Sermon On The Mount (Week 2)
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SERMON ON THE MOUNT (WEEK 2)
“The “heavens” are always there with you no matter what, and the “first heaven,” in biblical terms, is precisely the atmosphere or air that surrounds your body.” –Dallas Willard
Isaiah 55: 8-9 NIV: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. 9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Matthew 5:3 NIV: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed” was not another way of saying “happy.” Rather, it was a matter of actually living a good and meaningful life. It answers the question, “What is genuinely in my interest, and how may I enter true well-being?”
“Jesus came among us to show and teach the life for which we were made. He came very gently, opened access to the governance of God with him, and set afoot a conspiracy of freedom in truth among human beings. Having overcome death he remains among us. By relying on his word and presence we are enabled to reintegrate the little realm that makes up our life into the infinite rule of God. And that is the eternal kind of life. Caught up in his active rule, our deeds become an element in God’s eternal history. They are what God and we do together, making us part of his life and him a part of ours.” -Dallas Willard
O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
