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"What do you think?"  Remember this means sit down and hold on because the illustration is going to be different than human standards. God is like a shepherd who left ninety-nine sheep on the hillside to look for the lost sheep. (Matthew 18:12-14, John 15, 4-7)  Wrong...

Reversal of human priorities is a common theme in parables of the kingdom and they are meant to shock.  Whenever you hear the phrase, "The Kingdom of God is like," sit down and hold on because the illustration is going to be different than human standards of power and...

Walled mother cities had stores of weapons and grain so they could withstand an enemy siege.  The army, wealthy merchants, and the priestly class lived within the walled city while the poor lived outside the walled city, in the daughter villages.  Kings and priests...

In the Bible it is presented to the prophet Samuel, and later to Nathan, that the Lord is not so hot on the idea of the people having a king who might abuse his power.  Nor is the Lord hot on the idea of them having a temple.  What is wrong with the tabernacle?  The...

Samuel went to Bethlehem looking for a king and found David, a scrawny boy who kept the sheep. Let's look at the kingship more in relation to David.  David spilled innocent blood when he killed Uriah the Hittite because of his lust for Bathsheba.  Nathan would not...

Where does Jesus get his notion of servant-king?  He gets it from scripture.  Kings are to be servants.  The two on the road to Emmaus were in despair because the person they thought was to be king was killed by the very Romans he was to overthrow.  The stranger...

Let us continue to look at how Jesus presented the kingdom of God as he spent time with people who others forgot in Luke chapter 7. There were two healings at Nain.  The widow who had already lost her husband has now lost her only son through that husband.  The...

Today we look at yet another example of how Jesus presented the kingdom of God in a way that would have been very unexpected at the time. The Woman's Need The story of the hemorrhaging woman is well known.  It appears in all three of the synoptic gospels (Matthew,...

Jesus was intentionally drawn to people that the religious establishment of his day neglected. Jesus remembered the forgotten people.  Let us discuss some examples. John's gospel gives us the story at the Bethesda Pool.  Beth Eshdthayin (Aramaic) means, "House of the...

How did Jesus announce the Kingdom of God? After his wilderness experience of the temptations, Jesus returned to Galilee. He began to teach in the synagogues and was developing a favorable reputation. (Luke 4:14-15)  Then he went to Nazareth. Nazareth was a daughter...