Dan

“Although there are things that can be done to enhance corporate worship, there is a profound sense in which excellent worship cannot be attained merely by pursuing excellent worship. In the same way that, according to Jesus, you cannot find yourself until you lose yourself, so also you cannot find excellent corporate worship until you stop trying to find excellent corporate worship and pursue God himself. Despite the protestations, one sometimes wonders if we are beginning to worship worship rather than worship God. As a brother put it to me, it’s a bit like those who begin by admiring the sunset and soon begin to admire themselves admiring the sunset.”
― D.A. Carson, Worship by the Book

“Because the serpent slips in subtly, luring Christ's bride away through plausible lies and pleasant compromises, the church must also overcome by staying pure. The white garments of the victors symbolize their victory over defiling temptation and consequently their fitness to enter God's temple as the kingdom of priests, to serve gladly in his presence (Rev. 3:4-5, 17-18; 22:14-15). Though their white linen presents a portrait of their righteous deeds (19:7-8), the purity that makes them presentable before the thrice-holy God is not their personal achievement but the result of the costliest of cleansers: "they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb" (7:14).”
― Dennis E. Johnson, Triumph of the Lamb: A Commentary on Revelation

“The love of God is like himself – equal, constant, not capable of augmentation or diminution; our love is like ourselves – unequal, increasing, waning, growing, declining. His, like the sun, always the same in its light, though a cloud may sometimes interpose; ours, as the moon, has its enlargements and straightenings.”
― John Owen, Communion with the Triune God

“To show how a text fits into its whole canonical context, then, is to show how it points to Christ and gospel salvation, the big idea of the whole Bible. Every time you expound a Bible text, you are not finished unless you demonstrate how it shows us that we cannot save ourselves and that only Jesus can. That means we must preach Christ from every text, which is the same as saying we must preach the gospel every time and not just settle for general inspiration or moralizing.”
― Timothy Keller, Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism