1. Even if the numbers are bad, the news about Jesus crucified for sinners and raised to new life hasn’t become any less good.
  2. There is a revival, no less real and even more definitive, taking place in every church, every weekend, where God’s people gather around his gifts.
  3. To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.
  4. Jesus stands before the disciples as the bridge between heaven and earth, and between Old Testament and New Testament.
  5. His love for you is so deep that in his mercy, while you were yet a sinner, God sent his only begotten Son to die for you.
  6. “So loved,” then isn’t about how much but instead simply how.
  7. Love is pointing to Jesus who said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
  8. Forty days after giving birth, Mary, along with her husband Joseph, presented their firstborn Son at the temple and "bought" him back with a sacrifice of two small birds. This is known as the "Presentation of Our Lord."
  9. All of Scripture, every last syllable of it, is meant to drive us to "consider Jesus," the One who comes to "make us right" by gifting us his righteousness.
  10. The sign of the cross, according to the earliest centuries of Christians, is “the sign of the Lord,” and every baptized Christian was “marked” with it.
  11. The usual acclamation when one becomes King is: “Long live the King!” But this King of kings, this son of David, has come to die.
  12. As the writer to the Hebrews affirms, what makes the Christian gospel so much better is that we are no longer dealing with “types and shadows."