Everywhere Jesus went the regular folks were astonished and amazed. They were blown away not only by his miracles but by his teaching as well. But there was one place in particular that the folks were just not impressed, and that was his hometown of Nazareth. Now Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but he was raised in Nazareth. And after being away…

One of my dad’s passions over the years has been finding and collecting Native American artifacts up in Kentucky where he lives: arrowheads, spearheads, tools, and various other things. And he has come to amass a modest, but very fine collection. One of his favorite things to do when somebody comes to visit is to pull out that collection to show and…

What is your most valuable possession? It may be truly worth a lot of money or maybe just really meaningful to you, but either way, it’s highly valuable. In Matthew 13, Jesus tells the stories of two men who each found something incredibly valuable. One man found a buried treasure. I have to assume it was a chest filled with gold and…

You, undoubtedly, have tasted mustard before, but have you ever seen a mustard seed? It really is a tiny seed, about 1 mm in diameter, which is about the diameter of a sharpened pencil lead. In Matthew 13, Jesus said it was the smallest of seeds. He was not speaking scientifically there, but experientially. It was the smallest seed the people in…

I love to garden, but boy, I sure hate pulling weeds. Don’t you? In Matthew 13, Jesus tells us a parable about weeds. A farmer sowed good wheat seed in his field, but when the crop began to come up, it was filled with weeds. Apparently, an enemy had sown weeds in his wheat field when he wasn’t looking. His farm hands,…

Jesus spoke a lot of parables in his teaching ministry. But what exactly is a parable? A parable is an earthly story that communicates a heavenly truth. One of Jesus’ most vivid parables is the parable of the four soils in Matthew 13. Essentially, he says that our hearts are like different types of soil outside when it comes to the seed…

If you open up your news app, turn on your TV, or read a newspaper, it doesn’t take long to realize that spiritual darkness is real, and it’s all around us. And while sinful human beings are prone to do wicked things all by ourselves, Scripture makes clear that behind the scenes inciting greater and greater wickedness are demonic forces as well.…

The birth of Jesus was one of the most joyous moments in history. I mean, the birth of any baby is a reason to celebrate, but the birth of the Messiah Christ, that’s extra special. Yet, soon after the joy of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, the streets there were filled with bitter weeping. You see, King Herod, the wicked vassal king of…

The birth of Jesus wasn’t just good news for Bethlehem and Israel. No, it was good news for the world. And for that reason, God put a sign in the sky to alert the entire cosmos that the Christ had been born. We know this sign as the Christmas star. And there were some men of great knowledge and wisdom called Magi…

I sure hope you had the merriest Christmas! I bet there was a lot of joy, but did you get the deepest and highest part of your joy from Jesus? A few weeks after Jesus was born there in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph went to the temple in nearby Jerusalem to sacrifice to the Lord and took Jesus with them. There they…