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Luke 12:49-51 records Jesus’ statements about His earthly mission, and they do not inspire warm, fuzzy feelings in the reader. Here, Jesus emphasized the division brought by the gospel and the stress of knowing His painful death was quickly approaching. He said, “I have come to cast fire upon the earth; and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is accomplished! Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on the ear

At least three separate locations in Scripture record accounts of people tempted by greed. In each of them, those who succumb to greediness for earthly treasures arrive at disastrous results. Sometimes the greed shows itself in a person’s unwillingness to share what they own; other times it is a desire for what they hope to attain. But in every case, greedy living leads to spiritual downfall. In Luke 12:13-21, Jesus answered a greed-driven interruption with a parable about a

Luke 18:10-15 records the parable Jesus told about two men who went to the temple to pray. The first man was a Pharisee focused on himself, and Jesus even said he “prayed this to himself.” The prayer of the Pharisee was filled with comparisons to other people whom he believed were worse than himself. He was thankful that he was better than everyone else, and assumed God shared his estimation. The other man was a tax collector, one of those specifically named by the Pharisee a

John wondered if he had fulfilled his purpose. It is John, the relative of Jesus, the baptizer, to whom I refer. According to Luke 1:17, God intended for John to serve as the forerunner, the one who would prepare the way for the Messiah. He was to call people to repentance so that they would be ready when the Lord arrived. Luke 3 records John's ministry, how he commanded the people to repent and instructed them about specific sins, and how to leave them behind. Luke 3:18-22 s

Luke 8:5-15 records the parable of the sower, in which Jesus described four responses to the word of God using soil as an illustration....

In Luke 1, Elizabeth and Mary were both surprised to be carrying children. Elizabeth was beyond typical childbearing years, and Mary had...