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

Highlight Few parables show the genius of Jesus more than these two parables: ridiculously simple and yet extraordinarily profound. Jesus’ point is simple: the value you place on something is defined by what you would give up for it. And life with him and for him is worth more than anything else we could ever own or experience.  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