Home Group Sermon Series - 2020
The Sermon On The Mount
As the word spread of Jesus’ teaching, His proclamation of the gospel, and His healing of people’s sicknesses, crowds started following Him to listen to what He had to say (Matthew 4:23-25). It was then that Jesus gave His most well known, and famous, teaching, which we know as ‘The Sermon on the Mount’.
Jesus’ ‘sermon’ is as counter-cultural today as it was then. ‘The Sermon On the Mount’ is a Christian value system, looking at ethics, attitudes, ambition, lifestyle and what it means for us to live as kingdom people. Jesus focuses on our hearts, who we are, and provides us with both encouragement and comfort that we can trust the God who loves us and who will take care of us.
Elijah & Elisha: Standing For God
The time is around 850BC. The kingdom of David is now split in two, with Israel and its capital, Samaria, in the north, and Judah and its capital Jerusalem, in the south. The northern King is Ahab, however, it is Queen Jezebel who wears the trousers in this relationship! The worship of the one true God has been replaced with the worship of the fertility god Baal. As a consequence, God raises up the prophets Elijah (whose name means 'My God is Yahweh’) and Elisha (whose name means 'My God is my salvation') to draw his people back to Himself.
Although there had been many previous prophets in Israel, most of them had been anonymous figures, but not Elijah and Elisha, who, because they ‘stood for God’ were both highly regarded by those in the ‘school of prophets’ (2 Kings 4:38-41) as well as by the rulers of their country. Their influence led to a revival among many of the Israelites during a dismal period in their history.
The ‘I AM’ Sayings Of Jesus
The claims Jesus made were more startling to the people who first heard them than to us. The words ‘I Am’ drew Jesus’ first-century Jewish audience back to a pivotal point in Old Testament history when Moses, worried that the people would want to know who had sent him, asked God what his name was, and God answered: ‘I Am Who I Am’ - God’s covenant name with Israel (Exodus 3:14). Now, hundreds of years later, those same words come from the lips of Jesus who is claiming to be the Lord God Himself. In this study series, we will discover how Jesus’ words can transform our lives today. Be prepared to wrestle with some amazing claims as Jesus speaks afresh into our hearts and lives.