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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: 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: 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’ pursuit of happiness is revolutionary, and we ought seriously to give it a chance in our daily lives. |
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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: 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 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: “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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Jesus’ command to turn the other cheek is countercultural, but it frees us from the cycle of vengeance. |
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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 counter-cultural, but it frees us from the cycle of vengeance. |
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| There are 19 sermons in your results. |
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