Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: responsibility, obligation, commitment, obedience, allegiance, loyalty, faithfulness, fidelity, respect, deference, reverence, homage, job, task, chore, assignment, commission, mission, function, charge, part, place, role, concern, requirement, tax, levy, tariff, excise, toll, fee, imposition, impost, exaction, tithe, payment, rate

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1. Elihu

Job 32:1--37:24

Understanding Series

Gerald H. Wilson

... the usual formula used for this purpose (wayyosep . . . wayyoʾmar, “and [X] continued and he said”). Factors such as these have led many commentators to suggest that the Elihu speeches are a later addition to the poetic section of the book. Some would excise them altogether. Others wish to relocate these chapters to somewhere else in the book. Clines, for instance, would place the Elihu speeches following Job’s response to Bildad in chapters 26–27, and would take the wisdom poem in 28 as Elihu’s ...

2. Luke 19:28-40

Luke 19:28-40

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... . In order to make this scene more politically palatable, Luke omits the use of any palm fronds, and silences the cries of "hosanna." Fronds and tree branches were traditionally laid in the path of national and military processions. By excising their potentially inflammatory images from the story, Luke avoids confusing Jesus' messianic identity with that of some militaristic, revolutionary zealot. But Luke's most subtle attempt at diffusing a potentially problematic issue comes in the close of the entrance ...

3. 1 John 4:7-12

1 John 4:7-12

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... Christ will "bear fruit." This vineyard of believers is no careless operation, leaving us to produce or not at our leisure. In John 15:2 Jesus stipulates that barren branches will be pruned from the vine, and that even apparently productive branches will be excised. The true Israel will be known by its fruits. Its ability to incarnate the love of God through Christ depends on a disciplined, directed life, a life "pruned" to allow for new growth, new insights. Jesus uses the word "abide" ten times in this ...

4. Luke 19:28-40

Luke 19:28-40

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

5. Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... the weeds' appearance. At first they surmise that the seed their master had planted was no good. But the householder makes it clear that the weeds are the work of an outside evil force. Immediately, the zealous hands want to rid the field of weeds, excising the evil from its midst. But their enthusiasm for purity is blindly unconcerned with the well-being of the growing wheat. It takes the householder to point out that such an action would destroy the wheat along with the weeds. Instead of reacting against ...

6. John 5:1-9

John 5:1-15

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... , one of the most remembered details of this pool’s healing powers is based upon details supplied by vss. 3b-4. These two verses most modern translations consider a later gloss, or addition, to John’s original text. In fact, they are now often excised from the narrative and relegated to a footnote. The stirring up of the water by an “angel of the Lord” and the short-lived healing power derived from that miraculous mixing (“whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water”) are details ...

7. Freedom In Christ

Galatians 5:1-15, Galatians 5:16-26

Understanding Series

L. Ann Jervis

... perceive that they are unable to work because of age, they abandon them to a wreched old age and they try to use others as their slaves.” (Economics 1.23; trans. Pomeroy, p. 111) The Jewish thinker Philo advocated circumcision for “the excision of pleasure and all passions” (On the Migration of Abraham 92 [Colson and Whitaker, LCL]). A Christian thinker subsequent to Paul expresses a similar understanding of the goal of the Christian life: “One must live without city or home; one must have nothing ...

8. Life by the Spirit

Galatians 5:16-26

Understanding Series

L. Ann Jervis

9. Sin and Punishment

Jeremiah 8:4--9:26

Understanding Series

Tremper Longman III

... of Josephus and Jonckheere,” JBL 118 [1999], pp. 497–505) has picked up a suggestion by Rashi, modified by Erhlich, which argues that the circumcision practiced by nations like Egypt was physically partial. “The Egyptian procedure involved either the excision of a triangular section from the dorsal face of the foreskin or simply a longitudinal incision along the median line of the dorsal face allowing retraction of the foreskin and exposure of the glans.” Thus, they were circumcised, yet according ...

10. Driving Out the Nations

Deuteronomy 7:1-26

Understanding Series

Christopher J. H. Wright

... and to destroy their religion comes from the same source and has the same explicit theological motive and basis as the call to preserve distinctions in clean and unclean foods and to exercise social neighborliness. This makes it impossible for us simply to excise the commands relating to the Canaanites and relegate them to some allegedly inferior stage of Israel’s development or to dismiss them as somehow out of symmetry with the more palatable parts of OT faith and ethics. They are too interwoven with ...

11. Ingrafted Branches

Romans 11:11-24

Understanding Series

James R. Edwards

... of the verb, have been broken off (v. 17), is doubtlessly a “divine passive,” and, like its counterpart in 11:7 (they were hardened), it means that this has happened according to God’s will. But, as we have noted, Israel is also responsible for its excision from the nourishing sap of the olive root (v. 17), for they were broken off because of unbelief (v. 20). This accords with Paul’s teaching especially in 9:30–10:4 that Israel’s present alienation is due to its rejection of the gospel. As ...

12. Punishments for Sin

Leviticus 20:1-27

Understanding Series

W. H. Bellinger, Jr.

... their theological distinctiveness. A clear pattern emerges: exhortation to a holy, distinct life, followed by specific instruction in how to live this way. Sanctity of life and relationships is the goal of this chapter. The community, as a corporate whole, must excise any defilement, surgically remove it. The chapter, however, is not a polemic for capital punishment. To the contrary—the listing of capital offenses has the purpose of encouraging life and avoiding death. The cry to live as holy people in ...

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