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.
View/Download in Google Docs

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.


View/Download in Google Docs

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.



View/Download in Google Docs