Posts with the category “cost-of-living”

Highlight Do you remember the game where you try to guess the picture or logo based on a really zoomed in pixel shot? All that you see is red and white pixels, then zoom out a bit more and it is just more red and white pixels. Finally the whole logo is revealed and it's the Chick-fil-A logo. You think to yourself “I should have known.” But you would have never guessed that from the first few pixels of red and white. It could have been anything. You need to step back and see the whole thing for it to make sense.  Read More

Highlight Exodus 24 is a foreshadowing of Jesus’ last days in reverse. In Exodus, the covenant between God and Israel begins with a sacrifice and ends with a meal. Where Jesus’ new covenant begins with a meal and ends in sacrifice.  Read More

Highlight The Ten Commandments are probably the most well known of the over six hundred laws that God gives Moses. When Jesus comes, He simplifies the law by saying “'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is similar: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40).  Read More

Highlight Think back to your first memory of attending church. Is it a good memory? Bad memory? A little blurry. Or maybe crystal clear, you remember every detail.  Read More

Highlight Exodus 18:12 says, “then Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, brought a burnt offering and other sacrifices to God, and Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat a meal with Moses’ father-in-law in the presence of God.”  Read More

Welcome Welcome to Week 4 of the Cost of Living. This reading plan is typically designed to partner with Compassion Christian Church’s sermon series of the same name, which you can find information about right here.  Read More

Highlight The parable of the talents comes in a run of several parables all talking about the coming return of the Lord. The Parable of the Talents is specifically a reminder that we must keep diligently working while we look for the Lord’s return. The parable centers around ‘talents,’ which is not a coin or currency, but a unit of weight. The amount of weight varied by culture. A Greek talent was about 60 pounds while a Roman talent was closer to 70. Regardless, in every nation it was a heavy amount! The large gold menorah in the tabernacle weighed a talent (Exodus 25:39). Thus, even a single talent would be an immense fortune of gold or silver.  Read More

Highlight The Parable of the Tenants is unique amongst the parables we have looked at thus far because it is not very hard to understand what Jesus is talking about. The meaning is thinly veiled, so much so that at the end of this passage we are told that even the chief priests and Pharisees could tell that “he was speaking about them.” (v45) Jesus’ parable begins with a famous metaphor in Isaiah 5, where God describes Israel as a vineyard. It even uses the same structures: a fence, a winepress, and a tower. It proceeds through Israel’s history with a reference to two waves of prophets that the Israelite leaders rejected and killed. In Jewish tradition, these prophets were referred to as the ‘former’ and ‘latter’ prophets. Up until now, the parable follows the history of Israel as the Pharisees and Chief Priests would have understood it. But then, according to Jesus, the master sends his son.  Read More

Highlight Part of the genius of Jesus’ use of parables was that he used common knowledge at the time to help everyone understand the character of God. The problem for modern readers is that sometimes we don’t share that common knowledge so some of the nuance is lost on us. This is the case with the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard. Obviously people who have worked longer are getting paid the same as people who worked for less time, and that is unfair. However, the dynamic changes when we understand something about the people who worked the longest.  Read More

Highlight The Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man is directly connected with yesterday’s parable of the Dishonest Manager. After hearing the parable of the Dishonest Manager and the following lesson on money, the Pharisees scoffed. This second parable is told to the scoffing Pharisees, and is therefore appropriately confrontational.  Read More

Highlight This parable is widely considered to be Jesus’ most difficult parable because it appears to commend sinful and selfish behavior. To understand what’s going on, the key is to realize that Jesus is using a common style of teaching at the time. The technique was called ‘from lesser to the greater.’ The basic concept is to say - “if someone that is ill equipped to do something can figure it out, then how much more should someone who has the right tools?”  Read More

Welcome Welcome to Week 3 of the Cost of Living Reading Plan. This reading plan is designed to partner with Compassion Christian Church’s sermon series of the same name, which you can find information about right here. In the summer of 2023, a national survey asked people to list their top sources of stress and 75% of people listed money as their #1. Money never seems to be far from our minds or absent from the conversations we have with our spouses and friends.  Read More

Highlight The parable of The Lost Son is a well known parable. It takes a look at a wealthy father and his sons. The younger son asks for his inheritance, the father honors the request, and the son goes off and “squanders his wealth on wild living” (v. 13). When the younger son “comes to his senses” (v. 17), he goes to his father to beg for forgiveness. Yet, before he can say a word, his father welcomes him with generous forgiveness, love and compassion.  Read More

Highlight A silver coin or silver drachma, would have been roughly a day's wage. If this was part of her dowry price of her marriage, she would have worn the coins in her headdress and noticed instantly when it had gone missing. Therefore she begins the tedious search of finding what is missing. She searches for what she has been entrusted to keep safe. Once the coin is found, she rejoices and invites others to rejoice with her.  Read More

Highlight When reading this passage there are verses that feel harsh. Verse 33 in particular says “those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.” Talk about a gut punch. That feels difficult, especially when you couple that with verse 26 about hating your family and self. This is when greek translation helps clear some misconceptions. It does not mean that Jesus softened His request of a disciple, but it does mean the context changes slightly.  Read More

Highlight In Biblical days it was customary for there to be multiple invitations to a banquet. The first invitation was often to announce that it was happening in the near future, and the second to announce the banquet was prepared and ready for guests to arrive. In today’s culture it is a bit like a calendar invite to a meeting, and then being alerted 30 minutes before said meeting. Except in the Biblical times, it was often servants going out to make these personal invitations.  Read More

Highlight It is likely you have heard the phrase “Good Samaritan.” In our context it is often used to describe a person who generously helps another person. News stories will highlight a good Samaritan in your area, teachers will praise students who are a good Samaritan to their classmates, and there are often times, you act like a good Samaritan without anyone knowing.   Read More

Welcome Welcome to Week 2 of the Cost of Living Reading Plan. This reading plan is designed to partner with Compassion Christian Church’s sermon series of the same name, which you can find information about right here. In the summer of 2023, a national survey asked people to list their top sources of stress and 75% of people listed money as their #1. Money never seems to be far from our minds or absent from the conversations we have with our spouses and friends. This isn’t unique to modern Americans, it has been a common experience for people since civilization has existed. Jesus was aware of this reality, so he devoted time to talking about how our hearts and minds interact with money. Jesus was the greatest teacher who ever lived, and much of his teaching was centered around made up stories called parables. John Macarthur defines a parable as an ingeniously simple word picture illuminating a profound spiritual lesson. In Jesus’ parables we can find a hint of how he understood the way our thinking can focus on money: about a third of the forty parables Jesus told have something to do with earthly riches, treasures, coins, or currency of one kind or another. To support our series on money, this reading plan will look at those 14 parables.   Read More

Highlight The extent of God’s forgiveness cannot be understood without a sense of how extreme Jesus’ example is in this extraordinary parable. The number Jesus uses is ten thousand talents. All scholars point out the deliberately unrealistic nature of this sum. A ‘talent’ represents an annual income, so in today’s terms ten thousand talents comes out to be roughly $400 billion - more than the gross national products of 80 percent of the world today. This is not a personal loan, it’s something much more extreme.  Read More

This passage opens with a man asking Jesus to render a judgment between him and his brother. This was a common practice at the time - Jewish rabbis (teachers of the law) would make judgments as they traveled throughout Israel. Jesus refuses, but it isn’t because he doesn’t have a right to pass judgment. Rather, he puts his focus on an area that only He would be able to judge: the man’s motivations. Jesus knows that the man is motivated by greed, so he pivots to a parable about being motivated by earthly possessions and pleasures.  Read More

In this simple, short parable Jesus uses financial debt as a metaphor for the spiritual debt incurred through sin. The woman is described as a sinner, the word hamartolos in Greek. Throughout his account, Luke uses the word to identify a person who has a reputation for gross immorality. Culturally, the fact that the woman has unbound hair (v38) could point to the fact that she was a prostitute. Her actions show that she is aware of her sin and is grateful for the way that Jesus has treated her despite her deserved reputation. Jesus’ parable is not used to highlight an actual difference between the ‘debts’ of Simon vs the sinful woman. Rather, Jesus is highlighting that because Simon perceives he has little to forgive he is therefore less loving. Jesus’ point is that because there is no difference between the sin of Simon and the sin of the woman there should be no difference between their response to Jesus’ love, grace, and forgiveness.  Read More

We start our Reading Plan with Jesus’ parable about parables. At times throughout Jesus’ earthly ministry, he would attract groups of people who would gather to hear him teach about the Kingdom of God. That crowd would be filled with different groups of people who were bringing different expectations.  Read More

Welcome to Week 1 of the Cost of Living Reading Plan. This reading plan is designed to partner with Compassion Christian Church’s sermon series of the same name, which you can find information about right here. In the summer of 2023, a national survey asked people to list their top sources of stress and 75% of people listed money as their #1. Money never seems to be far from our minds or absent from the conversations we have with our spouses and friends. This isn’t unique to modern Americans, it has been a common experience for people since civilization has existed. Jesus was aware of this reality, so he devoted time to talking about how our hearts and minds interact with money. Jesus was the greatest teacher who ever lived, and much of his teaching was centered around made up stories called parables. John Macarthur defines a parable as an ingeniously simple word picture illuminating a profound spiritual lesson. In Jesus’ parables we can find a hint of how he understood the way our thinking can focus on money: about a third of the forty parables Jesus told have something to do with earthly riches, treasures, coins, or currency of one kind or another. To support our series on money, this reading plan will look at those 14 parables.  Read More