From Jerusalem to Jericho

From Jerusalem to Jericho is a collection of 32 sermons based on texts from the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. The sermons were written over a number of years and were preached in various Navy chapels and civilian churches. Jesus told stories about people-some ordinary, some anything but-to tell people the extraordinary story of God's salvation, now available to them in the Person of One Who looked for all the world to be just like one of them. The stories Jesus told are found in all four Gospels, but some of the most memorable, and powerful, are found in Luke alone. Jesus created a world with words that seems very much like the world created with divine words "in the beginning"-the world the people who listened to His stories knew so well. But the "story world" of Jesus turned out to be very different from what people had come to expect in their world. His stories revealed an unexpectedly different and far better world from the one they knew. Jesus had come not just to tell them about this other and better world, but to take them there. But before people could go there, they had to realize there was a different world to go to, and then what was required of them to get there. And for this, Jesus told them stories.Relating the parables of Jesus was not all Luke did in his Gospel, and his Gospel was not all he wrote to convey the story of Jesus-from His miraculous birth through His earthly ministry to His death and resurrection-and beyond. Luke told the stories of Jesus as part of the story of Jesus (in the Gospel) and of His Church (in the Acts of the Apostles). The stories of Jesus continue to be told today-and the story continues to be written, in our lives and the lives of hundreds of millions of other people who have heard what Jesus said and have seen the other world His words revealed. Every day, people go down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho with Jesus and find themselves in a far better world as a result.