After feeding, healing, and preaching to His own Jewish people, Jesus makes a dramatic decision. He leaves the area of the Jews and enters the region of the outsiders, the Gentiles. Read Matthew 15:21-28. How are we to understand this story? In many ways, this isn’t an easy story to read, because we’re without the … Continue reading –>
“Therefore the LORD said: ‘Inasmuch as these people draw near with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but have removed their hearts far from Me, and their fear toward Me is taught by the commandment of men’” (Isa. 29:13, NKJV). Though this was the Lord speaking to ancient Israel, what message is here … Continue reading –>
After the miraculous feeding, Jesus ordered His disciples into their boat (Matt. 14:22). He wanted them away from the mayhem and pressure. A good teacher will shelter his students from what they’re not yet ready to handle. “Calling His disciples,” writes Ellen G. White, “Jesus bids them take the boat and return at once to … Continue reading –>
A few years ago my wife and I hiked a rugged trail that was longer than we could handle. Near the end of the hot summer day she sat down at a resting place where the trail crossed a country road, while I trudged the last mile of the loop to our truck and then … Continue reading –>
One of the most well-known acts of Jesus is the feeding of the five thousand, “besides women and children” (Matt. 14:21). Yet, as with everything else in the New Testament, this story doesn’t occur without a context that helps us understand even more deeply the meaning of what Jesus had done. Read Matthew 14:1-21. What … Continue reading –>
Read for This Week’s Study: Matt. 14:1-21, Exod. 3:14, Matt. 14:22-33, Isa. 29:13, Matt. 15:1-20, Matt. 15:21-28. Memory Text:“‘I, the LORD, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles’” (Isaiah … Continue reading –>
“With or without religion,” someone said, “you would have good people doing good things, and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” In the 1600s, French mystic Blaise Pascal famously warned “men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious … Continue reading –>
As should be clear from the Gospel records, Jesus didn’t abolish the Sabbath. If anything, He restored the Sabbath, freeing it from the cumbersome burdens people had placed on it. Hundreds of years later Christians were still resting and worshiping on Sabbath. The fifth-century historian Socrates Scholasticus wrote: “Almost all churches throughout The World celebrated … Continue reading –>
It is very interesting to read through the Gospels and to see all the times that the writers recorded the Sabbath incidents between Jesus and the religious leaders. Why would all four Gospel writers include, in some cases numerous accounts, of the struggle that Jesus had with the leaders over Sabbath keeping if the Sabbath … Continue reading –>
This was the climate that Jesus was ministering in: rigid impossibilities required for Sabbath keeping that ruined the original purpose of the Sabbath. It was to be a day to rest from our work; a day to worship God and fellowship with other believers in ways that we cannot do during the work week; a … Continue reading –>
