The Life of Jesus

The next day the large crowd that had come to the Passover Festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. 1So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, “Praise God! God bless him who comes in the name of the Lord! God bless the King of Israel!” Jesus found a donkey and rode on it, just as the scripture says, “Do not be afraid, city of Zion! Here comes your king, riding on a young donkey.” His disciples did not understand this at the time; but when Jesus had been raised to glory, they remembered that the scripture said this about him and that they had done this for him. The people who had been with Jesus when he called Lazarus out of the grave and raised him from death had reported what had happened. That was why the crowd met him — because they heard that he ...

When you love someone, you want to express that love. You want to make them feel all your love. But how? I am a rational person. Most of the time I will think before I act. Helpful in most cases. My actions are thought through well. But sometimes my emotions rise above the surface. Like when I feel how much I love my wife, I will buy her flowers. An act of love. I listen to my heart. We look at the story again but this time focus on Mary. In this story we see an act of love by Mary. She wants to show her love to Jesus. She bought expensive perfume for Jesus. Let’s say No. 1. I don’t have to give expensive perfume to my wife (if only I could afford it!) but if I do, I’m sure she would feel loved. That’s Mary’s reason. She expressed her heart by giving this expensive gift. She wants to show ...

Deeply moved, Jesus went to the tomb, which was a cave with a stone placed at the entrance. “Take the stone away!” Jesus ordered. Martha, the dead man’s sister, answered, “There will be a bad smell, Lord. He has been buried four days!” Jesus said to her, “Didn’t I tell you that you would see God’s glory if you believed?” They took the stone away. Jesus looked up and said, “I thank you, Father, that you listen to me. I know that you always listen to me, but I say this for the sake of the people here, so that they will believe that you sent me.” After he had said this, he called out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” He came out, his hands and feet wrapped in grave clothes, and with a cloth round his face. “Untie him,” Jesus told them, “and let him go.” Many of the peopl...

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had been buried four days before. 18 Bethany was less than three kilometres from Jerusalem, and many Judeans had come to see Martha and Mary to comfort them over their brother’s death. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed in the house. Martha said to Jesus, “If you had been here, Lord, my brother would not have died! But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask him for.” “Your brother will rise to life,” Jesus told her. “I know,” she replied, “that he will rise to life on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me will live, even though they die; and all those who live and believe in me will never die. Do you believe this?” “Yes, L...

A man named Lazarus, who lived in Bethany, was ill. Bethany was the town where Mary and her sister Martha lived. (This Mary was the one who poured the perfume on the Lord’s feet and wiped them with her hair; it was her brother Lazarus who was ill.) The sisters sent Jesus a message: “Lord, your dear friend is ill.” When Jesus heard it, he said, “The final result of this illness will not be the death of Lazarus; this has happened in order to bring glory to God, and it will be the means by which the Son of God will receive glory.” Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Yet when he received the news that Lazarus was ill, he stayed where he was for two more days. Then he said to the disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” “Teacher,” the disciples answered, “just a short time ago the...

It was winter, and the Festival of the Dedication of the Temple was being celebrated in Jerusalem. Jesus was walking in Solomon’s Porch in the Temple, when the people gathered round him and asked, “How long are you going to keep us in suspense? Tell us the plain truth: are you the Messiah?” Jesus answered, “I have already told you, but you would not believe me. The things I do by my Father’s authority speak on my behalf; but you will not believe, for you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never die. No one can snatch them away from me. What my Father has given me is greater than everything, and no one can snatch them away from the Father’s care. The Father and I are one.” Then the people...

As a kid you are told not to go with strangers. It’s hard to know who to trust. Can Jesus be trusted? Isn’t that what they told you when you were young? Only go with people you know!  But how do you know if you can trust someone? Often because you know them personally. One night I went out to dinner with a good friend. We were talking and the waitress came up from behind us and said she knew my friend. But he didn’t know her. They had never met. But she recognized my friend by his voice. He is the writer of the devotional  ‘A Miracle Every Day’ and he records the messages every day. She listened to his messages often so when she heard him talking, she recognized his voice! In this part of Jesus’ life, he is sharing a story. A parable. Jesus is a great storyteller. He explains tha...

They took to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. The day that Jesus made the mud and cured him of his blindness was a Sabbath. The Pharisees, then, asked the man again how he had received his sight. He told them, “He put some mud on my eyes; I washed my face, and now I can see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “The man who did this cannot be from God, for he does not obey the Sabbath law.” Others, however, said, “How could a man who is a sinner perform such miracles as these?” And there was a division among them. So the Pharisees asked the man once more, “You say he cured you of your blindness — well, what do you say about him?” “He is a prophet,” the man answered. The Jewish authorities, however, were not willing to believe that he had been blind and could now see, until they called his...

You can have lots of questions about life, faith, God and Jesus. Some people ask questions yet never wait to hear the answer. Do you want find real answers? Listen to Jesus’ reply. When I was young, a teacher once forbid me to ask a question. That sounds strange, of course, because the schools should stimulate people to ask questions, don’t you think? Asking questions is always good!? But… the reality was, that I was asking questions all the time, while I was not really paying attention. I was just hiding my own attitude of being distracted by asking ‘smart’ questions. In the story of Jesus’ life, we see people asking questions to Jesus, but Jesus sees the real heart behind it. The teachers of Israel ask Jesus a question about a man, who was born blind. People think about punishment. Blind...

Jesus spoke to the Pharisees again. “I am the light of the world,” he said. “Whoever follows me will have the light of life and will never walk in darkness.” The Pharisees said to him, “Now you are testifying on your own behalf; what you say proves nothing.” “No,” Jesus answered, “even though I do testify on my own behalf, what I say is true, because I know where I came from and where I am going. You do not know where I came from or where I am going. You make judgements in a purely human way; I pass judgement on no one. But if I were to do so, my judgement would be true, because I am not alone in this; the Father who sent me is with me. It is written in your Law that when two witnesses agree, what they say is true. I testify on my own behalf, and the Father who sent me also testifies on my...

We all judge people for making mistakes yet we all make mistakes too. In this story Jesus protects an adulterous woman for the condemnation of her community. Why? It happens to me all the time. I try to blame people for the mistakes that I make. “Where were you? I was looking for you!” While I left home too late. Shame on me! Someone told me once: When you point your finger at someone,  three fingers are pointing back at you. In Jesus’ life, people were often trying to catch Jesus on a mistake. This time, they caught a woman who committed adultery. A huge crime in those days. Strangely enough we don’t hear about the man, who should have been involved surely. The spiritual leaders ask Jesus what to do. According to their law, the woman should be given the death penalty. It is clear tha...

The Pharisees heard the crowd whispering these things about Jesus, so they and the chief priests sent some guards to arrest him. Jesus said, “I shall be with you a little while longer, and then I shall go away to him who sent me. You will look for me, but you will not find me, because you cannot go where I will be.” The Jewish authorities said among themselves, “Where is he about to go so that we shall not find him? Will he go to the Greek cities where our people live, and teach the Greeks? He says that we will look for him but will not find him, and that we cannot go where he will be. What does he mean?” On the last and most important day of the festival Jesus stood up and said in a loud voice, “Whoever is thirsty should come to me, and whoever believes in me should drink. As the scriptur...