Imagine being told one day to attend a meeting at a secret location. You travel to the house where you were told to meet and all the major politicians of your time are there. They are kneeling, promising you fealty, and calling you the new ruler of England.

On July 9th, 1553, Lady Jane Grey found that her cousin, King Edward VI had died and that in his last will and testament, he had ordered the succession of the crown be changed– passing over Edward’s older half-sister Mary Tudor to name Lady Jane Grey as his heir to the throne. This was a role she neither anticipated nor campaigned for. In fact, she first protested the crown and when she did finally accept the role, she asked God to help her rule to His glory if it be His will that she reign.

We’ve all done it– we’ve all looked at the sin of someone else and judged it to be greater than our own. Maybe, in our own pride, we’ve even wished that God would pour out justice on that sin.

In John 8, we see a woman who is brought before Jesus to judge for her sin. John writes that she was brought to the temple and presented to Jesus as an adulteress and was caught in the very act– the punishment for which was to be stoned to death. The aim for these religious leaders was to put Jesus in a catch-22: condemn the woman for her sin thus painting Jesus as a strict, cruel judge, or for Jesus to condone the adultery which would make him wantonly lax on unrighteous, immoral sin.

How many things did you try to build your life on before Jesus? How many things did you try to nourish your soul with before His grace? What did you try to satisfy your heart with before you believed?

Before Christ, you can build your life on a number of things: a career, a family, an academic resumè, entertainment, the news– you name it, someone has probably tried it. But whatever that thing might be is like a sandcastle… it crumbles and amounts to nothing.

Jesus was not an uncommon name in Biblical times. It still isn’t, even though most will think of the same Jesus when they hear the name.

Back in Jesus Christ’s time, salvation was so longed for that the people named their children after it. Jesus meaning in simple terms, “God saves.” But when the angel came to Mary and Joseph, they both received the same name, and it was an indication of the work God was doing through this baby King.

Christians get a bad wrap. Why? Because most of the time, we preach a message that comes off “holier than thou” to a world that is comfortable in their sin. I can’t count how many times unsaved people have said something along the lines of, “It’s okay, I’m gonna live it up with my friends at the big party going on in hell when I get there.” And I know it’s meant to be a joke, albeit not a very funny one, but it just goes to show how tightly people will cling to their sin and their comfortable pleasures, despite the fact that those things will never add up to eternal salvation.

Imagine: You’re a little kid and you’re tossing a baseball in the house– something you’ve been told many times not to do. The more you toss the ball, the more you get lost in your make-believe game. Suddenly, you’re not in the living room anymore. In your mind, you’re under the lights of a stadium, pitching in the World Series. You wind up for the pitch at the bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, and everyone’s eyes are on you. You throw and– Crash.

At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, He gives a lesson on a mountainside. There is a great crowd of people around Him, and they are all attentive to what this Messiah has to say. For the Jews, they believed that Jesus was here to free them from Roman occupation and rule, restoring them to political power and peace, and reigning over them victoriously whilst pouring out spiritual and material blessings over His chosen people the Jews. But in Matthew 5, the beginning of what has more popularly become known as the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus sets a very different tone than what the Jewish people assumed of a Messiah for generations. Instead, Jesus lays out more of a foundation to discipleship; what daily life looks like for someone who belongs to the Kingdom of Heaven, and how His followers should ethically live.

Over the last month, we’ve been picking apart Psalm 23, one of the most recognizable passages of scripture there is. David, the author of the psalm was a king, a shepherd, a son, but most importantly, a man that was passionately invested in a relationship with God. If anyone understood the deep nuances of every line of this psalm, it was David himself. If there was anyone qualified to compare God to a shepherd, it was David.In six, short verses, we were taken through the green pastures and still waters of a life laid in submission to the Lord; a life that allows God to lead and take care of our needs. From there, we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, an ominous valley surrounded by the trials of life on all sides. Then, we sit down at a table prepared by the Lord, but a table set in a room full of our enemies, an oasis of comfort and rest in the middle of a not-so-wonderful situation.