Highlight The Temptation of Jesus is a fascinating passage of Scripture. To understand what’s happening, one of the important things to remember is that Jesus is the fulfillment of not only Old Testament prophecies, but also the one who does perfectly what others have failed to do. In Exodus 4:22, the nation of Israel is called “God’s son,” but ultimately Israel fails to obey their Father. In the Temptation, Jesus is the better Israel who succeeds where they failed. Jesus was taken into the wilderness after his baptism like Israel was led into the wilderness after their deliverance from Egypt. Israel spent 40 years in the wilderness; Jesus spent 40 days. All of the Scripture references quoted by Jesus are from Deuteronomy 6-8, which is a period of time when Israel faced its early testing. In every way, Jesus succeeds where we have failed and is the fulfillment of all the things that God originally intended for us.  Read More

Highlight The Book of Matthew’s primary purpose, like all of the Gospels, is to record the words and life of Jesus to show his divinity and capture his teachings for His followers. But each Gospel was written for a different audience, and therefore has been tailored for that audience. Matthew’s audience is culturally Jewish people, so he puts extra emphasis on showing how Jesus’ life matches the prophecies in the Old Testament about God’s Messiah (“Anointed One”).  Read More

Welcome to Week 1 of the 2023 Be. Become. Do. Reading Plan. This reading plan is designed to partner with Compassion Christian Church’s sermon series of the same name. This is a series all about how we are each invited to embrace a life where we will be with Jesus, become like Jesus and then live our lives doing what Jesus would do In order to better apprentice under Jesus, we are going to spend our reading plan following his ministry by reading an eyewitness account written by one of his disciples: Matthew.  Read More

Day 20 - Friday, September, 8 Read 1 Corinthians 16 Highlight Chapter 16 includes two sections that are worth giving a quick highlight to.  First, the historical context for the money collection referred to right at the start of the chapter: Paul was collecting funds for the poor (and extremely persecuted) believers in Jerusalem.  This was not only because of real need in the body of Christ, but also...  Read More

Day 19 - Thursday, September, 7 Read 1 Corinthians 15 Highlight In this portion of the letter, Paul speaks to an important concept that is found throughout the Bible.  The theological concept is called “Federal Headship,” and it can be seen in verses 21-22.  Tim Keller explains that, “A federal head is a person who, through a covenant relationship, represents or stands in for someone else.”  In this...  Read More

Day 18 - Wednesday, September 6 Read 1 Corinthians 14 Highlight This chapter focuses on two miraculous spiritual gifts that were present in the Corinthian church and how they ought to be used to benefit the whole church rather than bring attention to the people using them.  There may be confusion about what exactly these spiritual gifts are, so we will define them here.Speaking in tongues (glossolali...  Read More