“But when he was away from her, when he was left alone with his own thoughts, his intellectual confidence that he would eventually win her would evaporate like dew off a melon in August.”
An Editor Should Have Caught That
[Concerning 1 Tim. 6:3-5] “In Paul’s day, there were liberal teachers and preachers, just as we have them in our time, and Paul was most concerned that young Timothy not be caught up in the ‘battle of words’ which characterized their brand of indoctrination. William Barclay informs us . . .”
Olford, Anointed Expository Preaching, p. 39
Why Not, If the Play Usually Works?
“She also had a definite sense that here was a man on the verge of declaring himself, declaring his affections. She had been in this situation before, and she could tell that in this one respect, he was not departing from the playbook that all men apparently had.”
Man of God
“In Old Testament times, this appellation was assigned to a person who had been entrusted with a divine office. Moses was called ‘the man of God’ (Dt. 33:1); David was called ‘the man of God’ (2 Chron. 8:14); Elijah was called ‘man of God’ (2 Kings 1:9); the prophets were called ‘men of God’ (1 Sam. 2:27) . . . in the above text [1 Tim. 6:11], however, the apostle has in mind young Timothy, who had been called to be the preacher and pastor of the church(es) in the city of Ephesus and its environs.”
Olford, Anointed Expository Preaching, pp. 38-39
Which Can Be a Fierce Look
“Savannah remembered a book she had read years before when she was a little girl in which the heroine had tossed her curls. She thought of doing that now, but didn’t do anything. But the way she stood there at the doorway looked as though she just had tossed them.”
Motions of Time
“The time until Sunday morning went by so slowly that it ached, and after she spoke with him about meeting the next day, that time flew by so quickly there were a few moments she thought she felt the breeze in her hair.”
Particularly in Preaching
“The sin of despising [the person of the Holy Spirit] and rejecting his work now is the same nature with idolatry of old and with the Jews’ rejection of the person of the Son”
John Owen, in Olford, Anointed Expository Preaching, p. 29.
Unwanted Weight
“Thomas felt like one of the stones from the brook had somehow made it into his stomach, one of the rounded ones the size of a couple of fists.”
Water and Its Level
“‘That [we might] be complete’ (v. 17) We cannot lead others into spiritual maturity if we are still babes!”
Olford, Anointed Expository Preaching, p. 27
Which They Catch in a Minute
“As one Puritan put it, they sin till they’re out of breath.”