Week 09 - Blesed are the Pure in Heart

 When we think of purity of heart we might think of having completely pure, blameless, sinless lives, or perhaps a heart that is pure from temptations and sins (primarily, we think of the sexual ones). Sometimes our connotations of what the Bible means actually limit drastically the implications of its teaching for our lives.

A person who is pure in heart is a person whose motives are pure when they helping others. When they see a need, they truly want to help without any thought of what that means for them. We can contrast this with people who help others so that they can get something in return.
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Week 08 - Blessed are the Merciful

The first four beatitudes generally focus on how to live in relationship with God, our so-called "vertical relationship."  The second four generally focus on to live in relationship with one another, our "horizontal relationships."  The two are tightly connected.  A person in a relationship with God will treat other people in a manner that reflects His nature and His attitudes towards people.

Mercy is all about how we look at other people. We treat them as best we can, even better than ourselves. I think there is a parallel to the first beatitude, poor in spirit. A person ‘poor in spirit’ recognizes his true worth before God. A merciful person recognizes his true worth before other men. He understands that “There but for the grace of God, go I” and treats others accordingly.


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Week 07 - Blessed are those who Hunger and Thirst

Here are the notes that I came up with before class. This class, though, took a turn turn that I didn't expect, but had planned on going to in later weeks. So, we went ahead talked about some of those thoughts and get a preview of a radical way of viewing our freedom in Christ.

I have summarized those ideas in the Introduction of next week's study, so you will be able to see the preview there. We will look at this more in-depth later in the study.



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Week 06 - Blessed are the Meek

We continue our look at the different verses in the Beatitudes by looking at meekness.


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Week 05 - Blessed are those who Mourn

We look at the second verse of the Beatitudes poem, mourning.








Teacher Notes:

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Week 04 - Blessed are the Poor in Spirit

We will now begin a verse-by-verse analysis of the Sermon on the Mount, starting with look at each of the beatitudes one at a time.








Notes:

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Week 03 - The Principles of the Yoke

Many historical and research document start some sort of introduction to the rest of the paper. with These introductions are usually succinct, but powerful and overarching, explanations of a broad concept that will be explained in detail later on.

These introductions set the expectation for the audience and give them a preview of the content. The Sermon on the Mount is no different. Jesus starts this sermon with a poem we call the Beatitudes that sets the stage for a transformational way of looking at life.

Notes:

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Week 02 - The Lay of the Land

South Saskatchewan River valley

Context matters. So, before you can jump into and study each verse, one needs a 20,000 foot overview of the entire sermon. I used the Book Survey Bible Study Method to try and get a good idea how the sermon is structured as a whole.





My "teacher" Notes:

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The chart I created to show how the Sermon on the Mount is structured to look like a mountain. It builds up to the "Peak of Piety" and then descends back into practical applications:
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Week 01 - Seeing Jesus as a Rabbi

To truly understand the Sermon on the Mount, we need to have a historical and anthropological framework. This means understanding how first century Jews would have viewed Jesus.



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Sermon on the Mount Small Group: Plan

After taking a long break from leading a small group, Erin and I have delved back into this very important ministry. We will be using the Sermon on the Mount for the studying portion of this small group. Like always, I will try to make the materials available on my blog for others to use.

Here is a very tentative outline and schedule of the different things we will be looking at.



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