Exploring My Strange Bible

In this teaching, we address Matthew Chapter 12. Here, the leaders of Israel challenge Jesus and they want to make him prove his identity. Jesus responds by giving them a riddle and talking about the sign of Jonah. This story also raises a fascinating parallel with many of our own personal stories where Jesus is not coming through for us at all the way we thought he would, and we begin to bargain...

Matthew Chapters 11 and 12 are stories about people responding to what Jesus has been doing in chapters 4 -10. What we see here is one of the first notes of people’s rejection of Jesus by the Israelite contemporaries. So in this episode, we situate Jesus how he thought of himself in the tradition of the Hebrew Prophets. He gives warnings that are serious and significant, and they show us that Jesu...

We look at Matthew Chapter 11 today. It is kind of a puzzling story, where John the Baptist (who is actually Jesus’ relative and played a very key role in Jesus’ life early on) is in prison. John the Baptist is also expressing serious doubts about who Jesus is and his identity. It is a fascinating story that gives us a window into the kinds of expectations that Jewish people had about the Messiah....

This episode addresses faith in a story about Jesus healing a blind man in Matthew Chapter 9. In the Gospels, the word “faith” and specifically "having faith and trust in Jesus" really has a specific meaning. We see that different people have very different experiences with Jesus. Why the different reactions and responses? We address that question and more in this episode… Hosted by Simp...

We unravel a well-known story that takes place in Gospel Chapter 9 about Jesus forgiving the sins of a man who is paralyzed in legs. Then, he heals his legs so that he can get up and walk away. However, this is a controversy around this healing that Jesus performs, and it becomes a focal point for the whole story. For Jesus to forgive sins a first-century Jewish context was a loaded and symbolic a...

Today we look at a story in Matthew chapter 9. Each story makes a unique claim on Jesus’s identity, about his character, and the kind of communities that Jesus came to create. Jesus has brought together a diverse and complicated group of people around his Kingdom of God announcement. He’s labeled a rebel by the Jewish community, but today we are going to explore the method and mindset that is unde...

We are in the narrative chapters of Matthew Chapters 8 and 9, where Matthew has collected nine stories of Jesus performing a whole number of powerful deeds and acts. Some of them are acts of healing, others of them are acts of creative power. In this episode, we talk about two stories. One is about Jesus calming chaotic waters. The other is about Jesus meeting two dangerous men in a graveyard. Lis...

In previous episodes, we explored the Sermon on the Mount, but now we turn a corner back into the story Matthew of chapter 8. We explore this story of Jesus healing a man with a skin disease, which holds a lot of symbolic freight. Most importantly, this story is about Jesus’ contagious holiness. Jesus embodies the healing power of God’s holiness. This is an amazing story, especially once you take...

This episode explores Jesus’ teaching about prayer. It is the famous “ask and you shall receive” teaching. Personally, prayer has always been one of the aspects of following Jesus that I’ve found most difficult to make a big part of my life. So in this episode, I explore both what Jesus says, but also some of the objections or questions that come up in our minds when we try to take Jesus at his wo...

Today we are going to explore one of the most memorable teachings of Jesus that many people, even non-Christians, know. It is the teaching that centers around judgment or the idea “Don’t judge so that you will not be judged”. What did Jesus mean when he said not to judge other people? This is one of the teachings of Jesus that has truly taken on a life of its own. How has its meaning morphed over...

Specifically, we talk about the meaning and significance of one of the most important things that Jesus ever said to his followers. Jesus passed along his prayer and taught us how to pray, which he addressed in his Sermon on the Mount. Even after I became a follower of Jesus, I still never adopted the Lord's prayer as my own prayer that I prayed regularly. It took me years until I came across othe...

Today we explore the meaning and significance of Jesus’s command “Love your neighbor”, which even includes the people who hate you (or your enemies). We’re going to look into why this is such a shocking and controversial teaching, especially in Jesus’s day and age. It can sometimes feel very counter-intuitive. This is a difficult teaching to hear and process and think of what it means, but let’s g...

Today we are going to focus on Jesus’ teaching about swearing… as in “swearing oaths”. You’re probably not too hung up on “swearing too many oaths”, but it was actually a really important part of Jesus’ culture in his day and age. More importantly, we’re going to explore some of the basic heart-level issues that Jesus is getting at here. The way we talk to each other with spins, half-truths, etc....

Today’s particular teaching is about one of the few times that Jesus addresses the topic of sex and sexual desire. He uses a lot of intense language that has really stuck with Jesus’ followers for many thousands of years. The goal is to get inside Jesus’ heart and mind about his vision of what sexuality is and what it is for. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for inform...

Probably Jesus's relationship to the Torah isn't something that you woke up thinking about this morning, but it was actually a major major issue. The Torah represents not just the Bible, but the whole story and terms of the covenant that Israel used to relate to God. Jesus came saying that the Kingdom of God had arrived through him and the work he was doing, but it was confusing to a lot of people...

In this section, we’re exploring Jesus’s most famous collection of teachings in Matthew chapters 5-7. Jesus is announcing to the Kingdom of God that way of life that he’s inviting his followers to join only makes sense WITHIN the announcement that God’s Kingdom has arrived through Jesus. This teaching focuses on those famous little poetic sayings at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount called...

This teaching is about the second half of Matthew Chapter 4. Jesus is an adult in this segment, and he says his first words to the public (the people of Israel). He talks about the Kingdom or the reign of God. To me, this was a foundational idea and a big part of my own rediscovery of Jesus’ own life, mission, and values. This is ground zero for understanding Jesus and why you should follow him. H...

This is specifically a teaching that I did about Matthew Chapter 4 and the well-known story of Jesus being tested by the evil one in the wilderness. One of my biggest goals was to debunk a bunch ideas about Satan and the devil that aren’t actually in the Bible. I think debunking these ideas is a really important part of following Jesus because we should recognize the reality of “evil” and what tha...

We are going to explore probably the most famous story from the Gospel of Matthew in today’s show. It is the Christmas story, or the story of Jesus’s birth (you know, all the iconic images of Joseph and Mary riding on the donkey). So for this sermon, I tried to shake off all that familiarity and read this text from Mary’s perspective. Because interestingly, the story focuses in on her personal nar...

These sermons originally took almost two years to get through, and it was a remarkable experience for our whole church community. Stories of Jesus can become so over-familiarized that they begin to lack the power and passion and brilliance that they actually possess. Going through this book was an amazing religious and life-transforming experience for me and I hope it is for you too. Hosted by Sim...

These are famous love poems where Paul talks about nature and love in a Christian vocabulary. A lot of love poems from weddings begin right here in this teaching. Paul didn’t write for people getting married, but he actually wrote it to bring local community members together who were riddled with moral compromise. He wanted to give us an idea of what human existence and love was all about, and it...

The meaning and the symbolism of that final meal left a HUGE impression on the disciples that were there. So much so, that some sort of account has made it into every single one of the Gospels in the New Testament, and even made its way into one of the Apostle Paul’s letters. We did this teaching leading up to resurrection Sunday during holy week. During this episode, I reenact a short version of...

You find these words only in the crucifixion account in the Gospel of John. And these words bring into culmination a whole theme throughout the entire story of John’s Gospel. This sermon was from some of my very early days as a pastor at Door of Hope Church. I hope you enjoy this episode. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of...

This episode is a reflection on Daniel Chapter 12 (the last chapter of Daniel) and how it culminates the dreams and visions that Daniel had in the chapters previous to that. Ultimately, this chapter is really a meditation on the hope of the resurrection and new creation. We even explore the roots of the resurrection and new life throughout the Old Testament. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz compan...

The book of Daniel is about of a group of Israelites who are essentially kidnapped and exiled from their homeland. Daniel and his friends struggle to remain faithful to God in a place that is pressuring them to disobey. This book explores the challenge of being “in the world but not of the world.” It offers valuable lessons to us today, as we try to follow Jesus in the modern world. Listen in to l...