When we read the radical, world-changing sermon that Jesus preached on the mount, we are learning what it means to be subjects of His Kingdom. It is a strange Kingdom. We can’t see it, and yet He is seated on a throne ruling in mighty, sovereign power.
Read MoreA lot of times when we hear about the Good News of Jesus, we hear about the beauty of God's grace...and that is really good because His grace is amazing. He paid a tremendous price to give us that grace as a free gift. It means we have been adopted into His family, given the honor of being the children of the Most High God, receiving His love and protection.
Read MoreMatthew wrote the Sermon on the Mount to teach what it means to be a disciple of Christ. In the final three pictures that Jesus gave, He showed the difference between those who are truly members of His Kingdom and those who are not.
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 MoreJohn the Baptist was in prison. You see, he had said some things that Herod, the pretender king, did not like. Herod had taken his own brother’s wife and married her. John the Baptist spoke out against it, so Herod threw John in prison and kept him there.
Read MoreAs Jesus preached to the people throughout the region of Galilee, the powerful religious leaders began rejecting His message. But it wasn’t just the religious leaders that refused to hear the message of God through John and Jesus.
Read MoreIn the midst of Christ's busy ministry of teaching and healing throughout the region of Galilee, one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to dine in his home. Many of the Pharisees had already rejected the Messiah completely, but this one was still struggling with how to understand the coming of Jesus and His remarkable miracles.
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 MoreJesus and His disciples were in Capernaum, surrounded by the crowd. They were all packed into Peter’s house as Jesus preached. Religious leaders had come up from Jerusalem to challenge Jesus. The Lord had already cast out a demon and healed a man of blindness right in front of everyone.
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 MoreThe multitudes of crowds came to follow Jesus and see His amazing miracles. These were the powerful signs God had given in the Old Testament about the coming of His Kingdom. But as Jesus travelled to the cities and villages of Galilee, many of the people did not repent of their sins.
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 MoreWhen Jesus started His preaching ministry, He warned the people about the Day of the Lord, the final stage of The Great Battle over human history. It is the time when Christ will return to complete His total and utter victory against the curse that Adam and Eve had brought into the world.
Read MoreJesus continued to teach parables to help his disciples understand how the Kingdom of God would work in the world as true believers waited for Him to return.
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?
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