Holding the flashlight for your dad can be a dangerous task. You wouldn’t think it would cause so many problems, but almost universally it does. Why? Because it would be easier for your dad to do it by himself than involve you. This is true of our Heavenly Father too. Yet he chooses to use us for his work- to our joy. The problem comes when we start to think that because we held the flashlight that we are actually the ones that did the work. When the Pharisees held their heads high as their money dropped into the temple treasury, they had made a critical mistake….they thought God needed them.
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Sometimes, we can get so caught up in the things that we want that we completely miss the most important things that we should’ve seen. After Jesus’s opponents set multiple traps for him, he turned the questions back on them. When Jesus does it, he doesn’t try to trap his opponents but to teach them. He wants to show them just who this Messiah was supposed to be and why they’ve missed the obvious truth right in front of them.
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You can’t just get rid of religion in a country. When you take away Christianity, as American has done at an alarming rate over the last several decades, something has to fill the void. For so many, what has taken the place of church and Jesus is political parties and candidates. When Jesus’s opponents tried to set Him up, he was ready to teach them about the nature of our faith, the temporary nature of our world, and the eternal nature of God.
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Jesus is for everyone. This is the message that Luke has driven home over and over again throughout his gospel. It can make it easy to think that means we all get our own “version” of Jesus just for us. But when we say that Jesus is for everyone, we mean that ALL of Jesus is for everyone….the one that weeps over Jerusalem and the one that cracks the whip in the temple.
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What we want is a God that shows up and gives us everything we ask for, everything we desire, everything we want. What we have is a God that loves us enough to give us what we need most, even if we didn’t even know we needed it. As Jesus rode into town on the back of a donkey, he had the expectations of a city that was buzzing with anticipation. Instead of bowing to their desires, he continues to move to the cross in order to give them what they need. Which teaches us the pattern for our lives- he doesn’t remove the suffering, he redeems it.
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The goal of every investor is to find a way to make money where they don’t have to do anything to make it. It’s the holy grail of investing- passive income. Everyone wants something for nothing. For most church-goers in America, that’s what we want out of Jesus too. Put in a minimum investment and then just sit back and reap the rewards. Jesus makes it clear, though, that discipleship doesn’t work like that. He has jobs for us to do, assignments to complete, and investments to make. While the rewards may be significant, they are anything but passive.
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When a celebrity rolls into town it can cause a bit of a scene. Everyone wants to be near them, to see them, to see what all the fuss is about. Sometimes they’ll go to extreme measures to makes sure they don’t miss out on the spectacle. When this happens, most just expect to be passive observers. For Zacchaeus, he thought he was just going to catch a glimpse of the show. What he got was an unexpected dinner guest that changed the rest of his life.
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Distracted or Desperate? Sometimes the most obvious things are right in front of us and we can’t even see them. And in the case of one man in Jericho, the one that couldn’t see was the one that could see better than all the others. Which one are you?
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Comparison is the thief of joy…so the saying goes. But I guess that depends on who you’re comparing yourself to. This is the problem that Jesus points out when he tells the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The tax collector paid no attention to the pharisee, he just knew that he needed grace… because his comparison was far more appropriate. One man’s comparison led him to the feet of God, the other led him to walk away thinking he didn’t need God. Jesus makes it clear who had the right perspective.
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Don’t quit. No matter what the world throws at you. Don’t quit. That simple message may be just what you need to hear today. Jesus tells us a story of someone that had no reason for hope and every reason to quit- but her faith kept her going, and going, and going. Will he find that kind of faith in us when he returns? That’s the question that Jesus wonders aloud as he teaches his followers.
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When you know how the story ends, it will change the way you eperience the story. And if someone else knows how the story ends and warns us ahead of time what is coming, we’d do well to listen. Jesus knows the ending and wants us to live our lives like we do to…so that others will say, “That guy must know something I don’t!”
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Sometimes it’s not our reality that needs to change, just our perspective. When you see things differently, it can change everything about you. For the Pharisee and the Samaritan, you couldn’t find two people with more opposite perspectives. One man’s perspective drove him to believe he was owed something. The other man’s perspective led him to worship at the feet of Jesus. And the gospel is on display in the gulf between those two perspectives.
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Jesus is constantly telling his disciples how much it will cost them to follow Him. He tells them it will cost them everything, even their lives. Yet there is one thing he asks of his followers that may even be more costly than that- forgiveness. Exactly what do we mean when we talk about forgiveness? What does it entail? Is forgiveness even fair? What about that relationship? What if I don’t want to? What if they don’t deserve it? All these questions are complex and have a profound impact on the way we live our day-to-day lives. More than that, forgiveness gives us a chance to know God in ways we couldn’t without that experience. It may be costly, but it is God’s heart for his people.
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What stops you from believing? Jesus calls out the Pharisees for their love of money and misuse of the law- two things meant to glorify God and point them to his grace. Instead, the Pharisees had made those things an end to themselves and missed God altogether. What about you? What have you misused, misunderstood, and misapplied to use it for your own means and missed God?
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“Well done, good and faithful servant.” -or- “Good enough, moderately devoted church-goer.” We all say we want the first one, but most of us would probably be content with the second, especially if it means we get to live a more comfortable life here. In a parable that goes in a way you probably wouldn’t expect, Jesus teaches us how to pay attention to the things that matter the most and move on from the things that just aren’t that important.
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