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Little sins are peculiarly offensive to God precisely because they are little—we risk offending Him for what we ourselves care very little about and expect insignificant return from.
Yet understand: there is no opposition between Christ and His people requiring conquest.
Exell's *Biblical Illustrator* offers three principles for this conquest.
First, God's kindness (*chesed*) embodies tenderness toward the God-fearing.
First, recognize what we desperately need: the King of Glory dwelling within.
The Holy Spirit recorded a mystery of consolation: healing came through the *pistis* (faith) of others.
The parable of the wheat and tares reveals a profound truth: the beauty of the righteous man remains hidden in the present age.
The work of Christ in us and for us does not exempt us from work.
Two essential requirements emerge for realizing this ideal.
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.
He that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done (Philippians 4:25). I. Punishment Threatened. To Masters: Imperious masters wrong their servants by defrauding them of clothing, food, or wages; by imposing labours beyond their strength; by...
First, it expresses supreme contempt—the mighty Conqueror reduced His defeated enemies to mere grapes beneath His feet, utterly insignificant before His power.
Exell's Victorian homiletic unpacks this indictment with surgical precision.
First comes the temporal: "the former rain and the latter rain" (Joel 2:23), granaries filled with wheat, vats overflowing with wine and oil.
This is not optical biology but moral vision.
Yet Scripture is unambiguous: the heart (*leb* in Hebrew, the seat of will and intention) cannot be good while its practice remains evil.
Before conversion, the Galatians possessed neither natural knowledge of God—imperfect and weak as it is—nor revealed knowledge through Christ.
Why should not the seekers of Jesus fear?
The tabernacle in which our soul dwells is a most frail and complicated machine.
Its acquisition presents such difficulties that it is seldom truly found in our age.
First, Christ in us is the foundation of our hope, elected before the creation of the world (Ephesians 1:3–4; 1 Timothy 1:9).
By virtue of Christ's death and resurrection, Christians obtain the grace of a new life.
The same Almighty One who fed Elijah in the terrible days of dearth, and who delivered Daniel from the power of the lions, still watches over and provides for His people.
This desire for healing transcends centuries and cultures.