Sermon and Worship Resources

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 4776 to 4800 of 4958 results

4776. Mission and Rejection in Galilee

Mark 6:14-29, Mark 6:7-13

Teach the Text

Grant R. Osborne

... his body and laid it in a tomb. John did not stop having a definable group of disciples after he died, for Acts 18:25; 19:1–7 show a group of his followers in Ephesus over twenty years later, and there were followers in later centuries claiming that he was the Messiah (Ps.-Clem.1.60). The Mandaeans in Iraq and Iran still identify themselves as his followers. 6:30 The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. The sandwiching of episodes (6:7–13, 30 intercalated ...

4777. Gentiles Exemplify True Discipleship

Mark 7:31-37, Mark 7:24-30

Teach the Text

Grant R. Osborne

... to partake of the leftovers. While it is strongly debated, I agree with those who say that her use of “dogs” stems from the fact that Gentiles often kept dogs as pets.4In that sense, she uses a play on words to make her point. The Jews have first claim on the kingdom blessings (Rom. 1:16: “first to the Jew, then to the Gentile”), and as Jesus said, Gentiles were unclean and unworthy. So she asks simply that she (and the Gentiles), like a pet, be allowed to share in what is left of God’s blessing ...

4778. Possessions and Choice in the New Kingdom Community

Mark 10:17-31

Teach the Text

Grant R. Osborne

... ). 10:21 One thing you lack. The man believes that he has been faithful in keeping the commandments assiduously from his earliest days. This was not so much arrogance or hypocrisy, for Jesus responds with “love” for his sincerity (v. 21). The man is claiming not to be sinless but rather to be faithful; he feels that he comes to Jesus with a clear conscience. Still, Jesus unmasks his failure to look deeply enough into his heart, revealing the hold that his possessions have on his life. Jesus demands ...

4779. Peter Denies Jesus

Mark 14:66-72

Teach the Text

Grant R. Osborne

... fails. He is spotted and confronted again. 14:70 Again he denied it. This time Peter apparently speaks more loudly, so everyone around could hear. Matthew 26:72 says that he did so “with an oath,” intensifying the first denial in both volume and legal claim. Surely you are one of them, for you are a Galilean. Matthew 26:73 tells us it was Peter’s Galilean accent that gives him away. This is the same today; speech patterns and pronunciation can identify whether a person comes from New England, the ...

4780. The Supernatural Witness to the Significance of Jesus’s Death

Mark 15:42-47

Teach the Text

Grant R. Osborne

... two before they died (John 19:32). Mark here adds further emphasis to the fact that Jesus surrendered his own life at the time that God, not Pilate or the Jewish officials, chose. Roman law demanded that the victim be dead (evidence of the serious error in the claim that Jesus merely swooned on the cross), so Pilate has to hear from the centurion (the one in v. 39) that death has indeed taken place. Then he acquiesces and releases the body to Joseph. 15:46 took down the body, wrapped it in the linen. The ...

4781. A Special Child Promised

Luke 1:5-25

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos. . . . That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, the one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still.1 Social Commentary: Christ and the Media, by Malcolm Muggeridge. Muggeridge expresses beautifully the drama Jesus’s ...

4782. The Birth of Jesus

Luke 2:8-20, Luke 2:1-7

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... difference between a home filled with the stillness that arises from cold disinterest and disconnection and a home filled with the real, chaotic, messy joy that comes from satisfying connection, true safety, hard-fought honesty, and unvarnished intimacy. Both families may claim they are experiencing a “happy, peaceful home,” but one is defining peace and happiness as the mere absence of chaos and struggle, the situation that settles in when people stop caring and live in spite of each other. The other ...

4783. The Baby Messiah Recognized

Luke 2:21-40

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... agrees that there were strands of prophetic activity that were widely recognized among ordinary Jews in this “intertestamental” period.1Whereas Matthew’s first two chapters concentrate on demonstrating Jesus’s messianic role from Old Testament prophecy, Luke claims also the testimony of contemporary prophecy. After the strongly Jewish focus of the salvation celebrated in the earlier canticles, the Nunc Dimittis provides a manifesto also for the Gentile mission that will be so central to Luke ...

4784. Sabbath in Capernaum

Luke 4:38-44, Luke 4:31-37

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... immeasurable. In the introduction to his biography of Moody, Lyle Dorsett writes, “The testimonies . . . are legion from people who chose to enter Christian service after sitting under the preaching and teaching of Moody. . . . American home missionaries to Native Americans, recently freed slaves, the urban and rural poor, and prison inmates claimed Moody nudged them toward lives of full-time service.” He believed in the “healing and nurture of souls as well as the rescue of souls, or evangelism.”4

4785. The First Disciples

Luke 5:1-11

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... . Two aspects of discipleship stand out. First, the immediate and unconditional response to Jesus’s call (“they left everything and followed him”) is a paradigm for the life of discipleship, in which loyalty to Jesus takes priority over all other claims and concerns. Second, to be a disciple is to be commissioned to win other disciples. “Fishing for people” is a vivid metaphor that aptly encapsulates the essentially missionary nature of the Christian faith. We do not merely wait for recruits to ...

4786. The Good Life

Luke 6:17-26

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... persecution be avenues of blessing? Think of experiences in your life or the lives of others where need and want have actually been opportunities for God’s blessing. Consider also the implications of Jesus’s teaching for the so-called prosperity gospel, the claim that God promises to bless his people in material as well as spiritual ways. You should also consider the meaning and significance of the great reversal that Jesus seems to be predicting (note the future tenses). Is this a future prediction or ...

4787. Jesus and Women

Luke 7:36--8:3

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... of the disreputable (7:34), we now find him at a dinner party and befriending a disreputable woman. Two themes from earlier in the Gospel reemerge in this story: Jesus’s openness to and welcome by unrespectable members of society (5:27–32) and his claim to forgive sins (5:17–26). It develops further Luke’s characteristic theme of Jesus’s concern for those who lived outside the circles of privilege and respectability. In particular, this story (7:36–50) together with the following verses (8:1–3 ...

4788. The Messiah and His Glory

Luke 9:28-36, Luke 9:18-27

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... and Psyche, is reputed by some sources to be one of Lewis’s own favorite works. In it, the protagonist, Orual, has a lifelong battle with the gods (God). She tries to meet the longings of her troubled soul through a series of people in her life, claiming to love them, but using them for the sake of her own needs. The gods pursue her relentlessly. Finally, having lost many of those around her and unable any longer to fill the God-shaped vacuum, she begins to submit. She says, “But when the craving went ...

4789. Rejecting or Responding to Jesus

Luke 10:1-24

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... day, but the “insider” villages that have heard his teaching and experienced his miraculous works. You might also consider the question of whether judgment today may be more severe for some than for others, and if so, on what basis? How does the exclusive claim of 10:22 relate to those earlier verses? Illustrating the Text The seventy-two are to rejoice, not in the extraordinary powers passed on to them, but instead in the giver of that power and in their own eternal destiny. Commentary: Expositions of ...

4790. “Unless You Repent . . .”

Luke 13:10-17, Luke 13:1-9

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... this principle applies to the book of Job, in which Job’s suffering is shown not to be a result of sin. History: The year 2012 marked the centennial anniversary of the disaster of the famous ship that sank quickly into the icy North Atlantic, claiming 1,503 lives. The Titanic disappeared between 11:40 p.m. on Sunday night and 2:20 a.m. Monday morning. Few disasters have so raised the question of cause and responsibility. The winter previous to the tragedy had been warmer; glacial ice in the Arctic ...

4791. Ready for the Kingdom of God?

Luke 13:31-35, Luke 13:22-30, Luke 13:18-21

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... of relationship. We are not told whom the householder represents, but the parallel in Matthew 7:21–23 and the reference here to sharing meals with him and to his “teaching in our streets” indicate that it is Jesus himself who stands behind the door. The claim to have moved in the same social setting and even to have been in his audience carries no weight with him. All that matters for their salvation is that he knows them. Without that, they are simply “evildoers” (quoting Ps. 6:8). They may have ...

4792. The Cost of Discipleship

Luke 14:25-35, Luke 14:15-24

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... s dismissive words in 14:24 indicate that there is a point of no return. To have received and responded to the message of the kingdom of God is not enough if we then turn away from its demands and allow other concerns to supplant God’s claim on our lives. The sayings about the cost of discipleship in 14:25–35, though separated from the parable by a change of scene, have a similar focus and also envisage the possibility of ultimate failure. The kingdom of God is for the committed, not for the dilettante ...

4793. God and Mammon

Luke 16:16-18, Luke 16:1-15

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... into the hill a spacious wound And digged out ribs of gold.3 Wealth can be an aid or a great hindrance to effective discipleship. Quote: Money and Power, by Jacques Ellul. Ellul (1912–94), a French philosopher, law professor, and theologian, issues this warning: When we claim to use money, we make a gross error. We can, if we must, use money, but it is really money that uses us and makes us servants by bringing us under its law and subordinating us to its aims. We are not talking only about our inner ...

4794. Affluence and the Afterlife

Luke 16:19-31

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... “this place of torment” [16:28], where the rich man now finds himself.) Compare 13:28 for the idea that the suffering of the lost is increased by being able to “see” the saved at the banquet. 16:24 Father Abraham, have pity on me. All Jews claimed Abraham as their “father” (cf. 1:54–55; 13:16; 19:9). In 3:8 John the Baptist envisaged Jews relying on this relationship for salvation, but this man seems resigned to his fate and begs only for palliative help. But he expects Lazarus to be at ...

4795. Lessons in Discipleship

Luke 17:11-19, Luke 17:1-10

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... ”; the same word is used in Matthew 25:30 for the slave who gained no profit for his master. We can never put God in our debt. Compare a similar saying by Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai: “If you have worked hard in keeping the Torah, do not claim merit for yourself, since that is what you were created for” (m. ’Abot 2:8). 17:11 along the border between Samaria and Galilee. In 9:51–56 Jesus had tried to set off through Samaria. If Luke’s travel narrative represents only a single journey, he seems ...

4796. The Coming of the Kingdom of God

Luke 17:20-37

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... 38). 17:24 the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning. It will be suddenly and universally obvious when “the Son of Man is revealed” (17:30). That is why they should not, in their eagerness to see that day, give credence to charlatans who claim that the Son of Man has already appeared, but only in secret (17:23). 17:25 But first he must suffer. They should not hope for a premature glorification of the Son of Man that bypasses the destiny that Jesus has already clearly spelled out in 9:22 ...

4797. Two Parables about Prayer

Luke 18:9-14, Luke 18:1-8

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... reading changes the word order to read, “The Pharisee stood and prayed this to (about?) himself.” God, I thank you that I am not like other people. There is no reason to think that this prayer is insincere: most Pharisees would have been able to claim truthfully to have avoided the sins listed, and to be living a life more strictly governed by God’s law than those of most ordinary people. But the smug self-congratulation is what stands out. It reminds one of the later rabbi who instructed Jewish men ...

4798. Use It or Lose It

Luke 19:11-27

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... Empire “kings,” even if hereditary rulers in their own culture, had to be officially appointed by Rome as local client rulers. Such appointment was not automatic. When Herod died in 4 BC, two of his sons, Archelaus and Antipas, both claimed the kingship and went to Rome to lobby for it. Neither was successful: they remained “ethnarch” and “tetrarch” of their respective territories. An official Jewish delegation had followed Archelaus to Rome, requesting his deposition, and it was in response to ...

4799. The Roman Verdict

Luke 22:66--23:25

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... to the great Jewish revolt of AD 66 and that saw other such insurrections in Palestine (e.g., Acts 5:36–37; 21:38). As a nationalist freedom fighter, Barabbas would be a popular hero. Interpretive Insights 23:2 He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Messiah, a king. These are two specific examples of the more general charge of “subverting our nation” (which will recur in 23:5, 14). The charges are well tailored for the ears of a Roman governor. The refusal of the poll tax had been ...

4800. At the Tomb

Luke 24:1-12, Luke 23:50-56

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... was discovered empty by a group of women on the third day. The church would never have invented these stories, since women were not considered reliable witnesses in first century Judaism. (4) The witnesses to the resurrected Christ. Many reliable witnesses claimed to have seen Jesus alive after his death (see 1 Cor. 15:1–11). (5) The transformed lives of the disciples. Something radically transformed the lives of Jesus’s followers, from fearful cowards to bold witnesses. The resurrection is the only ...

Showing results