Study Desk

For your heart will always be where your riches are.

"Be ready for whatever comes, dressed for action and with your lamps lit,

like servants who are waiting for their master to come back from a wedding feast. When he comes and knocks, they will open the door for him at once.

Peter said, "Lord, does this parable apply to us, or do you mean it for everyone?"

But the servant who does not know what his master wants, and yet does something for which he deserves a whipping, will be punished with a light whipping. Much is required from the person to whom much is given; much more is required from the person to whom much more is given.

"Why do you not judge for yourselves the right thing to do?

Then Jesus told them this parable: "There was once a man who had a fig tree growing in his vineyard. He went looking for figs on it but found none.

So he said to his gardener, ‘Look, for three years I have been coming here looking for figs on this fig tree, and I haven't found any. Cut it down! Why should it go on using up the soil?'

A woman there had an evil spirit that had kept her sick for eighteen years; she was bent over and could not straighten up at all.

Now here is this descendant of Abraham whom Satan has kept in bonds for eighteen years; should she not be released on the Sabbath?"

The master of the house will get up and close the door; then when you stand outside and begin to knock on the door and say, ‘Open the door for us, sir!' he will answer you, ‘I don't know where you come from!'

Yet I must be on my way today, tomorrow, and the next day; it is not right for a prophet to be killed anywhere except in Jerusalem.

For those who make themselves great will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be made great."

Then Jesus said to his host, "When you give a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your rich neighbors—for they will invite you back, and in this way you will be paid for what you did.

When it was time for the feast, he sent his servant to tell his guests, ‘Come, everything is ready!'

Another one said, ‘I have just gotten married, and for that reason I cannot come.'

Soon the servant said, ‘Your order has been carried out, sir, but there is room for more.'

If he isn't, he will send messengers to meet the other king to ask for terms of peace while he is still a long way off.

It is no good for the soil or for the manure pile; it is thrown away. Listen, then, if you have ears!"

"Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them—what do you do? You leave the other ninety-nine sheep in the pasture and go looking for the one that got lost until you find it.