Gospeling Your Life ~ Sermon on the Mount

 

Chapters 5-7 is the Sermon on the Mount.  I once heard a scholar suggest that if all of chapters 5-7 was preached at one time, the disciples’ minds would have exploded with too much information.  In three chapters we have more wisdom than we could ever understand or stand under letting these words guide/govern our lives.  I encourage you to read the Sermon on the Mount several times and in different translations.  You can go to www.biblegateway.com and find The Voice translation or Message for a different take on these words.  You can read the NIV or Living Bible.  Try and test out two or three versions.  Notice what is different and what sounds the same.  Where do you find your soul soaring in response to Jesus’ words, where do you want to raise your hand and ask questions?  I know for me it is right out of the gate, “Um Jesus, how can the poor in Spirit really be blessed, because the evidence doesn’t seem to convince the jury in my mind?  How can there be life in meekness, have you seen the internet?”  Also, I wonder when have Christians really loved our enemies?  What is your take on generosity in chapter 6 or prayer or fasting?  What about the part on worry?  I am an Olympic Gold medalist in worrying!  While I love what Jesus says about taking the log out of my own eye in chapter 7, I am not sure how good I am at doing that, because sometimes it feels like there is a whole forest blinding me!  Read and then re-read this sermon letting the words sink and settle into your heart, challenge your life, and prayerfully ask what is one passage, just ONE part of this sermon you might seek to embody?  You don’t, DON’T, have to go live every single word and sentence today.  But maybe there is one person that you could be just a smidge, more loving toward today.  Maybe there is one place you want to replace judgement with curiosity.  Maybe there is a meeting where one word of this Sermon can sustain you through.  Hold your insights and questions close, for that might just be where God is working in your life in these days.  Amen.