A Look Back...

While I love the concise yet cryptic sayings of Jesus, they have been really tough to teach and to bring into our world. How do you take single, small phrase and teach it for almost 30 minutes without repeating it over and over and over again? How do teach them in a way that doesn't look like that 500 word essay given as a punishment to a student (you know, "I am very, very, very, very, very, very, very... sorry.")?

So along with the commentaries and other references, I came across some fantastic studies on the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes in particular. These were literally this struggling preacher's best friends for this series. I leaned heavily into them for help (that's why you may have kept hearing me refer to the authors quite a bit). And as I finished last week's message on that seventh Beatitude ("Blessed are the peacemakers"), I was struck that there might be others who would want to go deeper and further in the Beatitudes and/or the rest of the Sermon on the Mount.

So here are those struggling preacher's best friend for this series. The first is The Christian Salt and Light Company by Haddon Robinson who is one of America's best preachers. The whole book is his take on Matthew 5 and is phenomenal in taking abstract concepts and making them concrete and real for life. A BIG recommendation from me on him and his book.

The second is The Sermon on the Mount: An Evangelical Exposition of Matthew 5-7 by D.A. Carson who is a leading New Testament scholar. The whole book is his take on the whole sermon and the Beatitudes place in them. While the book is a bit more on the terse side of explanation, his clarity and directness are excellent.

The third is Studies in the Sermon On the Mount by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones who was a phenomenal preacher in England. This book is basically a collection of his thirty sermons of Matthew 5-7 that someone took down short hand while he preached them. So it is a weighty tome but definitely a spiritual classic as he explains and applies the Beatitudes (and the whole Sermon on the Mount for that matter) with an obvious agenda for the day and culture he lived in. A must for devotionally and reflectively engagement of the Sermon on the Mount.

The first two books are out of print, but a quick search on Amazon.com (do I get a commission for that plug?) for them will yield some used book versions of them. At least, that's what I did.

So have at it!