Heads Up

The chief reason we are so preoccupied with our possessions and with acquiring more of them is that we worry about the future and do not trust God to care for us. This is why Jesus discusses worry. “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what…

Up to this point in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has spoken almost entirely about the spiritual character of those who would be His disciples and of the relationship they must have with God. But Christianity is not just a vertical relationship between us and God. It also has horizontal dimensions because we are…

Halfway through the Disciples [Lord’s] Prayer in Matthew 6, we come to the fourth petition, “Give us this day our daily bread.” We turn from prayer for the advancement of God’s name, God’s kingdom, and God’s will to prayer for our personal needs: (1) life’s necessities, (2) forgiveness of sins, and (3) deliverance from temptation…

“This, then, is how you should pray:” ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver…

There is a wonderful wholeness as well as a compelling organization to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and we come to appreciate it more and more as we move carefully through Christ’s teaching.

What about telling the truth? According to surveys, Americans lie all the time, often with no apparent reason. But in most other societies, both past and present, telling the truth has always been judged an important personal virtue. What was the problem in Jesus’ day then? It was exactly what we have been seeing all…