Tag: The Gospel

Digging in Deeper: Matthew 13:10-13

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“Then the disciples came up and asked him, ‘Why are you speaking to them in parables?’ He answered, ‘Because the secrets of the kingdom of heaven have been given for you to know, but it has not been given to them. For whoever has, more will be given to him, and he will have more than enough; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. That is why I speak to them in parables, because looking they do not see, and hearing they do not listen or understand.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the arguments of the original postmodernists was that a literary text had no fixed meaning. Rather, the meaning of a certain text was whatever the reader wanted it to mean. In other words, everything was interpretation and no interpretation was incorrect. Everything was dependent on the perspective and experience of the individual. Of course, none of those guys seemed to have appreciated the irony of arguing that nothing could really be understood in one way while wanting to be understood a certain way, but we’ll leave that alone for now. Today, I want to look at something Jesus said about how and whether people were understanding Him. He acknowledged many folks might not, but His reasons were not postmodern. Let’s talk about it.

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Digging in Deeper: 1 Peter 3:18

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“For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

What is it that draws someone to the Gospel? A whole number of different things. Some are pretty good reasons. Others aren’t quite so good or reasonable, but thankfully the destination is ultimately more important than the path as long as you do indeed wind up in the right place. One of the most powerful draws to the Gospel historically has been the promise of God’s love as expressed through the substitutionarily sacrificial death of His Son, Jesus. This assurance that God values your life even more highly than His own is a pretty potent one indeed. As the apostle Peter put there, Jesus was willing to lay down His life in order to make it possible for you to get to God. The latest entry in what has become one of the most Gospel-soaked film franchises in recent memory offered up a picture of what this is like in one of the most powerful recruitment scenes I think I’ve ever seen. Let’s talk for just a few minutes today about the most recent adventure for super spy Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning.

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Digging in Deeper: Romans 3:23-24

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“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the bits of hope more seasoned parents often give to parents who are busy navigating their way through the teenage years (count me in on that journey) is that there will come a day when your kids say to you, “Dad, you were right.” That statement will pretty much always be framed in the past tense because in the present they’re never going to admit that anymore than we would have done when we were their age. But someday – or so they keep telling me – they’ll finally reach the place of agreeing with us. Getting to that place, though, isn’t easy for either party. In a similar kind of way, one of the hardest parts of the Gospel is having to get to the point that we agree with God. Let’s talk today about what that means and what makes it so hard.

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Digging in Deeper: Hebrews 9:22

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“According to the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

A little something different this week seeing as how we are just a few days from the single most significant day in the life of the church. This Sunday morning (at least in the Western church) we will celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave. This one event is the pivot on which the whole of human history swings. There is literally no more significant event in all of recorded history than this one. In order to get us ready for the day when it arrives, let’s do just a bit of thinking about how and why things had to go the way they did in order for the way to a right relationship with God to be made open to us. We’ll start this morning with a bit of context about how to get right with God in the first place.

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You Are Not Alone

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Jesus’ journey to the cross in Mark’s Gospel is almost complete. This week we are walking through the rest of Mark 14 from where we stopped last time. We left Jesus having announced the arrival of His betrayer to His sleepy disciples. As we pick up this week, Jesus does indeed get betrayed and abandoned. He is subjected to all kinds of abuse and injustice. And in the end, He is left alone to face it. It’s a pretty dark chapter, but it’s one that reminds us that Jesus has been through it. When we are going through it ourselves, we’ve got a friend in Him. Let’s explore all of this in more detail as we take the next step on our journey to the cross with Mark.

You Are Not Alone

Misery loves company. Have you experienced that? When we are miserable, we want to know that we are not alone in our misery. This desire manifests itself primarily in a couple of different forms, one of which is more helpful than the other. The less helpful way that misery seeks company is for us to try to drag down the people around us so they are as miserable as we are. Have you ever been around somebody like that? They’re like a gloomy Eeyore all the time because they secretly hope that can make the people around them as morose about life as they are so there’s at least one other person as miserable as they are. 

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