This morning we are going to look at all four of the accounts of the Triumphal Entry and the three accounts of Jesus clearing the Temple. I say three because the Gospel of John does not include that in his account – only the Triumphal Entry. First, look at the way each one describes the way Jesus is met when he enters the city. In Mark and Matthew, the crowds of those who followed him go before him laying down their garments, palm leaves and even branches from trees. In Luke it is a little different in that it is a multitude of disciples – not just crowds. They are…

Peter’s declaration of Jesus as Messiah in Mark 8 is our lesson this morning but I want us to look at it from the perspective of Peter’s vision in Joppa in Acts 10. The revelation is similar because it forces Peter to change in spite of everything he has been taught up to this point. It forces him to question his deepest beliefs about God. It is not only a revelation but an earthquake. When President Obama renewed diplomatic and trade relations with Cuba he said, “the United States will not be imprisoned by the past.” As I remembered and thought about the lesson this morning, I realized there is…

Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great, hears about the miracles done by Jesus and his disciples.  While he is the son of a great and greatly bad man, he is only a shadow of his father. The Scottish preacher Andrew MacLaren described him this way: “This Herod was a son of the grim old tiger who slew the infants of Bethlehem. He was a true cub of a bad litter, with his father’s ferocity, but without his force. He was sensual, cruel, and infirm of purpose.” That describes him perfectly.  His father was one of the most powerful kings of the Roman Empire – called King of the…

The purpose of trials is to produce genuine faith – not just testing.  It is refining – to remove everything that looks like faith but isn’t. I was on the board of Christianity Today for eleven years and have read the board notes from the earliest years.  It has always been an unrelenting process of solving problems and overcoming obstacles.  Circulation challenges, finances, personnel, board issues.  It is a history of constant trials – not relief from them.  There is a purpose to trials.  God accomplishes through trials what cannot be done through success or easy times. As you know, I like Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search For Meaning.”  Not because…

We are partial to short phrases that help us make decisions. “Do the right thing” is popular at the moment. Google coined, “Don’t do evil.” I grew up with, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.” All of those sound good until you find yourself in a situation that is not resolved so easily. You’ve heard me say before that for a couple of reasons I have questions about the phrase, “What Would Jesus Do?” First, he had abilities to do things we do not.  He could walk on water, heal the sick, give sight to the blind, raise the dead and, as in this passage, heal…

As you know from last week, one of my favorite stories of redemption and late bloomers is that of Mark. Unlike John and Matthew he was not a disciple or an apostle. Unlike Luke, he was not a Gentile observer of the early Church and he did not travel, except briefly, with Paul. He was the young man who ran away naked from Gethsemane, deserted Paul and Barnabas on the first missionary journey, was mentored by Peter in Rome and then martyred in Egypt. Most scholars believe that the gospel was written from Rome where his main source was Peter and Mark was, in a sense, taking dictation. You get…

One of the hallmarks and non-negotiables of American democracy is the orderly transition of power and when that is threatened it jeopardizes the foundations of our entire society. It is the same for any society and when a people cannot trust in their government to do that then there is chaos and violence. It is not only true now but it was true in the time of Jeremiah – even though Israel was far from a democracy. In most cases the power of the king passed from father to son until the nation was in its last days. That is where we are now. No longer is the throne passed…

One of the challenges in the book of Jeremiah is the way it is organized. It is not linear with one chapter beginning at a certain time and the next chapter following where that left off. It is more like snapshots of different times in your life. We could show you at ten years old and then skip to when you were married. After that we see who you were at seventeen and then jump to your 25th wedding anniversary. It would be hard to piece together your life, wouldn’t it? We are used to albums and stories that take us from start to finish in a logical way. That…