After rejecting Galilee and before heading south to Perea and Judea, Jesus returns to Capernaum to spend time with his family. His disciples will face many internal and external pressures in the next 6 months leading up to His death, so He spends time teaching and exhorting them as well. This episode examines the short time frame immediately before Jesus' late Perean and Judean ministry.
All resources referencing Genesis 1
Video
Once again Jesus gets into a conflict with the Pharisees. This time, they seek a sign from Jesus to validate His claims. Jesus tells them that no sign will be given to them but the "sign of Jonah". Jesus goes on to warn His disciples about their false teaching, then offers a physical sign to them about what their spiritual eyes are like.
Video
Perhaps only a week after His emergence from the wilderness, Jesus heads to Cana in Galilee with His new disciples for a wedding celebration. When the wine runs out, Jesus creates nearly 150 gallons of wine from water. While it's important to see that this was not a "public" beginning to His ministry, it was at Cana that His disciples began to believe in Him.
Video
What does the helpless Babe lying in an animal feed trough tell us about what God is like? In the story of Jesus' birth as recorded in Matthew and Luke, we are given a window into His breathtaking meekness and humility. From the circumstances leading up to His birth to that beautiful moment in Bethlehem, God forever declared His love and desire for the creatures He made to be with Him and to see His glory.
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So often we approach the little town of Bethlehem and peer at the Babe in that manger and walk away saying "isn't that cute, thank you Jesus for your coming". Yet if we are to be true to Scripture, we have to remember we're not only looking at the first sinless human since Adam in the garden, but we're seeing God in the flesh. This episode discusses the fear of the Lord and the measure of awe and reverence we should have when pondering this scene from the Gospels.
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Mark is the shortest, most succinct, and most action-packed Gospel out of the four. In this episode, I cover Mark's author, the date it was written, and some of the major themes and literary style of the book. The most important point we should understand for the purpose of this series is that Mark is chronologically arranged and focuses on Jesus' ministry in Galilee and the last week of His life before the cross in Jerusalem.
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In the past 3 episodes of this series, I've discussed three reasons why I wanted to talk about the Gospels. However, the greatest reason why the four Gospels are important for us to know and treasure as Christians is because Jesus is the one true God. In this episode, I develop Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 4:6: "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God [is] in the face of Christ". At every moment, our God and our Maker is the one who we're supposed to see as we read the Gospels.
Blog entry
The LORD, the Creator of all, clothes Himself with unapproachable light as a garment (Psalms 104:2, 1 Timothy 6:16), yet there was a time in history where He humbly clothed Himself with human skin and tabernacled among us. In the 89 chapters of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we are privileged to behold the life of our Maker, the Man we call Jesus of Nazareth.
Seeing Jesus as the LORD changes the way we read the first four books of the New Testament that we call the Gospels. This single truth is what makes the Gospels exceedingly important to our growth in the knowledge...
Blog entry
Yesterday much of the Far East and the Southwest US experienced an annular solar eclipse, often described as a "ring of fire" because of the way the moon blocks out most of the sun, leaving a bright ring around it in the sky. Much of the event was also visible here in Missouri, beginning around 7:30pm and lasting for 45 or 50 minutes.
I was able to view the eclipse at my folks' house where they have an open view of the western sky thanks to the rolling Missouri plains. We took turns looking...
Article
Scripture’s hush regarding the first 30 years of Jesus’ life can speak volumes to us if we have ears to listen (see my earlier article here). There is a great feast of the knowledge of God at the table of Christ’s early years as a growing man. Various facets of His family life, the customs of Galilee, the geography of Nazareth, and the religious culture of the Jewish people collectively paint for us an informative picture of what Jesus’ days might have been like. The loud silence heard in these...