Exploring My Strange Bible

We unravel a well-known story that takes place in Gospel Chapter 9 about Jesus forgiving the sins of a man who is paralyzed in legs. Then, he heals his legs so that he can get up and walk away. However, this is a controversy around this healing that Jesus performs, and it becomes a focal point for the whole story. For Jesus to forgive sins a first-century Jewish context was a loaded and symbolic act. We’ll discuss more about this and Jesus redefining the definition of God in today’s episode.

Today we look at a story in Matthew chapter 9. Each story makes a unique claim on Jesus’s identity, about his character, and the kind of communities that Jesus came to create. Jesus has brought together a diverse and complicated group of people around his Kingdom of God announcement. He’s labeled a rebel by the Jewish community, but today we are going to explore the method and mindset that is underneath Jesus’ mission of creating these really unique Kingdom of God communities.

We are in the narrative chapters of Matthew Chapters 8 and 9, where Matthew has collected nine stories of Jesus performing a whole number of powerful deeds and acts. Some of them are acts of healing, others of them are acts of creative power. In this episode, we talk about two stories. One is about Jesus calming chaotic waters. The other is about Jesus meeting two dangerous men in a graveyard. Listen in to hear more.

In previous episodes, we explored the Sermon on the Mount, but now we turn a corner back into the story Matthew of chapter 8. We explore this story of Jesus healing a man with a skin disease, which holds a lot of symbolic freight. Most importantly, this story is about Jesus’ contagious holiness. Jesus embodies the healing power of God’s holiness. This is an amazing story, especially once you take into consideration all of the Old Testament context.

This episode explores Jesus’ teaching about prayer. It is the famous “ask and you shall receive” teaching. Personally, prayer has always been one of the aspects of following Jesus that I’ve found most difficult to make a big part of my life. So in this episode, I explore both what Jesus says, but also some of the objections or questions that come up in our minds when we try to take Jesus at his word and pray.

Today we are going to explore one of the most memorable teachings of Jesus that many people, even non-Christians, know. It is the teaching that centers around judgment or the idea “Don’t judge so that you will not be judged”. What did Jesus mean when he said not to judge other people? This is one of the teachings of Jesus that has truly taken on a life of its own. How has its meaning morphed over time, and what did Jesus intend for this teaching to mean? We address these questions and more in this episode.

Specifically, we talk about the meaning and significance of one of the most important things that Jesus ever said to his followers. Jesus passed along his prayer and taught us how to pray, which he addressed in his Sermon on the Mount. Even after I became a follower of Jesus, I still never adopted the Lord's prayer as my own prayer that I prayed regularly. It took me years until I came across other people who really advocated that we should adopt the Lord’s prayer into our daily habits. Listen in to hear more about this on today’s show.

Today we explore the meaning and significance of Jesus’s command “Love your neighbor”, which even includes the people who hate you (or your enemies). We’re going to look into why this is such a shocking and controversial teaching, especially in Jesus’s day and age. It can sometimes feel very counter-intuitive. This is a difficult teaching to hear and process and think of what it means, but let’s go into this with open minds.

Today we are going to focus on Jesus’ teaching about swearing… as in “swearing oaths”. You’re probably not too hung up on “swearing too many oaths”, but it was actually a really important part of Jesus’ culture in his day and age. More importantly, we’re going to explore some of the basic heart-level issues that Jesus is getting at here. The way we talk to each other with spins, half-truths, etc. is actually the very same thing that Jesus is trying to address in this piece. This became a surprisingly relevant and important teaching for me, and I hope it is helpful for you.

Today’s particular teaching is about one of the few times that Jesus addresses the topic of sex and sexual desire. He uses a lot of intense language that has really stuck with Jesus’ followers for many thousands of years. The goal is to get inside Jesus’ heart and mind about his vision of what sexuality is and what it is for.