Category Archives: Luke

All for Jesus

Upon this seashore, Luke tells us, “the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God.” But it’s not the place or the people I want to draw your attention to. It’s this little phrase: “to hear the word of God.”

The Authority of the Word

Just as Jesus defeated the devil’s temptations in the desert with the Word of God, so we endure the devil’s rage and stand against his schemes, which don’t typically come at us in the form of demons in the middle of a Jewish synagogue but through the ways of the world, the lies of our sinful flesh, and the devil’s distortion of truth.

Believing Without Seeing

The irony of Nazareth is that the embodied favor of God stood in their presence, but they would not receive him. He who was conceived, anointed, and empowered by the Spirit of the Lord, proclaimed the good news of his coming explicitly, revealing his identity.

Preaching the Word, the Word Preached

For those who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, the spiritual and physical realities of Isaiah’s prophecy will be reconciled. In the new heavens and earth, there will be no poverty or captivity or blindness or oppression. For we will dwell with God as his people forever…

Tempted As We Are

As we proceed from the third chapter of Genesis through the rest of the Old Testament, we see evidence of God’s sovereign preservation of individuals, such as Seth, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and then a people, Israel, chosen by God with prophetic purpose to fulfill his promise. But we also see Satan’s sinister attempts to unravel the mystery, to destroy the woman’s offspring, to thwart God’s plan.

Pointing to Christ

For those who had ears to hear, John called to repentance, but for those who would not, he promised judgement. To some the seismic message of the gospel was indeed good news, evidenced by the multitude of people who were repenting of their sins and being baptized. But others were merely present, not repenting but observing, neither hearing nor believing.