Loading...
Search, filter, and discover the perfect illustration for your sermon
Free to browse · Sign up free to unlock most illustrations · Premium ($9.95/mo) for the full library of 50,000+ illustrations
the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day." The Lord abases human pride whenever He makes His presence felt by the power of His Spirit upon the heart.
His voice had grown weak, his body failing.
The Psalmist's cry, "Let me not be put to shame" (Psalm 25:2), rests upon confidence that those who wait upon Jehovah will not be abandoned.
At Pentecost, the disciples heard 'a sound as of wind'—yet Maclaren draws a crucial distinction that arrests the imagination: Luke's language carefully distinguishes between the *phonē* (sound) and actual wind. No air rushed through the chamber. No hair on any...
Exell's Victorian commentary unpacks reproof as an obligation rooted in love for our neighbours.
Cyrus the Great, born a prince of a small principality at the head of the Gulf of Oman, rose to conquer the Medes, Persians, Asia Minor including Lydia, and finally Babylon itself.
The pedigree of true believers consists of two movements: first, they were once *in* the world, characterized by practical atheism (living without God in spirit and conduct), imperial materialism (recognizing no spiritual universe), and dominant selfishness (each governed by selfish...
How long shall I be with you?"—reveals not divine anger but infinite pain.
The particle "therefore" (*dio*) anchors judgment in three ascending causes: first, their impiety itself; second, their refusal to repent despite God's discipline ("they turned not to Him that smote them"); and third, their continued obstinacy in refusing to seek the...
Achan's sin was not mere theft; it was *maʿal* (breach of trust), that treacherous departure from God described throughout the Pentateuch.
God does not pronounce judgment until men have first abused His benevolence and provoked His intervention.
The Almighty does not merely tolerate the godly; He loves them as His dearest friends, entrusting them with His very secrets.
If Adonai values our salvation so deeply, why does He withhold His hand and permit our enemies to rage?
First, we come into actual contact with sin, imaged in the corruption of death itself.
First, the accomplishment itself: "salvation." Not partial deliverance, not merely an escape from consequences, but complete salvation—a word *yeshuah* meaning wholeness, safety, and triumph.
The principle rests on two foundations: love to Christ involving obedience to His word, and living not unto ourselves but unto God and for others' welfare.
Christ presents a paradox: the disciples are clean, yet they require continual cleansing.
Exell's Victorian analysis of Ezekiel 14:26 unfolds the promise "And ye shall eat in plenty" across eight spiritual dimensions: satiation of body, contentment with portion, the capacity to eat, and supremely, the enjoyment of Elohim as our God in Christ.
Judah had forsaken their Rock, their *Elohim* of salvation, and in that abandonment rushed to cultivate 'gardens of pleasures' and 'vine slips of a stranger.' They nursed these alliances with Damascus with frantic care, as Maclaren observes: 'In a day...
These two graces mutually reveal and react upon each other in the penitent heart.
While absent from the Psalms until this passage, it surfaces repeatedly in later books: 2 Chronicles xxxvi.23, Ezra i.2, v.11–12, vi.9, vii.12–23, Nehemiah i.4, ii.4, Daniel ii.18–19 and 44, and Jonah i.9.
This intervention—born of her troubling dream—stands as a threefold testimony: the testimony of women to Christ, the testimony of dreams to Christ, and the testimony of suffering to Christ.
The believer's expectation rests not upon the shifting sands of human opinion or circumstance, but upon the immovable promises of Adonai.
He does not merely condemn; He first enumerates the favours which He had shown Israel, recalling the conditions of the covenant: no entangling alliances with the inhabitants, no tolerance for their idolatry.