Last week we finished looking at the Beatitudes in our study of the Sermon on the Mount. The 8 Beatitudes are characteristics of a Christian – of a citizen of the kingdom of heaven.  Jesus delineated the characteristics of someone who has been born again as a child of God.  The Beatitudes describe what we are by nature; the new nature that comes from a new heart as a gift from God in response to our faith and repentance.   But even in the last of the Beatitudes we start to see a transition, from what we are to what

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In our ongoing study of the Sermon on the Mount, we have come today to the eighth, and the last Beatitude. Most commentators agree that verse 10 is the last Beatitude, and vs 11, is an expansion on the same.  The Beatitudes, we have learned, are a description of someone who is a Christian. It is a list of characteristics of a Christian man or woman as given to us by the Lord Jesus. This last one differs a little from the others in that it is not just a characteristic of what behavior a Christian will have, but what

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For the past several weeks, we have been studying the first recorded sermon that Jesus preached which is called the Sermon on the Mount. And at the beginning of this sermon Jesus has given a series of statements which are called the Beatitudes. They are characteristics of someone who belongs to the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is a spiritual kingdom, ushered in by the Messiah, Jesus Christ. He is the King of this spiritual kingdom. And those who are citizens of His kingdom exhibit the characteristics of these Beatitudes. We have been looking at these each individually

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Today we are looking once again at our ongoing study of the Sermon on the Mount, and we are looking specifically at one of the Beatitudes.  The Beatitudes, you will remember, constitute a list of the characteristics of a citizen of the kingdom of heaven.  This is the basis of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Jesus, as the Apostle John described, is the Word made flesh, who dwelt among us.  He was in the beginning with God, He is God, and all things were made by Him.  So this is the message of God to the world.  This message gives

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There is a tendency in modern evangelicalism today to make a distinction between faith and obedience. That is a distinction that is not shared by the gospel of Jesus Christ. And this message we know as the Sermon on the Mount is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Someone has said, that in the gospels we have the gospel proclaimed. And in the epistles we have the gospel explained. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is announcing, proclaiming, preaching the gospel. His gospel. And it’s the only gospel we have. There is not a gospel of Jesus and another gospel

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In the beginning of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, are what is known as the Beatitudes.  The word Beatitude is derived from the Latin word “beatus” which means blessed.  And each of the Beatitudes you will notice begins with this word “blessed.”  Unfortunately, I believe our definition of “blessed” has been corrupted by our hedonistic culture.  I’ve heard many a Christian say when they received some sort of financial windfall that they had been blessed.  In fact, in the church, in most cases when you hear someone refer to being blessed or receiving a blessing, it has to do with

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We began our study of the Sermon on the Mount last week, and in that message we talked about the importance of the context of the message and how it is relevant for today in that it is the message of the Kingdom of Heaven which Jesus was preaching at the beginning of His ministry. I believe this message was the basis for much of the preaching that He did as He traveled through Judea and Galilee.  Chapter 4 tells us that Jesus traveled through those regions preaching “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”  I explained last

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I had fully intended to stop our exposition of 2 Peter at chapter 2, and begin a new series this week, which I anticipate will take us through the summer, on the Sermon on the Mount. However, after some thought, I believed that this last chapter of Peter’s message really would serve in some ways to act as an introduction to the Sermon on the Mount.  Because at the beginning of Christ’s ministry, when the Sermon on the Mount was initially preached, it was in the context of Jesus’s preaching that the Kingdom of God had come.  And so the

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