Reading
SAA Notes
This is a shorter account of the Sermon on the Mount than Matthew’s. It’s a passage you can ponder over year after year – there is much gold to be mined here. What gleams out at you today?
SJA Notes
Judgement. Condemnation. Forgiveness. Generosity.
Four actions that Jesus centers on in the middle of this passage.
The first two of them are “Do Nots” and the last two are “Dos”.
And then our Lord gives this most wonderful imagery of blessing that He will bring, “Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”
What is the measure we use? Are our hearts full of God’s love and mercy? Are we content as we pursue holiness and grow in godliness?
Do we submit ourselves humbly under the mighty hand of God, refusing our natural response to lash out in judgement, to condemn this or that – Instead going about with forgiveness and open-handed giving, trusting that our heavenly Father has laid out our good works? That it is His will at work, which we are submitting under.
Let’s be encouraged and exhorted in this, and in the many, many points that our Lord and Saviour preaches through in this passage.
* Gracious Father,
Please help us to have a heart for the lost, to be generous without thought of return, to forgive as we are forgiven.
Please as we read Your word and determine (please help us in this) to write it on our own hearts, please write it on our hearts, Your Holy Spirit carving into us with indelible ink!
Please make us more like Jesus.
Amen.