Jesus addresses a crowd with some things he wants them to hear, but he also gives them some things he wants them to overhear. Jesus wants the crowd to overhear him talking to his disciples about their money. And I’ve begun to realize that one of the...
Christmas shows why Christianity is unique. In all other religions, a prophet arrives and teaches how we can find eternal life. In Christianity, God himself comes to us and gives himself as the way to eternal life. Christmas shows that salvation is b...
In public these days, Christmas is seen as meaning that if we work hard, if we hold hands and breathe in unison, if we get together, we can make the world a better place. It’s like the song in the Live Aid concert in 1985, “We Are the World.” That’s...
If the baby in the manger was God—not just a guru, not just a supernatural being, not just the first created thing, not just a hologram, but God himself—it should make a difference in our lives. Christmas is about the incarnation: God becoming human....
No place gives us a loftier and more penetrating view of who Jesus is than Colossians 1, which tells us that Jesus is a king. This passage tells us Jesus is the king of all kings. One paragraph tells us about the kingship of Christ that is. The othe...
It’s one thing to have the gospel presented to you. It’s another thing to have it come to you. According to this passage, it is very easy to miss the gospel. How do you know if the gospel has come to you? This passage tells us four tests so you can...
If you want an idea of who Jesus is, he says he’s more like the bridegroom than anything else. If you want an idea of what it means to be a Christian, he says it’s more like going to a wedding feast than anything else. When Jesus says he’s the brideg...
Jesus tells us that to become a Christian, there has to be a smashing. Christianity is new wine: it ferments, it swells, it’s organically and chemically active, and it will smash the old, inflexible wineskins. Jesus teaches that there’s an old way t...
Here’s my thesis: The reason most people who profess belief in Christianity still don’t live big lives is because they don’t actually understand Christianity. Most people think Christianity is basically like other religions. But Jesus says his messag...
At the end of Jesus’ life, the religious leaders want him executed. But the Romans have all the political power. So they bring Jesus to the Roman politicians, saying he’s a threat, and the question is put directly to Jesus by Pilate: What are your po...
Jesus debated. Jesus fought. Jesus argued with the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians, the teachers of the law, people we would call religious and civil elites today. But Jesus never picked a fight unnecessarily. In Mark 7 Jesus argues about th...
It’s not the whale events in your life that make you who you are. It’s all the guppies. Every morning you wake up and millions of them come at you. You have to eat. You have to sleep. You have appointments. The mundane, the hum-drum, the hustle and b...
The real Jesus believed in demons. The real Jesus believed in the devil. Most of us say, “They didn’t understand then what we understand now about diseases and mental illnesses. They attributed them to demons.” But in Matthew 4:24, you see something...
The gospel changes the way we look at our money and possessions. If we understand the gospel, we should have a radically different relationship with money than what our culture says is normal. To look at what the Bible says about this, let’s look at...
In Luke 7, we see a personal encounter Jesus has with two people. They’re both seeking him, but he responds very differently to each of them. We first see Simon, a member of the religious and cultural elite. He invites Jesus to dinner, which meant i...
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