The Hard Sayings of Jesus

Everyone has particular movies or styles of movies that they prefer. Maybe it’s sports movies, war movies, period pieces, or romantic comedies. But no matter the movie genre, there is one plot line that will cause me to turn the movie off: miscommunication. I hate when the whole problem in a story revolves around someone misunderstanding someone else’s statement. I don’t know how often I have leaned over to my wife and said, “This movie/show/episode would have been ten minutes long if this person had simply asked that person what they meant.

The same is true of the Bible too. The Bible is not one book but a collection of books. It was written by dozens of authors over hundreds of years in multiple languages. It shouldn’t shock us that some of the things it contains are hard to understand. But some people consistently jump to the wrong conclusion. They claim the Bible is outdated, hateful, or some other fashionable critique that people use to excuse themselves from listening to its message.

Perhaps, instead of dismissing the hard saying of the Bible, we need to seek to understand. Maybe we will learn something about the Biblical world that makes the saying make sense. Maybe we will learn something about ourselves that will make the saying a source of truth we weren’t expecting.

Dive into this 2 part series to look at the Hard Sayings of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel. Hopefully, as we study various sayings, we will discover that it’s okay to ask questions and be bewildered by things the Bible says. Maybe this study will give you the confidence to ask the questions that keep you from following with your whole heart.