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Now that we have finished up with the eight beatitudes, which show us the characteristics of a heart that pleases God. Those characteristics showed how a heart aligned with the kingdom of heaven would interact with God and other people. At the time, the beatitudes also opened people’s eyes to the idea that the kingdom of heaven was being made available to the most unlikely people of that time, when it was thought that only the visibly righteous and those with material or social power were...

We will continue our study of the beatitudes in Matthew 5:7-12. Last week we went over the first four beatitudes, which are all generally linked to how our posture should be between us and God. The last four beatitudes shift more towards how our transformed heart should produce action or interactions with others in this world if we are on the right path that God desires. 5:7 – “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” We have been shown an enormous amount of mercy by God when...

Today we will officially begin our 20-week Sermon on the Mount series. We will be taking a quick deep dive each week into all the sections of Matthew 5 through 7. This week we will be going over the first four Beatitudes from 5:1-6, but before we do we should try to establish the big picture purpose that Jesus was communicating to us in the entire sermon. It is important to understand that Jesus was speaking to a very large crowd, that crowd did not just include all of the righteous people in...