Welcome to the Excel Stillmore podcast. I am your host, Chris Emerson. I'm here to encourage you in your walk with God. Thank you for joining in.

Today's podcast is sponsored by a wonderful company, Creation to Revelation. This group of Christians believe it is extremely important that we teach the Word of God to our kids.

They have original graphic illustrations from the beginning of the Bible to the end,

featuring the beautiful and consistent presence of Jesus throughout.

You can explore all of that at creation to revelation.com.

I'm so thankful you're here, so let's get started. Welcome. I hope that your day is going well,

and I want to thank you for joining today. If you were able to catch last week's episode titled

Pharisees and Jesus, then you already know that we are in the middle today of a three-part series

making some comparisons in the early chapters of Mark's Gospel. I promise not to use valuable time

today recapping all of last week's episode, but suffice it to say that Mark

Chapter 2 is extremely rich in identifying the problematic motives and disturbed heart of the

Pharisees with the genuine heart and humble purposes of Jesus. I hope it was clear in that

episode that we didn't present it so that you could identify

Pharisees around you and send them podcast links. Our journey on this program is self-analysis.

Have I been like those Pharisees, staring right into the face of the true mission of Jesus

and choosing to be suspect or judgmental or heartless right in the face of it.

I'm really interested in hearing your feedback on that episode, which I should have heard by now,

except I'm actually recording all three of these episodes pretty close together a couple of weeks ago

from your perspective, so they'll all be done before the first one airs.

So if you've sent me emails or Facebook messages, texts, or made calls, and we've discussed it,

I probably would have worked in your thoughts into subsequent episodes, except they were already

in the can. As it is, though, I'm feeling pretty good about the fact that we're working these

...