Luke 15 is not a random collection of nice thoughts about forgiveness. Jesus is answering a complaint, and that complaint tells you what to listen for as you read the parable of the Prodigal Son. Luke puts the issue right on the table in Luke 15:1-2: outsiders are...
The Bible uses the word law in a few different ways. If we do not sort that out, we will slide into one of two ditches: either we try to earn salvation, or we shrug off God’s commands like they do not matter. Psalm 19:7 is a good doorway into the subject because it...
John 4 shows a social divide, but it also shows a worship divide. A Samaritan woman raises an old argument about where God should be worshiped, and Jesus answers in a way that cuts through ancestry, location, and religious pride. In John 4:19-26, He brings her to...
Luke gives us a clear look at what Jesus does with a man everybody else had already written off. In Luke 19:1-10 Jesus meets Zacchaeus in Jericho, a wealthy chief tax collector with a ruined name, and we watch salvation land in a real house and start producing real...
Proverbs does not treat wisdom like a hobby for thoughtful people. It treats wisdom like survival, and it starts by putting God where He belongs. Proverbs 1:7 says the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, and it sets that against the fool who despises...
John is not handing out a motivational label for elite Christians. He is describing what is true of everyone who has been born of God. In 1 John 5:4-5, the word overcome is tied to faith in a very specific Person, Jesus the Son of God. So the passage pulls our eyes...
Paul does not let us imagine a life with no real master. As we open Romans 6:16-23, he puts two masters side by side, shows what each one produces, and then presses us to live like people who have truly been transferred from one to the other. Everyone serves...
Paul’s relationship with Timothy is one of the clearest pictures in the New Testament of how the Lord grows a servant and then uses him to strengthen churches. When you read 2 Timothy 2:1-2, you are listening in on a passing-the-baton moment. Paul is near the end...
A lot of confusion in churches comes from not letting the Bible define what a pastor is and what he is for. People sometimes treat the pastor like a CEO, a celebrity, a chaplain, or a hired speaker. Scripture treats him as a man called to shepherd God’s people,...
Fasting shows up in the Bible at serious moments: grief, confessed sin, danger, and seasons when someone needs clear direction from the Lord. But the same practice can go bad fast when it turns into religious performance. Our primary passage is Matthew 6:16-18,...
