God's Love for us

Who Were the Pharisees and Why Did They Oppose Jesus If you have read the Gospels you have encountered them repeatedly, a group of religious leaders who seem to appear at the worst possible moments, questioning Jesus, challenging Him, testing Him and ultimately conspiring to have Him executed. The Pharisees are often portrayed as the villains of the Gospel story, the opponents of grace, the enemies of everything Jesus stood for. And while their opposition to Jesus was real and consequential there is a much more nuanced, more historically accurate and ultimately more personally challenging story to be told about who the Pharisees actually were. Because here is the uncomfortable truth that we need to face honestly as we study this group: the Pharisees were not irreligious pagans who rejected God. They were deeply religious, highly educated, sincerely committed men who believed passionately that they were defending the truth of Scripture and the honor of God. They were the most respecte...

What Did Jesus Mean by I Am the Way the Truth and the Life There are moments in Scripture that stop you completely in your tracks, sentences so bold, so absolute, so unlike anything a merely good teacher would ever say that you cannot read them neutrally. You must either take them seriously or dismiss them entirely. There is no comfortable middle ground. John 14:6 is one of those moments. Jesus said to His disciples "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Six words that have shaped the faith of billions of people across two thousand years of history. Six words that have been celebrated, debated, misunderstood and misrepresented in equal measure. Six words that Jesus spoke not to a crowd of strangers but to His closest friends on the last night of His earthly life. To truly understand what Jesus meant when He said these words we need to understand the context in which He said them, what each of the three claims actually means...

What Does It Mean to Carry Your Cross Of all the things Jesus ever said to His followers, few statements have been more quoted, more misunderstood and more watered down than this one: "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me." Luke 9:23. We put it on bumper stickers, embroider it on pillowcases and quote it in sermons. But do we really understand what Jesus was saying when He spoke those words? Here is something important to remember about the moment Jesus said these words. He said them before His own crucifixion. His disciples had never seen Him die on a cross yet. They had no idea what was coming. But the people listening to Jesus that day understood exactly what a cross meant in first century Roman culture, and it had nothing to do with a difficult situation or a personal inconvenience. In the Roman world a cross meant one thing and one thing only. Public execution. Shame. The complete surrender of your own life. ...

What Happened to the Disciples After Jesus Died Have you ever experienced a loss so devastating that it felt like your entire world had collapsed? A moment when everything you believed in, everything you had built your life around, seemed to disappear in an instant? That is exactly where the disciples found themselves in the hours and days following the crucifixion of Jesus. The man they had left everything to follow, their teacher, their friend, their hope for the future, was dead. Executed publicly as a criminal. And in that devastating moment their world did not just change. It seemed to end. But the story of what happened to the disciples after Jesus died is not simply a story of grief and despair. It is one of the most powerful stories of transformation in all of human history, a story that takes us from broken men hiding behind locked doors to fearless apostles who would carry the Gospel to the ends of the earth, many of them paying for that mission with their own lives. Unders...

Why Did Jesus Wash His Disciples Feet Imagine the most powerful, most respected, most beloved person you know, someone whose wisdom, authority and character are beyond question, and imagine that person getting down on their knees in front of you and washing your dirty feet. Not asking someone else to do it. Not delegating it to the lowest person in the room. Doing it themselves. Quietly. Deliberately. With a towel around their waist and a basin of water in their hands. That is exactly what happened in an upper room in Jerusalem on the night before Jesus was crucified. And it is one of the most radical, countercultural, profoundly moving acts ever recorded in Scripture. In a world obsessed with status, position and power Jesus chose to demonstrate the heart of His entire ministry through the most humble act imaginable, washing the dirty feet of twelve ordinary men. In this study we are going to explore everything about this extraordinary moment, why Jesus did it, what it meant in the...