Jesus came into this world not as a philosopher or a general but as a carpenter. All work matters to God.

The targets of this story are not wayward sinners but religious people who do everything the Bible requires. Jesus is pleading not so much with immoral outsiders as with moral insiders. H wants to show them their blindness, narrowness, and self righteousness, and how these things are destroying both their own souls and the lives of the people around them.

A genuinely persuasive argument does not merely tell you that you are wrong about everything. It doesn't just beat on you from the outside. It comes inside your belief system, as it were, and affirms something you believe strongly. And then it says - well if you believe this (A) then why in the world can't you see that B is true?

It takes pride to be anxious – I am not wise enough to know how my life should go.

We tend to see God as a means through which we get things to make us happy. For most of us, He has not become our happiness.

The issue on which everything hangs is not whether you like His teaching but if He ‪rose from the dead.

Careful obedience to God’s law may serve as a strategy for rebelling against God