When it comes to stirring others to hear that hard message of the Cross and to guiding the faithful in understanding the same, James R. Carroll and his son, John T. Carroll, provide a blend of seasoned ministerial experience and solid scholarly talents that yields a rich interpretation that is down to earth, yet original and insightful. This is a book to be savored by preachers and teachers of all denominations. " Donald Senior, C.P., Catholic Theological Union

The longer we preach, the more we start to realize how radical and shocking the words of Jesus are-even to Christians. Veteran pastor Steven D. Mathewson provides proven wisdom from decades of preaching to makes sense of the red letters that perplex many in your congregations and to equip you with the tools you need to preach them confidently and persuasively. Preaching the Hard Words of Jesus is loaded with Scripture, bibliographic references, and scholarly resources, this book walks us through Jesus' harder teachings on topics like the demands of discipleship, sex, and marriage, divorce hell, the end times, and more.

Like his original hearers many people today find Jesus' sayings hard. Some sayings are hard because they are difficult to understand, others because the demands they make on us are only too clear. F. F. Bruce examines seventy of the hard sayings of Jesus to clear away the cultural and historical difficulties which keep us from grappling with the real challenge of Jesus' message. Evident in each chapter is Bruce's keen evangelical scholarship and pastoral insight.

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As well as telling parables and stories, giving teachings on how to discern questions of ethics and human nature, and offering beatitudes for comfort and encouragement, Jesus also spoke words and flung insults that followers then and now have found difficult, to say the least. He instructs disciples to hate members of their own families (Luke 14:26), warns that unending fire awaits some people, says body parts should be cut off if they offend. He calls a foreign woman a ‘dog’, the Jews ‘offspring of vipers’ and his closest disciple ‘Satan’. Preachers often gloss over these or avoid them altogether as they are still so shocking. In The Difficult Words of Jesus, Amy-Jill Levine sheds vital light on understanding these by exploring how these sayings sounded to those who first heard them. She reveals Jewish modes of expression, humour and the long tradition of Jewish insults and what they mean, and how we might interpret these sayings today within a gospel of love and reconciliation.

Hard sayings of Jesus are those he spoke which are hard to understand. Some confounded even the disciples, who did not understand or were astounded by what he said. The hard sayings often appear to contradict Jesus' other teachings about a loving, kind, forgiving and compassionate God. How can curious Christians wrestle with their meaning to understand them? This book stimulates engaging conversations for a six-week group study of Jesus' hard sayings. Each chapter contains conversation starting questions, background information, and texts needed to inform the discussion. The Appendix includes valuable tools like 1) The teaching methods of Jesus, 2) Basic questions to consider in bible study, 3) Fast Facts about the authors of the synoptic gospels, and others. The book is especially well-suited for small member-led discussion groups although anyone curious about Jesus' hard sayings will find it enlightening.

"A blockbuster of a message to the church and to preachers . . . " -Don Wilkerson, President, Teen Challenge, Inc. Can American Christianity really reconcile itself to the hard sayings of Jesus and the teaching of Scripture, or have we invented a version suitable for mass consumption that agrees with our Western ideas of fairness, our so-called rights, and the all-important American dream? In order to make God approachable, have we left out the parts of the New Testament we don't like? Is there a cost to being a disciple of Jesus? How do we reconcile the teachings of the Jesus we find in Scripture with the American Jesus we have created? In Hard Sayings: Reconciling the Cost of Discipleship and the American Dream, pastor and international speaker Joshua West considers these questions and more, and he compares the parables, teachings, and person of Jesus Christ found in Scripture against the pop culture Jesus we have invented in the West. Looking at the entertainment-driven, celebrity culture of the American church, West challenges the reader to reconcile what the Bible calls the cost of discipleship with the American dream.