Visiting Jerusalem as a Christian pilgrim and searching for the site where Jesus was buried and arose can be a conundrum. Why? Because tour guides take you to two sites, not one! First is The Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the second is known simply as ‘The Garden Tomb’. Both are beautiful and moving […]
Archive | The Gospels
How the Beatitudes come alive on a Galilean Hill
There are few places in Israel more ‘ground zero’ to Christianity than the Mt. of Beatitudes on the shores of the Galilean Sea, the subject of this month’s video blog. It is in this beauty-filled place that historians think Christ Jesus gave a sermon that included the core teachings of what it is to be […]
Why The Sower and the Seed Parable is the ‘First Among Equals’
As you study Jesus’ parables’, it becomes quickly obvious how important the Sower and the Seed story is, one of the few to appear in all three synoptic Gospels. (John’s Gospel doesn’t contain any parables.) Even more noticeable is that the Sower and the Seed story headlines the rest–in Matthew (Matt. 13:3-17), Mark (Mark 4:1-9) and […]
Why the Parables are Integral to Matthew’s Gospel
The synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) share similarities with each other, including their versions of Jesus’ parables. (The Gospel of John doesn’t contain parables.) When I discovered that Jesus’ parables constitute over one-third of the Master’s teachings in these three books, it was time to treat them as more than loved stories whose characters […]
Bringing the Resurrection Forward
It’s hard to focus too much on the resurrection. No one understood this better than Paul who preached it throughout his 30-year ministry. Writing to the Corinthians, he asks: If Christ hasn’t been raised, then our preaching is useless and your faith is useless… then we deserve to be pitied more than anyone else […]