As I prepare this blog, my heart trembles. I have never been called upon to truly suffer for my faith. One of the interesting things about blogging is that I can check every day to see how many people have read my posts and what countries they are from.
Read MoreIn the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord Jesus started by describing the qualities of those who are blessed in His Kingdom. They are very different from the things that receive respect and honor in the eyes of the world. They look like Him.
Read MoreJesus preached the heart-wrenchingly beautiful qualities of a disciple as the opening poem of the Sermon on the Mount. Then He taught that the humility and dependence of His blessed ones would be like salt and light to the rest of the world.
Read MoreJesus declared that the Laws and prophecies of the Old Testament would remain unbreakable and true until the end of time. In His own life on earth, the Lord obeyed them with absolute perfection in response to His heavenly Father.
Read MoreJesus was teaching the Sermon on the Mount. He explained what it means to be a member of God’s Kingdom. The key is found in qualities of the heart such as purity, mercy, and meekness. These rich inner qualities will show outwardly in the way Christ’s followers respond to life.
Read MoreThe next Kingdom ideal that the Lord explained to for His disciples in the Sermon on the Mount was about taking oaths.
Read MoreThe next thing Jesus tackled in His Sermon on the Mount was a law that Moses gave in the book of Deuteronomy. It said: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” I've know some people to find this repulsive and brutal, but my guess is that they hadn't thought it through very deeply.
Read MoreAs Jesus taught the Sermon on the Mount, He proclaimed six different ways that the Jewish leaders of His time had distorted and misused the high and holy Law of the Old Testament. In His protection against the rages of evil in this world, God gave commands against murder, adultery, and divorce so that sin would be restrained.
Read MoreAs Jesus preached through His piercingly clear Sermon on the Mount, He began to talk about what it means to love. He pointed out that nobody should get a reward for loving the people who love you back. That’s easy.
Read MoreIn the first part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught a high and holy Law where absolute love is the supreme goal. Then He taught that His disciples what it would look like to honor it perfectly. The vision of Kingdom love that the Lord presented on the mountain is so achingly pure and obviously holy that humanity naturally praises it and longs for it.
Read MoreOf all the important questions there are in the world, perhaps one of the most important is this: “How are we supposed to talk to God?” If you think about it, the fact that we can talk to Him at all is pretty amazing. There are lots of false stories about God out there that suggest we can’t come to Him.
Read MoreA lot of times when we hear about the Good News of Jesus, we hear about the beauty of God's grace...and that is really good because His grace is amazing. He paid a tremendous price to give us that grace as a free gift. It means we have been adopted into His family, given the honor of being the children of the Most High God, receiving His love and protection.
Read MoreMatthew wrote the Sermon on the Mount to teach what it means to be a disciple of Christ. In the final three pictures that Jesus gave, He showed the difference between those who are truly members of His Kingdom and those who are not.
Read MoreMatthew wrote the Sermon on the Mount to show us all the things Jesus taught as He went about the countryside in Galilee. It gives us the big picture of what He said about life in the Kingdom of Heaven. Many of those ideas are also told in the book of Luke, but they are scattered throughout his book as Luke showed how Jesus was teaching those things along the way.
Read MoreJesus continued to journey about the countryside telling everyone the Good News and healing the sick. One day He travelled to a city called Nain. His newly appointed disciples were with Him, and they were followed by a huge crowd.
Read MoreJohn the Baptist was in prison. You see, he had said some things that Herod, the pretender king, did not like. Herod had taken his own brother’s wife and married her. John the Baptist spoke out against it, so Herod threw John in prison and kept him there.
Read MoreAs Jesus preached to the people throughout the region of Galilee, the powerful religious leaders began rejecting His message. But it wasn’t just the religious leaders that refused to hear the message of God through John and Jesus.
Read MoreIn the midst of Christ's busy ministry of teaching and healing throughout the region of Galilee, one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to dine in his home. Many of the Pharisees had already rejected the Messiah completely, but this one was still struggling with how to understand the coming of Jesus and His remarkable miracles.
Read MoreJesus and His disciples went out once again to the cities around the Sea of Galilee. He proclaimed the Good News of the Kingdom of God to everyone who came to Him. There was a group of women who came along with them as well.
Read MoreJesus had spent His days travelling around Galilee, teaching the deepest, richest truths that humanity had ever heard, and healing the broken. He started out teaching in the synagogues, giving the religious leaders a chance to recognize their Savior.
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