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Elements City Church

Sermon on the Mount - Week 4 - Live Sacrificially

The Sermon on the Mount is the most famous sermon Jesus ever preached. It derives its name from the place where Jesus preached it; a mountainside that acted as a natural amphitheater along the shores of Galilee. The Sermon on the Mount, preached to ordinary people, covers a wide range of topics like prayer, fasting, money, worry, forgiveness, anger, lust, judging others, and more. But the theme that unites it all is Jesus explaining the heart of God behind His given Law. It is one of the most challenging biblical texts to interpret properly because the Sermon goes far deeper than promoting external obedience to God’s moral imperatives or simple behavior modification. Every line of the Sermon goes to the heart of discipleship. The Sermon offers a clear understanding of what a blessed life that is pleasing to God looks like from the inside out. What Jesus taught often runs counter to mainstream thinking, but every lesson is brimming with heavenly wisdom and practical instruction that leads us into a flourishing life.

Locations & Times

1825 N Alvernon Way, Tucson, AZ 85712, USA

Sunday 5:00 PM

Thanks for joining us!

Whether you're on-site or online, we are praying that tonight will be an encouragement to your soul. May God whisper to you and help you in taking your next steps in a journey with Him. If you're new, we'd love to have you fill out our connection card.

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It's here in the Sermon on the Mount -- found in Matthew 5-7 -- that King Jesus gives us a radical picture of what life in His Kingdom looks like. And it’s our hope that, as we meditate on Jesus’s words, we might become people who more closely follow His Way and experience a life that truly flourishes in the process.

Key Themes in the SotM:
1. Makarios and Human Flourishing

“I think the Sermon is a piece of wisdom teaching from Jesus that invites people into true human flourishing through wholeness centered on God and his coming kingdom. Jesus’s Sermon invites us to see the world in a certain way and to be in the world in a certain way that accords with God’s nature, will, and coming reign upon the earth; in short, “righteousness” (cf. Matt 5:20). It is a call to faith‐based discipleship in Jesus, the Son of God.”
- Jonathan T. Pennington

The Sermon so far:
Beatitudes (Matt 5:1-12)
Salt and Light (vs. 13-16)
How to Have Kingdom Righteousness (vs. 17-48)

Key Themes in the Sermon (con't):
1. Makarios and Human Flourishing
2. Teleios and Wholeness

In vs. 17-48, Jesus describes for us the way of righteousness required to enter the Kingdom. He gives us six examples of how we are to live. What these examples show us is this:

Just because the law allows you to do something doesn’t mean it will lead to you flourishing, nor does it lead to the wholeness God requires of those in His Kingdom.

Jesus's teachings are a call to a way of being in the world that teaches us to look inward and become a different kind of people, a vision of virtue. A radical reorientation to our thinking often requires hyperbolic speech.
- Jonathan T. Pennington

Matthew 5:38-39 ESV

1. Be unoffendable.

Ex 1: Turn the other cheek.

James 4:1 ESV

1 Cor 6:7 ESV
Why not rather suffer wrong?

Matthew 5:40-42 ESV

2. Be sacrificially generous.

Ex 2: Give the shirt off of your back

Ex 3: Go the extra mile

"… What Jesus is saying is: 'Suppose your masters come to you and compel you to be a guide or a porter for a mile: don't go a mile with bitter and obvious resentment; go two miles with cheerfulness and with a good grace.' What Jesus is saying is: 'Don't be always thinking of your liberty to do as you like; be always thinking of your duty and your privilege to be of service to others. When a task is laid on you, even if the task is unreasonable and hateful, don't do it as a grim duty to be resented; do it as a service to be gladly rendered.'"
- William Barclay

Ex 4: Be ready to give

So what do we do?
1. Look to Jesus as our example.
2. Actively live in the Gospel.

Thanks for partnering with us!

Thank you for enabling us to be the Church in our city! Your gifts help fuel the mission of Elements City Church, as well as our capacity to share His love with as many as we can. You help us bring the HOPE and LIGHT of Jesus to our city! You can give online at the link below or through the Elements app.

http://elementscitychurch.org/give

Whether you joined us on-site or online, thanks for being with us tonight!
May you have a blessed week ahead friends.

Join us next week as we continue our series in the Sermon on the Mount. (read Matthew chapters 5-7)

Check out the Elements app for upcoming events! We look forward to gathering again next weekend.