What Do We Know For Sure About Jesus? Sample

My favorite way to focus on the “red stuff” in the New Testament—the words of Jesus—is to ask “the Oprah question.” Near the back of every O Magazine, and near the end of the popular talk show she once hosted, Oprah asks her celebrity guests this brilliant question: “What’s one thing you know for sure?” As a lifelong journalist, I’ve interviewed hundreds of people over the years, and I think the Oprah Question is the best single interview question I’ve ever heard. So I co-opted her question, morphing it into this: “Based on this Scripture passage alone, what’s one thing I know for sure about Jesus?” As a random exercise in asking the Oprah Question, let’s read through one chapter from Matthew’s Gospel that’s loaded with red stuff—chapter 15—quickly determining what we know for sure about Jesus as we scan through the things he said and did. We’ll sometimes read the same passage but answer the question differently. (Taken from the book The Jesus-Centered Life by Rick Lawrence, a companion to the Jesus-Centered Bible—jesuscenteredbible.com.)

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