After telling His followers to love their enemies – a revolutionary concept that turns every natural human impulse on its head – Jesus doesn’t let up. He now explores mercy and all its ramifications. Just as the citizen of the kingdom of God must treat his enemies as God does, so he must have the […]
Love your enemies. It’s a simple sentence, isn’t it? It’s an imperative made up of three words, none of which is hard to understand. It’s short, it’s easily definable, it’s easy to read and speak. There’s absolutely nothing about it that’s complicated at all. It even kind of rolls off the tongue. What we realize […]
Starting in verse 20 and lasting through the end of the chapter is what some call the Sermon on the Plain. Likely the same sermon as the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, it is Jesus’ manifesto explaining how a citizen of the kingdom of God is to live. In a word, the godly […]
1-13 Instead of recounting the Sermon on the Mount in one place like Matthew, Luke spreads the teaching throughout his book. In these verses he records Jesus’ teaching about prayer from the Sermon and adds a parable that is unique to this account. The model prayer shows the importance of making God the priority of […]
Jesus concludes His sermon with a final application comparing those who look saved with those who truly are. He already discussed people who go through the wide gate and travel the wide way versus those who go through the narrow gate and travel the narrow way. He explained that there are false teachers who bear […]
In this text Jesus takes a break from outlining the precepts of the Kingdom and encourages us to get help from the King to obey the King’s commands. He’s at a point in the sermon where He essentially says to His listeners, “If you’ve been paying attention you should realize by now that you stand […]
When a man is speaking to God he is at his very acme. It is the highest activity of the human soul, and therefore it is at the same time the ultimate test of a man’s true spiritual condition. There is nothing that tells the truth about us a Christian people so much as our […]
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God This Beatitude may perhaps seem less weighty than the others. It doesn’t seem to compare to being poor in spirit, or being meek and merciful. But peace between men in this world isn’t common or easy, and the believer who’s characterized by peace […]
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy Mercy is showing love to the helpless and hopeless (as opposed to grace which is showing love to the undeserving). The best definition of the two that I have ever encountered is this: ‘Grace is especially associated with men in their sins; mercy is especially associated […]
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth To be meek is to truly understand what I am and how that affects my interactions with others. I see others through the lens of my own sin. If I am poor in spirit to the extent that it causes me to mourn over sin, […]
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