New Focus Church

Our Lord Jesus Christ left Jerusalem for the Mt of Olives and Gethsemane, crossing over the Kidron brook. Despite all that lay before Him His thoughts were upon the wellbeing of His people and He tells Peter and the disciples that though they all will be offended because of Him this night He has prayed for them that their faith fail not. Blessed Jesus!

Our Lord Jesus Christ instituted the Lord’s Supper on this evening before His death. When we share in the bread and wine of communion with faith we are showing forth His death and testifying of our hope and trust in the cleansing power of His blood. It is a precious witness to our souls and to one another.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is our passover. He told His disciples that one of them would betray Him to death, generating amongst them great sorrow, self-doubt and self-examination. Our Saviour also preached to them about divine sovereignty and human responsibility for sin.

Our Lord Jesus Christ was the anointed one of God, set apart to redeem, reconcile and save all God’s elect. Here at Bethany a dear lady anticipates the Lord’s death for His people by anointing His head with very precious spikenard. The act pleased the Saviour despite the murmuring of some disciples. He declared that her act would be remembered wherever the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached throug...

Our Blessed Saviour spent much of His final week busily teaching, preaching and ministering to His people and disciples. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday had been days full of activity. On Thursday the Lord would eat the Passover and begin His soul-suffering in Gethsemane. But Wednesday is remarkably silent. None of the Gospel writers speak about the Saviour's activities on this day. It is Silent Wedne...

The Saviour warned His disciples to take heed, watch and pray and these admonitions apply not only to the times of the disciples’ lives but continue as a proper response from believers to the challenges of every age. The Lord has left His church with a task and a witness to every generation – to every man his work – to take heed, watch and pray, lest coming suddenly He find us sleeping.

When the Lord Jesus explained to His disciples about the coming destruction of Jerusalem, and the temple, He expressly gave warning and advice and comfort to His chosen people, His elect. For their sakes the days of terror would be lessened, they would not be seduced by the false prophets of freewill, works-religion, and they would all be gathered in by the coming of Christ in His power in the gos...

The Lord Jesus Christ provided His disciples with ‘signs of the times’ for the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. He also warned them to be alert to false and deceptive Christs, to take heed to recognise and avoid false doctrine, and also of the need for the Lord’s preserving care for His church. These are lessons for all His people in every age.

The Lord Jesus Christ pointed out to His disciples a certain poor widow whose faith brought her to give a gift to the Lord in gratitude and praise for her Saviour. He taught them, and us, that our gifts of worship and service must be offered in faith and all we have body and soul is only what He has first given to us.

The Lord Jesus Christ asked, “What think ye of Christ? whose son is he?” It is an essential question. Our Lord Jesus is the Messiah of God. He is the God Man mediator according to the scriptures. If we are to know Him and love Him and serve Him it can only be as we learn of Him in scripture by divine revelation. May we so learn Christ.

The Lord Jesus Christ taught His disciples and His church that true worship is spiritual worship, built on a knowledge of gospel truth and inspired by personal faith in Jesus Christ. May none of us be content merely to be ‘near the kingdom of God’. May we rather be like those who listened to the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, and who ‘seek … first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness’, ‘Even the...

The Lord Jesus Christ met His antagonists head on when they came attacking His doctrine and ministry. In so doing He teaches us not only that these bodies of ours shall rise gloriously from the dead as spiritual bodies, but that the Gospel of new life in Christ is the only message by which sinners can be saved and find comfort in death.

The Lord Jesus Christ calls upon His people to render to God the things that are God’s. There is but one way to do this and that is by faith. We honour God, worship God, love God, serve God, and obey God to the extent that we trust in Him through the faith of Jesus Christ which He has given to His people for that purpose.

The Lord Jesus Christ often taught using parables. The parable of the fraudulent tenants gives an overview of mankind’s rebellion and opposition to God from the beginning of time to the slaying of God’s own precious Son at Calvary. However, there will be a reckoning, and destruction will overtake all who reject God’s marvellous salvation in Christ.

The Lord Jesus Christ faced His enemies in the temple as they demanded He give an account of Himself, and the authority by which He did and said the things He did. The Lord requires an answer first from them which they are unwilling to supply, whereupon the Saviour declaims their hypocrisy.

The Lord Jesus Christ taught His disciples using many wonderful miracles including, and perhaps surprisingly, a withered fig tree! He told them that faith in God was at the heart of all true religion and the power that would attend their own ministries in the years to come.

The Lord Jesus Christ entered Jerusalem and “looked round about upon all things”. The Lord was no sightseeing tourist, however. This insight and awareness teaches us the Lord knew all that was happening and how to interpret the events and needs of those around Him. We see in His words and actions the glory of His divine majesty and the humility of human need. These endear us to the One who alone c...

The Lord Jesus Christ sat upon a donkey, an ass and the colt of an ass, on the final part of His journey into Jerusalem where He would suffer and die for His people. Why a donkey now after years of walking, and why an unbroken colt upon whom never man sat?

The Lord Jesus Christ appeared to John on the Isle of Patmos and declared, “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death” (Rev 1:18). Believing this makes a difference at to how we live and what we look forward to enjoying.

The Lord Jesus Christ met Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, on the road out of Jericho. Bartimaeus certainly was blind but he knew his Bible and he knew too, that Jesus Christ, the Son of David, could heal the blind. He believed that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah so he cried out, ‘Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me’. Jesus did have mercy for He never disappoints anyone who comes to Him in fa...

The Lord Jesus Christ gave His disciples three great lessons following a less than great request from James and John. They were: a beautiful statement of God’s covenant purpose, a patient re-statement of true Christian character, and a delightful confirmation of limited, substitutionary atonement. James’ and John’s request for pre-eminence was unfortunate but we can thank them for it in light of t...

The Lord Jesus Christ went before His disciples as they travelled up to Jerusalem where He would be crucified. Such was the zeal of our Saviour that He must press on to meet the ‘due time’ for His suffering and death. The Lord is our Forerunner, our Intercessor and Mansion-builder and has gone before us to prepare the way that we might follow after Him confidently and with joy. 27 March 2022

The Lord Jesus Christ meets the Rich Young Ruler. This young man is eager for religion but grieved at the cost of spiritual life. He spends his life meticulously following God’s law only to discover he has never grasped its spiritual tenor and never felt the power of its curse. The Lord Jesus shows him that far from obeying the law from his youth, as he assumed, he has stumbled at the very first s...

The Lord Jesus Christ calls us to come to Him as little children. When we do He embraces us in His arms, lays His hand upon us, and intercedes with His Father on our behalf.

The Lord Jesus Christ’s comments on divorce and remarriage went to the heart of man’s sinful condition. We act from the hardness of our hearts, we decide in our own self-interest. But God’s way is a better way, and in Jesus Christ sinners can find redemption, forgiveness and everlasting joy.