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10,045 illustrations — Lessons from history, biography, and world events
In His humanity, Christ emerges as the Rod from Jesse's stem, the Branch from his roots (Jeremiah 23:5; Zechariah 3:8).
SermonWise.ai generates complete sermon outlines for any passage across 17 theological traditions.
Man's true wisdom is a pattern of God's wisdom.
The prohibition is not against reasonable foresight, but against anxious foreboding, that wretched state in which a man is 'rent asunder' by care.
Among those who reverently buried the martyr were devout men—not disciples, but Hellenistic Jews, perhaps from the very synagogue whose members had disputed with Stephen and dragged him before the council.
Maclaren observes that 'one coat of paint is not enough, it soon rubs off'—a homely image that captures how readily doctrinal knowledge slides from memory without constant reinforcement.
This is no mere coincidence of timing, but the visible sign of a profound spiritual principle: unbelief seals the mouth; faith unlocks it.
Christ is King in Zion—the sole Sovereign of His Church by the Father's appointment and ordination.
Years before, Elijah had anointed him king over Syria—a word that had festered in his ambitious heart while the decrepit Ben-hadad still nominally held the throne.
This verse captures the great change and its obligations.
He does not stand above his audience as one who possesses the message of salvation and dispenses it downward.
Matthew Henry observed her strategy: she calls them "simple" and "wanting understanding," inviting them to her school under pretense of refinement.
The Greek word *skolops* suggests not a splinter but one of those hideous stakes used in ancient impalement—Paul describes himself as "quivering upon that tremendous torture." This is no minor inconvenience but a piercing affliction from God's own hand.
These heresy-hunters positioned themselves apart from the crowd at Peter's house, sitting near enough to observe yet far enough to signal their superiority over the provincial peasants.
He had rough-hewn his plan with apostolic certainty.
To the officers sent by the Pharisees—men animated by hatred, restrained only by inexplicable awe—His declaration 'Whither I go, ye cannot come' becomes a triumphant assertion of invulnerability.
He depicts "them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death"—not wanderers moving frantically, but travelers *benighted*, huddled together, afraid to move.
Yet his greatest difficulty arose from a faction calling themselves Christ's party—a group whose very name masked dangerous sectarianism.
Our Lord moves far in advance of His followers, His fixed purpose stamped upon His face, a strange haste in His stride that casts astonishment and awe over the silent, uncomprehending disciples.
The gifts are not separate from grace; they are its direct offspring, its cognates.
Matthew 10:7 presents five critical dimensions of apostolic proclamation, restored from Joseph S. Exell's Victorian exposition: First, *Who* preaches? The disciples Christ commissioned. Second, *What* do they announce? "The kingdom of heaven"—speak of the King in His threefold majesty: King...
Rather, He sets him apart for Himself—to converse with him, to communicate Himself to him as a friend and companion, making him His delight.
Exell's Victorian homily isolates four charges against this congregation, each applicable to contemporary faith communities.
First, the gospel illuminates what was previously hidden.
First comes the temporal: "the former rain and the latter rain" (Joel 2:23), granaries filled with wheat, vats overflowing with wine and oil.