We like life easy, so when following Jesus brings bumps instead of the smoother path we expected, we wonder what went wrong. Luke 9 reminds us that Jesus never promised following him would meet that expectation.
It’s easy to look across the room and thank God we’re not like that person—the failure, the compromiser, the obvious sinner. In Luke 18, Jesus tells a parable to confront such self-righteousness in us.
Pastor Tim continues our series, “the Weary World Rejoices.” This week, we will look at the hope we discover in the Shepherds’ story.
What does waiting for Jesus’s return look like? Are we just trying to “make it through” until the end? This week we turn to Matthew 25:14-30, looking at the “Parable of the Talents” and what it says to us about what God calls us to do with our lives right now.
The familiar verse “the righteous will live by his faith” is quoted multiple times in the New Testament to remind us of God’s grace through faith. But, it’s point doesn’t stop there — it also assures us of God’s faithfulness in times of trouble.
We scramble to fix what’s broken, certain we know the one restoration that matters most. But when friends lower a paralyzed man before Jesus in Matthew 9, desperate only to walk, the first words he hears are “Take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven.” Do we trust Jesus enough to receive what he says we actually need?
We’ve all prayed about something so long that we start to wonder if God has put us on hold—and whether anyone is ever going to pick up. In Luke 18, Jesus tells a parable about a powerless widow who keeps pleading before a judge who neither fears God nor respects people, and asks whether his people will keep crying out to him day and night or simply lose heart.
Most of us have something we’d rather not put on the table before God—something we’re holding just tightly enough that we hope He won’t notice. In Luke 18, a ruler who has kept the commandments since his youth comes to Jesus asking what he still must do to inherit eternal life, and Jesus names exactly the one thing he isn’t ready to hear.
We often treat sin as a handful of inconsequential debts, so asking God for forgiveness—or forgiving someone else—can feel unnecessary. In Matthew 6:12, Jesus places both debts before us in a single petition: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Do we understand the balance we have run up?
We see lots of details but miss the main point when we come to Jesus mainly to eliminate problems here and now. In Matthew 9:18–26, two people reach out to Jesus with needs very much like the ones we have and must wrestle with the deeper point of Jesus’s ministry — just like we do.