Last week, in our study of what is to be a peacemaker, one of the many verses that we spent time with was Romans 12:18, “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” A few things jump out at us as we think about this verse. First, and this really is the main point, Christians should spend their time, energies and influence in pursuit of peace, but, secondly, we also see that Paul adds some qualifying language (“if possible” and “so far as it depends on you”) that clea…
In this message we spend time with the seventh beatitude found in Matthew 5:9, which says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”
It is fitting that our study of this beatitude follows our exploration last Sunday of the one that comes immediately before, “blessed are the pure in heart.” As we saw last Sunday, that beatitude was concerned with the inner reality of a person. It follows logically that Jesus would then go on in the next beatitude to speak of…
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
There is a lot to think about and consider in connection with this statement that Jesus made, and I’m looking forward to exploring it this Sunday, but perhaps we should begin with the simple and obvious observation that what Jesus is concerned about is our hearts.
He does not say, for example, “blessed are the pure in conduct…”
Matthew 23:27-28 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like…
The phrase “just deserts” comes from a now obsolete meaning of the word “desert” which was something a person deserved or merited. You’ve probably heard the expression applied to people who get what was coming to them. We tend to take a certain amount of pleasure when our enemies, adversaries, and those people who manage to make our lives difficult or downright miserable get their “just deserts,” which is to say they get what we feel they deserve. “Poetic justice,” we might say whil…
In the fourth beatitude Jesus says, “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
Those words, “hunger” and “thirst,” are descriptive of a longing for something that is so powerful it feels desperate and necessary. It is a gnawing pang, an uncomfortable awareness of a thing’s absence, that not only doesn’t go away but it actually gets worse and more intense until it is satisfied.
In his book, “The Treasure Principle,” Pastor and author Randy Alcorn writes about a visit he made to Cairo, Egypt. His guide took him down an alleyway in an obscure, and poor quarter of the city until they passed through a gate into a square filled with trash and overgrown with weeds. It was a nearly forgotten graveyard for American Missionaries. Randy Alcorn had read about a young man, named William Borden, who was buried there, and he had come there to find his grave. Borden had been…
Our study through beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12) brings us to verse 4; “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” In last week’s message we saw that the Greek word for blessed, “makarios,” essentially means happy, but whatever the translation and whatever English word is used the juxtaposition of “makarios” (blessed, happy) with “pentheo” (mourning, lament) is provocative and also potentially confusing. Like water and wine, happiness and mourning seem to be mutually exclusive …
The sermon on the mount spans three chapters (5-7) in Matthew. If you have one of those Bibles that prints the words of Jesus in red then you will find that those chapters are nearly a solid block of red ink. I say “nearly” because the actual content of the sermon is sandwiched between two small bits of commentary about who was in the audience. In the opening verses of chapter 5 we are told that the “disciples came to Jesus… and He taught them,” (Matthew 5:1-2) and then if we fast…
In the Bible, God often compares His Word to food. Consider the following examples:
When Jesus was being tempted by Satan He quoted Deuteronomy 8:3 saying, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Psalm 119:103- “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth.”
Jeremiah 3:15- “Then I will give you shepherds after My own heart, who will feed you on knowledge and understanding.”
1 peter 2:2, calls us to “…
The Bible gives no word of encouragement to those who would quit the life of a sojourner and make a home for themselves down here. We are, after all, the spiritual descendants of Abraham who lived in tents, not Lot who settled on the plain. 1 John 2:15-17 warns against some dangerous affections that threaten to replace loving God with a love for the world, and loving others with a love for the things of the world. Jesus said that we cannot serve two masters, for either we will hate the one …
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