Podcast. Instagraphics. Website. iTunes. Spotify

Manners matter. We’ve all done it, haven’t we? We’ve embarrassed ourselves in a social situation by breaking some mysterious rule of etiquette. At best, people just laughed or frowned at us. Or maybe the faux pas was so serious that you got ejected and excluded. Manners matter.

What about Gospel manners? What are Gospel manners and how do we observe them? In Luke 14:7-24 Jesus writes down three rules of Gospel etiquette to help us avoid spiritual embarrassment, ejection, and exclusion when invited to the Gospel banquet.

Podcast. Instagraphics. Website. iTunes. Spotify

Lovers of Jesus are hated for Jesus. You’ve experienced, that haven’t you? You meet people who are Christless and hopeless. You tell them about hope in Christ and they hate you for it. They threaten you and accuse you of being a hater. You’re like, “What just happened?” All I did was love them and they hated me for it.

How should we respond to those who hate us for loving them? We’re tempted to hate the haters, aren’t we? Or, at least, stop loving those who don’t want to be loved. Or maybe, we start editing the good news to make it more acceptable. But then we all lose. Let’s ask Jesus, the greatest lover who received the greatest hate. Jesus models how to love haters in Luke 13:31-35.

Podcast. Instagraphics. Website. iTunes. Spotify

If we ask the wrong question, we’ll get the wrong answer. The devil loves to get us asking the wrong questions because he loves wrong answers. He especially loves us asking wrong questions which keep us from the most important questions.

In Luke 13:22-30, someone asked Jesus the wrong question: “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” (22). How did Jesus handle it? He gave the right question so we get the right answer. The right question is not “Lord how many will be saved?” but “Will I be saved?” The former question is speculative and secondary. The right question is personal and primary.  But Jesus not only gave the right question, he also gave hints to help us arrive at the right answer.

Podcast. Instagraphics. Website. iTunes. Spotify

An apple-free apple tree is a dead apple tree. Fruit-free faith is fatal faith. An apple tree without apples and faith without fruit are worse than useless. Both are a waste of time and space. However, before they’re cut down and replaced, there’s one more option that can fertilize the deadest to life. What is faith’s fertilizer? Jesus points the fruitless to himself in Luke 13:6-17.

Podcast. Instagraphics. Website. iTunes. Spotify

Bad events can be good teachers. When I was twenty-years-old, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded in the old Soviet Union. Although the Russians tried to keep it secret for days, a huge cloud of radioactive particles was released and began to spread over Europe.

Experts predicted hundreds of thousands of cancer deaths over the coming years. It was a scary time, especially for me. A few days after the explosion, I got soaked in an unexpected rain shower on the way to catch a bus to work. Dripping wet, I got on the bus and opened my morning paper, to be met with a government warning: Stay indoors and avoid rain!

I wasn’t a Christian at the time, but this tragic event got me thinking seriously about my life and my death, which I was sure was imminent. I thought a lot about what would happen to me after death. This bad event was a good teacher for me.

But bad events can also be bad teachers, as we’ll discover in Luke 13:1-5. How do we use bad events as good teachers instead of bad teachers? Let Jesus teach us how.

Sermon notes on Daniel 9:20-27.