Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: thirstiness, dryness, parched, craving, strong desire, longing, yearning, avidity, hunger, voracity, keenness, eagerness, lust, appetite, passion, love, crave, want, covet, desire, hunger for/after, lust for/after, hanker for/after, have one's heart set on

Antonyms: aversion, distaste, apathy, dislike, hatred, antipathy, disgust, disregard, abhorrence, acrimony, wet, animosity, animus, antagonism, bad feeling, bitterness, be averse to, detestation

Showing 151 to 175 of 188 results

151. The Crucifixion

Mark 15:21-32

One Volume

Gary M. Burge

... a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1:23). Some gnostic sects were so aghast at the idea of a crucified messiah that they put Simon of Cyrene, not Jesus, on the cross. One of the realities of Roman occupation most detested by Jews was compulsory service. Exercising this privilege, soldiers force an unknown passerby, Simon of Cyrene, to carry the heavy crossbeam of Jesus’s cross to the site of crucifixion. Simon’s place of origin in Cyrene (North Africa) may indicate he was a ...

152. The Parable of the Shrewd Manager

Luke 16:1-15

One Volume

Gary M. Burge

... . Apparently the Pharisees were ridiculing Jesus because they imagined some compatibility between serving God and serving money. Jesus replies that their attempt at self-defense is hollow because God penetrates to the true state of their hearts. An attempt to appear pious before people without being pious before God is detestable to God.

153. The Calling of Levi

Luke 5:27-32

Understanding Series

Craig A. Evans

... Levi sitting at his tax booth (see note below) with his customary summons: “Follow me” (v. 27). To include a tax collector among his intimate associates would be, in the minds of the Pharisees, beyond belief. Tax collectors were among the most detestable of all the outcasts of proper religious society. By adding the phrase, left everything, Luke emphasizes Levi’s total commitment to Jesus. Indeed, the great banquet that follows underscores further that in Levi’s mind a complete break with the past ...

154. God's Righteous Judgment

Romans 2:1-16

Understanding Series

James R. Edwards

... are more than enough pitfalls listed in 1:29–31 to catch the most scrupulous and wary moralist. There is still more to Paul’s concern over judgments. Do not even truly moral individuals discover to their acute disappointment that the evils they detest and strive to overcome are also in themselves? It is no coincidence that we have learned more about the meaning of evil from the saints who have forsaken this world than from any number of moral idealists. Little is learned about temptation by surrendering ...

155. Love

Romans 12:9-21

Understanding Series

James R. Edwards

... face of wrong. It hates evil. The word for evil, ponēros, is the strongest word for evil or wickedness in Greek, and this is its only occurrence in Romans. The Christian response to it must be equally strong. The Greek word apostygein means to “detest” or “abhor.” Whoever does not hate evil does not love good. Refusing to condemn evil in whatever form it takes (though not the people who do it), or tolerating evil for whatever reason when there is within our power the ability to do something about ...

156. Unlawful Sexual Relations

Leviticus 18:1-30

Understanding Series

W. H. Bellinger, Jr.

... 22, precludes sexual intercourse between men. There is evidence that such homosexual relations were not taboo in other cults, and so interpreters have suggested that this prohibition enables Israel to demonstrate its distinctiveness as Yahweh’s people. The act is called detestable (to’ebah), a word which warns against the practices of other cults; compare Deuteronomy 14:3; 22:5. But there may be more to the prohibition. We have seen that boundaries are important to the Priestly structure of life. In ...

157. Job's Reply to Bildad

Job 9:1–10:22

Understanding Series

Gerald H. Wilson

... but God’s treatment of him. Even a thorough cleansing would not suffice because God has already determined Job’s guilt. God would just plunge him swiftly into a slime pit so that his suffering and gross physical ailments would only become worse. Even his garments would detest being close to his body. The Lack of Divine Parity Undermines Justice 9:32–33 Job’s frustration is a consequence of the lack of parity that exists between God and his creatures. He is not a man like me. Since God is not a human ...

158. Job's Second Reply to Bildad

Job 19:1-29

Understanding Series

Gerald H. Wilson

... know to respect their elders, pick up on the general societal attitude toward Job and join in heaping scorn and ridicule on this object of communal rejection. Job’s “mates” or “comrades,” who could usually be counted on for support in any circumstance, detest him instead, and his loved ones have turned against him. Job’s physical maladies have reduced him to skin and bones (lit., “to my skin and my flesh my skeleton clings”) and he has escaped death for the moment, but only barely (by ...

159. Job's Third Reply to Bildad

Job 26:1--31:40

Understanding Series

Gerald H. Wilson

... now,” at the beginning of verse 9, returns us to the context of the mocking younger generation: insignificant sons of banished fathers. In the Hebrew, Job has “become their song” (neginatam), the source of their rollicking amusement and derision. They detest me. Job describes a common phenomenon. When those who have long enjoyed respect, influence, and power fall from their exalted positions, many times those who have long been subject to them respond with great anger and cruelty. Often the anger is ...

160. The Image of Gold and the Fiery Furnace

Daniel 3:1-30

Understanding Series

William Nelson

... executed (1 Macc. 1:57, 60–63; 2 Macc. 6:9–11, 18, 31; 7:1–42). Some Jews denied their faith and participated in the pagan cult, but others were martyred, choosing death over apostasy. In this interpretation, the statue in Daniel 3 represents the detestable Greek cult, and the furnace is a cipher for the Seleucid soldiers who carried out the king’s order to murder faithful Jews. The author of the book of Daniel hoped that God would intervene in history by delivering his people from death, just as he ...

161. Paying Taxes to Caeser

Luke 20:20-26

Understanding Series

Craig A. Evans

... . Ironically, the very ones hoping to lure Jesus into making an answer that would have been popular among his fellow Jews, but seditious to the civil authorities, have in their possession money that symbolized the very presence of the Roman Empire that they so detested. They have and produce the coin; Jesus does not, for he has none. Whose portrait is on the coin? Caesar’s. Since the coin bears the image of the Roman Emperor, it belongs to him, but what bears God’s image (humankind itself, Gen. 1 ...

162. God's Angel to Prepare the Way

Exodus 23:20-33

Understanding Series

James K. Bruckner

... them and break their sacred stones to pieces” (v. 24). The adoption of the false gods of the peoples of the land was an enduring problem. The worst offenses of their practices were child sacrifices to Molech (Deut. 12:31; 18:9–12) and detestable sexual practices (described in Lev. 18:3–30). The words “break their sacred stones” refer to the Canaanite veneration of sexuality and fertility. The Canaanites erected single stone pillars as dwellings for local gods (see also 34:13; Deut. 12:3–4). The ...

163. Ahaziah King of Israel

1 Kings 22:51-53

Understanding Series

Iain W. Provan

... the authors’ scorn of or hostility towards this “deity.” We may note here the analogous substitution of Hb. bōšeṯ, “shame,” for Baal in 2 Sam. 2:8 (cf. 1 Chron. 8:33) and 2 Sam. 11:21 (cf. Judg. 6:32); and the substitution of Hb. šiqquṣ, “detested thing,” for “god” in 1 Kgs. 11:5. On the NT material see further W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, ICC, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1991), pp. 195–96. 1:8 / A man with a garment of hair: The Hb ...

164. Ahaz King of Judah

2 Kings 16:1-20

Understanding Series

Iain W. Provan

... relation to Judah. This is disconcerting. The last time it was absent from the account of a wicked king’s reign (Ahaziah’s) we saw the Davidic house brought to the brink of extinction. What are we to expect now, when a Judean once more follows the detestable ways of the nations and when we are reminded, not of the LORD’s promise to David, but of his “driving out” of the nations before the Israelites because of their sins? Is the Davidic promise no longer in force? Is Judah is to be “driven out ...

165. Amon King of Judah

2 Kings 21:19-26

Understanding Series

Iain W. Provan

... a new Asherah pole replaces the one Hezekiah removed (v. 3; cf. 18:4). It is his grandfather Ahaz who is the new king’s role-model, as he sacrifices his own son in the fire and practices divination (v. 6; cf. 16:3, and possibly 16:15), following the detestable practices of the nations (v. 2; cf. 16:3). Manasseh also imitates the arch-apostate Ahab, by building altars to Baal (v. 3; cf. also the Asherah pole in 1 Kgs. 16:33) and worshiping idols (v. 11; cf. 1 Kgs. 21:26); he emulates Jeroboam and the other ...

166. Josiah Renews the Covenant

2 Kings 23:1-30

Understanding Series

Iain W. Provan

... . Josh. 5:10–12 for the last mention of Passover in the narrative). Little wonder, then, that having reported the removal of mediums and spiritists (2 Kgs. 21:6), household gods (lit. “teraphim”; cf. Judg. 17:5; 18:14, 17), idols (2 Kgs. 21:11, 21), and detestable things in general (1 Kgs. 11:5, 7; 2 Kgs. 23:13) from Judah and its capital, the authors should conclude their account of Josiah’s reforms by telling us that there was no king like him when it came to “turning to the LORD” (vv. 24–25 ...

167. Benjamin

1 Chronicles 7:6-12

Understanding Series

Louis C. Jonker

... 1–2. Dan and Zebulun are left out (although some see faint traces of a Dan genealogy in 2:12), and Joseph is replaced by his two sons Ephraim and Manasseh. Dan might have been omitted for a theological reason, namely, on account of its detestable cult referred to in Judges 18:30–31 and 1 Kings 12:29. But these explanations do not account for Zebulun’s omission. The simplest solution might be to remember that the northernmost tribes apparently left very scanty records, probably because they were always ...

168. Naphtali

1 Chronicles 7:13

Understanding Series

Louis C. Jonker

169. Manasseh

1 Chronicles 7:14-19

Understanding Series

Louis C. Jonker

170. Ephraim

1 Chronicles 7:20-29

Understanding Series

Louis C. Jonker

171. Asher

1 Chronicles 7:30-40

Understanding Series

Louis C. Jonker

172. The Book of Law Found

2 Chronicles 34:14-33

Understanding Series

Louis C. Jonker

... text that had the cultic reform measures in this position in the narrative. The Chronicler shifted the report on these measures to the beginning of his narrative in contrast to Kings, which has it after the covenant ceremony. The words Josiah removed all the detestable idols from all the territory belonging to the Israelites, and he had all who were present in Israel serve the LORD their God (34:33a) are probably a remainder from the older version. The subsection ends with words added by the Chronicler: as ...

173. Promise of Restoration

Jeremiah 33:1-26

Understanding Series

Tremper Longman III

... have not been faithful, but rather have led Israel down the primrose path of idolatry. 2 Chronicles 36:14 describes the priesthood on the eve of the exile in these terms: “the leaders of the priests became more and more unfaithful, following all the detestable practices of the nations and defiling the temple of the Lord, which he had consecrated in Jerusalem.” God’s continuing gracious involvement with them is a sign of his mercy and love. The Book of Consolation then concludes with a final word to ...

174. Excuses, Excuses

Matthew 17:20

Illustration

Alison L. Boden

... – a true gift of God as a person.” She hated that! She was quite gruff with those who suggested such things. She’d say, “No, I’m not! I’m no different from you. If you value what I do, go do it yourself. You could, you know.” She detested any language that set her apart from others, because she saw it as a cop-out, a way for people to rationalize why they were not more devoted to easing the suffering of the poorest. Jesus' disciples were this way at first too. They saw before them what their ...

175. The Samaritan

Luke 10:25-37

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... . No matter whether Samaritan or Judaean, it makes the story interesting. If a Judaean, his own priest and Levite don’t help him. If a Samaritan, it’s easy to see why they don’t. But it makes the two passers-by all the more detestable. Jesus does say that the people who passed the injured man by were a (Jewish) priest and a (Jewish) Levite –both respected members of the Jerusalem Temple, something like your pastors or your elders (deacons). And both were avoiding the man for various reasons. He was ...

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