April 2 Chapter 1 covers a lot of ground from Dr. Luke’s careful investigation into Jesus’ background, to his relative John’s birth after his father was struck speechless while serving in the Temple, and finally to Zechariah’s prophecy regarding his son. Luke was a Gentile physician, likely from Troas. His Gentile background is why he,…
Mark 16 Early Sunday Morning, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome went to the garden tomb of Joseph of Arimathea to put spices on Jesus’ body. Anointing the body was a customary way to pay respects to the deceased. On their way, the women wondered how they would access the tomb, since…
February 16 After feeding five thousand men, besides women and children, with five loaves of bread and two fish, Jesus sent His disciples across the lake, and He went up to pray on the mountain. Some have suggested that sent is too mild a word; other translations use the word compelled, perhaps suggesting that the…
February 9 When God created the heavens and the earth, He set in motion all of the systems that seemingly run on their own, the “invisible gears” of the universe like natural laws (gravity, thermodynamics, etc.), weather patterns, and beyond. Four times in Matthew 9, however, we see Jesus once again demonstrating His power over…
January 15 John 11:1-44 tells the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. It’s a familiar story for those of us who have been around church a while. It reveals the Lord’s authority over death and demonstrates His compassion for His friends. It also contains the Bible’s shortest verse, the famous two-word passage: “Jesus…
January 11 Chapter 9 reveals Jesus’ sixth miracle in the Gospel of John: the healing of another disabled man on the Sabbath. We also discover a stark contrast between the cause of this man’s disability and that of the thirty-eight-year paralytic Jesus healed in John 5: The paralyzed man was disabled for some unspecified sin. This…
John 6 Did you know that the feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle that occurs in all four Gospels? Jesus feeds five thousand men with only five barley loaves and two fish, which at that time was a poor man’s meal. (Wheat bread was the food of the wealthy.) As the scene…
January 6 Ordinarily, today would be a “free day” from our Bible reading and devotional, but I wanted to circle back and elaborate further on John 5. A friend asked me about a statement regarding the man Jesus encountered at the Pool of Bethesda. Yesterday, I said:“This man was disabled for thirty-eight years. John doesn’t…
January 5 Jesus encounters a disabled man near the Temple in Northeastern Jerusalem. It seems there was a belief that the Pool of Bethesda would occasionally stir, and the first disabled person who was able to get into the pool would be healed of their illness. John gives us this information as a description, not…
January 4 We expect that Jesus would minister to God’s covenant people, the Jews. However, we rarely think about Jesus’ ministry outside the Jewish household of faith. John 4 records Jesus’ outreach to both Samaritans and Gentiles. John shows the universal reach of the Gospel. Jesus Ministers to a Samaritan Woman John tells us that…