Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 476 to 500 of 2157 results

1 Kings 12:25-33

Understanding Series

Iain W. Provan

... your gods: It is often held that Jeroboam has had a raw deal from the authors of Kings and that he did not in fact initiate idolatrous worship in Israel at all but, in effect, only substituted calves for ark and cherubim, in a slightly different version of the worship of the LORD in Jerusalem. He is not so much wicked, it is claimed, as misunderstood, even misrepresented; what he really wanted was for Israel to worship the LORD through the medium of the calves. Such is the dogmatism with which this position ...

477. Woe to David’s City

Isaiah 29:1-24

Understanding Series

John Goldingay

... , p. 236). They are as lost and as pathetic as the Jebusites who never dreamed that their city could be taken (2 Sam. 5:6). In Sheol (see on 14:3–23) people cannot truly communicate. At this point, as at others, their “lives” are attenuated versions of the real lives they once lived. So their voices become even lower whispers than often characterize the dying, little more than a rattle in the throat. Judeans who tried to communicate with the dead, instead of with God, sought to learn their language (8 ...

478. Hezekiah's Prayer

Isaiah 37:14-20

Understanding Series

John Goldingay

... indeed God, God with a capital “G” (cf. v. 10, though this is a distinction possible in English but not in Hebrew). Additional Notes 37:8–38 A common critical view has been that these are two versions of the same events. Instead of trying to combine the two into one story, the text puts the two versions of the story one after each other. The effect is rather like that in Gen. 1–2, where two creation stories are placed one after the other rather than being interwoven. The usual conservative view has ...

479. Signs and Oracles of Judgment

Ezekiel 4:1-5:17, Ezekiel 6:1-14, Ezekiel 7:1-27

Understanding Series

Steven Tuell

... vv. 2 and 3, and “This is what the Sovereign LORD says” (all that the LXX has from vv. 5–6) introduces v. 10. As a result, many interpreters believe that later editors assembled this chapter out of parts, with vv. 1–4 and 5–9 as alternate versions of the same oracle (e.g., Cooke, Ezekiel, p. 75; J. W. Wevers, Ezekiel [NCB; Greenwood, S.C.: Attic, 1969], p. 62). Indeed, for much of this chapter, the LXX is shorter than the Heb. text from which our OT is translated (called the Masoretic Text, or MT ...

480. Signs, Sayings, and Oracles of Judgment

Ezekiel 12:1-28, Ezekiel 13:1-23, Ezekiel 14:1-11, Ezekiel 14:12-23

Understanding Series

Steven Tuell

... be a later elaboration of the first. Johan Lust further observes that these 3 verses are missing from Papyrus 967, an old and generally reliable witness to the best Gk. text of Ezek. Lust therefore proposes that vv. 26–28 were not present in the version of Ezek. on which the oldest Gk. translation was based, but were added later (Lust, “Shorter and Longer Texts,” pp. 13–14). However, it is just as likely that a translator might have deleted this short, repetitive oracle as that a later editor would ...

481. Riddles and Metaphors

Ezekiel 15:1-8, Ezekiel 16:1-63, Ezekiel 17:1-24

Understanding Series

Steven Tuell

... sprig is not Babylon here, but the Lord!). Nonetheless, old scribal traditions marked these verses as a separate unit with a paragraph break at the end of verse 21 and another following verse 24. The messenger formula at its beginning (v. 22), and a modified version of the oracular formula at its end, I the LORD have spoken, and I will do it (v. 24), further mark it as separate. Many interpreters see these three verses as a later expansion (e.g., Darr says, “We cannot know whether Ezekiel, in proclaiming ...

482. Personal Accountability

Ezekiel 18:1-32, Ezekiel 19:1-14

Understanding Series

Steven Tuell

... his strength.” The NIV, like the NRSV, follows Tg. Jonathan here, which has “he ravaged his strongholds”: a reading that nicely parallels the next line, and devastated their towns. However, the Heb. is meaningful as it stands and accounts well for the various versions, all of which we can explain either as scribal errors or as attempts to make better sense of the Heb. text by slight emendations. We do better to read, with the NJPS, “He ravished their widows” (see also Block, Ezekiel 1–24, pp ...

483. Two Adulterous Sisters

Ezekiel 23:1-49

Understanding Series

Steven Tuell

... others will take warning from their destruction and not behave as they did (v. 48) Ezekiel 23 tells the story of Oholah and Oholibah twice, in verses 1–35 and again in verses 36–49. As with the two versions of the sword oracle (21:1–7, 8–17), this may indicate alternate versions of the narrative that Ezekiel or an editor decided to combine here. In each telling of the story, judgment, in the form of divine word (vv. 22–35, 46–49), follows a shocking account of the sisters’ adulterous liaisons ...

484. Possessions and Choice in the New Kingdom Community

Mark 10:17-31

Teach the Text

Grant R. Osborne

... ran up to him and fell on his knees. We commonly know him as “the rich young ruler,” but it is Matthew 19:20 that tells us he is “young,” and Luke 18:18 that tells us he is a “ruler.” His wealth is noted in all three versions. Jesus is “on his way” to his destiny, connoting his God-endowed “path” to the cross. Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Most Jews believed in the afterlife (only the Sadducees demurred), so this was a valid question on the surface. It is hard to ...

485. Hearing and Responding

Luke 8:19-21, Luke 8:16-18, Luke 8:1-15

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... ,” where there was a thin covering of soil over the bedrock. 8:8 It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown. Because Luke mentions only a single seed in the good soil, he cannot reproduce Mark’s more nuanced version, with different seeds producing different levels of yield. A hundredfold yield is a very good crop (cf. Gen. 26:12) but not in the realm of fantasy; one ancient Jewish writer (b. Ketub. 111b–112a) imagined, as a sign of God’s ultimate blessing, a miraculous ...

486. Negative Responses to Jesus

Luke 11:33-36, Luke 11:29-32, Luke 11:14-28

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... the Canaanite term “Baal” (“lord”)—perhaps “lord of the height” or “lord of the house.” A pagan god Baal-zebub (“lord of flies”) is mentioned in 2 Kings 1:2–16; hence the corruption of this name to “Beelzebub” in the Latin and Syriac versions. 11:18 If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? This is a commonsense argument: the idea of the devil driving out his own subordinates is ridiculous. On the devil as “the ruler of this world,” see on 4:6; he is ...

487. The Whole World Is under the Curses of the Covenant

Romans 3:9-20

Teach the Text

C. Marvin Pate

... story is a response to other works of that time in which authors showed belief in the inherent goodness of human nature. Depravity, Golding seems to suggest, is part of humankind’s composition, manifesting itself even in children. There are two film versions (1963, 1990), from which key scenes could be shown. A similar work is the short story “The Destructors,” by Graham Greene, in which children living in post–World War II London pervert the gift of creation to destroy. Sin causes alienation from ...

488. Purification from “Leprosy”

Leviticus 14:33-57, Leviticus 14:1-32

Teach the Text

Joe M. Sprinkle

... that his mother and sister are alive but suffering from leprosy, and Tirzah is dying. He desperately tries to bring them for healing to Jesus, whom Judah has encountered earlier in the story. Jesus, however, is arrested before they can do so. In the film version, Judah and his sister and mother watch as Jesus is crucified and dies. But at his death a cleansing rainstorm begins. The water mixes with Jesus’s precious blood, just as the blood of the bird slaughtered for the leper in Leviticus 14 is mixed ...

489. Balaam’s Donkey

Numbers 22:21-41

Teach the Text

Joe M. Sprinkle

... this solution, Numbers 22:22–35 is synoptic/resumptive repetition.2Verses 20–21 are the synoptic summary version of the dream account, stating that Balaam has a dream-vision from God that allows him to go with the dignitaries from Moab. Verses ... 22–35 are the resumptive-expansive version of the same story. In other words, although this argument is controversial,3verse 22a should be understood as a pluperfect, “[Now ...

490. The Lord Chooses a Prophet

1 Sam 3:1--4:1

Teach the Text

Robert B. Chisholm Jr.

... of the announced judgment. 3:13 his sons blasphemed God. The traditional Hebrew text (MT) has “his sons made themselves contemptible,” but it is more likely that the original reading, preserved in an ancient scribal tradition and in the Septuagint (LXX: ancient Greek version of the OT), is “his sons blasphemed God.”4 Normally this verb (qalal) refers to a verbal curse or, if God is the object, blasphemy (Exod. 22:28; Lev. 24:15). There is no indication that Eli’s sons curse God verbally, but ...

491. “The Heavens Declare the Glory of God”

Psalm 19:1-14

Teach the Text

C. Hassell Bullock

... difference that has made in your life. Psalms and hymns grow out of life experience with God. Hymn: “How Great Thou Art,” by Stuart K. Hine. Hine was an English missionary to Poland in the 1920s. During his time there, he heard a Russian version of a Swedish poem put to a Swedish melody. Later, Hine made his own arrangement of the Swedish melody and added English words, creating the hymn we sing today. The first three verses were written based on experiences Hine had in the Carpathian Mountains. After ...

492. “Taste and See That the Lord Is Good”

Psalm 34:1-22

Teach the Text

C. Hassell Bullock

... The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous.” This psalm has long been considered to have messianic implications. John quotes 34:20 in his account of the crucifixion to portray Jesus’s unbroken bones as fulfilling this prophecy (John 19:36). Peter draws on the Greek version of this psalm (33:13–17a LXX; 34:12–16a Eng.) in support of his admonition that one should not “repay evil with evil or insult with insult” but “repay evil with blessing” (1 Pet. 3:9–12). It is likely that he sees in the ...

493. “Be Exalted, O God, above the Heavens; Let Your Glory Be over All the Earth”

Psalm 57:1-11

Teach the Text

C. Hassell Bullock

... so it will), but Paul’s point is that in the midst of cold and hunger, of danger to life and limb, we are more than conquerors.”15 In 57:2, the ESV has “to God who fulfills his purpose for me.” The psalm may represent an early version of the theological notion of Israel as a “light to the Gentiles” (see also Ps. 96:3), a doctrine that reaches its summit in Isaiah’s understanding of Israel’s historic purpose (Isa. 42:6–7). In fact, the suppliant is in agreement with that purpose, which we ...

494. Contributions for Worship

2 Chron 31:2–32:23

One Volume

Gary M. Burge

... in 2 Chronicles is dominated by his religious reforms related to the temple and its services. But the final phase of the account is largely devoted to a summarized version (cf. 2 Kings 18–20) of Yahweh’s rescue of Hezekiah’s kingdom from the clutches of the Assyrian Sennacherib (32:1–24), whose own versions of these events have been discovered (see COS 2.119B:302–3). That Judah would face the Assyrians was inevitable, especially after the incorporation of the Aramean and Israelite kingdoms ...

495. Submit Yourselves to God

James 4:1-12

One Volume

Gary M. Burge

... soul,” as Peter puts it (1 Pet. 2:11), and this fighting within also results in fighting without (4:1). The precise meaning of verse 2 depends entirely on how we punctuate the verse. (The earliest copies of the New Testament had no punctuation at all.) Some versions (KJV and HCSB, for instance) separate the relevant words into three separate sentences: 1. You want something but do not get it. 2. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. 3. You quarrel and fight. However, most contemporary ...

496. Denunciation of the Intruding Teachers

Judges 1:1-36

One Volume

Gary M. Burge

... there is the question of the relationship between Judges and Joshua. For the most part Joshua presents a very different view of Israel’s early experience in the land (i.e., a total conquest, summarized essentially in Josh. 10:28–43), while Judges begins with its own version of the events, which was anything but a complete conquest. It is likely that Judges portrays the more real picture and Joshua the more ideal.[20] But even in Joshua’s ideal presentation we find references that correspond to Judges ...

497. A Jiffy for Eternity

John 3:1-17

Sermon

Robert Leslie Holmes

... for eternity: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life" (John 3:16). It is short but not shallow. Perhaps no version translates this eternally powerful sentence any better than the old King James Version, in which many of us learned and memorized it for the first time: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3 ...

498. Divorce

Mark 10:1-12

Understanding Series

Larry W. Hurtado

... in Mark seems to be adapted to a gentile setting in which both men and women had legal right to divorce (cf. 10:11–12; Matt. 19:9). One detail common to both the Markan and the Matthean versions of the incident that deserves mention is that people are said to have approached Jesus with the purpose of “testing” him (10:2). The most likely explanation of this is furnished by the description of the conflict between John the Baptist and Herod Antipas over Herodias’ divorce of her former ...

499. The Lord's Supper

Mark 14:12-26

Understanding Series

Larry W. Hurtado

... Gospel describes Jesus’ crucifixion as happening on the day of the killing of the Passover lambs (18:28; 19:14, 31, 42) and does not describe the last supper of Jesus and the Twelve as a Passover meal (13:1). The reasons for John’s version of the meal and the apparent difference in the timing of Jesus’ death are perhaps not fully recoverable, but they may be based on his theological emphases and his use of symbolism, making the death of Christ the new Passover sacrifice, replacing the traditional lamb ...

500. The Crucifixion

Mark 15:21-32

Understanding Series

Larry W. Hurtado

... And the scripture was fulfilled which says, ‘He was counted with the lawless ones,’ ” (see NIV margin note) making this allusion explicit. The present numbering of verses in the NT was made long ago using manuscripts that contained this statement, and so in modern versions that use more ancient and superior manuscripts, there is no v. 28. 15:29 Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads: This appears to allude to Ps. 22:7, “All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their ...

Showing results