Heads Up

Sin challenges love. Repentance offers the way of recovery. And then the restoration of love becomes our hope. This is the third thing we need to learn from this book. Hosea is filled not only with warnings of judgment and calls to repentance; somehow, piercing all these divine forebodings of doom, we find prophecies of…

“Love is blind, and marriage is an eye-opener.” So goes the old saying. But what is love? To many, the word itself is exciting. Love is pure positive emotion. Love is a force to be experienced. Love is uncontrollable, thrilling, bliss!

When we began these studies of Matthew 16, we said that, although this is one of the richest and most important chapters in the Gospel, it is also one that seems to be a source of countless problems. Almost every sentence seems to have produced diverse interpretations among commentators. How is Peter the rock? What…

How many important lessons can a person learn at one time? Not many, probably. But on this occasion Jesus seized the moment and immediately went on to teach His disciples that not only did He have to go to the cross but in a sense, they had to go to the cross too, dying to…

In a sense, in chapter 16 Matthew is introducing us to Jesus Christ. He has been telling us about Jesus all along, of course, but here he gets to the heart of his introduction. Who is Jesus? Peter had the answer: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Then, what does Jesus…

Jesus said, “…I will build my church (ekklesia – “called out assembly”) and the gates of hell [hades] shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16.18). What did he mean by “the gates of Hell” not being able to overcome Christ’s Church? Several different interpretations exist. The most common view is that “the gates of Hades”…