Synonyms: renounce, relinquish, dispense with, forswear, disclaim, disown, disavow, discard, wash one's hands of, give up, stop, cease, drop, forgo, desist from, have done with, abjure, abstain from, discontinue, break off, refrain from, set/lay aside, desert, leave, leave high and dry, turn one's back on, cast aside, break (up) with, vacate, quit, evacuate, withdraw from, surrender, cede, yield, indulge in, give way to, give oneself up to, yield to, lose oneself to/in, uninhibitedness, recklessness, lack of restraint, lack of inhibition, unruliness, wildness, impulsiveness, impetuosity, immoderation, wantonness
Antonyms: keep, claim, continue, stick by, self-control, power through, achieve, defend, bear, hope, acquire, quick visit, adopt, continue along, adhere, remain, pursue, support, take up, keep up, reuse, advocate, stay, persevere, cherish, keep going, carry on
Showing 426 to 450 of 2404 results
426. Cain and Abel
Genesis 4:1-26
Understanding Series
John E. Hartley
... in society and brought death into the world. This chapter has four parts: the births of Cain and Abel (vv. 1–2a), Cain’s murder of Abel (vv. 2b–16), Cain’s genealogy (vv. 17–24), and the birth of Seth (vv. 25–26). Eve glories in her achievement by naming her first (v. 1) and third sons (v. 25). The reports of Eve’s giving birth thus frame the portrait of Cain’s family. Reports of the birth of new life surround the hideous stories of hatred and murder, showing that God’s grace triumphs over ...
Understanding Series
John E. Hartley
... ”) and b-ts-r (“be impossible”) occur together only here and in Job 42:2. Job employs these terms to laud God’s ability to do exactly as he plans. Here they describe the hubris of humans in thinking that like God they can achieve anything they plan. 11:7 The shift to first person plural cohortatives indicates that God took counsel with the heavenly court (1:26). The fact that God’s activity mirrors that of the city dwellers (v. 4), both cohortatives being preceded by habah (“come”), supports ...
428. Love the Lord Your God
Deuteronomy 6:1-25
Understanding Series
Christopher J. H. Wright
... of the previous verses, it is impossible to read into verse 25 any kind of alleged “works righteousness.” The context makes it impossible to think that righteousness (in a salvific sense, which is in any case almost certainly not its meaning here) is somehow achieved by obedience to the law. Rather the point of the father’s whole answer is that obedience to the law is the only right response to the saving acts of such a God as Yahweh. Indeed, “the righteousnesses of Yahweh” is one way the OT ...
429. Do Not Forget the Lord
Deuteronomy 8:1-20
Understanding Series
Christopher J. H. Wright
... emphasis is on Israel’s own productive use of the resources so given, resulting in abundance of everything, luxury, settling down, and great wealth. The tragic pitfall would be to become proud and forget God (v. 14) and to have an attitude of self-asserting achievement (v. 17). (Actually, vv. 12–18, like 7–11, are one whole sentence. The verbs in vv. 15–16 are all participles describing God’s actions. The main verb is remember in v. 18). Thus there seems to be a balancing truth—which is fairly ...
Understanding Series
John Goldingay
... than of war. When compared with Micah 4:1–3, the most distinctive feature of Isaiah’s version of this prophecy is the “application” in verse 5. The house of Jacob (see on 1:10) is challenged to walk in the light of the LORD. If Yahweh is committed to achieving a purpose whereby the nations let their lives be shaped by Yahweh’s teaching, the least Israel can do is let that teaching shape their own lives now. Perhaps they may then be in a position to avoid the trouble that 1:2–31 and 2:6–4:1 ...
Understanding Series
John Goldingay
... encapsulates the OT in microcosm. Israel’s history demonstrates that war gets no one anywhere, not even God. Violence begets violence; it never ends it. So the battles in Isaiah become more supernatural and less this-worldly (e.g., chs. 24–27) and the achievements to which the book testifies are won by absorbing violence rather than administering it (52:13–53:12). Although the OT describes Yahweh as being all-knowing in the sense of being able to know all about us, it also describes Yahweh as learning ...
Understanding Series
John Goldingay
... the court. It is the first of a series of claims on Yahweh’s part to a sovereignty that extends as far as can be envisaged through time and space. The claim undergirds that other implicit claim that the long-ago achievements of Abraham and the up-to-the-minute achievements of Cyrus are part of the implementation of the same sovereign purpose. For the Judean community, the rise of Cyrus is thus good news. For other peoples it brings frightening political convulsions. So what are they to do? Judah has the ...
Understanding Series
John Goldingay
... God is creator of the whole cosmos and is applying the creator’s sovereign energy, through Cyrus, to the restoring of Jerusalem and the freeing of the exiles in Babylon so that they can go home (v. 13). Would they not be wise to let God decide how to achieve this? 45:14–17 One of the tricky issues in the interpretation of Isaiah 40–55 is the relationship between a “nationalist” concern and a concern for the whole world. Indeed this is an issue in the Bible as a whole (see comment on 25:6–12). It ...
434. A Call to Servanthood and Suffering
Mark 10:46-52, Mark 10:35-45, Mark 10:32-34
Teach the Text
Grant R. Osborne
... from previous years (1967, 1977, and 1987), when the focus was on being part of a group.12This focus on fame should not surprise us, for this value is accentuated and modeled for us in our culture. Fame is like a drug that drives people to achieve. But what happens when fame is unsatisfying? In 1988 George Harrison, former member of the Beatles rock band, told Time magazine, “Of course, at first we all thought we wanted the fame. . . . After a bit we realized that fame wasn’t really what we were after ...
435. Two Parables about Prayer
Luke 18:9-14, Luke 18:1-8
Teach the Text
R.T. France
... is not so much a “how to pray” parable as a sharp challenge to our conventional understanding of “goodness” in relation to God. Like so much in Luke’s Gospel, it turns accepted values upside down. The kingdom of God is the realm of grace, not of achievement. God’s love is not earned; it is freely given to those who are conscious of their need of it and yet their unworthiness for it. Teaching the Text These two parables can be taught together as a message on prayer, or separately with emphases on ...
Teach the Text
R.T. France
... to remind us that during the period of Jesus’s absence not everyone will be working for him or looking forward to his return? 19:16, 18  your mina has earned ten more . . . your mina has earned five more. The two successful slaves have achieved different levels of success starting from the same endowment (by contrast, in Matthew the amounts entrusted vary, but the rate of success is the same). Is this feature intended, like the different levels of yield from the seed in Mark’s and Matthew’s versions ...
Teach the Text
Preben Vang
... some way present or involved. In the same way, the gifts of the Spirit are like God’s fingerprints in a congregation or movement. They are his way of authenticating his involvement. These gifts differ from abilities in that they create lasting fruit that can be achieved only supernaturally. A human can give a good talk, but only the Spirit can use that talk to bring conviction that leads to conversion. When the Spirit does this, we can look back and say that it was a gift of preaching being exercised, not ...
Teach the Text
Joe M. Sprinkle
... have concluded that the enemy is too powerful to conquer. The people are again in revolt and ready to go back to Egypt (Num. 14:1–9). This rebellion will come to be listed as pivotal in Israel’s failure to live up to its calling and achieve its goal of entering the land (Deut. 1:26–45). God threatens to annihilate Israel as he threatened previously during the incident of the golden calf (Exod. 32:10; Num. 14:12), for these two events represent the most egregious moral failures of Israel in the desert ...
Teach the Text
Joe M. Sprinkle
... , Hormah (Num. 14:44–45). This leads to melancholy reflections about what could have been in that old generation. Perhaps we too can reflect on bad decisions in the past that have stopped us from achieving victories for God. Was there a time when God opened a door for us but we refused to enter it? Was there a time when we failed to achieve what God would have had us do because we were too afraid to act? Was there a time when sin reared its ugly head—whether pride or lust or envy or anger—and derailed ...
Teach the Text
Daniel J. Estes
... make it out of addiction. Sports: Many athletes in the doping scandals of recent years consumed performance enhancement drugs, but the very drugs that enabled them to achieve athletic success not only damaged them physically but also stripped them of their honors, ruining the reputation they had worked to achieve. News Story: In recent history, two governors of Illinois (representing both political parties) have been tried for some kind of political manipulation (George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich). George ...
Teach the Text
C. Hassell Bullock
... eliminate the incalculable distance between God and evil. Putting this in human terms, “the arrogant cannot stand” in the Lord’s presence (5:5). Yet the psalmist will enter the Lord’s house and worship in his holy temple (5:7), and this by no achievements of his own but by God’s “great love.” Teaching the Text Psalm 5 is a personal lament weighted with the psalmist’s overwhelming confidence in God, and this weight outbalances the power of evil; formidable as it is, evil is still no match for ...
Teach the Text
C. Hassell Bullock
... ’s subsequent attitude that led to his prayer for their harm was a character failure. Could he not, should he not, have continued to nurture the “good for evil” principle that he practiced in the first phase of this troubled relationship? If he had achieved the ethical principle of loving one’s neighbor as oneself, the answer is definitely “yes.” But one wonders if the ethical currency of the day was that high a norm, especially when the “good for evil” principle had been rebuffed by its ...
Teach the Text
C. Hassell Bullock
... the first introduction to the city, and he blesses Abraham (Gen. 14). Joshua had a military success against a coalition of five kings, including Adoni-Zedek of Jerusalem (Josh. 10:5–11), but it evidently fell short of a conquest of the city. That long-term success was achieved by David, who, sometime in the late eleventh or early tenth century, captured the city, which was then occupied by the Jebusites, and made it the political and religious capital of his kingdom (2 Sam. 5:6–16; 6). Part of that ...
444. The Power of Persistence
Luke 11:1-13, Luke 18:1-8
Sermon
Maxie Dunnam
... prayers. The same is true of everything else that is important in life, of everything that we desperately want to achieve, of everything that we hold as valuable. These things do not come to us by half-conscious, halfhearted efforts—they come through persistence. If ... our commitments are great enough, if what we seek to achieve is important enough, if we really want to be effective in witness, it we want to be disciples worthy of the name ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... any real meanness. However, let me ask you a question that may surprise you: Could it possibly ever be considered a sin to be shy? We know that shyness can be a hindrance in life, not only in winning a fair maiden, but in winning a good job and in achieving a satisfying life. Examples of that are plentiful. A man named Rick Shambroom tells about being at the end of an exit ramp along with two other cars, but no one was moving. Clearly the driver in the first car was too timid to blend into the flow of ...
446. Kings of Israel
1 Kings 15:33–16:28
One Volume
Gary M. Burge
... on the conspiracy he wrought, we are referred to the northern annals, and primary attention turns to Omri. Although his reign is recorded in only a handful of verses, Omri (16:21–28) is the most influential northern king since Jeroboam. He achieves full control once the threat of the rival Tibni expires, after what seems to be a four-year struggle, with the death of Tibni himself. Most recent commentators note that Omri garners a couple of extrabiblical notices (in the Moabite stone and Assyrian ...
447. Proverbs of Solomon
Proberbs 10:1--22:16
One Volume
Gary M. Burge
... is good” will both practice and experience steadfast love (NIV “love and faithfulness”; Hebrew hesed and emet; cf. Prov. 3:3; 16:6). But merely planning good (i.e., “mere talk”) accomplishes little—no pain, no gain (14:23). Accumulated wealth is a “crowning” achievement for the wise (cf. 14:18, 35), while all that fools multiply is folly (14:24). Life-and-death matters are addressed in 14:25–27. Verse 25 affirms the life-saving power of a truthful witness in a capital case (cf. 14:5 in ...
448. Wealth is Meaningless
Ecclesiastes 5:8--6:12
One Volume
Gary M. Burge
... to pass on to an heir (5:14b–15). This leads the author to a related thought, a second “grievous evil” (5:16; cf. 5:13), namely, that all individuals end up departing as “naked” as when they arrived in this world. They can achieve no lasting “gain,” since they are, in effect, toiling “for the wind” (5:16). 5:18–20 · The second scenario stands in stark contrast to the empty existence just sketched. Verses 18–20 describe wealth enjoyed through divine enablement; God is mentioned four ...
449. Israel’s Unbelief
Romans 9:30--10:21
One Volume
Gary M. Burge
... of Jesus the Messiah. They continue to establish and maintain righteousness through obedience to the law. Because God’s righteousness now comes through faith in Jesus Christ, the righteousness they achieve through the law is their own righteousness and not God’s righteousness (10:3). In 10:4 Paul reiterates how salvation is achieved in light of God’s new revelation. Since God now grants righteousness through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, the righteousness he accepts on the day of ...
450. Playing One Hand
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Sermon
Tom Garrison
... had come home to the fact that about three out of four of the things he would like to see happen would not materialize because of factors beyond his control. Here is the humble recognition that the reach of human aspiration does exceed our ability to grasp or achieve. Three out of four of the seeds that left the sower's hand in hope did not come to flower. It is interesting to note Jesus' numbers at this point. They parallel rather accurately what is true in the realm of baseball. If you know anything about ...
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