Text: Luke 17:11-19 | Listen to Message Is Jesus Your Sugar Daddy? It’s a familiar enough children’s Bible story: Ten lepers were healed but only one bothered to return and actually thank Jesus. The standard lesson is something like, “Don’t be like the nine; be like the one and live with a heart of gratitude.” Sure, […]

Text: Luke 17:1-10 | Listen to Message Helping Others with Their Sin In stark contrast to the religious culture of his day, Jesus envisioned a culture in which everyone made it easier on everyone else not to sin – and easier to find true forgiveness when they did. This isn’t wishful thinking or pie-in-the-sky theology. Jesus […]

Text: Luke 16:19-31 | Listen to Message Is Hell Fair? “How could a loving God send people to hell?” This is perhaps our culture’s greatest objection to Christianity: it’s impossible for many to fathom why anyone would choose to believe in a God who punishes sinners…forever. Ironically, the hell most people don’t believe in bears little […]

Text: Luke 16:14-18 | Listen to Message A Primer on Self-Justification “You justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts.” —Luke 16:14 What does it mean to justify ourselves – and how and why do we all do it? What? “To justify” literally means “to declare righteous.” Thus, self-justification refers to our attempts to acquit […]

Text: Luke 16:1-13| Listen to Message Master Your Money or It Will Master You Jesus famously stated that “no one can serve two masters … you cannot serve both God and money.” Philip Graham Ryken notes: “We would prefer to do the very thing Jesus tells us we cannot do: serve God and money. If only […]

Text: Luke 15:1-2, 11-32| Listen to Message Two Ways of Rejecting the Father Spoiler Alert: The Parable of The Prodigal Son is not exclusively – or maybe even primarily – about the prodigal son. In fact, Jesus himself introduced the parable this way: “There was a man who had two sons…” (Luke 15:11). Yes, the first […]

Text: Luke 15:1-10| Listen to Message How’d You Get Lost? Jesus’ stories about the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost (prodigal) son are some of his best-known parables – and for good reason: all three illustrate the Good News that God loves to pursue and find the lost. In fact, restoring the lost is […]

Text: Luke 14:25-35 | Listen to Message The Startling Demands of Jesus Imagine what would happen today if a political candidate abruptly announced to a packed arena, “Many of you are only following me because of what you think I will do for you, but here’s the thing: unless you’re willing to hate your families, renounce […]

Text: Luke 14:1-24 | Listen to Message A Life Of Disinterested Goodness It took Jesus all of one dinner to completely dismantle the self-absorption of the Pharisees. Everything they did, he pointed out, was calculated to massage their enormous egos and to enhance their status. They were obsessed with rules – and suspect interpretations along with […]

Text: Luke 13:22-35 | Listen to Message The One Door That’s Different Our culture tends to make two assumptions about the inclusiveness or exclusiveness of God’s salvation: Assumption #1: If God is inclusive, that means everyone’s going to be saved regardless of what door or path they used to get to him. There are more than […]