Jesus' purpose is not to warm our hearts but to shatter our categories.

A sense of Jesus’ absence might be a sign of his presence- a sign that he’s working already in your life.

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.

Cities have more “image of God” per square inch than anywhere else, and so we must not idealize the country as somehow a more spiritual place than the city.

To take a person out of slavery takes an instant. To take slavery out of a person takes a process.

Unless you believe the gospel, everything you do will be driven by either pride or fear.

Nothing we formulate or do can qualify us for access to God. Only grace can do that- based not on our performance but on the saving work of Christ.