The account of the arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane ends with these words: “Then all the disciples deserted Him and fled.” Read Matthew 26:47-56. Have you ever felt abandoned when you really needed someone on your side? That’s where Jesus stands at the end of this text — alone in the midst of a…
By Justin Taylor With help from the ESV Study Bible, here’s an attempted harmony/chronology of the words and actions of Jesus in the final week of his pre-resurrection life. Jesus instructs his Peter and John to secure a large upper room in a house in Jerusalem and to prepare for the Passover meal Matthew 26:17-19…
By Steven Lee Matthew shows us an odd exchange between Jesus and his disciples. In Matthew 20:20–28, the mother of James and John, in typical motherly fashion, asks Jesus whether her nice, upstanding sons can sit beside Jesus in his kingdom. James and John, through their mother, are seeking prominence. They want to be great….
By Ronald G. Davis John, in his Gospel, borrows the beautiful image of God that permeates the Scriptures: God is our shepherd. And that image may be the most common symbolic image reproduced through the Christian era. From mosaics in the second-century catacomb resting places of those first Christians in Rome to magnificent stained-glass windows…
By the Rev. Mary Holder Naegeli Episode Three of History Channel’s The Bible makes the leap from Old Testament to New Testament times. The fast-forward is appropriate to the feeling one has as one turns the page from Malachi’s prophecy in the Old to the gospel of Matthew in the New. What happened? Circumstances have…