ralph Davis, 2 Samuel: Out of Every Adversity

“This prophecy against Eli emphasizes that you can end up in grave sin by thinking it very important to be nice to people. How easy it is to practice a gutless compassion that never wants to offend anyone, that equates niceness with love and thereby ignores God's law and essentially despises his holiness. We do not necessarily seek God's honor when we spare human feelings.”
― Dale Ralph Davis, Davis's Commentaries on Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel

“Reason returns and so [Nebuchadnezzar] blesses the Most High. That is what sane people do -- they offer adoration to the God of heaven. Truly rational people talk like this; they confess the supremacy of the King of heaven.”
― Dale Ralph Davis, The Message of Daniel

“Giving insight and understanding (22b) is his privilege; ponder the word and discern the vision (23b) – that is our responsibility.”
― Dale Ralph Davis, The Message of Daniel

“As noted before, the book of Daniel functions as a manual for the suffering church, as does its New Testament counterpart, the book of Revelation.”
― Dale Ralph Davis, The Message of Daniel

“Solomon’s prayer, then, is a proclamation of the fidelity of God. His prayer begins with praise of Yahweh’s dependability. That is proper in itself—God should be so praised. But it is also useful for the pray-er, for as we praise in prayer we are encouraged in petition, for we realize as we rehearse Yahweh’s record that we are coming to a faithful God. Praise then becomes the basis of confidence.”
― Dale Ralph Davis, 1 Kings: The Wisdom and the Folly

“In a written lament then words cannot simply be dumped or gushed or mushed as in initial grief. Here one cannot simply vomit out feelings but must choose words. Not that the lament is cold, objective, and detached. Rather the intensity of one's emotions unite with the discipline of one's mind to produce structured sorrow, a sort of authorized version of distress, a kind of coherent agony. In a lament, therefore, words are carefully selected, crafted, honed, to express loss as closely yet fully as possible.”
― Dale Ralph Davis, 2 Samuel: Out of Every Adversity

“And the calculations have been made; the time has already been set for the last tyrant who would assault God’s kingdom and crush God’s people to be terminated. Somehow that injects a ground-floor assurance into the souls of God’s servants and makes it possible for them to walk on with a certain godly fearlessness.”
― Dale Ralph Davis, The Message of Daniel

“In short, we are to never cut loose from this ʻmourning’ over sin as if it belongs to some elementary stage of Christian experience we leave behind. It is a proper preoccupation of our prayers.”
― Dale Ralph Davis, The Message of Daniel

“Since God has left the fingerprints of his wisdom everywhere, since there is no place where God does not furnish us with raw materials for godly thinking, Christians should be seized with a rambunctious curiosity to ponder his works, both the majestic and the mundane. The task of wisdom is joyfully to describe and investigate all God’s works. We may not be Solomons in insight, but we can gratefully examine the same data.”
― Dale Ralph Davis

“If what I study won't preach, there is something wrong with the way I study what I study.”
― Dale Ralph Davis, The Word Became Fresh: How to Preach from Old Testament Narrative Texts

“in the aftermath of the Nuremberg trials in 1946. After the executions of Nazi celebrities on 16 October, fourteen bodies, including those of Goering (who had ‘cheated’ by managing suicide), Ribbentrop, Keitel, Rosenberg, Frank, Streicher, Jodl and Seyss-Inquart, were delivered to a Munich crematorium. That same evening a container holding the amassed ashes was driven through the rain into the Bavarian countryside. After an hour’s drive the vehicle stopped and the ashes were poured into a muddy ditch.4 Five or six years before, these men could dominate and intimidate. That night a drizzle washed them away.”
― Dale Ralph Davis, The Message of Daniel

“Abner is not far from any one of us. We share an Abner-nature that harbors sin’s stupidity, perversity, and twistedness. Let Abner preach to you. Let him tell you that it is possible to know the truth but not embrace the truth, to quote the truth but not submit to the truth, to hold the truth and yet assault the truth. And so Abner joins all the other anti-christs who strut around and say, ‘I will be king’ (1 Kings 1:5).”
― Dale Ralph Davis, 2 Samuel: Out of Every Adversity

“Where should this leave us? In gratitude. True, we seldom if ever think of it – of the horror and pain the Lord’s servants endured in order to be the vehicles through whom his word is passed on to us in the Scriptures. We sit comfortably at our desks or tables with a companionable mug of coffee, read the prophets, and scarcely think of how Daniel was physically and emotionally wiped out or Ezekiel plunged into a mental morass of anguish and anger (Ezek. 3:14–15) – in short, of how much the word of God cost them.”
― Dale Ralph Davis, The Message of Daniel

“The loneliness of Yahweh’s man is the corollary of the freedom of Yahweh’s word.”
― Dale Ralph Davis, 1 Kings: The Wisdom and the Folly

“The most shocking part of Exodus 4:24-26 is most useful to me. It forces me to ask if God is free to be who he is, or, do I try to make him my prisoner, subject to what I think he should be? A Christian must keep asking himself: Am I worshiping the God of the Bible or only God as I wish to think of him?”
― Dale Ralph Davis, The Word Became Fresh: How to Preach from Old Testament Narrative Texts

“it. He does not always shield you from all distresses and dangers, but it is in the loneliness, in the betrayal, in the loss that the Fourth Man comes and walks with you. He has the knack of both exposing you to, yet keeping you through, waters and rivers and fire (cf. Isa. 43:2–3) – and operating rooms and funeral parlours and an empty house. The Fourth Man can always find his people.”
― Dale Ralph Davis, The Message of Daniel