By Evan Knies

Joe Rigney is assistant professor of theology at Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

You can purchase The Things of Earth here.

1. Earthly blessings are the necessary sign of God’s favor toward us, so we seek them above all and seek him for their sake (pg. 23).
2. The things of earth are both false and fair (pg. 23).
3. Glorification includes not merely the display of God’s attributes but also the knowledge of those attributes and love for and delight in those attributes (pg. 41).
4. Relationship is at the heart of reality (pg. 45).
5. God created the world to get a bride for his Son (pg. 45).
6. God’s preservation of the world is nothing but a continued act of creation (pg. 49).
7. Man is an under-king, a steward of God’s creation, charged with establishing God’s rule and reign over the unsubdued earth (pg. 84).
8. False guilt kills true joy and ruins us for fruitful ministry (pg. 90).
9. Idolatry begins with a false separation of gift and giver (pg. 103).
10. The Bible brings us to God, and when we arrive, we praise him, using instruments and human words as means of expressing our hearts (pg. 122).
11. Culture, is a kind of cultivation, a drawing out what God has put in. Culture is an adornment of creation, the further the beautification of an already beautiful world (pg. 139).
12. When seeking to be the kind of character that God wants you to be in the story, remember that your main goal is to image God in Christ to those around you. Your aim is to be a walking gospel proclamation (pg. 173).
13. Biblical self-denial is always the giving up of a lesser, legitimate joy for the sake of a greater one. It’s renouncing something good for the sake of something better (pg. 179).
14. Our service to the Lord must be filled with joy and gladness because of the abundance of all things (pg. 189).
15. Love for God’s gifts expands our mental capacity for understanding who God is. It expands our heart’s capacity for delighting and rejoicing in who God is. (pg. 221).

Evan Knies is married to Lauren and a student of SBTS.