December 10, 2025
|
Luke 1:26-38
|
christmas
Like Mary, many of us struggle to understand that God wants to do something significant in our lives. We look at our resumes, our past mistakes, or our current limitations, and we think, “God couldn’t possibly use me. I’m nothing special.” We tend to think God’s favor is something we have to earn, achieve, or qualify for. We need to know today that God’s activity in our lives isn’t based on our performance, but on His unmerited favor. If we miss this, we miss the heart of the Gospel.
Luke’s account shows us a different way. It shows us that God breaks into ordinary history to reveal His extraordinary, unmerited grace to ordinary people.
In the gospel according to Luke, he recorded how the angel Gabriel announced God’s gracious favor to Mary, revealing the miraculous conception of God’s Son and assuring her through God’s Word and power so that she might respond in faithful submission.
April 29, 2025
“And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27 ESV). Two disheartened disciples walked away from Jerusalem on the road to Emmaus, weighed down by sorrow and confusion. Their hopes in Jesus seemed buried with Him. Yet, as they walked, the risen
April 28, 2025
“It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two” (Luke 23:44-45 ESV). As Jesus hung on the cross, an extraordinary darkness covered the land. The Light of the World was
April 27, 2025
“For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23:31 ESV) As Christ was being led away to His crucifixion, He turned to the weeping women following Him and offered a sobering proverb. Even in His own suffering, His heart was full of compassion. Rather
April 25, 2025
“Why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation” (Luke 22:46 ESV). Jesus spoke these words to His disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, just moments before His betrayal and arrest. Though He was in deep agony over what lay before Him, He turned to His disciples and found them
April 24, 2025
“You are those who have stayed with me in my trials, and I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Luke 22:28–30 ESV). In the midst of the Last
April 23, 2025
“Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was of the number of the twelve. He went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers how he might betray him to them. And they were glad, and agreed to give him money” (Luke 22:3-5 ESV). The name Judas has become a byword for betrayal.
April 22, 2025
“Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:28 ESV). After some of His disciples expressed admiration for the beauty of the Jerusalem Temple, Jesus told them that a day was coming when not one stone would be left upon another. The
April 21, 2025
“Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.” (Luke 20:38 ESV). The Sadducees, who denied the resurrection and only accepted the five books of Moses, came to Jesus presenting a question that they thought would make the idea of the resurrection seem ridiculous. However, Christ’s response
April 20, 2025
‘But he looked directly at them and said, “What then is this that is written: “‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone’?’ (Luke 20:17 ESV). Jesus spoke these words to the religious leaders in Jerusalem, knowing that they were planning to reject Him. He quoted Psalm 118:22 to show that their rejection