Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: touch, feel, sense of touch, tactile sense, tactility, contact, using one's hands, sensation, sense, suspicion, sneaking suspicion, notion, inkling, hunch, fancy, apprehension, presentiment, premonition, foreboding, love, care, affection, fondness, tenderness, warmth, warmness, emotion, sentiment, emotional state, compassion, sympathy, empathy, fellow feeling, understanding, concern, solicitude, solicitousness, tender-heartedness, brotherly love, sensibilities, sensitivities, self-esteem, ego, pride, opinion, belief, view, impression, intuition, instinct, estimation, guess, theory, hypothesis, thought, way of thinking, point of view, atmosphere, ambience, aura, air, mood, climate, character, overtone, undertone, tenor, spirit, quality, flavour, colour, aptitude, knack, flair, bent, talent, gift, skill, art, trick, faculty, ability, propensity, inclination, sensitive, warm, warm-hearted, tender, tender-hearted, caring, soft-hearted, sympathetic, compassionate, empathetic, responsive, receptive, intuitive, thoughtful

Antonyms: bad feeling, acrimony, animosity, animus, antagonism, antipathy, aversion, bitterness, detestation, disgust, dislike, disrelish, enmity, friction, grievances, grudges, hatred, hostility, loathing, malevolence, malice

Showing 551 to 575 of 655 results

551. The Lamp of the Body

Luke 11:33-36

Understanding Series

Craig A. Evans

... is to respond in obedience (=he puts it on its stand). The second metaphor is slightly different. Jesus equates the eyes with the lamp. If one’s eyes are good then one is full of light. The “eyes” probably represent one’s moral disposition. The one inclined to hear and obey Jesus (=eyes are good) will be full of truth (=light). If one’s moral disposition is to disregard Jesus and his proclamation (=eyes are bad), then one will be left in ignorance (=whole body is full of darkness). Verse 35 is an ...

552. Do Not Worry

Luke 12:22-34

Understanding Series

Craig A. Evans

... material things are a sure sign that the things of this world are valued and not the things of God’s kingdom. The disciple willing to use personal resources to help those in need and to further the work of the kingdom, however, demonstrates a heart inclined to God’s work. Jesus’ assuring words in v. 32 constitute the high point of the section (so Tiede, pp. 226, 237). Despite the threats and persecutions endured by the “flock” (see Acts 20:29), God’s people should know that they have been given ...

553. The Narrow Door

Luke 13:22-30

Understanding Series

Craig A. Evans

... prophets. Gundry (p. 145) thinks that Matthew has omitted the phrase. However, because of Luke’s interest in the OT prophets (see Luke 6:23, 26; 13:31–35), who provide a major witness to Jesus as the Messiah (Luke 24:25, 27, 44), I am more inclined to view the phrase as a Lucan addition. 13:29 People will come from east and west and north and south: The expression is borrowed from Ps. 107:2–3, where the Lord gathers the “redeemed” from the east, west, north, and south. and will take their places ...

554. “I Am from Him and He Sent Me”

John 7:25-44

Understanding Series

J. Ramsey Michaels

... Jesus (“he meant”) but the Scripture (“it meant”). The same Greek verb, eipen, is translated “said” (in reference to the Scripture) in verse 38b and “meant” in verse 39. It is difficult to decide among the three alternatives, and the modern reader is perhaps inclined to ask how necessary it is to decide. The weight of tradition favors version 1, and to a lesser extent version 2, yet an appreciation of version 3 sheds its own light on the text’s meaning. Here, as elsewhere (e.g., 3:11–21 ...

555. Praise to God for a Living Hope

1 Peter 1:1-12

Understanding Series

Norman Hillyer

... –57; NIDNTT, vol. 2, pp. 59–66; vol. 3, pp. 752–59. Souls: “The original idea is that of the soul as a gift from God in a pure and holy condition, to be preserved against all contamination by the ‘evil inclination’, which makes war against it” (P. Carrington, The Primitive Christian Catechism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940, p. 27). Salvation Was Prophesied 1:10 Christians are greatly favored, for they already enjoy a foretaste of this great salvation—something that the inspired ...

556. Be Holy

1 Peter 1:13-2:3

Understanding Series

Norman Hillyer

... with Peter (2:11; 4:2, 3; 2 Pet. 1:4; 2:10, 18; 3:3), but always with its negative meaning. The expression can characterize Gentile behavior (Rom. 1:24; Eph. 2:3; 4:22; 1 Thess. 4:5) and corresponds to the rabbinical “evil inclination.” See E. F. F. Bishop, Apostles of Palestine: The Local Background of the New Testament Church (London: Lutterworth Press, 1958), p. 162. Ignorance in Jewish terminology meant more than a lack of knowledge. It characterized those who did not know the true God. The choice ...

557. Wives and Husbands

1 Peter 3:1-7

Understanding Series

Norman Hillyer

... opportunities of revealed truth. Yet in Jewish law a woman was deemed to be a thing. A man owned sheep and cattle—and his wife. She could not leave him, but he could despatch her at a moment’s notice, if he felt so inclined—although a rejected wife did have to be given a divorce certificate, enabling her to remarry. The teaching of the NT brought about a revolutionary concept of marriage between believers. Now the union involved a new and liberating attitude. While Christian wives were still bidden ...

558. Rehoboam Fortifies Judah

2 Chronicles 11:5-17

Understanding Series

Louis C. Jonker

... ’s reign became a time of consolidation for those who sought the Lord in the cult in Jerusalem. As seen in 7:14, and as we will also see later, “seeking the LORD” is the basic constituent of being Yahweh’s people. By showing this inclination, they were walking in the ways of David and Solomon (11:17). The continuation of the Davidic-Solomonic kingdom is not so much dependent on the political support of All-Israel as it is constituted when All-Israel is “seeking the LORD.” Additional Notes 11 ...

559. Jehoshaphat Defeats Moab and Ammon

2 Chronicles 20:1-30

Understanding Series

Louis C. Jonker

... to inquire (darash) of the LORD. The whole of Judah (from every town) gathered with him to seek (biqqesh) help from the LORD. This “seeking” attitude of the king is a very positive sign. To the Chronicler, darash and biqqesh express the ideal religious inclination. The seeking of Yahweh became material when Jehoshaphat stood up before the assembly gathered at the temple of the LORD (20:5) and started praying (20:6–12). The king introduces his call to God with the invocation O LORD, God of our fathers ...

560. Contributions for Worship

2 Chronicles 31:2-21

Understanding Series

Louis C. Jonker

... .) What characterized all of Hezekiah’s actions was that he sought (darash) his God and worked wholeheartedly, with the result that he prospered (31:21). The seeking of God is characteristic of a good king in the Chronicler’s view, and this inclination leads to blessing from Yahweh. Additional Notes 31:1–21 The elaborate description of the voluntary offerings and priestly duties in 31:2–19 is actually a substitution for the Deuteronomist’s reference to the Nehushtan mentioned in 2 Kgs. 18:4 ...

561. Jehoiakim King of Judah

2 Chronicles 36:5-8

Understanding Series

Louis C. Jonker

... internal differences between the two brothers, the sons of Josiah, could have resulted in Egypt’s getting a more favorable figure (from the Egyptian perspective) on the throne in Judah. Since Judah forms the land bridge between Egypt and the Mesopotamian empires, a favorable inclination in this part of the world would have been important for Egypt. 36:5–8 These verses also contain a much-abbreviated version of the royal narrative in the source text in 2 Kings 23:35–24:7. Not only is the information of ...

562. Jehoiachin King of Judah

2 Chronicles 36:9-10

Understanding Series

Louis C. Jonker

563. Zedekiah King of Judah

2 Chronicles 36:11-14

Understanding Series

Louis C. Jonker

564. Woes and Judgments

Isaiah 5:8-30

Understanding Series

John Goldingay

... Israel resonates with Isaiah’s subsequent comment on who this God is (v. 16). One need not suppose that people literally said the words in verse 19 (and suppose that this lets readers off the hook if they can claim not to do so). Isaiah is inclined to put on people’s lips the implications of their words (see 28:15). This scorn involves denying the reality of the crisis that confronts the community, saying things are going well when they are on the way to disaster (v. 20). Even in English, bitter/sweet ...

565. A Prophecy Against Assyria

Isaiah 14:24-27

Understanding Series

John Goldingay

... of Israel. Why, then, does Isaiah include Jerusalem in these chapters? Perhaps it brings out the ambiguity in Jerusalem’s position. It is the city of Yahweh. Yet it lives in the world. Insofar as it operates by the world’s methods (its own inclination), Yahweh treats it in the same way as other peoples, and so it can tellingly appear sandwiched between Damascus and Cush or Arabia and Tyre. The subjects of all the poems thus make sense in the context of Isaiah’s ministry. Nevertheless their perspective ...

566. Israel's Only Savior

Isaiah 43:1-13

Understanding Series

John Goldingay

... time at Sinai when Yahweh wanted to abandon Israel and start again. Israel’s later abandonment of its side of the covenant commitment that led to Samaria’s and then to Jerusalem’s fall might indeed have led to Yahweh’s having a further inclination of that kind. If Yahweh could not get out of the relationship with Israel, one might alternatively have imagined Yahweh in some way keeping Israel as covenant partner but finding some other agent in the world. Perhaps that might have been abandonment in ...

567. The Lord, Not Idols

Isaiah 44:6-23

Understanding Series

John Goldingay

... of Yahweh (see on 40:18–20). In Babylon, the community was surrounded by people who had images of their gods, many of them large and impressive, and given a prominent place in worship. It is entirely imaginable that Judeans should have been inclined to worship Yahweh in the same way as these other people. It is also entirely imaginable that they should have been tempted to worship these Babylonian gods themselves, for they had seemed to manifest their superiority to Yahweh. After all, their devotees had ...

568. Restoration of Israel

Isaiah 49:8-26

Understanding Series

John Goldingay

... take it in a new/old direction. Talk of transferring the vocation of servant from people to prophet could be dangerous. It could suggest megalomania on the part of prophet (I once heard the principal of a Jewish seminary say that he was inclined to call in the psychoanalyst when a student talked of feeling called by God to be a rabbi). More importantly, it could suggest that Yahweh has forgotten the undertaking to persist with Jacob-Israel as servant notwithstanding its unreliability. Verses 7–13 begin ...

569. Comfort for the Contrite

Isaiah 57:14-21

Understanding Series

John Goldingay

... of people who behaved as if they were majestic like Yahweh (e.g., 2:9, 11, 12, 17; 5:15; 10:33). It is the same word that the Poet used for the “putting down” of obstacles to the “way” of 40:3–4. If these people were ever inclined to pretend to exalted-ness, life has removed that possibility from them. Yahweh associates with the crushed and humiliated in order not to leave them there (v. 15b). When someone has been wronged, it is easy for the awareness of that injustice to possess the whole being ...

570. Sin, Confession and Redemption

Isaiah 59:1-21

Understanding Series

John Goldingay

... that requires divine intervention, but it is not the case that it is too far for Yahweh to reach. Nor (behind that, logically and chronologically) is it the case that Yahweh’s ear is too heavy (literally), as if Yahweh’s head therefore cannot lift so as to incline it in the direction to listen. The heavy ears sit on someone else’s head: see 6:10 (Zech. 7:11 is the only other occurrence of this expression). 59:2–8 Central to Israel’s self-understanding in the Preacher’s time was the notion of ...

571. Judgment and Hope

Isaiah 66:1-24

Understanding Series

John Goldingay

... prayer in 1 Kings 8. That prayer enthuses over the temple’s significance, but does so in the context of an acknowledgment that Yahweh, who dwells in thick darkness, cannot be contained by the building that Solomon has constructed. That acknowledgment undermines any inclination to take everything that comes in between as the whole truth. Heaven is like the throne on which Yahweh actually sits. The earth is like the footstool on which the divine feet then rest. That fact makes a laughing-stock of the notion ...

572. Before You Start Ripping Your Clothing

Joel 2:12-17

Sermon

King Duncan

I don’t know about you, but it feels a little strange to me to celebrate Ash Wednesday on St. Valentine’s Day. It puts some of you who are romantically inclined in a real bind. “How shall we celebrate Valentines, dear? How about we go to an Ash Wednesday service where the pastor will read from the prophet Joel telling us to ‘rend your hearts and not your clothing?’” Does that put you in a romantic mood? It doesn’t sound ...

573. Noah and the Robots

Genesis 9:8-17

Sermon

King Duncan

... created humankind in His image, giving us the freedom to decide our destiny, and what did we do? Certainly not what was pleasing to God. We read in Genesis 6: “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, ‘I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have ...

574. If the Stones Cried Out

Luke 19:28-40

Sermon

King Duncan

... be under the reign of our lesser selves. Our deepest longing is to be all he created us to be. That amazing writer C.S. Lewis wrote: “I think that many of us, when Christ has enabled us to overcome one or two sins that were an obvious nuisance, are inclined to feel (though we do not put it into words) that we are now good enough. He has done all we wanted him to do, and we should be obliged if he would leave us alone. “But the question is not what we intended ourselves to be, but what he ...

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

Reinhold Niebuhr

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