jesus earthly ministry on Wealth

The world has always despised people from the wrong places and with the wrong credentials. We are always trying to justify ourselves. We need desperately to feel superior to others. And everything abo...

His poverty was so great that He was born in another man's house, and buried in another man's tomb.

In what sense, then, did Jesus declare that the Kingdom of God was present? Our answer must at least begin with His own answer to John: “The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf...

Introduction Jesus is the deliverer of Israel (1:54–55, 69–75, 77–79) Jesus states his mission in Luke 4:16-19: to proclaim good news to the poor, liberty to captives and the oppressed. The word J...

Introduction Jesus is the deliverer of Israel (1:54–55, 69–75, 77–79) Jesus states his mission in Luke 4:16-19: to proclaim good news to the poor, liberty to captives and the oppressed. The word ...

The kindness of Jesus. We are quick to think of his power, his passion, and his devotion. But those near him knew and know God comes cloaked in kindness

Preaching Commentary The Fast-Paced Gospel “Immediacy” defines the Gospel of Mark’s rendition of Jesus’ ministry. Its fast pace reads like a comic strip of heroic proportions. Before one miraculous...

We should also note that while Jesus had the biggest work assignment in human history-he had been invited to "save the world"-he never spent weeks writing a vision statement with steps for s...

Sociologist Erving Goffman wrote in his classic study Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity that the term stigma originated with the ancient Greeks, roughly during Jesus’ tim...

The world of Jesus was not the Old Testament Hebrew world. Like the United States now, Israel was multicultural, including a combination of Aramaic, Greek, and Roman influences. The people looked Jewi...

Nothing good has ever come into the world without opposition, and that is especially true in spiritual matters.

With a certain oversimplification we can trace easily enough the three options open to Jews in Jesus’ day. … First, the quietist and ultimately dualist option, taken by the writers of the Dead Sea Scr...

Thus, from the standpoint of the gospels, the mighty deeds of Jesus, healings and exorcisms alike, were the product of the power which flowed through him as a holy man. His powers were charismatic, th...

Christ became our Brother in the flesh in order that we might believe in him. In him the love of God came to the sinner. Through him men could be sinners and only so could they be helped. All sham was...

Context In the Book of Mark Mark 13 contains the “Olivet Discourse,” also called “the Little Apocalypse.” At the beginning of this chapter (and our reading), the disciples marvel at Herod’s spectacu...

Lord—You’re the God who notices. You notice a desperate woman who touches Your garments in a crowd. You notice a lonely, little tax-collector in a tree. You notice a blind man on the roadside, a widow...

The Fast-Paced Gospel “Immediacy” defines the Gospel of Mark’s rendition of Jesus’ ministry. Its fast pace reads like a comic strip of heroic proportions. Before one miraculous event is over another ...

Intertwined Narratives Jesus’ encounters with Jairus’ daughter and the bleeding woman are sandwiched together with the intention that the two narratives would unlock and help to interpret the other....

Intertwined Narratives Jesus’ encounters with Jairus’ daughter and the bleeding woman are sandwiched together with the intention that the two narratives would unlock and help to interpret the other....

Jesus knew his spiritual journey depended on responsiveness to God’s invitations. Although his job was the most crucial in human history, Jesus did not get compulsive, preoccupied or unable to practic...

T. S. Eliot once described the current human endeavor as that of finding a system of order so perfect that we will not have to be good. The way of Jesus tells us, by contrast, that any number of syste...

When Christians discuss the life of Jesus, they usually are thinking of the period from his birth in Bethlehem to his resurrection from the dead following the crucifixion at Calvary. This life lasted ...

The servant role was completed in Jesus. Though there were auspicious sings that preceded and accompanied his birth, preparing the world for the majestic and kingly, the birth of Jesus itself was of t...

The Child of glory,  The Child of Mary,  Born in the stable;  The King of all,  Who came to the wilderness  And in our stead suffered;  Happy they are counted  Who to Him are near. When He Himself sa...

In stark contrast to ourselves, when Jesus needed to know who he was, he listened to his Father’s voice, trusted that voice and claimed its truth for his own life.

My central claim is that we can become like Christ by doing one thing—by following him in the overall style of life he chose for himself.

One of the most convicting things I have recently come to realize about Jesus is that He was never, not once, in a hurry.

The witness of the New Testament is, therefore, twofold: it transcends the land, Jerusalem, the Temple. Yes: but its History and Theology demand a concern with these realities also. Is there a reconci...

I was invited to visit a friend who was very sick. He was a man about fifty-three years old who had lived a very active, useful, faithful, creative life. Actually, he was a social activist who had car...

In these acts of love Jesus created a scandal for devout, religious Palestinian Jews. The absolutely unpardonable thing was not his concern for the sick, the cripples, the lepers, the possessed . . . ...