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10,045 illustrations — Lessons from history, biography, and world events
He means it with deliberate, reiterated assurance to that handful of poor, ignorant fishermen who knew Him so dimly.
SermonWise.ai generates complete sermon outlines for any passage across 17 theological traditions.
The hereditary monarchy secured peaceful succession but never guaranteed continuity of godly policy.
This supernatural eclipse during the crucifixion carries five profound theological meanings, as exposited by Dean Stanley and W.
Man's untamed spirit spurns the Redeemer's love, and no truer picture of the altogether intractable exists than this creature traversing the desert according to its own nature alone.
The text, "How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard?
The Greeks and Romans witnessed friendships that shaped both statecraft and individual virtue—Scipio and Laelius, Cicero and Atticus, Achilles and Patroclus.
For thirty years, under the guardianship of the High Priest Jehoiada, the king remained faithful to his conscience and duty.
First, the great facts of human nature—sin, mortality, the soul's hunger for God—remain substantially unchanged across the ages.
If they are driven hard one day, all the animals will die.' He did not demand that his reconciled brother match his slower journey, but instead stated his reason openly so he would not be thought unkind.
First, as an intellectual gift, the Scriptures answer mankind's deepest inquiries about the origin and history of the world in ways that satisfy the reasoning mind.
In Adam's family stood Cain; in Christ's family, Judas; in the earliest Church, deceivers.
One Victorian writer imagined hours passing like solemn virgins in silent procession, their faces veiled, carrying caskets filled with treasures: brilliant diadems, ripe fruits, faded flowers.
Exell (1887) identifies flattery's essential character: it assumes all forms and colors, a universal countenance indifferent to truth.
The wisdom of religion is vindicated in the contrasting ends of good and evil men.
Our Lord Himself uttered these same words when His soul was overwhelmed with grief in the prospect of His agonies, bloody sweat, and sacrificial death (John 12:27).
When David offers him honor in Jerusalem, the ancient man declines—and in that refusal, Maclaren finds a portrait of flourishing old age that rebukes our youthful delusions of perpetual vigor.
The picture is midnight—the master absent, servants waiting with loins girded, lamps burning, eyes fixed upon the entrance.
The greatest truths burned high in the heavens like the star that guided the Magi, yet they directed Christians to the humblest details of daily conduct.
First, the wicked man takes deliberate pains to devise evil, much as a miner searches for treasure in concealed depths.
This text reveals a profound truth: bodily satisfaction depends entirely upon the soul's condition.
Gaze not on beauty overmuch, lest it blast thee; nor too long, lest it blind thee; nor too near, lest it burn thee.
Exell notes the critical distinction: it is not the place itself, but the way to it.
We employ what he calls 'two pairs of spectacles'—one that diminishes our own faults, another that magnifies our brother's.
1887, when the printing press has become the mightiest agency for good or evil ever unleashed upon civilization.