Have you ever thought about the difference between a tradition and a commandment? A tradition is something that people have just come up with over the years. Somebody started doing it, and somebody decided to keep doing it. Traditions come and go, and we can take them or leave them. But a commandment is something that God has decided, something God came…

In Matthew 14 something pretty amazing happened in the land of Gennesaret when Jesus was there. The power of the Holy Spirit was so strongly upon him for healing that all people had to do was simply touch the fringe of his garment to be healed. But here’s the really cool thing… when people began to see Jesus and what was happening,…

One of Jesus’s greatest miracles was when he took just two fish and five loaves of bread and fed over 5,000 people. I say over 5000 because Matthew 14 says that those who ate of Jesus’s miracle were about 5000 men besides women and children. So, there were 5,000 men plus women and children. In reality, we could be talking at least…

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.…