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The Sanhedrin spoke solemnly of 'putting down error' and maintaining doctrinal purity, yet their true motive was *zelos*—jealousy, not genuine zeal.
Neither Ezra nor Nehemiah originated this gathering—they obeyed "a popular impulse which they had not created." This is extraordinary because Ezra, who had labored thirteen years in Jerusalem fighting corruptions among the returned captives, had never before promulgated the law...
The repetition *houtos* (this very one) marks a decisive moment in Israel's history.
The Holy Spirit recorded a mystery of consolation: healing came through the *pistis* (faith) of others.
In A Quiet Place, the Abbott family survives alien invasion by living in absolute silence. Any sound draws lethal creatures. They communicate in sign language, walk barefoot, eat without silverware. Survival requires stillness. The Lord was not in the wind,...
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.
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.
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.
These unnamed men, bearing no vision, no command from Jerusalem, no precedent to guide them—only truth in their minds and the impulses of Christ's love in their hearts—solved the question that had vexed the apostles: whether salvation belonged to Gentiles.
In The Impossible, the Belon family is separated by the 2004 tsunami. Maria and Lucas are swept miles away; Henry searches with the younger boys. Against all odds, they reunite. What survived the wave? Not their possessions—family, love, determination to find each other.
First, consider the effect of the gospel truly preached.
We treat the present as though it shall never end, and eternity as though it shall never begin.
Basil observed that these saints possessed such extraordinary courage and confidence amid their sufferings that watching heathens witnessed their heroic zeal and constancy—and turned to Christ themselves.
Both old cloth and new cloth share the nature of cloth; similarly, old wine and new wine share the nature of wine.
This transaction teaches us not to be too forward in our professions, or too confident in our own strength, lest confidence increase the guilt and shame of failure.
The circle stands as geometry's most perfect figure, and God selected it as His design for creation itself.
These phases repeat with such regularity that he compares them to *the white and red lights and darkness reappearing in a revolving lighthouse lantern, or figures recurring in a circulating decimal fraction*.
As Maclaren observes, this Roman official embodied the practical man's contempt for mere ideas, the statesman's faith in visible force and authority alone.
The human mind naturally divides into two warring camps.
When danger surrounds us, our fear knows no bounds—we sense the full weight of our peril.
Yet this appeal reveals something profound: the preacher refers always back to Christ as the source of all authority and influence.
The first—mere acceptance of His Messianic claim—is what Maclaren calls 'shallow,' proven by these same believers taking up stones to stone Him before the chapter closes.
The world's policy, like the world itself, fluctuates and deceives—uncertain in both objects and means, it knows nothing of the steadfastness that religious principle imparts to mind and conduct.
For that indeed a notable miracle hath been done ...