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222 illustrations
The fear of God operates as a restraining influence upon the heart.
Our Lord justifies His parabolic teaching method on the principle that immediate revelation is not always desirable.
The Lord keeps His people in six distinct ways.
The human heart reveals its corruption most plainly in how it despises true Christianity while admiring false religion's pageantry.
Not yet are all things in subjection to humanity, yet this sovereignty shall come.
Exell identifies the distinguishing mark of such hollow speech: the avoidance of Scripture's most penetrating term—*sin* (*hamartia*, missing the mark before God).
The Spirit speaking to the Church reveals three foundational truths: First, certain great moral elements alone determine the character of individuals or communities.
But by what standard shall we measure ourselves?
This proverb exposes the merchant who deprecates goods to negotiate a lower price, then brags of his shrewd bargain once the transaction concludes.
First, safe hiding-places are founded upon Christ alone, the foundation God has laid in Zion.
First, the *sources* of our vulnerability: the human heart harbors dormant moral propensities until outward circumstance awakens them.
Its rarity made it precious; it formed an essential ingredient in incense throughout the ancient world.
God announces Himself the witness and judge of all mankind.
John Locke defined it as "the uneasiness which a man feels within him on the absence of anything whose present enjoyment carries delight with it." Our desires reveal our destiny.
The upright—those bent on fulfilling God's will and keeping His commandments—walk a highway characterized not merely by abstinence from evil, but by active *apochōreō* (departure, turning away).
Life is not blind accident but the deliberate operation of the great Workman, and perceiving Elohim's purpose becomes our shield against sorrow, doubt, despondency, and fear.
William Perkins observed that God's logic is inescapable: human arguments have exhausted themselves.
The Christian idea of life is founded on conscious dedication: "To the Lord we live; to the Lord we die." What all other men must do unconsciously, the Christian does with full awareness.
This blessedness demands our attention to what purity truly means.
What distinguishes Christian righteousness from mere external morality?
Under the Levitical dispensation, tithes, firstfruits, and firstlings were consecrated to the Lord.
The body is a bad master, though it may be a good servant.
Clean hands may indicate abstinence from visible transgressions, yet a clean heart—*katharos*—concerns the inward disposition, the bias of the will, and the affections themselves.
This breath infused intelligence in the brain and vitality in the heart, making man a moral being capable of virtue and responsible for his actions.