Matthew’s Gospel has five discourses given by Jesus that each conclude “when Jesus finished speaking”: the Sermon on the Mount, the Missionary Discourse, the Discourse on Parables, the Discourse on…

“Faith” is a word used so often by Christians that we easily forget its purpose and power. It’s not nebulous,  nor does it make you vaguely a “person of faith.”…

Jesus has turned toward the cross. “From that time”, after Peter’s great confession, “Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things…

Peter makes the great confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God (Matt. 16:16). Christ will build His church on the rock and the gates of Hades don’t…

At this point in Matthew’s gospel, the disciples are beginning to understand who Jesus is. Peter’s great confession names Him as the Christ, the Son of the living God. But…

We tend to think of truth and love as opposites, or at least in tension with one another. Truth is cold, hard, and probably mean—to be truly honest is to…

Jesus came as the Jewish messiah to save “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”. All the disciples are Israelites, and He tells them to stay within Israel when…

It’s easy to think of the scribes and Pharisees as an impossibly self-righteous sect that neither you nor anyone you respect could ever become—like spiritual orcs. But they probably descended…

The miracles Jesus’ performs in the gospels are never raw feats of strength to prove His divinity. If we read the gospels closely, the works always reveal who God is,…

Man-centered evangelism makes people the object of God’s worship rather than God the object of theirs. Thus the goal at many “seeker events” is to get a verbal affirmation, a…