November 2021

The Persecuted for Righteousness Sake

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 […]



The Peacemakers

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.” […]



The Pure in Heart

“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 […]



The Merciful

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 […]



October 2021

Those Who Hunger and Thirst

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 […]



The Meek

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 […]



Those Who Mourn

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” […]



The Poor in Spirit

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 […]