Everything the author has been saying about the Son’s superiority to angels has been building to 2:1 ...
Angels were highly revered by the Jewish people. God had often used angels in the Old Testament to give his people guidance (Genesis 19:17), protection (Psalm 91:11), deliverance (Isaiah 37:35-37), and even judgment for their sin (2 Samuel 24:16-17). As one author writes: “When an angel spoke, people listened.”...
When life gets hard, what do you turn to for comfort? And where do you go for relief when the Christian life in particular becomes difficult? Do you persevere in your walk with Jesus despite the hardship? Or do you return to the comfortable habits and patterns of life that marked your life before becoming a Christian? These were the kind of questions facing the original recipients of Hebrews....
Genesis 23:1-25:18 wraps up the life of Abraham by focusing in the land, offspring, and blessing God had promised him. In Genesis 23, Abraham became the legal owner of a small plot of the promised land when he purchased a cave in which to bury Sarah. In Genesis 24, the focus shifts to the promise of offspring....
Having waited decades for the promised child to arrive, Abraham was tested by God to see if he valued God above all other things, even his beloved son. In the climax of the whole Abraham story, he proved that he did by being willing to offer up Isaac as a sacrifice (see Genesis 22)....
In between God’s initial promise to Abraham of offspring and Isaac’s actual birth were years of waiting as well as numerous trials. But the greatest test to Abraham’s faith in God’s promise wouldn’t come until after Isaac came on the scene. ...
In Genesis 20, Abraham again tried the “Sarah is my sister” ruse out of fear for his life (see Genesis 12:10-20). This time, he tried it with Abimelech, king of Gerar. God intervened to assure that Abimelech didn’t touch Sarah, and for the entire time she was in his palace, the women of Gerar couldn’t get pregnant. After the truth came out, Abimelech returned Sarah to Abraham, who in turn prayed for the barren women of Gerar to become pregnant. This begs the question: God can do this for Gerar’s women; when will he do it for Sarah?...
In Genesis 12, God promised Abraham that he would give him offspring and make him into a great nation. Since then, many obstacles have threatened to stand in the way of that promise. Some were circumstantial, such as Sarah’s barrenness (11:30) and eventually her age (18:11). Others were moral, like the incidents in Egypt (12:10-20) and the one with Hagar (16:1-16). On the eve of Isaac’s birth, another moral failure from Abraham threatens the fulfillment of God’s promise....
In Genesis 18:1-15, Abraham was met by three visitors: God himself and two angels. After being treated to Abraham’s remarkable hospitality, God told him that his promise to give him and Sarah a son would be fulfilled in a year. In response to Sarah’s skeptical laughter, God reminds her that because he is God, nothing is impossible for him....
In Genesis 17, God gave Abram several new details regarding the covenant he had made with him in chapter 15. First, Abram was to be the father of not just one nation but many, so God changed his name to “Abraham” which means “father of a multitude”. Additionally, kings would come from him, this covenant would be an everlasting one that included his descendants, and most importantly, God would be their God in a personal way. God also made it explicitly clear that Abraham’s promised child would be born to his wife Sarah....
In this final section of the Sermon on the Mount so far, Jesus has used a series of contrasts to demand a response from his audience. They are to choose the narrow road as opposed to the wide road (7:13-14), listen to true teachers as opposed to false ones (7:15-20), and to do God’s will over and against merely professing to love him (7:21-23). Jesus turns to one more co...
Keep ReadingEvery good sermon closes with a call to action. Having established what life in the Kingdom of Heaven is to look like (Matthew 5:17-7:12), Jesus now invites us to choose whether we will follow the path he has laid out in this Sermon or the way of the world. ...
Keep ReadingAfter instructing his followers not to judge others, Jesus begins to close out the main body of the Sermon on the Mount with an appeal for his followers to regularly approach their heavenly father in prayer....
Keep ReadingAs Jesus begins to wind down his sermon, he returns to the theme of hypocrisy that dominated 6:1-18. In this case, he deals with hypocrisy in the way that believers address sin in each other’s lives....
Keep ReadingIn Matthew 6:19-24, Jesus addressed our values, the things we treasure. This leads quite naturally to the subject of anxiety, for if our heart is where our treasure is (v. 21), and if our treasure is something on earth that can be lost, then our hearts will always be restless with worry that our treasure might be taken from us....
Keep ReadingA major theme in the Sermon on the Mount is how different Jesus’ followers are to be from the rest of the world and what role our distinctiveness plays in God’s mission. In 6:1-18, Jesus illustrated the Christian’s distinctiveness in terms of his devotional life. Now he addresses our perspective and values. As citizens of the kingdom, the things we value (vv. 19-24) ...
Keep ReadingJesus spent much of Matthew 5 illustrating the principle he stated back in 5:20: that his followers’ righteousness should be an inner one that delights to obey God’s commandments. This theme of inner righteousness carries over into this next section (Matthew 6:1-18) where Jesus contrasts hypocritical and authentic faith. In 6:1, he states a principle and illustrates it...
Keep ReadingIn his discussion on prayer so far, Jesus has critiqued two methods. In contrast to the Pharisees, Christian prayer should be sincere rather than hypocritical. In contrast to the pagans with their multitude of gods, Christian prayer should be purposeful and direct, knowing full well that we are addressing our Father. To drive home his point, Jesus now gives his listeners a...
Keep ReadingIn Matthew 5:20, Jesus said that his followers’ righteousness should exceed that of the Pharisees who were considered by many to be the pinnacle of godliness. For the rest of the chapter, he illustrates the kind of righteousness he’s calling for by contrasting the true meaning of various Old Testament laws with how they were being misapplied by the Pharisees. In these ...
Keep ReadingThe Pharisees thought they had discovered loopholes in several laws of the Old Testament. They won’t murder, but they’ll hate. They won’t commit adultery, but they’ll lust. In this section, Jesus calls them out on their attempts to justify adultery and lying....
Keep Reading