Jesus used miracle power to pay a tax? Even though he didn't need to? All because he didn't want to offend someone?
That's a side of Jesus people don't talk much about but perhaps we need to remember.
We have all experienced great moments of the sublime, and we long for them to last longer, but you don’t need to manufacture a moment or maximize your moment if you are willing to trust the maker of the moment.
Jesus had a mountaintop moment of glory followed by a dark valley of suffering, but another mountaintop of glory was still in the future!
It’s a terribly contagious idea that God wants to give you a king just like you, who will defeat your enemies, and make you great. It is, as we have been talking about for some time now, the rule of the schoolyard. Get the biggest bully on your side.
Jesus calls that thinking a virus and has plans to build something better.
For centuries, people have been using religious traditions to get them something of personal benefit. Religion can empower selfishness. Jesus, however, calls that evil.
If you have ever been tempted to use a religious rule to mask your own selfishness, this lesson is the challenge you need to hear. Oh, I think it will be encouraging too, but the challenge comes first.
If Peter can get out of a boat, you can love your enemy.
Matthew 14 gives us three stories of impossible moments leading to the impossible conclusion that Jesus is literally an impossible man with impossible power telling us to do impossible things.
Is Jesus trying to confuse people? Is he telling cryptic stories and saying impossible things on purpose because he's hiding something from us?
Yes, yes he is. But he doesn't want you to stay confused. He wants to give you the answers, but he wants you to stick with him through the confusion.
Taking a detour from our lessons in Matthew, this is a full sermon-style message studying Hebrews 7. I've never had the opportunity to teach through Hebrews, so I'm taking the time to address at least this one chapter simply because it's on my heart to do so. Thinking of Jesus as our forever King means so much more than we tend to think.
Why did Jesus let John die in prison? After all, the job of the Messiah was to set the captives free. What if I told you that Jesus is the kind of king who will disappoint you today because he has something bigger in mind for the future. Would you still follow a king like that?
When Jesus sent his disciples out as workers in his harvest field, he gave them a clear message and a clear method. And neither had anything to do with salesmanship.
When Jesus tells his followers that the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few, what does he mean by the harvest? Is it all about telling people the gospel and getting them saved, or is there something more going on? If we want to know how we are supposed to participate in the great harvest Jesus mentions, we should probably consider what kind of harvest he initiated and what kind of seeds he planted to produce that harvest.
Don't build your house on the sandy sand. Don't build your house on the shore. Well, it might be kinda nice, but you'll have to build it twice. Oh you'll have to build your house once more.
What does Jesus mean by telling us not to judge before giving us instructions about avoiding pigs, helping someone get a speck out of their eye, and avoiding false prophets? That sounds like a lot of judgment doesn't it?
Perhaps not the way he meant it.
On Wednesday, September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk, a MAGA political activist, founder of Turning Point, USA, husband and father, was killed in what most people are calling a politically-motivated act.
At this point we don't know the motives of the killer, but we can know the motives of our own hearts, and so it's time for us to reflect on whether or not we are loving our enemies the way our King would have us do.
Do you have enough faith to trust that God will take care of you? Actually, how would it change you if you had that much faith? How would it change your relationship to money? In Matthew 6, King Jesus makes a promise that seems too good to be true.
Have you ever realized that giving to the poor or forgiving someone who hurt you are both acts of faith? Both of them will cause you to lose out on something that was rightfully yours, and if you keep doing it enough, you will eventually become needy yourself, won't you? That is... unless you are getting filled up in some other way.
What is the heart of the Law of Christ? If you think the rules of the Sermon on the Mount are all about avoiding lust or avoiding divorce, you might have missed what's really going on. It's so much deeper than that.
If you think of Jesus primarily as a Savior, he's the one that gets you out of the things you don't want to do. But if you think of him mainly as your King, you should expect him to demand something of you.
Citizens of the new kingdom of Jesus are salt and light to the people of the old kingdom, but what does that mean? Here's a hint. It doesn't mean to be a restraining force and it doesn't mean to shine a light of shame on the sins of the world. Still, it is the first command of the new kingdom and how you understand the command will affect nearly everything about how you live in relationship to the world around you.
Last time, we considered one aspect of blessing, but in Matthew 5, Jesus starts really teaching about it. He gives us 8 very specific blessings along with the principles for how you can get in on them. This section sets us up to see the entire Sermon on the Mount with completely new eyes.
What if blessing was already on the way to you? What if you were impatient and wandered away before the blessing came? What if that blessing ended up falling to someone else?
That's what happened when Jesus went to Galilee and fulfilled Isaiah 9.