After His great confrontation with the religious leaders in Jerusalem (see Story 44), Jesus made the journey with His disciples back home to Galilee.One day, Jesus and His disciples were going for a walk through the grain fields of the countryside.
Read MoreOne of the ways a writer expresses what is important is by using a lot of repetition. You can tell what is important to them by the subjects that they bring up the most often and by what themes get the most volume in their writings.
Read MoreJesus was doing massive amounts of healing and preaching to the multitudes. The Jews from Galilee and Judea that came to Him early on in His ministry were being joined by Gentiles from cities hundreds of miles away.
Read MoreThe Sermon on the Mount is one of the most beautiful ethical writings in the history of humanity. Just before giving us the Sermon Matthew explained that crowds of people were traveling from all over the nation of Israel and the surrounding Gentile countries to get near Jesus.
Read MoreMatthew wrote the Sermon on the Mount to show us all the things Jesus taught as He went about the countryside in Galilee. It gives us the big picture of what He said about life in the Kingdom of Heaven. Many of those ideas are also told in the book of Luke, but they are scattered throughout his book as Luke showed how Jesus was teaching those things along the way.
Read MoreJesus continued to journey about the countryside telling everyone the Good News and healing the sick. One day He travelled to a city called Nain. His newly appointed disciples were with Him, and they were followed by a huge crowd.
Read MoreJesus and His disciples went out once again to the cities around the Sea of Galilee. He proclaimed the Good News of the Kingdom of God to everyone who came to Him. There was a group of women who came along with them as well.
Read MoreJesus had spent His days travelling around Galilee, teaching the deepest, richest truths that humanity had ever heard, and healing the broken. He started out teaching in the synagogues, giving the religious leaders a chance to recognize their Savior.
Read MoreImagine if the powerful religious leaders of your day journeyed to find you so they could confront you. Men from the Temple in Jerusalem in the South of Israel had travelled all the way to the North to do just that. Jesus had a lot of choices that He could have made.He could have hid from them...and then gossiped about them for the next 20 years.
Read MoreJesus had begun to speak to His disciples in parables about the Kingdom of Heaven. The rest of the crowd was still there as Jesus preached from the boat, but for most of them, these stories would be a mystery.
Read MoreJesus spent another remarkable day teaching and healing the broken. By the time evening had come, the Lord was tired. That might seem surprising since Jesus was God. Can God get tired? Well, the truth is that Jesus was and is fully God, but during His time on earth, He willingly laid aside the privileges of His divine powers. He took on the form of a man when He came to save humanity (Phil. 2:5-11). That included taking on our human frailties.
Read MoreThe Lord Jesus calmed the mighty storm. Imagine it. All the winds and waves raging, creating a terrifying howl, filling your boat with water…and then up He rises… commands…and everything slows to calm.Jesus and His bewildered disciples sailed their boats to the other side of the Sea to the region of the Garasenes. Many Gentiles lived there.
Read MoreImagine what it was like to be a disciple of Jesus. They saw Him heal with a power nobody had ever seen before. They stood by Him as He confronted the most influential men of His day. They watched Him silence the storm with a word.
Read MoreIn this story, Jesus was continuing to give His faithful witness of the Gospel in the region Galilee in spite of the hard-heartedness of the people. Where was the repentance that should have marked the children of God when their Savior came?
Read MoreAfter healing the blind men and the mute in Capernaum, Jesus made His way back to His hometown of Nazareth. That was a pretty bold thing to do. The last time we read about Christ visiting there, the townspeople tried to throw Him off a cliff!
Read MoreYou may have noticed on these blogs about the life of Jesus that the stories from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John get a little mixed up. For example, when in the book of Matthew we read from chapter eight before we read chapters 5 through 7, which are the Sermon on the Mount.
Read MoreThe time had come for the Lord to prepare His disciples for when it would be their job to tell the world what God had done through the work of His Son. Jesus was going to offer His life to pay for the sins of humanity. Through His sacrifice He was going to utterly defeat sin and death.
Read MoreJesus left the area of Galilee and journeyed out to the region of Tyre. Tyre was a large city on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. This was Gentile land. The Lord was putting distance between Himself and His Jewish enemies.
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