Jesus teaching in the Sermon on the Mount quotes and alludes to Jewish Scripture at an alarming rate. We’ve barely finished ruminating on one saying (“you have heard it said…but I say to you…”) before another begins. Jesus spoke and taught as a Jewish man, so it is no surprise..
Jesus’ parable about the two builders will either cause a smile to break across your face, or a furrowing of your brow, and that’s just as Jesus intends it to be….
There are good ways to read parables and bad ones. Don’t look for symbolic meaning in every detail, but also don’t limit the meaning of a parable to only one layer. Parables are deceptively complex literature. Treat them as such…
READ the passage SLOWLY as if for the first time. Then look for three things: Light Bulbs: Anything that stood out to you each day. Question Marks: What didn’t make sense? What do you wonder about? Arrows: Anything that seems to apply directly to you…
This will be a shorter Devo. So here’s what I’d like for us to do today. Take 5 minutes and re-read the passage slowly. Read it as though you are one of the Philippians hearing this letter read to you for the first time….
Paul transformed the term with a “powerfully Christ-centered redefinition of contentment.” Paul and all who are in Christ are God-sufficient as opposed to self-sufficient…
The people of God have always been marked out by possession of the Word of God, his revealed truth, and the transition from their very different circumstances to our own day is obvious and easy…
The Bible knows nothing of our ‘denominationalism’, and if Isaiah’s wording prompts us to put our hand to reform and renovation then its proper focus is the local church to which we each belong…
