1.We can go home, too. Jesus tells his disciples a little later that he’s going to prepare a place for them in his Father’s house. Because Jesus returned to the Father, I can say with Paul that “to live is Christ, and to die is gain”—when I depart, I will be with Jesus.
2. Jesus mediates for us to God. It’s phenomenal: Jesus, the God-man, advocates for me before the holy and righteous God.
(a) In John 13:14, Jesus says, “You should wash one another’s feet.” Most Christian groups do not have a foot-washing liturgy. Why not? In what ways can we fulfil this command even if we do not follow it literally?
(b) In Luke 22:19, Jesus says, in connection with the Last Supper, “Do this in remembrance of me.” Most Christian groups do have a ‘Lord’s Supper’ liturgy. Why? Looking at this passage in Luke, what would you say are the main things about Jesus that we are to ‘remember’ when we take communion?…
In Mark’s Gospel there are three characters that go unnamed but are later named in John’s Gospel. They are:
(1) the woman who anoints (Mk 14:3) who John reveals as Mary (Jn 12:3);
(2) the man who wields the sword (Mk 14:47) who John reveals as Simon Peter (Jn 18:10);
(3) the servant of the high priest (Mk 14:47) who John reveals as Malchus (Jn 18:10).
These are examples of what Richard Bauckham (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses) calls ‘protective anonymity’ in the earlier accounts: this was not needed in a later account, when fear of embarrassment or reprisals would have partly or wholly disappeared.…
It seems quite fashionable these days for Christian people to insist that the expression ‘the word of God’ can only be applied to Jesus Christ, and not, say, to Scripture. Steve Chalke, for example, writes: ‘the Bible itself is unambiguous: “The word of God” is a person not a book.’
However, the phrase is used in Scripture itself in several ways:-
(Source unknown)
…
Lauren Becker, contributor to Point of Enquiry radio programme and podcast, reflects on her experience of driving by a church billboard which proclaimed the words, “Go by faith, not by sight.” She says that she worried that all the drivers around her would take the message to heart and close their eyes. She quickly prepared herself for extreme defensive driving maneuvres. She calls the slogan ‘dangerously stupid’, and explains that this is one of the reasons ‘we reasonable people’ get so annoyed by people of faith. …
Richard Sibbes pictures conscience as ‘God’s court within’, and an anticipation of the last judgement:-
‘To clear this further concerning the nature of conscience, know that God hat set up in a man a court, and there is in man all that are in a court.
1. There is a register to take notice of what we have done…The conscience keeps diaries. It sets down everything. It is not forgotten, though we think it is…there is a register that writes it down.…
Michael Green (BST) points out that even though Matthew does not offer exhaustive evidence for the resurrection, nevertheless he does ‘give us a handle on six arguments for the truth of the resurrection which were widely deployed in the early church and down the centuries:-
1. The first witnesses. The testimony of women counted for little in both Jewish and Greco-Roman society. They could not bear witness in a court of law. But God chose them to be the first witnesses to the resurrection of his Son!…
