Today, of course, is the holiday we call Easter. The origins of this holiday are not completely clear. Some people think that the Emperor Constantine changed a pagan holiday on this date to become a day which the resurrection of Christ would be celebrated. That cannot be verified. But we do know that by the time of Martin Luther and the Reformation, the association by Christians with Easter as a celebration of the resurrection was pretty much established. So much so that the translators of the King James Version substituted the word Easter for the original word Passover in Acts

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Today we are looking at another parable of Jesus which is called the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  That’s a title that was given by the translators and editors of the original manuscripts.  It’s not phrase that would have been understood by Jesus’s audience.  That phrase would have been considered by Jesus’s listeners as an oxymoron.  In the opinion of most Jews of that day, the only good Samaritan would have been a dead Samaritan.  Samaritans were considered people of the lowest, most despicable character.  They were half breeds who were the descendants of those Jews left in the land

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This parable teaches the universal need for forgiveness – both the need to be forgiven, and the need to forgive. Jesus illustrates in this parable how God’s forgiveness is to be a precursor to our forgiveness of others. If we have been forgiven, then we should forgive others. This principle is essential to our psychological well being, in dealing with two common causes of anxiety, depression, and all sorts of psychological problems; those two causes being on the one hand guilt, and on the other hand resentment. Jesus illustrates in this parable how we can be set free from the

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We saw last week in the account of  the rich young ruler that there are many people who feel some need to be religious, to be rich towards God, because they are not like the rich fool in the earlier parable who cares not for God nor man but only for his pleasure on earth, but these people believe in God and in the hereafter, and they think it prudent that they make an investment in heaven so that they will be rewarded after this life is over.  This desire for religion then a common aspiration throughout the entire world

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As we learned previously in our study of the parables, it’s important to determine the primary principle that was being taught by Jesus in the parable.  We should avoid the temptation to allegorize every detail of the story, but try to discern the central thought that Jesus was teaching. Having said that, however, it’s still possible to have more than one application.  And this parable lends itself to possibly more than one application.  But rather than focus on whatever those possible interpretations may be at this point, I want to go back to chapter 19, because I think that by

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In the first message of our series on the Parables of Jesus, I gave the following definition of a parable; Parables as Jesus used them are fictional illustrations taken from real life situations, which teach a spiritual lesson. Now by that definition, I do not think that the story we have in front of us today strictly qualifies as a parable.  And the reason I say that is because I don’t believe that it is fictional.  I think it’s an actual story about two real people.  I think that is evident because this is the only so called parable in

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