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292 illustrations
Propriety demands three conditions: first, that things be done in their proper time; second, that they be kept to their proper use; third, that they be put in their proper place.
This text reveals a profound truth: bodily satisfaction depends entirely upon the soul's condition.
The latter we enjoy now through faith and hope; but the former is present with us, the certain consequence and necessary attendant upon a mind truly virtuous and religious.
The ruined city in Solomon's metaphor depicts precisely this condition.
Consider the work of mortification—to pluck out our eyes, to chop off our hands, to cut off our feet.
Yet Christians must judge timidity differently than the world does.
The first four ring out 'sharp and short like pistol-shots'—watch, stand fast, quit you like men, be strong—a military cadence that marshals the believer for spiritual combat.
Gaze not on beauty overmuch, lest it blast thee; nor too long, lest it blind thee; nor too near, lest it burn thee.
Cleanse Thou me from secret faults." — Psalm 19:12 Sin possesses a remarkable tenacity and cunning.
The Word visited men before the Incarnation through nature and conscience, came fully at the Incarnation, and still comes through the Spirit who interprets His name (John 14:25; 16:13).
The fear of God operates as a restraining influence upon the heart.
Aben-Ezra, the medieval Hebrew commentator, grasped this with clarity: their salvation shall be evident and conspicuous, just as a garment is.
Yet the Elohim who governs temporal harvests governs spiritual ones identically.
2:13), where every meat-offering required salt as a preservative, Christ establishes a profound contrast between two destinies.
They possessed no human sympathy for the sufferer whom hope deferred had made sick and hopeless.
First, he is a *hagios* (saint)—a separated one, taken out of the world and set apart for God's purposes.
The Jews of Haggai's time had fallen into spiritual lethargy, their slothful security masking a deeper neglect of covenant duty.
Exell (1887) identified four essential means of this prosperity.
First, we come into actual contact with sin, imaged in the corruption of death itself.
If we would pray well, we must pray early.
Spurgeon identifies three compelling reasons woven into Scripture's wonderful character.
Our Lord justifies His parabolic teaching method on the principle that immediate revelation is not always desirable.
but Israel doth not know." The prophet addressed a people surrounded by idolatrous nations, prone to regarding Jehovah as merely one god among many, or worse, as a provincial deity rather than the God of all the earth.
First, it demands a *specific pursuit* (*zēteō* – to seek diligently).