Jesus says follow me to a tax collector, and Matthew’s first act as a disciple is to fill his house with his own circle. Nobody was cleaned up first — and Jesus tells the religious professionals watching to go and learn what mercy means.

Pastor Adam opens Christmas Eve with a question rather than a text: when did it start feeling like Christmas? The manger is the answer precisely because it resists atmosphere — a feeding trough is not evocative, it is simply what was available.

The unclean spirit makes the most theologically accurate statement in the chapter — I know who you are, the Holy One of God — and Jesus silences it. Correct information about Jesus turns out not to be the same thing as relationship with him.

Harry Wilson sets two passages side by side: Jesus says “come and see” to two disciples, and Mary’s household says it back to him at a grave. Between them sits a man weeping ten minutes before raising the dead, with no practical reason to cry.

Four men dig through a roof to lower a paralysed friend in, and the text says Jesus saw *their* faith. Then he forgives sins rather than legs — and the healing that follows is offered as evidence for the harder claim rather than as the main event.

Rondi Pogue starts generously: the crowd follows Jesus because they have seen him heal people, which is not a pure motive, and he feeds them anyway. The question he asks Philip was never for information — Jesus asks questions to teach.

“I see people; they look like trees walking around.” Pastor Adam takes the two-stage healing as the point rather than an embarrassment — Jesus is not a microwave salesman selling instant spirituality, and a second touch is not a failed miracle.

A series on the miracles opens with a definition rather than an assumption, then notices the setting: Jesus leaves the synagogue and goes to a house, where the miracle happens for somebody’s relative after the service is over.

The series works backwards into how the family got there, through the part most sermons skip. Pastor Adam names two failures — minimizing trauma, and the inability to communicate — then asks the room not to judge too fast, since David was a neglected son himself.