Study Desk

But if God so clothes the vegetation in the fields, that blooms to-day and to-morrow will be thrown into the oven, how much more certainly will He clothe you, you men of feeble faith!

And whether it be in the second watch or in the third that He comes and finds them so, blessed are they.

Blessed is that servant whom his Master when He comes shall find so doing.

So he said to the gardener, "`See, this is the third year I have come to look for fruit on this fig-tree and cannot find any. Cut it down. Why should so much ground be actually wasted?'

They gave Him no answer; so He took hold of the man, cured him, and sent him away.

"So the servant came and brought these answers to his master, and they stirred his anger. "`Go out quickly,' he said, `into the streets of the city--the wide ones and the narrow. You will see poor men, and crippled, blind, lame: fetch them all in here.'

"`Go out,' replied the master, `to the high roads and hedge-rows, and compel the people to come in, so that my house may be filled.

So in figurative language He asked them,

The younger of them said to his father, "`Father, give me the share of the property that comes to me.' "So he divided his wealth between them.

So he went and hired himself to one of the inhabitants of that country, who sent him on to his farm to tend swine;

"So he rose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and pitied him, and ran and threw his arms round his neck and kissed him tenderly.

"`All these years,' replied the son, `I have been slaving for you, and I have never at any time disobeyed any of your orders, and yet you have never given me so much as a kid, for me to enjoy myself with my friends;

"So he called all his master's debtors, one by one, and asked the first, `How much are you in debt to my master?'

"But I charge you, so to use the wealth which is ever tempting to dishonesty as to win friends who, when it fails, shall welcome you to the tents that never perish.

Every man who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery; and he who marries her when so divorced from her husband commits adultery.

So he cried aloud, and said, "`Father Abraham, take pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame.'

So you also, when you have obeyed all the orders given you, must say, "`There is no merit in our service: what we have done is only what we were in duty bound to do.'"

Being asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God was coming, He answered, "The Kingdom of God does not so come that you can stealthily watch for it.

For just as the lightning, when it flashes, shines from one part of the horizon to the opposite part, so will the Son of Man be on His day.

"And as it was in the time of Noah, so will it also be in the time of the Son of Man.