Regardless of generation or cultural and political affiliation, everyone feels that our culture isn’t stable. Our world feels polarized, confusing, insecure … in a word, chaotic.
Jesus’ ministry took place in a region and a culture of similar chaos: economically insecure, politically charged, culturally fragmented. But in the “founding” sermon of his ministry - the message that summarized his new Kingdom - Jesus offered a better way.
The Sermon on the Mount (found in Matthew 5-7) is, among other things, a template for the life and society we were made for. Jesus calls us away from the anxious pursuits of our world - power, pleasure, wealth - into a life of integrity and love, founded on the eternal words of God. Instead of striving after a Utopia or giving up in despair, he calls us to resilient hope in the kingdom to come.
SERMON ARCHIVE
RESOURCES
The Message of the Sermon on the Mount by John Stott
The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering our Hidden Life in God by Dallas Willard
Strange Days: Life in the Spirit in a Time of Upheaval by Mark Sayers
Crucifying Morality: The Gospel of the Beatitudes by R W Glenn
[Historic] Of the Imitation of Christ by Thomas of Kempis