GRINDIT podcast

Throughout the rest of Matthew 22, the Pharisees and the Sadducees try to stump Jesus and prove to everyone that he is not the Messiah as he claims. They send in some disciples along with some of Herod’s men and they get shamed. The Sadducees ask about the resurrection when they don’t even believe there is a resurrection! Jesus made them look foolish in front of the crowds and they were astonished...

Jesus is sparring with the religious leaders once again as he has entered Jerusalem and cleansed the Temple. This gives him an opportunity to tell them some parables pointing out their hypocrisy and in Matthew 22 he rips them by telling them a parable of a wedding feast. The king sends out invitations that keeps getting rejected and the people who were invited eventually kill the king’s servants....

It’s day 2 of being in Jerusalem. As Jesus was coming into town he is hungry. Hungry people look for something to eat and that’s what Jesus did. He sees a fig tree and goes to get some figs off it but there aren’t any. Jesus knew there wouldn’t be any figs on that tree and instead of miraculously producing figs on the tree, he cursed it and it immediately withers! Why did he do this? Because he wa...

What would you do different if you knew you would be dead in less than a week? Would you change anything at all? Would you try and right your wrongs? Would you tell your friends and family how much you love them and what they mean to you more often? Would you go live life to the fullest and try to pull off as much as you can on your bucket list? Matthew 21 is the turning point for the disciples an...

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem to die. He has explained to his disciples this day was coming. He is about a week away from the cross and shocking the known world at that time, As he is making his way to Jerusalem, he goes into more detail about what is going to transpire when he gets to Jerusalem. You would think the disciples would be upset and asking about it but no, two of them get their momm...

Peter asked Jesus a question after the rich young man had walked away and Jesus said it would be hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. He said, “We gave up everything. What will we get?” After answering Peter’s question, Jesus then gives a parable about an owner of a vineyard who continues to walk through town and hiring people to work at all times of the day. At the end of the...

A man came to Jesus and asked, “What good deed do I have to do to inherit eternal life” He came to the right person and asked the right question. But when he got the answer to his question, he gave the wrong response! He was all excited because he thought he was in for sure but Jesus knew the man’s heart and how he loved his stuff so he tells the young man to go and sell all his possessions and gi...

Matthew 19 is a passage many people turn to because of the divorce issue that is brought up by the Pharisees. They are, once again, trying to trap Jesus, and their plan is to use the law of Moses, who was the authority of their religion, against Jesus. If Jesus didn’t answer correctly, then they have trapped him! But they didn’t get the answer they were hoping for. Jesus explains to them what God’...

Jesus has used a child to teach his disciples about humility and along with humility...forgiveness. when children play together, there can be a little bit of a skirmish but within seconds, they are right back to playing as if nothing ever happened. Jesus tells his disciples they must forgive others and Peter thinks he has a great handle on it when he asks, "How many times do I have to forgive? Sev...

Jesus is giving an answer to a questions the disciples asked him but they aren’t getting the answer they were expecting. Jesus takes a small child and uses this child as an illustration on how his followers should be. As he is speaking, he mentions something about angels in heaven watching over the little children. Do we have guardian angels? Listen to find out, but the answer may be in the parabl...

Men have huge egos and are very competitive. It was no different with the disciples! They were men who came from all kinds of backgrounds and occupations. The three that had special privileges, Peter, James, and John were commercial fishermen who competed in the fishing business to make a living and we’ll see this play out as they follow Jesus. They want to know “Who is the greatest person in the...

The disciples couldn’t cast a demon out of a kid and Jesus tells them it is because they don’t have enough faith but some versions read, “They had doubt.” Why would they have doubt? They have been walking with Jesus for a while now and have seen him work miracle after miracle yet they continue to doubt. At the end of chapter 17, the Temple tax needs to be paid and Jesus tells Peter to go catch a f...

Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up on a mountain where they witness something amazing—the Transformation of Jesus. The word in the Greek means metamorphosis which is what we see when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. Jesus’ face shines as bright as the sun and his clothes are a brilliant white. Peter, bless his heart, tries to interrupt what was happening but God the Father overshadows the...

Peter had just made that great proclamation, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!” and yet, in the next breath Jesus is calling him Satan and telling him to get behind him! How did this happen? Why would Jesus say this? How could someone who has given their life to follow Jesus and has worked miracles themselves allow Satan to influence them? Can this happen to us today? Can people be d...

Jesus is challenged by the Pharisees and Sadducees yet again and after a mic drop moment, he gets in the boat with his disciples and heads to Philippi. While there he warns them about the leaven of the pharisees and they mistake what Jesus is saying. They think he is scolding them because they forgot to bring the bread along on the trip. So Jesus takes this opportunity to give a survey to his disc...

Something we don’t hear about to often is Jesus going into the region of Tyre and Sidon where it is heavily populated with Gentiles. Tyre and Sidon have an interesting history and two synagogues from the time Jesus was walking on the earth have been discovered there and one the best preserved Hippodromes is there to this day. Learn a lesson from the disciples here…Remember! Jesus had just fed a cr...

Jesus arrives to another region and is immediately met with a woman who was desperate but this is no ordinary woman. This woman was a Gentile so she had many things going against her. Gentiles weren’t very well liked by Jews and she was also a woman. In Jesus’ culture, women weren’t very respected, in fact they were treated much like shepherds. They weren’t even allowed to be a witness in court ye...

The Pharisees and religious leaders have heard of all these great things Jesus has done with the most recent being how he fed a ginormous crowd with two fish and five loaves of bread. He always has crowds around him and they all seem to want a miracle from him. He never disappoints so they would go back home talking about what Jesus had done for them. The Pharisees are fed up with this guy and the...

Gary Henline is the Senior Minister at First Christian Church in Maryville, TN located at 400 Court St, Maryville, TN 37803. He discovered he had stage 3 bone cancer in September 2022 and is going through treatment. He talks about how he found out he had cancer and how God is bringing him, as well as his family, through it. You will be encouraged by Gary's story!

Jesus sends his disciples to the other side of the Sea of Galilee and a storm comes up. They are out there rowing for their lives for hours while Jesus watched from the mountainside. He knew they were struggling and he allowed them to struggle! He didn’t keep them from the storm and he didn’t immediately comer to their rescue! When he did show up, he still didn’t calm the storm and his disciples d...

We know Jesus was a giver and the ultimate gift he gave was his life on the cross for our sin, but his example of giving goes way back before the cross. He was always meeting people’s needs, from his disciples to the crowds that constantly gathered around him everywhere he went. After hearing the news about the death of John the Baptizer, Jesus went off to be alone but some people heard where he w...

This chapter starts off heavy because we learn of the death of John the Baptizer. He was beheaded because he had confronted the sin of Herod Antipas and his wife, who was married to his brother. They didn’t want to hear about their sin so she came up with a plan get John killed. She threw a birthday party for her husband, invited a bunch of buddies over, probably had some alcohol flowing freely, a...

Jesus is talking to his disciples and he tells them a parable about a fishing net which had to catch their attention because some of them were commercial fishermen who used nets to catch fish for a living. He says a fisherman caught all kinds of fish in their nets and when the net was brought into the boat, the fish were separated—the good fish were kept and the worthless fish were trashed. Then h...

We continue looking at the parables Jesus used to teach the crowds so they could try and understand what it was like to follow him. In this episode of the GRINDIT Podcast, we take a look at two parables: the hidden treasure and the pearl. In both of these parables someone is searching for something. One treasure hunter has heard about a certain buried treasure in a field so he goes looking for it....

I love bread, especially when it's hot and covered in butter! In this episode we take a look at making homemade bread. I've never made it before so I borrowed a recipe from a website that has. One of the main ingredients to make bread is yeast. Without the yeast, the loaf won't be a loaf...it will be flat like a pancake, or maybe a tortilla! Jesus says the kingdom of God is like a little bit of ye...