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| Summary: The Beatitudes represent Jesus’ work of grace before the demands of discipleship in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus’ blessings sound strange to us because they bless the very people we think of as down and out. Jesus’ blessings offer a future joy, but also a present encouragement. |
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| Summary: God’s blessing comes in a way of living based on the sure hope that mourning is not the final word, that mercy is a godly quality, that a hunger for righteousness points us in the right direction, that the kingdom of God is wide open to those who know they need it, and that God’s future will be a time of mercy, peace and fullness. |
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| Summary: Jesus’ pursuit of happiness is revolutionary, and we ought seriously to give it a chance in our daily lives. |
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| Summary: Jesus told us that the kingdom of God was like finding a great treasure or a pearl of great price. To relate to that kingdom, he said, would mean being poor in spirit - acknowledging our spiritual impoverishment freely before God. The gift is ours if our hands and hearts are open to receive it. |
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| Summary: The blessings that introduce the Sermon on the Mount affirm the actions and attitudes that Jesus believes best characterize God’s people. |
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| Summary: Jesus told us that the kingdom of God was like finding a great treasure or a pearl of great price. To relate to that kingdom, he said, would mean being poor in spirit - acknowledging our spiritual impoverishment freely before God. The gift is ours if our hands and hearts are open to receive it. |
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| Summary: Poverty is not what most people think of when they are looking for happiness. Mourning is really not all that appealing, and persecution is sought only by masochists. One might well wonder what Jesus was trying to do in this inaugural address. The promise was wonderful-happiness; however, the prescription seems a ridiculous one, at least in human terms. |
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| Summary: In some ways the Beatitudes have become so familiar to many Christians that they miss how counter-cultural they are. One way to see them in fresh ways is to read them in unfamiliar translations that can help uncover at least some of how Jesus’ first hearers might have received them.
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| Summary: Jesus doesn’t want us to be happy because we’ve counted our blessings. He wants us to know we are blessed, and to live that blessing. |
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| Summary: A ceremony sometimes used as part of the baptismal service helps highlight the fact that Christians are the light of the world because they have received the light of Christ. But it is really the light of the world only if it isn’t hidden, only if it’s allowed to shine. We do that through our witness to what God has done in Christ, through our actions and our words. |
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| Summary: Among the many voices that tell us who we are, Jesus comes today to say we are “salt” and “light.” Though we are understandably skeptical, Jesus is saying something important about our usefulness — not as something we need to become, but as something we followers already are, indelibly. |
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| Summary: When Jesus speaks of salt and light, he is not telling us what we need to become so much as he is reminding us what we already are. The questions is how willing we are to be what we have been empowered to be by the way God has created us.
We can point to people who have enhanced the world around us. Some of them are famous. Most of them are known as salt or light only to the handful of people they have touched. Our invitation is not to simply be impressed by them but to follow their lead and be what we already are.
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| Summary: Being more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees is not easy. It’s not a matter of fulfilling the law perfectly by ourselves, in desire as well as act, because we can never do that. But as those called to be Jesus’ disciples, we have his perfect righteousness. We continue to need the law, but not as a way to save ourselves. And as those who have the righteousness of Christ, we are to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth. |
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| Summary: Salty Christians show a powerful love that prevents the church from going bad. Bright-light ones act in ways that are good and right and true. When we put salt and light together, people will be drawn to Jesus Christ. |
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| Summary: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Cain’s question of God has been answered affirmatively by Christians for 2,000 years. God’s challenge to Cain to care for his brother is renewed by Jesus, who asked us to be salt and light to our world. We need to do God’s work by assisting others. |
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| Summary: Jesus calls the church to become the salt and light of the world. We respond in gratitude for God’s grace, not out of fear. |
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| Summary: Father’s Day is a call for us to renew our commitment to responsible parenthood and the imparting of God’s law in such a way that it becomes integrally woven into the fabric of our spirituality. |
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| Summary: In a gospel lesson that may provoke fear for some, it’s possible to envision the healthy communities and relationships toward which the gospel propels us. Rather than fear, we can be motivated by love. |
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| Summary: Christians often struggle with how to express anger, which can make us feel uncomfortable. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us how to focus this powerful emotion. |
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| Summary: In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus states the law’s demands quite strictly. Even minor infractions are condemned. But the same Jesus invites and welcomes sinners, and finally dies for them. And the fact that death could not hold him means that he is the one in whom we can put our deepest trust.
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| Summary: Jesus teaches what a community that embodies the ethos of God’s kingdom looks like. He offers instruction on forgiveness/reconciliation, relationships between men and women, marriage and solemn vows. |
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| Summary: Jesus extended the meaning of the “You shall not murder” command to teach that we are responsible for one another. |
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| Summary: This segment from the Sermon on the Mount is not a strategy for social action, or practical advice for life in the real world. It is a witness to the inbreaking of the kingdom of God and to a new way of being human. |
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| Summary: Our Lord calls us to resist violence, but not with more violence.
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| Summary: How can we pray for our enemies and what should we pray about them? We can ask God to help us know what to pray and what place to give our feelings about that person. And we can ask God to help us see this person as he does. If we pray those two things, we will know how to finish the prayer. |
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| Summary: Jesus’ command to turn the other cheek is countercultural, but it frees us from the cycle of vengeance. |
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| Summary: Jesus’ command to turn the other cheek is counter-cultural, but it frees us from the cycle of vengeance. |
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| There are 27 sermons in your results. |
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