Podcasts about Pharisees

Read Online“No one patches an old cloak with a piece of unshrunken cloth, for its fullness pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse. People do not put new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. Rather, they pour new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.” Matthew 9:16–17The parable above teaches us that even if someone were to faithfully understand and live the authentic Law that was given through Moses and the prophets, Jesus' new teaching of grace, the New Law, was so different that it was not simply an improvement of the old, it completely replaced it. Furthermore, many of the customs taught by the Pharisees were unfaithful representations of the Law of Moses. They had deviated from the Law's meaning and replaced it with their own scrupulous and erroneous multiplication of external practices. Thus, Jesus' New Law needed to break away from these deviations completely.To use a modern example, if you were to have an old phone that had become obsolete or stopped working, you wouldn't buy a new phone so as to remove various parts from it to try to add those parts to the old phone to fix it. Instead, you use the new phone as a complete replacement for the old one.A central quality of the New Law of grace is that it is entirely new and transforming. Therefore, by embracing this New Law, we become entirely new creations in Christ. Grace doesn't simply patch that which is weak and sinful in us. It transforms us, elevating our human nature to an entirely new existence.This teaching is not only directed at the misguided teachings that the Pharisees had developed over the years, it was directed at human life itself. Not only were the Jewish customs to go through a transformation, humanity itself was to go through a transformation. Everything is made new in Christ. This teaching applies just as much to us today as it did to the Jewish people of old. Today, we not only receive the new life of grace in Baptism, but we also receive it anew and share in this ongoing transforming renewal every time we allow grace to touch us more deeply and transform us more fully into the people God wants us to be. The “new patch” and the “new wine” are always transforming, and we must look forward to this newness throughout our lives. Reflect, today, upon the joyful discovery that awaits you every day. Discovering the New Law of grace, accepting it into your life, and allowing it to transform you will set you on a path of discovery that will never get old. It is an ongoing discovery that is far greater than anything this world has to offer. Nothing can ever compare to the gift of God alive in our lives. It will never get old. It will always be transforming. And it will always be new. Ponder this gift God offers you today and say “Yes” to it with all your heart. My transforming Lord, You continuously offer to renew me, transform me and elevate me to the life of grace. I thank You for this Gift and desire to accept it with all my heart. May I always be ready and willing to say “Yes” to You and the transformation that awaits me as I discover this ever new treasure of Your Grace. Jesus, I trust in You.  Image: Titian, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsSource of content: catholic-daily-reflections.comCopyright © 2025 My Catholic Life! Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission via RSS feed.

Gospel Matthew 9:9-13 As Jesus passed by, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. He said to him, ""Follow me."" And he got up and followed him. While he was at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat with Jesus and his disciples. The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples, ""Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"" He heard this and said, ""Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Go and learn the meaning of the words, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.""  Reflection If one looks for a description of the ministry of Jesus, this is a perfect passage. Certainly he came to give us an example, he wants us to follow his ways. And what he shocks the institution at the time of the temple is that instead of seeking only righteous people, spending time with him, he went to those that they were told to avoid. He went to sinners. And the beauty of that is that he has in that action described a key element to his ministry. Mercy, unmerited love. To have that gift, to be in that kind of relationship with others is the key to the Kingdom. Closing Prayer Father, it's so easy for us to become negative about those around us who aren't fully what we think they should be. Never let us fall into the trap of criticism and judgment and condemnation. But always, always place within us a longing, a desire for people to change, to grow, to become what their destiny truly is. And we ask this in Jesus' name, Amen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Read Online“Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.  Go and learn the meaning of the words, I desire mercy, not sacrifice.  I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”  Matthew 9:12–13Would you describe yourself as one who is “well” or one who is “sick?” Are you among the “righteous” or the “sinners?” Be careful how you answer this question. Of course, the pride that comes with our fallen human nature often tempts us to claim that we are “well” and “righteous.” But humility will reveal the truth that we are among the “sick” and “sinners.”This statement of Jesus is a response to the Pharisees who noticed that Jesus was dining at the house of Matthew, the tax collector, whom He had just called to follow Him. Matthew did indeed leave everything behind and followed Jesus, and then he hosted dinner for Jesus at his house. At that dinner, there were “many tax collectors and sinners” who came and sat with Jesus and His disciples, which led the Pharisees to ridicule them all.Jesus' response is very important for us to hear. By stating that He came not for those who were well and righteous but for those who were sick and sinners, it tells us two important things. First, it tells us that we are all spiritually sick and sinful. Second, it tells us that if we cannot humbly admit to that, and in our pride claim that we are well and are righteous, then we essentially reject Jesus, the Divine Physician, from our lives. We essentially say, “Lord, I do not need You.”It's also helpful to notice that Jesus was not embarrassed to be seen with sinners. He did not hesitate at all and, in fact, clearly stated that they were those whom He came for. For that reason, we should not be afraid or embarrassed to admit we are sinners who are spiritually ill and in need of our Lord. To deny that fact is to deny reality and to deny the very source of the ongoing healing we most certainly need in life. It's a denial of our need for Christ Jesus Himself.Do you need our Lord? Do you need interior cleansing, healing, and forgiveness every day? If it's difficult for you to wholeheartedly say “Yes” to that question, then perhaps you struggle with the pride of the Pharisees more than you know. No matter how holy you become, no matter how deeply you pray and no matter how charitable you are, you will always need the healing and forgiveness of the Divine Physician each and every day. Reflect, today, upon the need you have in your life today for forgiveness. What sin do you struggle with the most? Interestingly, the holier one becomes, the more clearly they see their daily sins and their need for forgiveness and healing. If you struggle with this at all, spend time examining your conscience. Look for ways to do it more thoroughly and honestly. If you do, you can be certain that our Lord, the Divine Physician, will deeply desire to dine with you today and always. My forgiving Lord, You are the Divine Physician Who has come to forgive and heal all of our ills. Remove my pride and self-righteousness so that I can be filled with humility and see clearly the sin in my life. As I see my sin, help me to turn to You and to trust in Your abundant mercy. You came for sinners, dear Lord, and I am one of those sinners in need. Jesus, I trust in You.  Image: James Tissot, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsSource of content: catholic-daily-reflections.comCopyright © 2025 My Catholic Life! Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission via RSS feed.

Jesus, lead me to compassion over rules.Keywords: Rules; healing; Pharisees; legalism; compassion; wisdom. Scripture: Mark 3:5

Christ said that the scribes and Pharisees sat on the seat of Moses (Matthew 23:2). Is this a metaphor or a defined position of authority? Did Moses pass on his authority in succession, and is it the same as his own?

In Mark 2, people came to ask Jesus why His disciples did not fast like the Pharisees. Jesus' response? A question and two cryptic metaphors. Pastor Mike Kelsey unpacks not only the significance of these metaphors but also what the answer to this question means for our search for the abundant life as Christians today. […] The post Why didn't Jesus' disciples fast? | Mark 2:18-22 | Mike Kelsey appeared first on Cross Point Church.

In week 10 of our series on the Gospel of Mark, guest speaker Dr. Megan Fate Marshman shares Jesus' thoughts about the Sabbath in Mark 2:23-3:6. Her teaching reminds us that God isn't calling us to do more “right things” to prove ourselves – that's what the Pharisees are prone to doing. Instead, you can […] The post What is the Sabbath? | Mark 2:23-3:6 | Dr. Megan Fate Marshman appeared first on Cross Point Church.

John 8:1-11 records one of the most fascinating stories in the Bible. We see the religious scholars and Pharisees teaming up and bringing a woman who had been caught in adultery to Jesus. It was a trap to test Him, and He willingly walks right into it to show us that mercy ultimately triumphs over judgement. Watch how the Divine Judge masterfully disarm the accusers by answering their question with another, demonstrating a public display of God's wisdom, grace and redemption at its finest.

John 8:1-11 records one of the most fascinating stories in the Bible. We see the religious scholars and Pharisees teaming up and bringing a woman who had been caught in adultery to Jesus. It was a trap to test Him, and He willingly walks right into it to show us that mercy ultimately triumphs over judgement. Watch how the Divine Judge masterfully disarm the accusers by answering their question with another, demonstrating a public display of God's wisdom, grace and redemption at its finest.

Today, Pastor Jack teaches that, unlike the Pharisee, the tax collector exhibits precisely what Jesus spoke about. We're to come to God, recognizing our sinful condition, humbling ourselves before Him, so He can show us His boundless love, and forgiveness through Christ. The post Parable Of The Pharisee & Sinner – B first appeared on Pastor Jack Hibbs.

This week, Pastor Tim Brown continued our sermon series, The Fifth Act, with a teaching on Acts 9:1-22, which recounts the miraculous conversion of Saul. Before he became the Apostle Paul—God's chosen instrument to proclaim the Gospel of Christ—he was Saul—a devout Pharisee and zealous prosecutor of Christians. Still, the Son of Man came to seek and save Saul, as He did for all those who are lost.

Pride is the pathway for destruction. When someone's life is in shambles, pride often went before that.In his series Faces of Pride, Dr. Gabriel Allen Powell unpacks the complexities of pride and its many faces by challenging listeners to examine their hearts, confront uncomfortable truths, and pursue authentic humility over mere outward appearances. The message takes a close look at intellectual pride—how the need to always be right and difficulty submitting to authority can damage relationships and spiritual growth. Support the showText encounteratl to 94000 to stay up-to-date on all things Encounter.Worship with EncounterSundays at 9 AM ET | Wednesdays at 7:30 PM ETSupport EncounterText egive to 77977 Connect with EncounterFacebook | Instagram | TikTok | YouTube | WebsiteConnect with Dr. GabeInstagram | YouTube | Website

In tonight's Bible study, we pick up in Luke 11 and discuss prayer and the way God responds to our requests and provides for our needs and desires, often in ways or on timelines we do not expect. Stuart and Cliffe Knechtle, Father-Son Paster Duo's take on Blasphemy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMeNSG9dSjsFollow our new Bible Study Channel - No Wrong Questions on YouTube!https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKcJ8tSzhySkA-QndkmyFPw Support the show, access all of our episodes ad free, and get bonus OVERDOSE episodes on LOCALS - https://alternatively.locals.comMERCH - https://conspiracypilled.com/collections/all Join the DISCORD - https://discord.gg/c8Acuz7vC9 Give this podcast a 5 Star Review - https://ratethispodcast.com/conspiracypilled NORTH ARROW COFFEE - https://northarrowcoffee.co Use code CONSPIRACY10 to get 10% off your order! Abby — @abbythelibb_ on X and InstagramLiz —- @adelethelaptop on XJon —- @Kn0tfersail on XMusic by : Tyler Daniels #Luke #Prayer #Provision #Gospel #Discipleship #Jesus #PhariseesBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/alternatively-formerly-conspiracy-pilled--6248227/support.

Flowing with God or Fighting against God?   Scale of 1-10 If flowing with God is a 10—and fighting against God is a 1—where are you on that scale? Acts 4:36-37 Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means “son of encouragement”), 37 sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles' feet. Acts 5 Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property.  2 With his wife's full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles' feet. 3 Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land?  4 Didn't it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.” 5 When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened.  6 Then some young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him. 7 About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened.  8 Peter asked her, “Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?” “Yes,” she said, “that is the price.” 9 Peter said to her, “How could you conspire to test the Spirit of the Lord? Listen! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.” 10 At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband.  11 Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.   Beware of hypocrisy.   12 The apostles performed many signs and wonders among the people. And all the believers used to meet together in Solomon's Colonnade.  13 No one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people.  14 Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.  15 As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter's shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by.  16 Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by impure spirits, and all of them were healed.   17 Then the high priest and all his associates, who were members of the party of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy.  18 They arrested the apostles and put them in the public jail.    Beware of jealousy.   19 But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out.  20 “Go, stand in the temple courts,” he said, “and tell the people all about this new life.” 21 At daybreak they entered the temple courts, as they had been told, and began to teach the people. When the high priest and his associates arrived, they called together the Sanhedrin—the full assembly of the elders of Israel—and sent to the jail for the apostles.  22 But on arriving at the jail, the officers did not find them there. So they went back and reported, 23 “We found the jail securely locked, with the guards standing at the doors; but when we opened them, we found no one inside.”  24 On hearing this report, the captain of the temple guard and the chief priests were at a loss, wondering what this might lead to. 25 Then someone came and said, “Look! The men you put in jail are standing in the temple courts teaching the people.”  26 At that, the captain went with his officers and brought the apostles. They did not use force, because they feared that the people would stone them. 27 The apostles were brought in and made to appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest.  28 “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,” he said. “Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man's blood.” 29 Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than human beings!  30 The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead—whom you killed by hanging him on a cross.  31 God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might bring Israel to repentance and forgive their sins.  32 We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.” 33 When they heard this, they were furious and wanted to put them to death.  34 But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while.  35 Then he addressed the Sanhedrin: “Men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men.  36 Some time ago Theudas appeared, claiming to be somebody, and about four hundred men rallied to him. He was killed, all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing.  37 After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too was killed, and all his followers were scattered.  38 Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail.  39 But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.” 40 His speech persuaded them. They called the apostles in and had them flogged. Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. Beware of neutrality. 41 The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.  42 Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah.

11am The Parables of the Kingdom Luke 15:11-32

  760 Which of the Debtors with Love Him More, A Guided Christian Meditation on Luke 7:39-42 with the Recenter With Christ app The purpose of this podcast is to help you find more peace in  and connect with the true source of peace, Jesus Christ.  Outline: Relaxation, Reading, Meditation, Prayer, Contemplation and Visualization. Get into a place where you can sit comfortably and uninterrupted for about 20 minutes.You should hopefully not be driving or anything tensing or unrelaxing.  If you feel comfortable to do so, I invite you to close your eyes.   Guided Relaxation / Guided Meditation:   Breathe and direct your thoughts to connecting with God. Let your stomach be a balloon inflate,  deflate. Scripture for Meditation Luke 7 ESV 39 Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” 40 And Jesus answering said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he answered, “Say it, Teacher.” 41 “A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?” NET 9 Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him, that she is a sinner.” 40 So Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” He replied, “Say it, Teacher.” 41 “A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed him 500 silver coins, and the other fifty. 42 When they could not pay, he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Meditation on Scripture: When believers read this part we can be a bit incredulous to the response of the pharisee. Since we have an understanding about who Jesus is and what he knew, it seems silly to question Him. As though this pharisee was more knowledgeable than Jesus regarding this woman and her actions. There is a kind of arrogance that accompanies the judgemental heart. He had his own information and presumed himself to be wiser than Jesus. Since he knew something of the woman's crimes, that knowledge caused him to doubt Jesus.  Jesus then starts a parable that will teach a valuable lesson. It wasn't ignorance or weakness that led him to welcome this action from this woman. It was grace. When we ignore Jesus' grace, then we approach the heart position of this pharisee. There are times in our lives when we feel that we know what is just and unjust. We think we have all the facts needed to be clear on how offended to be about something and we end up in a very similar situation as this man.  Jesus invites us into a position of grace with Him and His other children. Whenever we have a feeling of moral superiority over anyone for any reason, this mindset rears its head. We are all debtors to God. None of us have the funds needed to pay that debt. He points out that He is willing to forgive us. God extends his grace to you, and the other people we judge. During this meditation may we embrace grace. Leave to God, the role of offense. Our role is not to be indignant at others but to be grateful to the one who forgives our debt and allow Him to deal with his other debts however he chooses. Meditation of Prayer: Pray as directed by the Spirit. Dedicate these moments to the patient waiting, when you feel ready ask God for understanding you desire from Him. Meditation of God and His Glory / Hesychasm: I invite you to sit in silence feeling patient for your own faults and trials. Summarize what insights you have gained during this meditation and meditate and visualize positive change in your life: This is a listener funded podcast at patreon.com/christianmeditationpodcast Final Question: If you consider the invitation and command to persevere in the faith, what change in your life does that bring to your mind?  FIND ME ON: Download my free app: Recenter with Christ Website - ChristianMeditationPodcast.com Voicemail - (602) 888-3795 Email: jared@christianmeditationpodcast.com Apple Podcasts - Christian Meditation Podcast Facebook.com/christianmeditationpodcast Youtube.com/christianmeditaitonpodcast Twitter - @ChristianMedPod  

KJV 35 But wisdom is justified of all her children. 36 And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house, and sat down to meat. 37 And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, 38 And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.

Full Text of ReadingsSolemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles Lectionary: 590, 591The Saint of the day is Saints Peter and PaulSaints Peter and Paul's Story Peter (d. 64?) Saint Mark ends the first half of his Gospel with a triumphant climax. He has recorded doubt, misunderstanding, and the opposition of many to Jesus. Now Peter makes his great confession of faith: “You are the Messiah” (Mark 8:29b). It was one of the many glorious moments in Peter's life, beginning with the day he was called from his nets along the Sea of Galilee to become a fisher of men for Jesus. The New Testament clearly shows Peter as the leader of the apostles, chosen by Jesus to have a special relationship with him. With James and John he was privileged to witness the Transfiguration, the raising of a dead child to life, and the agony in Gethsemane. His mother-in-law was cured by Jesus. He was sent with John to prepare for the last Passover before Jesus' death. His name is first on every list of apostles. And to Peter only did Jesus say, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:17b-19). But the Gospels prove their own trustworthiness by the unflattering details they include about Peter. He clearly had no public relations person. It is a great comfort for ordinary mortals to know that Peter also has his human weakness, even in the presence of Jesus. He generously gave up all things, yet he can ask in childish self-regard, “What are we going to get for all this?” (see Matthew 19:27). He receives the full force of Christ's anger when he objects to the idea of a suffering Messiah: “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do” (Matthew 16:23b). Peter is willing to accept Jesus' doctrine of forgiveness, but suggests a limit of seven times. He walks on the water in faith, but sinks in doubt. He refuses to let Jesus wash his feet, then wants his whole body cleansed. He swears at the Last Supper that he will never deny Jesus, and then swears to a servant maid that he has never known the man. He loyally resists the first attempt to arrest Jesus by cutting off Malchus' ear, but in the end he runs away with the others. In the depth of his sorrow, Jesus looks on him and forgives him, and he goes out and sheds bitter tears. The Risen Jesus told Peter to feed his lambs and his sheep (John 21:15-17). Paul (d. 64?) If the most well-known preacher today suddenly began preaching that the United States should adopt Marxism and not rely on the Constitution, the angry reaction would help us understand Paul's life when he started preaching that Christ alone can save us. He had been the most pharisaic of Pharisees, the most legalistic of Mosaic lawyers. Now he suddenly appears to other Jews as a heretical welcomer of Gentiles, a traitor and apostate. Paul's central conviction was simple and absolute: Only God can save humanity. No human effort—even the most scrupulous observance of law—can create a human good which we can bring to God as reparation for sin and payment for grace. To be saved from itself, from sin, from the devil, and from death, humanity must open itself completely to the saving power of Jesus. Paul never lost his love for his Jewish family, though he carried on a lifelong debate with them about the uselessness of the Law without Christ. He reminded the Gentiles that they were grafted on the parent stock of the Jews, who were still God's chosen people, the children of the promise. Reflection We would probably go to confession to Peter sooner than to any of the other apostles. He is perhaps a more striking example of the simple fact of holiness. Jesus says to us as he said, in effect, to Peter: “It is not you who have chosen me, but I who have chosen you. Peter, it is not human wisdom that makes it possible for you to believe, but my Father's revelation. I, not you, build my Church.” Paul's experience of the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus was the driving force that made him one of the most zealous, dynamic, and courageous ambassadors of Christ the Church has ever had. But persecution, humiliation, and weakness became his day-by-day carrying of the cross, material for further transformation. The dying Christ was in him; the living Christ was his life. Saint Paul is the Patron Saint of: Greece Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

Luke 20:1-18 - The Gospel and Me - Pastor Dan PlourdeMESSAGE NOTES:http://www.calvaryword.com/Luke/a1410.pdf

In this sermon we look at Matthew 12 and talk about the heart postures that put us more in sync with the Pharisees than with Jesus.For more teaching, visit citizenscharlotte.com/teaching

A Sermon for the Second Sunday after Trinity 1 John 3:13-24 & St. Luke 14:16-24 by William Klock Another town.  Another Sabbath.  And Jesus found himself in the synagogue reading the scriptures.  He'd spent the last few days doing the usual Messiah things: healing the sick, casting out demons, proclaiming good news to the poor, calling the people to repentance because God's kingdom was coming.  Some people loved it.  Others hated it.  If Jesus was the Messiah, he sure was doing it all wrong.  St. Luke says some of the Pharisees were determined to trap him.  They lurked everywhere he went, waiting for him to do or to say just the wrong thing that would get him into trouble.  “See!  See!” they want to shout to the crowds.  “He's a fake!”  If they were really lucky, maybe Jesus would do something downright arrestable and he'd end up in jail.  So far, no such luck. One of the leading Pharisees in this town invited him to lunch after the synagogue service.  If nothing else, it would look good to have this popular rabbi in his house, but maybe he'd get lucky.  Maybe he'd catch Jesus breaking the law red-handed.  And lo and behold as Jesus arrived at this Pharisees' house, he met a man whose limbs were swollen with dropsy.  I doubt he was invited.  The rabbis taught that dropsy was the Lord's punishment for secret sexual sins.  But in those days, doors were open, people came and went from banquets.  The poor and needy would show up looking for handouts.  On any other day, this Pharisee might have shooed away the man with dropsy, but not today.  It was a perfect opportunity to see what Jesus would do.  It was a given that Jesus healed the sick—but would he do his messianic doctoring on the Sabbath? But instead of letting himself be put on the spot, Jesus—as he so often did—flips the tables.  He takes one look at the afflicted man, then turns to the Pharisee and his torah-expert friends and puts them on the spot.  “Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath or not?” he asked.  They really should have seen that coming.  Now, no matter what they said, they'd condemn themselves.  And so while they stood there looking awkward, Jesus healed the man with dropsy and sent him away.  And then he turned back to the Pharisees and to the lawyers and said, “Suppose one of you has a son—or an ox—that falls in a well.  Are you going to tell me you won't pull him out straightaway even on the sabbath day?”  And, of course, they just looked at him.  They had nothing to say that wouldn't condemn them.  Because if their son or their ox fell in a well, even on the sabbath, of course they'd pull him out. It was hard to hear.  The Pharisees were right about a lot of things. They knew that Israel was supposed to be a bubble of God's light in the middle of a dark world.  They were the people who lived with the living God in their midst.  They were his people, graciously chosen, delivered from bondage, and made holy for just this task: to be light in the darkness.  The Pharisees were zealous for the law because they were grateful for God's grace.  Not all of the people in Israel were as faithful as the Pharisees.  The Pharisees tried to live their lives—even the little things—as if they were in the temple, in the presence of God.  They saw themselves as walking manifestations of God's light and of his kingdom—walking bubbles of what the world is supposed to be like.  And Jesus just exposed them, because as much as they were right on a lot of things, they'd forgotten the most important thing.  The law was about more than do this and don't to that.  It was about loving God and loving neighbour.  It was about showing others the same grace, the same lovingkindness that God had shown to them.  They knew this deep down, but somehow, through the generations, they'd forgotten.  Instead of being a light to lighten those lost in the dark, they were being light to shame and condemn those lost in the dark—and that's not light at all. At this point Jesus had already spoiled the party, so he just kept going.  Luke tells us in 14:7 that Jesus noticed how each guest claimed the best seat he could, so he told them that God's people should, instead, be humble.  “If you go to a wedding and just assume you can sit in the seat of honour, the host is going to tell you to move so the real guest of honour can sit there and you'll look like a fool in front of everyone.  No.  Instead, be humble.  Take the lowliest seat and let your host offer you a better place.” They were starting to figure out what Jesus was getting at.  He said, “Everyone who pushes himself forward will be humbled, and everyone who humbles himself will be honoured.”  They knew this wasn't just about banquets.  Jesus was saying that the way these leaders of Israel were behaving at banquets had become representative of how they thought of themselves in relation to God and to each other.  They acted like God had chosen them because they were special when it was really the other way around: They were special because God had chosen them.  They knew better—just like we do.  They knew God chose Israel because he is gracious.  But they didn't act like it. So Jesus says: If you truly want to represent God and his kingdom, stop thinking so loftily of yourselves, stop avoiding the people who aren't like you and who don't share your status, and start throwing banquets for the crippled, the lame, and the blind.  Rejoice when sinners repent.  Rejoice when God saves the lost.  That's what God has done for you, after all—you've just forgotten. Everyone could feel the tension in the room growing and that's when some poor, clueless soul shouted out, “A blessing on everyone who eats bread in the kingdom of God.”  Maybe he'd totally missed point.  Maybe he was just trying to defuse the situation.  Blessed, indeed, is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God, but who will be there.  That was Jesus' point.  These people were sure they'd be there, but in so many ways the way they acted and the way they saw themselves said otherwise.  They weren't the walking bubbles of the kingdom they thought they were.  For all their holiness, they were really more like walking bubbles of darkness. So in response, Jesus told them another parable.  This is our Gospel today beginning at Luke 14:16. Jesus said, “Once a man made a great dinner, and invited lots of guests.  When the time for the meal arrived, he sent his servants to say to the guests, ‘Come now.  Everything is ready!'  But the whole lot of them began to make excuses.  The first said, ‘I've just bought a field, and I really have to go and see it. Please accept my apologies.'  Another one said, ‘I've just bought five yoke of oxen, and I've got to go and test them out.  Please accept my apologies.'  And another said, ‘I've just got married, so naturally I can't come.'  So the servant went back and told his master all this. As they sat eating what was probably a simple sabbath lunch prepared the day before, Jesus brings to mind an elaborate and expensive feast—the sort of thing that took days to prepare and that cost so much that the man throwing the part would send out invitation months in advance.  And the guests responded, “Yes, we'll be there!” and he made preparations.  So much wine and so much fruit.  So much meat and so much bread.  He arranged for musicians and dancers and other entertainers.  He got his house ready.  He sent his servants around to remind everyone.  And then the day of, he put on his finest clothes, threw open his doors—and no one came.  So he sent his servant out to find out what was up with his guests.  And they all had excuses.  This one bought a field sight unseen and had to go have a look at it.  This one bought a bunch of oxen and just had to try them out.  Another just got married.  Obviously his honeymoon was more important than this man's great feast. Imagine all the effort and expense that this man invested.  It was a huge deal for him.  But no one else cared.  No one else valued all that he had done for them.  Imagine how you'd feel if no one came to your wedding banquet after they all returned their RSVP cards saying they'd be there.  Jesus says the man was understandably angry, but he wasn't going to let all his expense and preparations go to waste. ‘Go out quickly,' he said to his servant.  ‘Go into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in here the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.'  ‘Alright, Master,' the servant said, ‘I've done that—but there's still room.'  ‘Well then,' said the master to the servant, ‘go out to the highways and the hedges and make them come in, so that my house may be full!  Let me tell you this: none of those people who were invited will get to taste my dinner.' If his rich friends won't come, he'll invite the poor.  Notice that his servant literally has to bring, to compel them to come to the banquet.  Imagine what the poor people in the town thought at the invitation.  Imagine what the blind beggar sleeping in a ditch thought when this rich man's servant pulled him up and dragged him into a fancy house full of fancy food.  They would have thought it was a joke, at least until they actually got there.  That's why the servant had to compel them to come, because they knew how these things worked.  They didn't belong.  But the rich man brought them in.  He brought them all in.  And they had the time of their lives—and, I think, so did he. Now, Luke doesn't tell us how the Pharisees responded.  In the next verse he jumps to a completely different time and place.  But we know.  We know that this just made them angrier and more hostile to Jesus—not every last one of them, but most of them.  Eventually they'd be angry enough that they'd conspire to have Jesus arrested.  But why did the things that Jesus did and said at that sabbath lunch make them so angry? So remember that the Jews, and especially the Pharisees, were waiting for the Lord's return.  The prophets had talked about that day in terms of a great banquet and this banquet idea then became a common image of the coming Day of the Lord.  Israel's God would return to judge and to cast down the nations (and the unfaithful within Israel—like the tax collectors and the sinner with dropsy) and then he'd throw a great feast for his beloved people.  The closest things they had to describe it was their entry into the promised land, the land of milk and honey, and the prosperous days of King David.  It would be like that, only a thousand times more so.  When Jesus told a story of a man preparing a great feast, everyone listening knew he was talking about the Lord and how he would come to deliver his people and set everything to rights and usher in the age to come—the age when they would feast in his presence.  And now Jesus explains that he's come to throw open the doors to God's great banquet.  This is what Israel has been waiting for all these years.  And yet Jesus rebukes them.  This isn't the first time the Lord has extended his invitation.  For centuries he had called to his people through the prophets, but they had refused to hear the prophets and had even killed some of them.  The Pharisees knew that and they were committed to making sure they didn't do the same thing.  Except that's exactly what they were doing.  This time God has spared no expense.  His people had rejected and killed the prophets.  This time he's sent his own son, who humbled himself to be born in their flesh.  He's travelled through Galilee and Judea, calling everyone to the banquet, but like the people in the parable, they all have excuses. And those excuses.  One man says that he's bought five yoke of oxen sight-unseen and has to check them over.  Another has bought a field sight-unseen and needs to go have a look at it.  The third just got married and has obligations to his new bride.  All three of these excuses have echoes that go back to the law in Deuteronomy.  A man who had built a new house, but hadn't dedicated it yet; a man who had bought a field, but hadn't enjoyed its produce; and a newly married man were all legitimately excused from going off to war.  And now these guests twist those laws as excuses to reject their host's banquet.  But this is what Israel had done with the law: twisting it into something it was never meant to be.  And it's that twisting of the law that was particularly exemplified by the Pharisees.  Jesus didn't meet their expectations of the Messiah.  His banquets included too many sinners, unclean people, and outsiders.  Those were the people that the Pharisees, with their hyper-holiness, left exposed.  The Messiah was supposed to come and feast with people like them, while raining down fire and brimstone on all those unholy people.  And so they scowled as Jesus forgave sins and welcomed home the prodigals.  The Pharisees had gutted the torah of its loving heart and that was profoundly exemplified by their angry glares as Jesus healed a sick man on the sabbath.  There could be no better way to celebrate the sabbath than to dance and sing and glorify God for his lovingkindness, but instead they tisked-tisked and frowned and gave Jesus disapproving how-dare-you scowls.  The angels rejoiced in heaven to see God's mighty works—but here on earth the people most expecting it, the people most longing for it, frowned and disapproved because God didn't do his mighty works according to what they thought the rules were.  That was their attitude towards Jesus' entire messianic ministry.  The banquet had come, but now they wanted nothing to do with it.  And so Jesus warns them: I'm going to take my invitation to the unclean and to the sick and to the poor—and even to the gentiles—and having rejected me, you will have no share in God's new creation.  If I were to let you in, you'd only mess it up—because you don't know what love is. The parable was a warning.  Matthew records it too, and I expect he was thinking of his people, most of whom continued to rejected Jesus even as their judgement day was so close.  But think of Luke.  He was one of those gentiles.  He was one of those poor men, sleeping in a ditch while the rich man prepared his banquet.  Maybe he didn't even know the banquet was going to happen.  He saw the caterers coming and going, wondered what it was all about, but he never expected to be there.  He'd never received an invitation, but more importantly, he wasn't even the right sort of person.  He was a gentile—uncircumcised and unclean.  Jews didn't associate with his sort.  And then the rich man's servant came, woke him up with a kick, and said, “Hey!  My master's thrown a banquet and no one came, so now he's inviting you to know his goodness.”  For Luke, that servant seems likely to have been the Apostle Paul.  And Paul gave Luke a firm gospel shove into the banquet.  And before he knew it Luke was dancing and singing and praising and glorify the God of Israel—the God of those weird, annoying Jews—and this God was like none of the gods he'd ever known.  This God was good and loving and most of all faithful.  And even though Luke, as a gentile, had no right to be at the banquet, he was welcomed in because when he heard about this Jesus, this Messiah who had died and risen from the dead, and he believed and he was caught up in God's great redemptive act of new creation. In fact, this unexpected and undeserved invitation to the banquet so transformed Luke that before too long he joined Paul as they set sail for Europe as gospel heralds—to proclaim to the lordship of Jesus.  A few years later he would join Paul on another missionary journey.  And about ten years after they'd left Troas that first time, Luke would journey with Paul on his final voyage, the one that took him to Rome to appeal his case before Caesar.  And not only was Luke, with Paul, singing the glories of Jesus and the God of Israel through Greece and on to Rome, he also talked to those who had met Jesus and he recorded their stories and wrote his gospel and then followed it up with the book of Acts.  Luke learned profoundly what grace is.  He knew profoundly the love of God.  Because even though he was a foreigner, through Jesus, the God of Israel had made him a son and even poured his own Spirit into him—including Luke in promises he had no natural right to be part of. Brothers and Sisters, Luke is us.  Like Paul hauling him out of the ditch and sending him into the banquet, the Lord's servants have come to us, proclaiming the good news about Jesus, hauling each of us out of our own ditch, giving us a gospel kick in the pants, and (with the Spirit's help) propelling us into God's great banquet.  We need a reminder of this, because we're prone to taking our place before the Lord for granted.  The Pharisees had their way of taking their family status for granted and we have our ways, but however we do it, it always seems to stem from forgetting that whether Jew or gentile, whether we were born into the family or whether we came later, we forget that it is by the gracious lovingkindness of God—who gave his son to die so that we who were his enemies can be here as his sons and daughters.  And when we forget the lovingkindness of God, we tend to become unloving ourselves—just like the Pharisees. Remember how Paul rebuked the Corinthians saying that they could have all sorts of spiritual gifts, but without love, they were might as well just be clanging cymbals?  Well, here's how John puts that same sentiment in today's Epistle—form the third chapter of his first letter: We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the family.  Anyone who does not love abides in death.  Everyone who hates his brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has the life of the coming age abiding in him.  This is how we know love: [Jesus] laid down his life for us.  And we too ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.  Anyone who has the means of life in this world, and sees a brother or sister in need, and closes his heart against them—how can God's love be abiding in him?  Children, let us not love in word or in speech, but in deed and in truth. (1 John 3:14-18) Does God's love abide in us?  I think that all too often, we come to the banquet, to the Lord's Table.  We eat the bread and we drink the wine, but we've forgotten the amazing sacrifice of love in which we participate here.  We take the Lord's feast for granted.  Or maybe we eat it for the wrong reasons.  But we find some kind of assurance here, the Table reminds us that we belong to God and to his family, but then we go out into the world—or maybe we even interact with our brothers and sisters here—and instead of being bubbles of gospel light in the darkness, instead of being bubbles of God's future here in the present, we're darkness.  We call ourselves God's sons and daughters, we follow the rules, but there's no love.  We eat the Lord's bread and we drink the Lord's wine and we should be reminded of God's great provision for us, of his great blessings, but we ignore the needy.  Here we're reminded that in Jesus and because of his death on our behalf, we've been given life and have a share in God's new creation, but too often we keep it to ourselves instead of taking it to the highways and hedges.  Here we have the means of life, the gospel, the good news about Jesus, crucified and risen.  We know the gracious lovingkindness of God.  We don't belong here, but he's invited us anyway.  He's forgiven our sins and filled us with his Spirit and given us a promise of new creation.  And we go out to a world in need, people suffering physically and people dying spiritually, and we close our hearts against them. So, Brothers and Sisters, come the Lord's Table this morning and be reminded that in Jesus, God has humbled himself and given his life for our sake.  This is the defining act of love.  But don't just remember.  The Lord's Supper is more than an intellectual exercise.  As we eat the Lord's bread and drink his wine, we participate in that great act of love ourselves.  So be shaped, be transformed by the love of God made manifest at the cross.  Every time you come to the Table and participate in God's perfect love, let it define you more and more.  Abide in God's love and, more and more, let God's love abide in you, that you might truly be a gospel light in the darkness. Let us pray: Father, you delight to show mercy to sinners and you graciously sent your Son to suffer the punishment we deserve.  We have received your grace and have been given new life.  Remind us to set aside all thoughts of self-righteousness.  Give us opportunities now to share your gracious love with others—with each other and with the world, that everyone we encounter may be transformed by your gospel.  We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

As we continue to think about becoming a faithful steward, this next portion of Scripture addresses several kingdom principles of stewardship. As Jesus continues to instruct His disciples, we discover that there are also Pharisees nearby who were listening to this teaching. Taking a moment to address them, Jesus reprimands them for the condition of…

Luke 19:28-48New King James VersionThe Triumphal Entry28 When He had said this, He went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29 And it came to pass, when He drew near to [a]Bethphage and Bethany, at the mountain called Olivet, that He sent two of His disciples, 30 saying, “Go into the village opposite you, where as you enter you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Loose it and bring it here. 31 And if anyone asks you, ‘Why are you loosing it?' thus you shall say to him, ‘Because the Lord has need of it.' ”32 So those who were sent went their way and found it just as He had said to them. 33 But as they were loosing the colt, the owners of it said to them, “Why are you loosing the colt?”34 And they said, “The Lord has need of him.” 35 Then they brought him to Jesus. And they threw their own clothes on the colt, and they set Jesus on him. 36 And as He went, many spread their clothes on the road.37 Then, as He was now drawing near the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they had seen, 38 saying:“ ‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!'Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”39 And some of the Pharisees called to Him from the crowd, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.”40 But He answered and said to them, “I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out.”41 Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, 42 saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. 43 For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, 44 and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”45 Then He went into the temple and began to drive out those who [b]bought and sold in it, 46 saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house [c]is a house of prayer,' but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.' ”47 And He was teaching daily in the temple. But the chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people sought to destroy Him, 48 and were unable to do anything; for all the people were very attentive to hear Him.Jesus Weeps over JerusalemJesus Cleanses the Temple

I have been in cahoots with the Pharisees recently and have allowed aggression and arrogance to shape my behaviour.   I wish I had been like Ghandi and taken a more gentle approach.  It would have saved me a lot of embarrassment and reduced the Lovely Sue's frustrations with me significantly.  Luckily, I didn't go as far as forming a vigilante group and arranging an assassination like the religious leaders did in Acts 22, but I was on the same path. It's definitely something we need to keep an eye on.  

Anyone who believes in Jesus – is also meant to be an Ambassador of Christ. Now – that's not an easy role. Sometimes being Ambassador requires some tough talk. Other times it's about diplomacy – the question is, knowing when to call a spade a spade, and when to be more … circumspect.   It's Not a Shouting Match One of the most embarrassing things I've ever seen as a Christian – and I've seen it a few times – is some guy standing on a soapbox in a Mall or on a street corner, or as I shared a few weeks ago, at a Saturday morning market, screaming out the so called, "Good News" about Jesus Christ. Now, I'm a Christian and so I will sometimes stop and see if I can understand where they're coming from. And truly, most of the time, I just can't figure it out, but there they stand on their soapbox, with a Bible in their hands and surrounded by some pretty tacky placards normally, screaming the Gospel at people. Do I think God can use that? Sure – I mean, He seems to use the foolishness that I preach sometimes, in peoples' lives, so why not the guy on the soapbox on the street corner? Do I think, however, that it's the most effective way of dealing with the issue? Is it the best way to communicate the incredible love of God, the grace of Jesus Christ, the riches available to those who put their faith in Him? Is it the best way to share that Good News? Not by a long shot; not by a very long shot! And yet, it's easy ... it's so easy for us to imagine that telling people about Jesus is kind of like getting on that soapbox. That it's about two equal and opposite ideologies – God's and the world's – butting heads and locking horns. Over the last couple of weeks and again this week on the programme, we are having a chat about living our lives out as ambassadors of Christ; His emissaries, if you will. If I believe in Jesus; if you believe in Jesus, then one of the things that we have to do with our lives – one of the main things - is to communicate His love; to carry His love out into a lost and a hurting world. That's what the Apostle Paul said in writing to his dear friends at the church in Corinth – way back in the First Century. Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 20: So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us. Each one in our own way, of course but otherwise, how can we possibly claim to be His ambassadors? How can God make His appeal to this world to be reconciled with Him through someone who looks nothing like Him; who sounds nothing like Him? Now, that presents us with something of a dilemma! Does me, anyhow, because what I see is that sometimes Jesus stood up and berated people – not too often, but sometimes He did. He called the religious leaders of the day "hypocrites", "a brood of vipers" and a whole bunch of other things as well. And yet other times, He dealt with people with such tender love and compassion, it kind of moves you to tears when you read about those times. Like the woman caught in adultery – you can read her story in John's Gospel chapter 8. I mean He pretty much puts Himself between her and the angry mob that wanted to stone her to death. Go figure that out!! So how do we reconcile that? How do you or I, if we want to be like Jesus, learn to speak into this world the way that He did? When do we speak with tender love and when do we stand up to be counted and call a spade and spade, no matter who it's going to offend? I guess that's kind of where we are going this week on the programme – looking at how we speak into this world like Jesus. How do we connect His message of love and forgiveness and a new and abundant life to the needs ... the often desperate needs in the lives of the people around us? Do we call a spade a spade and get right into peoples' faces or do we speak with compassion and love? And if it's both of those, how do I know when to use one and when to use the other? Now these questions, as you can imagine, are questions that I have mulled over a lot and as I look at how Jesus communicated, He only got upset ... really upset with people on a handful of occasions. In other words it was the exception rather than the norm. He didn't see His role as God in the flesh, as being one half of a shouting match most of the time. And so far as I can see, He reserved His anger for the people who should have known better; for the people who said they believed in God – the religious leaders. Have a listen – Matthew chapter 23, beginning at verse 12: All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and then when others are going in, you stop them. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross the sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. Or when He went into the temple, John chapter 2, verse 15: Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. See, the only time Jesus really got stuck in was when He encountered hypocrisy amongst the religious leaders. When they held themselves out to be clean on the outside but actually, they were filthy on the inside – when they oppressed the people who were looking for God; when the powerful stood over the weak; when the rich exploited the widow and the poor; when the judges were dishonest to the detriment of the ordinary people. You know, when Christians, at least here in Australia where I live, sometimes stand up to politicians and publicly speak out against injustice and wrongs and decisions being made and laws being passed that just aren't in the interests of the common people, like you and me, the most common response of the politicians is that Christians and church leaders should keep their noses out of politics. I couldn't disagree more! When we see wrongs and injustices – and can I say, especially when we see those things in the church; especially when we see hypocrisy amongst God's own people – I believe it's time to stand up and to say so. This isn't a clash of ideologies; it's not a slanging match or a shouting match; it's not some irrelevant joker standing on a soapbox on a street corner - because you know something? The truth … the truth rings out, clear as a bell. Sure, people with vested interests aren't going to like it. Sure, there's going to be a cost, but God's heart ... God's heart is for justice for the poor and the oppressed. And sometimes we are called to speak out. Next, we are going to have a look at the flip side of that coin – the gentle speech of the diplomat; the ambassador.   The Diplomacy of an Ambassador Let's take a look at the flip side of the coin – the diplomacy of an ambassador because Jesus used that much more than that other really direct and angry approach. Most of us, you and I, we have blind spots. In fact, the reason they are called, "blind spots" is that we can't see them. And when it comes to our own blind spots in life, what's amazing is how defensive and touchy we are about them. It's almost that we hold them to be sacred. Let's say that our blind spot is anger – that's the one we are dealing with in our lives - and we are prone to flaring up quickly and someone comes along and points it out to us. Well, they'd better watch out! Or if it's low self-esteem and someone tries to help us with it, we can crawl even further inside our shells. So how do you help someone with their blind spots? Because my blind spots – if I don't deal with them, will end up hurting you and stunting me and you know, my friend, your blind spots, if you don't deal with yours, will end up hurting the rest of us and stunting you. That's what sin does! And before we get all judgemental: Sin! Sin! What century is this guy coming from? Let me read out to you a succinct list of the sorts of things that I'm talking about – just so there's no mistake. Now, I'm reading from the Message translation which is a really contemporary translation of the Bible, written by a guy called Eugene Peterson. It's coming from Galatians chapter 5, verses 19 to 21. Have a listen to what God calls sin: "It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on,” writes Paul. “This isn't the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit the kingdom of God." Now, you don't have to be a rocket scientist here to figure out that the sort of things that God calls "sin", which Paul is talking about here – they are exclusively the things that cause us and other people pain. And the thing that we want to do when someone's sin is causing us pain is we want to give them what for – we want to tell them exactly what we think about them and hold them to account and, if needs be, have a shouting match with them and get our own way – we do! Because what we are driven by is desire to stop our pain. What we are driven by is "wanting" to win. But here's the thing: if what we want to do is to live our lives as ambassadors of Christ then we need to handle these incredibly difficult issues, with His wisdom. And time and time again, when Jesus encountered people whose sin was ruining their lives, He dealt with them with such incredible compassion. Tax collectors back in Jesus day were a really grubby lot – they were dishonest, they rorted the system, they applied extortion and this behaviour was sanctioned by the Romans who occupied Israel – so long as the Emperor got his taxes! So, by the common Israelite, they were despised; they were considered to be the worst sinners of all; they were traitors and turncoats. Let me read you some of Jesus wisdom and how He handled them. Matthew chapter 9, verses 9 to 13 – if you have a Bible, grab it, open it up – Matthew chapter 9, verses 9 to 13: As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And so, he got up and followed Jesus. And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why is it that your teacher eats with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, Jesus said, “Those who are well don't need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have come to call not the righteous but the sinners." See, you and I, when we see people whose sin offends us or hurts us; when we are on the receiving end of their sin, the thing we want to do, naturally – it's a natural human response – is to cut them off; to cut them out of our lives. That way we are protected; that way we don't have to deal with them; that way we don't have to deal with the pain that they cause in our lives. But what Jesus is saying here is that it was precisely for these people; these sinners; these rejects, that He came and so He went and ate a meal in that house. Here He was, this veritably rock star – huge crowds were following Him - He comes into town, He decides to go and eat with what – the Mayor, the Governor, the church leaders, the synagogue leaders, the bishops? No, no – the tax collectors! Do you see this huge ... huge symbolic act that was going on here? He knew that it would do two things. That He would draw vocal criticism from the religious leaders and He'd also confer honour upon the sinners. And by conferring honour on them, He was building a relationship with them. He was accepting them just as they were; without a word of condemnation or judgement. And my hunch is that that completely changed their attitude towards Him. You know something? They had their blind spots – they were rationalising away their extortion and dishonesty and if Jesus had come and berated them or condemned them or ignored them, nothing would have changed in their lives. Instead He came and ate with them and drank with them and listened to them and took the criticism that everyone else heaped upon Him for doing that – and He built a bridge by honouring them. And so powerful was this that one of them, Matthew, became one of His disciples. He wrote the first Book of the New Testament. You want to be an ambassador of Christ – then we need to learn the language of an ambassador? Being an ambassador, as we saw on last weeks programme, about building relationships and bridges, so that when there are difficult issues that have to be dealt with, there is already a connection of relationship and trust in place, through which to deal with the problem. Think about it – who are the people in your life to whom you give a licence to talk to you about your blind spots? I know who they are in my life – it's the people who have honoured me and stuck with me and who've proven themselves to be wise and trustworthy. They're the ones with that licence! And as I look back, it was through those people – people just like that; people who had eaten with this sinner; loved this sinner; coped with my sins – it was through those very people that I encountered the transforming love of Jesus Christ. They were His ambassadors in my life. They treated me the way He treated those tax collectors and friend, without them I wouldn't be with you here right now. It makes you think.   Preaching with our Ears Today and over these last few weeks on the programme we have been chatting about what it means to be an ambassador of Christ; to live our lives - if we believe in Jesus - as one of His ambassadors. Remember, the Apostle Paul – Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 20 writes: So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, to be reconciled to God. Now, one of the things that strikes me is how strong differences are across cultures. We've had a man recently join our team here at Christianityworks – his name is Gregory. Now you may or may not have known this but we Australians are fairly direct in the way we speak. Americans on the other hand, are less so – we often joke about that. Gregory will ask where the bathroom is, whereas I'll ask where the toilet is. So we Australians are much more direct. But even more than that, Gregory grew up; spent many of his childhood years in Japan, and so he has a lot of Japanese culture on the inside too – a culture that's very much about politeness and face. And even though we have known each other for a very long time, working together now every day has been a real learning experience for both of us. When I ask him what he thinks, I want him to actually tell me what he thinks. If he thinks I'm off with the pixies on some issue, I actually want him to tell me so. Forget hierarchies – I just want his direct, honest input because that's how we will get the right results. He, on the other hand, can find that just a bit confronting because that's not the cultural background that he's come from. It's just one simple example but it's a good one. Imagine if I, as direct as I am, were sent as Australia's ambassador to the U.S. or even more so, to Japan. I'd have to learn a lot about their cultures before I could communicate effectively on a diplomatic level with those countries. I'd have to find different ways of saying things I want to say. I'd have to listen carefully to what their diplomats were saying to make sure I actually hear what they mean to say. You know something? Sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ with the people around us is no different to that. After fifteen years of walking with Jesus, I have a whole different perspective on what success is, what joy is, what happiness is, what sin is, what pain is – and all sorts of things, from someone who has never met Jesus – from someone who doesn't have that relationship with Jesus. Why would I ever imagine I could talk to them as though they have the same perspective as me? You know, for a long, long time in my life, I just wasn't ready for anyone to tell me about this Jesus. I mean, get lost! I couldn't stand those God botherers. I had a totally different perspective to theirs. I just knew that life was about making lots of money and being recognised in my field and being successful. I knew I'd find my pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. I had, back then, a whole bunch of misconceptions about life and where I wanted to be headed and what would make me happy. And I didn't need anyone to preach at me - least of all those God botherers telling me about Jesus. What I needed was someone to listen to me – what I needed was someone to understand me and help me to understand myself. I needed someone to preach to me with their ears – if that makes sense. An ambassador from one country who is about to be sent to another country has to learn about the culture and the language and the issues and the aspirations and the concerns of the country to which he or she is being sent. Someone who lives in one country and is going to be a missionary in another country, well, they have to do exactly the same. I believe the most important asset an ambassador can have are his ears and his eyes – to observe, to perceive, to listen, to see, to understand. Jesus grew up in the Hebrew culture of First Century Israel. He attended school in that culture. He knew how to speak and He had a lot of time listening. He spent time eating and drinking with tax collectors; with sinners. He spent time living with His disciples. He spent time getting to know the issues in peoples' lives. I remember when I was working in a retail buying group – quite some years ago. The chairman of our board was a man called Stan Brown – he owned a menswear store in Sydney. I remember him saying that a shop attendant who walks up to a customer and opens up with, "Can I help you?" well, he'd say it's like asking someone to marry you on the first date. First he said, you need to find out who they are, why are they here, why did they come into your store, what's their taste, what are they looking for? First you have to find a point of connection, he said, then ... then they'll be open to receive any help. As I look at people who God brought to me; the ambassadors whom He sent in my direction when I needed to meet Him, what I realise, is that they, for the most part, preached with their ears – they listened, they understood, they laughed, they cried with me and once they understood – once I really knew they understood – then I relaxed. Then I let them into my thoughts and into my heart – then they were allowed to influence me because they got me. Then they had the opportunity to show me who this Jesus really, really is. The stock-in-trade of an ambassador is diplomacy. It's about trust and communication and understanding and if you and I ... if you and I are going to be ambassadors of Jesus Christ, then that's something I believe we are going to have to learn. When I take the time to get to know you and understand you – whether or not I agree, I have just built a bridge into your life that honours you. When you feel understood, you feel secure and you experience trust and it's exactly the same back in the other direction. Friend, Jesus was an amazing communicator – He was prepared to confront the difficult issues when they needed to be confronted and He was prepared to show compassion because that's what flowed out of His heart to people in need. And it was that bridge of compassion that we can build with people. That's the bridge that, one day, Jesus will walk across. Trust me, that's the bridge and it all comes from preaching with our ears. Go figure!

Send us a textActs 15:5-21But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.”The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles. After they finished speaking, James replied, “Brothers, listen to me. Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for his name. And with this the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written,“‘After this I will return,and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen;I will rebuild its ruins,and I will restore it,that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord,and all the Gentiles who are called by my name,says the Lord, who makes these things known from of old.'Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood. For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues.”Support the show

John 5:31-36 “If I alone testify about Myself, My testimony is not true. There is another who testifies of Me, and I know that the testimony which He gives about Me is true. You have sent to John, and he has testified to the truth. But the testimony which I receive is not from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved. He was the lamp that was burning and was shining, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. But the testimony which I have is greater than the testimony of John; for the works which the Father has given Me to accomplish—the very works that I do—testify about Me, that the Father has sent Me. When Jesus called Himself the Son of Man, the Jews knew He was saying that He was the Messiah and equal with God. He explained that He had authority to execute judgment because He always sought the will of the Father. He also knew they were questioning His testimony about Himself, so having presented His case for who He is and for His actions, Jesus acknowledged that if he had no other witnesses to testify for Him, His testimony could not stand. Therefore, He cited other witnesses who could be trusted. Today we will look at the first two. First, He recognized His cousin, John the Baptist, who had testified to the truth that He is the Messiah. The people believed John was from God, and therefore was a worthy witness. Second, Jesus presented for their consideration a greater witness—His works. Even one of the Pharisees had testified on behalf of them, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” We also should have these two witnesses testifying of who we are and where we have come from—the testimony from man and the testimony of our works of love for His namesake. If we are the only ones testifying about ourselves that we have been born again and have Jesus' life living within, then Jesus said in these verses that there is no truth to the testimony. Not only should there be others who bear witness to the transformation of our lives, but our love should prove the case that we are living our lives with Jesus. Love is a sign—the fruit of the Spirit at work in our lives. Our works should testify that our faith is true. The encouragement today is that if Jesus is living in us, we love with Him, and Jesus still has the witness if His works that He is who He says He is. May our faith shine as lights in this world as we live to love with Jesus. I invite you to become a partner in our ministry. Would you pray about becoming a regular supporter of Elijah Ministries and the Live to Love with Jesus ministry? I hope you will receive the joy and benefit of "giving it forward," so others may receive encouragement to turn their hearts to God and to live to love with Jesus. You may give online or send a check to the address listed at www.spiritofelijah.com/donate.

Today, Pastor Jack teaches that the Pharisee and the tax collector both came to the temple to pray, but it was the tax collector who God listened to. The sinner's desire for mercy captured God's heart, and He answered his prayer. The post Parable Of The Pharisee & Sinner – A first appeared on Pastor Jack Hibbs.

Today's Topics: 1) Gospel - Luke 15:3-7 - Jesus addressed this parable to the Pharisees and scribes: "What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it? And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them, 'Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.' I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance." Solemnity of Most Sacred Heart of Jesus O Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy upon us! Bishop Sheen quote of the day 2) Heal thyself through simplicity and prayer https://spiritdailyblog.com/health/53317 3, 4) Vice President JD Vance's journey to Catholicism https://www.ncregister.com/news/j-d-vance-s-catholic-journey

When Jesus tears into you, He goes right for the heart.

Gospel Luke 15:3-7 Jesus addressed this parable to the Pharisees and scribes: "What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it? And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them,      'Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.' I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.” Reflection The Kingdom of God is more about finding something lost than perfection. What is lost is an awareness, an experience of God inside of us. God living in us, his Holy Spirit resonating life and love and goodness to the world. The one person to see that is more important than 99 who are just doing things that they're told to do, is much more than doing what you're told, it is about receiving what you need, and even more frightening, what you may have lost. Closing Prayer The image of Jesus carrying the sheep on his shoulders is a beautiful image of the care that God wants to give to each of us. When we wander, when we're in danger, he's there. And he's there to care for us, carry us, show us the way. Help us to trust in this good shepherd. And we ask this in Jesus' name, Amen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jesus addressed this parable to the Pharisees and scribes:"What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of themwould not leave the ninety-nine in the desertand go after the lost one until he finds it?And when he does find it,he sets it on his shoulders with great joyand, upon his arrival home,he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them,     'Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.'I tell you, in just the same waythere will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repentsthan over ninety-nine righteous peoplewho have no need of repentance."

Pastor Nelms preaches on the religious spirit that Jesus confronted in the Pharisees, and that is still alive and well in the modern church. This spirit has a form of godliness but denies the operation of the power of the Holy Spirit to transform lives. We pray you are enlightened and transformed by this message.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/renaissance-school-of-the-spirit--3241606/support

Welcome to our podcast, where we dive deep into the powerful message of John 8:12-20. In this episode, we explore Jesus' declaration, "I am the light of the world," unpacking its profound meaning and relevance for our lives today. We'll discuss the context of His words, the reactions of the Pharisees, and how this passage illuminates the themes of truth, testimony, and divine authority. Join us as we reflect on how embracing Jesus as the light can guide us through spiritual darkness and inspire us to walk boldly in faith.

Empty Hands #RTTBROS #Nightlight Empty Hands, Open Hearts: The Wisdom of Being Teachable"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction." Proverbs 1:7 (KJV)There's something profoundly humbling about Solomon's opening words in Proverbs. Here stands the wisest man who ever lived, and his first lesson isn't about accumulating facts or winning arguments, it's about posture. The posture of fear. The posture of reverence. The posture of someone who knows they don't know it all.How often do we approach God's Word like scholars defending a thesis rather than students seeking truth? We flip through familiar passages, nodding along with verses that confirm what we already believe, while our eyes glaze over the uncomfortable ones that challenge our assumptions. We come to Scripture like lawyers building a case rather than children learning to walk.But notice what Solomon calls this alternative approach: foolishness. "But fools despise wisdom and instruction." The Hebrew word for "despise" here carries the idea of rejecting with contempt, of treating something as worthless. When we use the Bible merely to rubber-stamp our existing opinions, we're essentially saying, "I already know what I need to know. God's Word is only valuable when it agrees with me."The "fear of the LORD" that Solomon describes isn't terror, it's the breathless awe of standing before infinite wisdom and recognizing our desperate need for it. It's the difference between a cocky student who thinks they could teach the class and a hungry learner who hangs on every word because they know their life depends on understanding.This fear produces a specific kind of knowledge, not just information, but transformation. When we approach God's Word as learners rather than lecturers, something beautiful happens: we discover truths that make us uncomfortable, and that discomfort becomes the very place where growth occurs.Consider how often Jesus had to correct people who thought they had God figured out. The Pharisees knew their Scriptures backward and forward, yet missed the Messiah standing right in front of them. They had turned God's Word into a weapon for their arguments rather than a mirror for their hearts."Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." Proverbs 3:5-6 (KJV)Here's the invitation: to come before God with empty hands and an open heart. To let His Word shape our opinions rather than forcing our opinions onto His Word. To embrace the uncomfortable verses alongside the comforting ones, knowing that God's wisdom often looks foolish to our limited perspective.Reflection Questions:- When you read Scripture, are you more often surprised by what you find, or do you find exactly what you expected?- What biblical truths make you uncomfortable, and how might God be using that discomfort to teach you?- How can you cultivate a "fear of the LORD" that leads to genuine learning rather than mere confirmation?Prayer:Lord, help us to come before Your Word not as experts but as students, not as judges but as those being judged by Your truth. Give us the humility to let Your wisdom reshape our thinking, even when it challenges our comfortable assumptions. May we truly fear You, not in terror, but in the awe-struck recognition that You alone have the words of eternal life. Amen.Be sure to Like, Share, Follow and subscribe it helps get the word out.https://linktr.ee/rttbros

 1 And when great multitudes stood about him, so that they trod one upon another, he began to say to his disciples: Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.Multis autem turbis circumstantibus, ita ut se invicem conculcarent, coepit dicere ad discipulos suos : Attendite a fermento pharisaeorum, quod est hypocrisis. 2 For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed: nor hidden, that shall not be known.Nihil autem opertum est, quod non reveletur : neque absconditum, quod non sciatur. 3 For whatsoever things you have spoken in darkness, shall be published in the light: and that which you have spoken in the ear in the chambers, shall be preached on the housetops.Quoniam quae in tenebris dixistis, in lumine dicentur : et quod in aurem locuti estis in cubiculis, praedicabitur in tectis. 4 And I say to you, my friends: Be not afraid of them who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.Dico autem vobis amicis meis : Ne terreamini ab his qui occidunt corpus, et post haec non habent amplius quid faciant. 5 But I will shew you whom you shall fear: fear ye him, who after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell. Yea, I say to you, fear him.Ostendam autem vobis quem timeatis : timete eum qui, postquam occiderit, habet potestatem mittere in gehennam : ita dico vobis, hunc timete. 6 Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?Nonne quinque passeres veneunt dipondio, et unus ex illis non est in oblivione coram Deo? 7 Yea, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: you are of more value than many sparrows.sed et capilli capitis vestri omnes numerati sunt. Nolite ergo timere : multis passeribus pluris estis vos. 8 And I say to you, Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God.Dico autem vobis : Omnis quicumque confessus fuerit me coram hominibus, et Filius hominis confitebitur illum coram angelis Dei :These two brothers were officers under Constantius. After the death of the Chritian Emperor, they became martyrs at Rome in the persecution of Julian the Apostate, A.D. 362.

Galatians, Grace, and Gospel: Paul's Passion and Our Freedom In this episode of the Exploring More Podcast, Michael Thompson and SJ Jennings open a brand-new journey through the book of Galatians. With passion and insight, they explore Paul's missionary travels, his dramatic transformation from Pharisee to apostle, and the cultural tension between Jewish and Gentile believers in the early church. This episode lays the foundation for the Galatians series—a deep dive into one of Paul's most emotional and urgent letters. Michael and SJ unpack themes of identity, freedom, grace, and spiritual warfare, and examine how Paul's personal encounters with the resurrected Christ shaped his bold message of salvation by grace, not by works. Alongside historical and theological context, the conversation gets personal: What are we adding to the gospel? Where are we still performing for acceptance? Through honest reflection and practical application, the hosts invite listeners to confront performance-based faith and embrace grace as the empowering presence of God. Whether you're listening alone or with a small group, this series invites you into the heart of the gospel—a life of freedom, identity, and unshakable belonging in Christ. We hope you enjoy this episode and invite you to connect with us!

The Pharisees were more concerned about their own interests and powers than the people that they were to protect and lead. How often do we do the same? How can we be more like Christ - the Good Shepherd (John 10:7-15)? 

On todays show Texas Jim and James, Chris, and Glenn talk about on the theological concept of belief in Christ and its implications for salvation. Key points included the necessity of recognizing Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, and the importance of the resurrection. The conversation explored the intellectual, emotional, and voluntary aspects of faith, emphasizing the need for propositional knowledge and the role of the Holy Spirit. The debate also touched on the historical context of the Sadducees and Pharisees' beliefs, the significance of the resurrection in the New Testament, and the practical application of these teachings in evangelism. Don't miss it!

If you Google the term “Pharisees” you find the following: “The Pharisees were a Jewish social movement and school of thought in the Levant during the time of Second Temple Judaism”. That definition is historically true, but spirituality inadequate, for Pharisees were and are not confined to the Levant or to the time of Second Temple Judaism. They can be found almost anywhere, in all places and in all religions. Modern Orthodoxy is home to many of them, for Pharisaism remains a perennial spiritual temptation afflicting the heart of man and especially of the pious.

What do a jaded weatherman and a bloodthirsty Pharisee have in common? In this episode, Jack explores the radically different—but equally transforming—power of grace in the lives of Phil Connors (Groundhog Day) and the apostle Paul. Using Paul's conversion in Acts 9 as a springboard, this solo episode highlights the stunning reality of salvation by sovereign grace. Jack walks through the biblical text, reflects on Paul's post-conversion transformation, shares the gripping story of a Japanese death row inmate turned Christian, and reminds listeners: no one is too far gone. If you've ever doubted the power of the gospel to change a life—this episode is for you.   For a limited time, The Chorus in the Chaos listeners get 10% off their first purchase at Reformation Heritage Books! Use the coupon code "CHORUS". While there, don't forget to check out Joel Beeke's new book 'How To Lead Your Family'   The Chorus in the Chaos Info: Website & Blog: www.chorusinthechaos.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chorusinthec... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chorus_in_the_chaos/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Chorusnthechaos Intro/Outro Music (by our good friend Nick Illes): https://open.spotify.com/artist/7tnsQ... Email: chorusinthechaos@email.com      

Jesus Delivered Us (2) (audio) David Eells – 6/25/25 I'm going to continue speaking about how Jesus has delivered us. When the Syrophoenician woman asked Jesus to deliver her daughter in (Matthew 15:21-28), who was “grievously vexed with a demon” (Mat.15:26) … He answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs. Deliverance is for God's people; deliverance is “the children's bread.” Those who think they can go and just cast demons out of any lost person do not know anything about deliverance. In the first place, it's a very dangerous thing to do. We are the ones who are in covenant with God, the covenant being deliverance from the curse of sin and of death (Rom.8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.). This is our covenant. We have a right to total deliverance from bondage of the flesh and from bondage to demon spirits. We have the right, but that does not mean we will attain it. The right to deliverance comes when we receive knowledge and understanding of the promises, and then we enter into those covenant promises by faith. The Bible says in (Heb.4:3) …the works were finished from the foundation of the world. So the only thing remaining is for us to enter into those works through faith. It also says in (Heb.4:2) …but the word of hearing did not profit them (the Jews), because it was not united by faith with them that heard. When the Israelites were supposed to conquer their Promised Land, all they needed to do was what Joshua and Caleb did; they believed the Word of God. Ten of the twelve spies who came back did not believe the Word of God. They believed only what they saw, felt, and heard, and those were the things they confessed. They did not enter into the Promised Land because they brought back a bad report. Let's read that. (Num.13:25) And they returned from spying out the land at the end of forty days. (26) And they went and came to Moses, and to Aaron, and to all the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the wilderness of Paran, to Kadesh; and brought back word unto them, and unto all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. (27) And they told him, and said, We came unto the land whither thou sentest us; and surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this is the fruit of it. (28) Howbeit the people that dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified, and very great: and moreover we saw the children of Anak there. (29) Amalek dwelleth in the land of the South: and the Hittite, and the Jebusite, and the Amorite, dwell in the hill-country; and the Canaanite dwelleth by the sea, and along by the side of the Jordan. (30) And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it. (31) But the men that went up with him said, We are not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we. (32) And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had spied out unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature.  (33) And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come of the Nephilim: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight. (Num.14:1) And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night. This is also a type and shadow. There are ministers today who do not believe that we can be holy. They do not believe we can overcome sin and the devil. God wants to lead us through our Promised Land or Land of Promise to come against our enemies and conquer them all. But you have no authority to cast a demon out of a person who is full of bitterness, unforgiveness, anger, and resentment. You'll waste a lot of breath trying to deliver these people because, without true repentance, they can come back. And you do not know the tormentors; you just know that they are demons. They could be demons of spiritual infirmities or they could be unclean spirits. Anyone wanting to help in the ministry of deliverance should first be filled with the Holy Spirit. We need this gift, and a person who is not filled with the Holy Spirit has no business in any deliverance ministry. In the days of the first disciples, all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they would make sure other disciples were also filled with the Holy Spirit. (Act.19:1) And it came to pass, that, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper country came to Ephesus, and found certain disciples: (2) and he said unto them, Did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye believed? And they [said] unto him, Nay, we did not so much as hear whether the Holy Spirit was [given]. (3) And he said, Into what then were ye baptized? And they said, Into John's baptism. (4) And Paul said, John baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they should believe on him that should come after him, that is, on Jesus. (5) And when they heard this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. The Holy Spirit is God's authority to know what is going on in people. We are to live under the law of the Spirit (Romans 7:6,8:2,4; etc.). The Old Testament Law, all those rules and regulations, was given to Israel because they did not have the Spirit of God, and so they didn't know what to do when they got into such-and-such a situation. It does not work that way in the New Testament because we have the Holy Spirit to lead us. (Gal.5:18) But if ye are led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law. He guides us in the ministry of deliverance from lusts of the flesh and demons that rule over the lusts of the flesh. The most common reason why people don't get delivered from demons is because they are not right with their brother, and what often happens is that not being right with their brother does not get revealed. Jesus tells us to make things right with our brother before we bring our gift before the altar; otherwise, He will turn you over to the jailer and the jailer will throw you into prison. That “jailer” is the devil. (Mat.5:23) If therefore thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, (24) leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. (25) Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art with him in the way; lest haply the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Jesus came to set the captives free. That is what we were, but that is not what we are now supposed to be. We were captive to the lusts of the flesh, representing the old man of the land, who seems like a giant to us, and were captive to the devil. We were in prison, having no hope without God. In Luke 4, Jesus was quoting from Isaiah, (Isa.61:1) The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening [of the prison] to them that are bound… Liberty to the captives has been proclaimed, but not everybody is entering into this liberty being cowards before their giant flesh. Our job as ministers of reconciliation is to minister the same thing that Jesus ministered. (2Co.5:18) But all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation. Our job is to proclaim the liberty that was given to us at the Cross. This liberty is deliverance from bondage to the flesh man, and deliverance from the demons that rule over the him. Then Jesus went on in (Luk.4:18) … to proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of the sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, (19) to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. He did not quote the second part of the sentence in (Isa.61:2) To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God… He only quoted the first half of this verse because the day He was ministering in was the day of the Lord's favor, but in these days we're coming to the second half, “the day of vengeance of our God.” While grace and liberty to the captives are being offered, to the extent that we will humble ourselves to the Word is the extent we can enter into it. The Bible says in (Rev.22:18) I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, if any man shall add unto them, God shall add unto him the plagues which are written in this book: (19) and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, which are written in this book. Even though we have authority to cast out demons, there won't be anything lasting you can do for a person who is adding to or taking away from the Word. If you think you are going to deliver them from that curse, then you're deceived, and you haven't read Deuteronomy 28 for yourself. So that person should fill themselves with the Word to keep their gift. It was not the devil who put the curse on this earth; it was God. He sent the curse because of man's rebellion. The curse is designed to motivate us to run to the Cross and to make us run to Jesus Christ, Who has the only antidote for the curse. The world likes to deceive us into thinking they can solve our curses for us, but it's not possible. All the world can do is just shove the curse around without solving a thing, and they're about to see the truth of that now. For example, diseases they thought they had wiped out are coming back, and they're coming back stronger than ever because of man's intervention. And mans so called cure is killing a lot of people.  You see, it's not possible to destroy a curse that God has put out there, but He also sent Jesus Christ to deliver us from that curse when we repent. God is so merciful that He sent the curse to turn us away from the wrath of hell. The devil will laugh at you when you want to deliver somebody who has not repented. It's a waste of breath and time, and I know because I've tried to do it. When you have people who have not repented, it doesn't matter that they call themselves “Christians.” It makes no difference, lasting deliverance from the curse comes by repentance, faith, and obedience. There's no way we can get around that.  Jesus said, (Mat.28:18)… All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. This does not leave anything for the devil if it is not given to him, since Jesus delegated His authority to us when He said, (Mat.18:18) Verily I say unto you, what things soever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and what things soever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. That was delegating authority to us; so how is it then that the devil gets his authority? He gets it from us. When we walk out from under the Blood and walk in the flesh, submitting to demon spirits, we give the devil authority. The only way to take away his authority in that case is through repentance and faith that Christ delivered us. The apostle Paul, by the Holy Spirit, turned a man over to Satan (1Co.5:5) to deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Again, you cannot get around this. If you had come to that man after Paul had turned him over to the devil, thinking to cast out all of the demons from him, you would have been deceived because those demons will literally play with you. Sometimes they'll act as if they are gone, and sometimes they will even come out, but they will not be gone for long. When you turn your head, they're right back, and if you ask them, “Hey, what are you doing? I thought I cast you out of there!” They'll tell you, “No, we have a right to be here. They want us to be here.” Or, “They invited us to be here.” I've actually heard demons say that. The demons know when they have a right, and you'll be wasting your time because they'll just deceive you. What does the Bible say will happen if you cast demons out of a person who does not repent? They may come back seven times worse. (Mat.12:43) But the unclean spirit, when he is gone out of the man, passeth through waterless places, seeking rest, and findeth it not. (44) Then he saith, I will return into my house whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. (45) Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man becometh worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this evil generation. These were apostate covenant people. Mere flesh can be dealt with by repentance and faith, but sometimes you find that even when you exercise repentance and faith, you are still not having success. That's because demonic oppression or possession is a compelling bondage that goes beyond just mere flesh. It is still repentance and faith that gets rid of the bondage of a demon spirit, but first you have to take away the “stink” that brings them. The “stink” arises when someone is giving in to the flesh or sin. “Flies” represent demons, and the “flies” come to the stink. Beelzebub, the devil, is known as the “Lord of the Flies.” Scripture calls him “Beelzebub the prince of the demons.” (Mat.12:24) But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This man doth not cast out demons, but by Beelzebub the prince of the demons. As long as you have the stink, the flies will come because they have a right to come. If you repent of the stink and get rid of the stink, that will cast out the demon or demons, and they won't be able to come back. Most deliverance happens when people do not have the foggiest idea that they have ever been delivered of anything. A lot of deliverance happens when people get saved. By the depth of their commitment to Christ, they are delivered of many demon spirits. I, and others close to me, have had demons from which we were delivered. We mentioned a man whom Paul turned over to Satan in 1 Corinthians 5:5. Did you know this man was a Christian? So what was it that caused him to be delivered over to Satan? It was the lusts of his flesh. You are protected if you walk under the Blood of Jesus Christ, but willful disobedience is not under the Blood. The Bible warns in (Heb.10:26) For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more a sacrifice for sins, (27) but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries. Willful disobedience brings judgment by the “tormentors,” who are demons. (Matthew 18:34) And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due. Demons can bring forth sickness and corruption of all kinds. When Jesus cast out demons, who was receiving that deliverance? Well, what did Jesus say? (Mat.15:24) … I was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It was not the Canaanites who lived around them; it was the Israelites, the people who had God's Covenant promise. Jesus said that casting out demons is for God's children. He did not cast demons out of the world, because deliverance is the “children's bread” (Mark 7:27). This makes it clear that the Covenant people were the only people out of whom Jesus was casting demons. Deliverance is what God has provided for His children. The world is not in covenant with God, and they have no right to deliverance, healing, or any of the promises of the New Covenant, nor the blessings of the New Testament. If it is the “children's bread,” then it is not to be given to the world; however, Jesus had to have been awed at the Syrophoenician woman's great faith. Since He was right on the edge of a new covenant, He counted her as a believer and He gave her what she asked. (Mar.7:26) Now the woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by race. And she besought him that he would cast forth the demon out of her daughter. (27) And he said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs. (28) But she answered and saith unto him, Yea, Lord; even the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs. (29) And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the demon is gone out of thy daughter. The Bible says, (Rom.1:16) For I am not ashamed of the gospel: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. You see, there's a condition in the Gospel that has to be met in order to receive deliverance, healing, soul salvation, and so forth, and that condition is believing what the Gospel says. You may ask, “Does God ever cast a demon out of somebody who does not believe or even think because they are totally possessed?” Yes, He does, but it's usually because they are among the elect and will later believe, like with the demoniac of the tombs (Mark 5:1-20; Matthew 8:28-34; Luke 8:26-39). Sometimes they are oppressing others who have a right to peace. In most cases it takes repentance and belief in order to get deliverance. (Mat.8:16) And when even was come, they brought unto him many possessed with demons: and he cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all that were sick: (17) that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying: Himself took our infirmities, and bare our diseases. This word “our” is talking about us. Christians spoke and wrote these words. Jesus took the curse from us. Did He bear the curse for the world? Yes, but it is ultimately to “whosoever will” (Matthew 16:25; Mark 8:34; Revelation 22:17; etc.) Who is “whosoever will?” The Bible says, (Joh.6:44) No man can come to me, except the Father that sent me draw him… The elect will; this is absolutely clear. The elect are those who bear fruit and were chosen before the foundation of the world, as the Bible says. (Eph.1:3) Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly [places] in Christ: (4) even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love: (5) having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, (6) to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved: (7) in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, (8) which he made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, (9) making known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him (10) unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth; in him, [I say,] (11) in whom also we were made a heritage, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will; (12) to the end that we should be unto the praise of his glory, we who had before hoped in Christ: (13) in whom ye also, having heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation,-- in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, (14) which is an earnest (down payment) of our inheritance, unto the redemption of [God's] own possession, unto the praise of his glory. The “elect” are the overcomers who will be standing at the end of their time of testing (Romans 12:21; 1 John 5:4; Revelation 2:7,11,17,26-28; 3:5,12,21; etc.). Many of the called will not, but the elect will have gotten what Jesus was talking about here because the elect are those who bear fruit. (Mat.22:14) For many are called, but few chosen. The Greek word here for “chosen” is the same word for “elect,” eklektos. Many are the called, as we see from when God called the Israelites out of Egypt (Exodus 3:10; Hosea 11:1-7). He said in (Mat.2:15) … Out of Egypt did I call my son. He also said in (Jud.1:5) Now I desire to put you in remembrance, though ye know all things once for all, that the Lord, having saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. You see, “calling” is not “election”; “calling” is on the way to election. “Calling” just means “an invitation,” from the Greek word klētos, “to invite.” Jesus has invited us to partake of the Body and Blood of Christ. If we do this, we will not have any problem bearing fruit. 2Pe 1:10  Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never stumble:  The Bible says, (2Co.7:1) Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. So you may be wondering how a Christian can have a demon and the Holy Spirit at the same time. It's simple; let me explain. The body is a temple. (1Co.6:19) Or know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have from God? and ye are not your own; (20) for ye were bought with a price: glorify God therefore in your body. The ancient manuscripts say, “a temple of the Holy Spirit” because the Temple was threefold (Exodus chapters 25-27). It had an outer court, a holy place, and the Holy of Holies, and the outer court was called the “Court of the Gentiles” (Revelation 11:2). Were Gentiles holy? No, and we have proof from Old Testament examples that evil people did come into the outer court. They even laid hands on the horns of the altar to receive mercy (1 Kings 1:50; 2 Chronicles 23:12;15; Matthew 23:35), and sometimes they found mercy and other times they did not. So we see that evil could come into the outer court, but it could not come into the Holy of Holies. Some people like to say that the Spirit of God will not dwell in an unclean temple. If you're talking about the flesh, the flesh is unclean and it's also the enemy of God. (Rom.8:6) For the mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace: (7) because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be: (8) and they that are in the flesh cannot please God. In fact, when the Bible talks about the lusts of the flesh, those lusts have the same nature as the demons do because the flesh is unclean and it's not going to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. (1Co.15:50) Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Only the “High Priest” Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, dwells in your “Holy of Holies,” your spirit. The demons do not enter into the spirit. Except for the High Priest, anybody who came into the Holy of Holies was struck dead. (Lev.16:2) And the Lord said unto Moses, Speak unto Aaron thy brother, that he come not at all times into the holy place within the veil, before the mercy-seat which is upon the ark; that he die not: for I will appear in the cloud upon the mercy-seat. No evil could go into the Holy of Holies because that was the place of only the High Priest. The Holy Spirit is not dwelling in an unclean temple when He dwells in your spirit. Your spirit is clean. He has to give you a new spirit before He can even come and dwell there. You need to be born again before He can come and dwell in that spirit. (Gal.4:6) And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Demons come into the flesh with the desire to possess your soul, which is your mind, will, and emotions. The Lord comes into your spirit with the desire to possess your soul. The warfare is between spirit and flesh; God and demons seek to possess the soul. (Act.10:38) Even Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him. We've been lied to about the supposed difference between “possession” and “oppression.” “Possession” is when the demon is reaching out of the flesh and into the soul, taking control of the mind, the actions, and the character of the person. If you've ever seen a schizophrenic, where one moment they are given over to the lusts of the flesh, and the next minute they seem to straighten right back up. Is that person possessed or not? They are possessed when that happens and they are not possessed when the demon backs off. The demon is still in them; he hasn't gone anywhere. All he's done is just back out of the soul into the flesh, becoming dormant, and he remains there until the next time he wants to take control. The Holy Spirit is the same way. Just because you have the Holy Spirit does not mean you are being led by the Holy Spirit. Having the Holy Spirit is not even going to save you! (Rom.8:14) For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. You can have the Holy Spirit, but not be led by Him, and it's the same with demons. You can have demons, without the demons being in control. We should desire to give possession of this “land” to the spiritual man (Hebrews 6:4-8). God, through the Spirit, gives our spiritual man the power to possess our soul. When you walk after the flesh, the Bible says you must die. (Rom.8:13) For if ye live after the flesh, ye must die; but if by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live. When you walk after the flesh, you permit the demon's power to reach into your soul to take control of your thinking, actions, and character, your very nature. In the world they call this “schizophrenia,” but it's demon possession. There is only one nature that is the “real you”. The demons like to come into Christians and impart their own thoughts to deceive them into thinking that this is their nature. The demons give themselves up to the lusts of the flesh and then rule the Christians by speaking in their minds and blending into their characters so that they do not even know that it is them. Christians think it's themselves, but those demons can be forced to manifest by the Authority of God. Some of you may have heard or seen the Gospel being preached and demons manifesting in Christians. They are forced to manifest because they hate the Gospel. They hate tongues and they hate the Blood of Jesus. They hate all things that are Godly. If you learn the things that they hate, those are your best weapons against them. Some of you have already found out that these demons can hide in you very tactfully, convincing you that their thinking is your thinking. Thoughts coming through your mind might seem to be yours, but when forced to manifest by the Word of God, you realize they're coming from a demon. Where the Word of God is tormenting these demons, they will manifest, and this is exactly what happened in Jesus' Presence. The Word of God forced them to manifest. (Mat.8:28) And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gadarenes, there met him two possessed with demons, coming forth out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man could pass by that way. (29) And behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time? If you have a repentant person and you command these demons to give their name and to manifest in some way, they will do it. If they have never been commanded to manifest, you may have never actually felt their presence. When they are commanded to do so, they will literally speak out of a person and give their name, but they'll also argue with you and lie to you. They will do all the things that demons like to do. Now it's helpful to have other people alongside, but you can deliver yourself because we have that authority. (2Co.7:1) Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. If you suspect something is more than just flesh, then exercise your authority and command those demons to go. Sometimes they will speak in your mind, or you'll get their name in your mind. Sometimes their names will come right out of the person's mouth. Many times, a strong, compelling desire turns out to be a demon, not the flesh, but the devil wants you to think that it is only flesh. We are in the process, called “sanctification,” of being delivered of two things: defilement of flesh and spirit (2 Corinthians 7:1). But is your spirit defiled? If you are a Christian, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in a new, clean spirit Who is called the Spirit of Christ in you. (Gal.4:6) And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. This is a Christian. God says, (Eze.36:26) A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. 27  And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes… Notice, a “new spirit” and then “My Spirit” or the Holy Spirit. You do not have a defiled spirit, so why does Scripture say to Christians, “let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit”? It's because this defilement of spirit is talking about the defilement of you by demon spirits. This is not talking about the defilement of your spirit because your spirit is the only part of you that is totally white and clean. If it is not, you are not a Christian. The defilement that we have the authority to get rid of is the defilement of our souls by the flesh and evil spirits. Do you know what “self” is in the Bible? It is a synonymous term for the word “soul.” One Gospel will say “self” and another Gospel will say “soul” in a same text in another Gospel. “Self” and “soul” are the same. We want to be delivered of all defilement of our soul by both flesh and spirits. (Col.3:5) Put to death therefore your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry; (6) for which things' sake cometh the wrath of God upon the sons of disobedience: (7) wherein ye also once walked, when ye lived in these things; (8) but now do ye also put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, railing, shameful speaking out of your mouth: (9) lie not one to another; seeing that ye have put off the old man with his doings, (10) and have put on the new man, that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him. The Bible tells us in (Eph.4:27) Neither give place to the devil. The Greek word “place” there is a geographic term meaning “region” or “area.” This is the exact thing God talked about when He was cleansing the Promised Land from the pagan tribes that controlled it. (Deu.7:1) When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and shall cast out many nations before thee, the Hittite, and the Girgashite, and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite, seven nations greater and mightier than thou… All these “ites” had their demonic “gods” (Deuteronomy 32:17). If you leave a place for the lusts of the flesh to live in your land, you are going to sin because they will make you sin, so we are not to leave them any place in our land. (Deu.7:2) And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them up before thee, and thou shalt smite them; then thou shalt utterly destroy them: thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them; (3) neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. (4) For he will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and he will destroy thee quickly. When Jesus delivered the woman with a “spirit of infirmity” in (Luke 13:11), He said in (Luk.13:16) And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan had bound, lo, [these] eighteen years, to have been loosed from this bond on the day of the sabbath? Jesus called this woman a “daughter of Abraham,” and you might think, “Well, He's just talking about Jews,” yet Jesus never called the literal, physical Jews “daughters and sons of Abraham.” These Jewish leaders and their followers were professing Abraham to be their father, but Jesus totally disagreed with them because a daughter or son of Abraham, like the woman He loosed, is someone who is truly in covenant with God. (Joh.8:38) I speak the things which I have seen with [my] Father: and ye also do the things which ye heard from [your] father. (39) They answered and said unto him, Our father is Abraham. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham. Here's the point: “Ye would do the works of Abraham.” (Joh.8:40) But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I heard from God: this did not Abraham. (41) Ye do the works of your father. They said unto him, We were not born of fornication; we have one Father, [even] God. (42) Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I came forth and am come from God; for neither have I come of myself, but he sent me. (43) Why do ye not understand my speech? [Even] because ye cannot hear my word. (44) Ye are of [your] father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and standeth not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof. Paul said the same thing; he said that people who walk by faith are the sons of Abraham. (Gal.3:7) Know therefore that they that are of faith, the same are sons of Abraham. Jesus never disagreed with this. This woman who was loosed, got her deliverance because she was a daughter of Abraham. The people who were coming to Jesus were Covenant people, just as we are Covenant people. They had the right of the Covenant and therefore they got healing and deliverance from God. We are proving ourselves through this “trial in the wilderness,” through the things that we're going through, to be either sons of Abraham or sons of the devil. The Bible says in (1Jn.2:6) He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also to walk even as he walked. Sons of the devil in the world have no Covenant rights, and you're just casting the children's bread to the dogs when you try to deliver an unrepentant person (Mark 7:27). You'll have the same problem, too, if you're trying to give deliverance to a Christian who is unrepentant. We are proving who are overcomers, those who truly belong to Christ. They are going to be the ones who are proven to be the Elect of God (Philippians 2:12; 2 Peter 1:10). We can prove ourselves just as much sons of the devil by our actions as these people proved themselves sons of the devil by their actions. Jesus pointed out to them, “No, if you were of your father Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham!” Amen.

Listen to the Message from Sunday, June 22, 2025 Honor's Reward: How Doors of Blessing Open   Summary of "Power of the Lord Always Present" b Luke 5:17, Now it happened on a certain day, as He was teaching, that there were Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting by, who had come out of every town of Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was present to heal them. 18 Then behold, men brought on a bed a man who was paralyzed, whom they sought to bring in and lay before Him. 19 And when they could not find how they might bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the housetop and let him down with his bed through the tiling into the midst before Jesus. 20 When He saw their faith, He said to him, “Man, your sins are forgiven you" This message highlights the truth that God's power is always present wherever His presence is. Drawing from Luke 5:17, where Jesus taught among Pharisees and religious leaders, the Scripture notes, “the power of the Lord was present to heal them.” However, healing didn't happen automatically—it required faith and action. The story of the paralyzed man lowered through the roof by his friends shows how persistent, active faith can tap into God's healing power. Jesus responded not to passivity, but to visible faith. He forgave the man's sins, resulting in both spiritual and physical healing, demonstrating that healing of the soul and body are often connected. Key takeaways: The Lord's power is always available when He is present. That power must be activated by faith. Faith requires action—not just belief, but effort and persistence. Jesus doesn't always “pray” for healing; sometimes He simply declares wholeness. Let your actions reflect faith, as “faith without works is dead” (James). The message ends by encouraging listeners to keep this truth in mind daily and to check out the related message, “Honor's Reward: How Doors of Blessing Open.”

Acts 15:1, 2b-4a, 5-12 - [After many Gentiles came to faith in Jesus,] some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” And … Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed … But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.” The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the Gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as He did to us, and He made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.” And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.

Today's Scripture passages are 2 Samuel 23:8-39 | 1 Chronicles 11:20-47 | Matthew 19:1-12 | Mark 10:1-12.Read by Ekemini Uwan.Get in The Word with Truth's Table is a production of InterVarsity Press. For 75 years, IVP has published and created thoughtful Christian books for the university, church, and the world. Our Bible reading plan is adapted from Bible Study Together, and the Bible version is the New English Translation, used by permission.SPECIAL OFFER | As a listener of this podcast, use the code IVPOD25 for 25% off any IVP resource mentioned in this episode at ivpress.com.Additional Credits:Song production: Seaux ChillSong lyrics written by: Seaux Chill, Ekemini Uwan, and Christina EdmondsonPodcast art: Kate LillardPhotography: Shelly EveBible consultant: JM SmithSound engineering: Podastery StudiosCreative producers: Ekemini Uwan and Christina EdmondsonAssistant producer: Christine Pelliccio MeloExecutive producer: Helen LeeDisclaimer: The comments, views, and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the host and/or the guests featured on the podcast and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of InterVarsity Press or InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

Is the story of the prodigal son really just about one wayward child, or does it hold a deeper message for all of us? Join me, as we navigate the often overlooked emotions and themes surrounding the elder brother in this classic parable. While the tale has traditionally spotlighted the younger son who strayed, our conversation today challenges that narrow interpretation, unveiling a narrative rich with lessons on jealousy, misunderstanding, and the transformative power of forgiveness.We'll explore how the elder son mirrors the Pharisees of Jesus' time, trapped in resentment and unable to rejoice in redemption. Through our discussion, you'll see how the father's patient love extends to both siblings, prompting us to consider our own responses to grace and mercy. This episode encourages us to reimagine our worship, moving beyond rigid religious practices to embrace a more joyous and inclusive celebration of faith.Join us as we rediscover what this parable really says about forgiveness, maturity, and the love that always runs toward us.Key Takeaways:The Parable of the Prodigal Son is about two sons, not just one, highlighting the different attitudes and spiritual conditions they represent.The first son's journey from estrangement to homecoming reflects personal redemption and grace as he returns to his father's embrace.The second son's anger and misunderstanding symbolize internalized religious stagnation and refusal to rejoice in spiritual celebrations.Parallels between the parable's second son and modern-day religious leaders who resist participative and dynamic worship experiences.A strong call for believers to break free from religious stagnation and join in celebration, reviving their relationship with God.

Welcome to The Daily, where we study the Bible verse by verse, chapter by chapter, every day. Today's shout-out goes to Jim Travato from Brentwood, CA. Jim, your partnership with us through Project 23 is helping us and others remember what God has done in the past and will do in the future. This study is for you. Our text today is Mark 8:14-21: Now they had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. And he cautioned them, saying, “Watch out; beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” And they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread. And Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” They said to him, “Twelve.” “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” And they said to him, “Seven.” And he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?” — Mark 8:14-21 The disciples forget bread. Again. And as they're grumbling about lunch, Jesus gives them a deeper warning: “Beware the leaven of the Pharisees and Herod.” But they miss the point. They think Jesus is mad because they forgot the food. Jesus isn't talking about carbs. He's talking about corruption. Leaven was a metaphor. Just a pinch of it affects the whole loaf. And just a pinch of pride, hypocrisy, and unbelief—like that of the Pharisees and Herod—can corrupt the soul. But the disciples are stuck in their heads on bread. So Jesus hits them with a list of questions: Don't you understand? Are your hearts hardened? Didn't you see the miracles? Don't you remember what I did with five loaves? With seven? They had seen the power of Jesus multiply what little they had. But somehow—they still worried there wouldn't be enough. The danger wasn't the lack of bread—it was the lack of belief. And that's the same danger we face today. You've seen Jesus provide—but you still stress about tomorrow. You've seen Jesus' power—but still act like it's all up to you. You've watched Jesus move—but forget by the time the next challenge hits. That's spiritual amnesia. And Jesus calls it out in the lives of his disciples and ours. But Jesus is not frustrated by your questions. He's grieved by your forgetfulness. Because when you forget what God has done, you start depending on yourself again. So, pause today. Remember the baskets in your life. Remember the miracles he has done in the past. Remember what he did with your “not enough.” And let that memory build your trust today. Then, keep believing and moving forward. #RememberGod, #FaithNotFear, #Mark8 ASK THIS: What “basket moments” have you forgotten? How does forgetting God's past provision affect today's faith? What does “leaven” look like in your life today? How can you train your heart to remember? DO THIS: Write down three things God has provided for you this year—and thank him for each one. PRAY THIS: Jesus, forgive me for forgetting Your past faithfulness. Help me remember who You are—and trust You with what's next. Amen. PLAY THIS: “Do It Again” by Elevation Worship.

758 She Washed His Feet With Her Hair, A Guided Christian Meditation on Luke 7:35-38 with the Recenter With Christ app The purpose of this podcast is to help you find more peace in  and connect with the true source of peace, Jesus Christ.  Outline: Relaxation, Reading, Meditation, Prayer, Contemplation and Visualization. Get into a place where you can sit comfortably and uninterrupted for about 20 minutes.You should hopefully not be driving or anything tensing or unrelaxing.  If you feel comfortable to do so, I invite you to close your eyes.   Guided Relaxation / Guided Meditation:   Breathe and direct your thoughts to connecting with God. Let your stomach be a balloon inflate,  deflate. Scripture for Meditation Luke 7 KJV 35 But wisdom is justified of all her children. 36 And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house, and sat down to meat. 37 And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, 38 And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. NASB 35 And yet wisdom is vindicated by all her children.” 36 Now one of the Pharisees was requesting Him to eat with him, and He entered the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. 37 And there was a woman in the city who was a sinner; and when she learned that He was reclining at the table in the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster vial of perfume, 38 and standing behind Him at His feet, weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears, and she wiped them with the hair of her head, and began kissing His feet and anointing them with the perfume. Meditation on Scripture: If we are not careful or thoughtful we can end up with a misunderstanding of what this message teaches. First we must be careful not to mix up the stories of this occurring. There is another one that shows up later. Jesus corrects people regarding their misunderstanding of the action this woman performs. Jesus accepted her tribute from this woman for various reasons. Jesus calls out the hypocrisy of human judgment. There is certainly a value in this lesson but I think for the moment I would like to focus on the woman and her actions. The humility and love represented are so meaningful. Jesus will go on to compare the actions of this woman to His host but the reason he does so is the devotion this woman displays.  There is a deep devotion she shows. So in this situation it can be helpful to consider ourselves in this role. Do we feel the kind of love and devotion that would inspire us to humble ourselves in front of others? Do we worry too much about what other people would think instead of truly lifting our eyes to glorify God? As you read about her act to glorify God you can really connect with how meaningful Jesus was to her. THis was not a passive act of regular gratitude. This was a profound and gut wrenching description of the value this woman placed on Jesus.  So as we reflect on the disinterested perspective she took on her own pride we have something to reflect on. Are we willing to similarly pour out our love for God? How can we demonstrate his same kind of gratitude for the Lord? Put your heart and mind on the things that God calls to you as things to show Him gratitude.  Meditation of Prayer: Pray as directed by the Spirit. Dedicate these moments to the patient waiting, when you feel ready ask God for understanding you desire from Him. Meditation of God and His Glory / Hesychasm: I invite you to sit in silence feeling patient for your own faults and trials. Summarize what insights you have gained during this meditation and meditate and visualize positive change in your life: This is a listener funded podcast at patreon.com/christianmeditationpodcast Final Question: If you consider the invitation and command to persevere in the faith, what change in your life does that bring to your mind?  FIND ME ON: Download my free app: Recenter with Christ Website - ChristianMeditationPodcast.com Voicemail - (602) 888-3795 Email: jared@christianmeditationpodcast.com Apple Podcasts - Christian Meditation Podcast Facebook.com/christianmeditationpodcast Youtube.com/christianmeditaitonpodcast Twitter - @ChristianMedPod

The Pharisees created extra laws around God's commands to bring the Messiah and restore Israel as a blessing to the world. But when Jesus comes, he shows that he is the fulfillment, authority, and purpose of the law. In this podcast episode, David walks through three stories in Mark where Jesus demonstrates His lordship over the Sabbath and reveals Himself as the long-awaited bridegroom, King, and God of the new creation.