The Story of God: 7/10-11/2010
Joe Boyd, from the Vineyard Church in Cincinnati told us an amazing story this weekend. If you missed it, all you missed was pretty much the whole story of God. From the first breath to the ending that is to come, we can see how much God desperately wants to be the Father and the King of the world He lovingly created and sustains. God has gone to desperate measures over and over again to keep this story going.
Hopefully, this weekend inspired, reminded or challenged us to absorb and enjoy the story we find in the Bible. If that happened for you this weekend, I want to direct you to a Bible study that Joe Boyd wrote based on the Sermon on the Mount. Of course, Jesus was no One Hit Wonder but he did have one defining message found in Matthew 5-7. I'll let Joe introduce the study and you can find the link at the end of his post. Take the next few weeks, maybe by yourself, with a friend or your small group and get into the story.
From Joe:
Jesus had a central message. There was one single reality that prompted all of his teachings. Many have reduced Jesus’ life and words to a message other than his primary one. Some have taken some of his peripheral statements and made them primary.
At the beginning of Matthew’s gospel there is a simple, straight-forward statement that is crucial to observe:
From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” – Matthew 4:17 (NIV)
Matthew is about to reveal the single greatest oration humanity has ever heard – The Sermon on the Mount. Before revealing the words of Jesus’ great Kingdom Manifesto, Matthew lets his readers in on the main thesis of the life story of his subject: that from the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry until the end, he will have one central action step spurred by one simple statement of reality: Repent (the action) because the Kingdom is near (the reality).
It is from this reality that Jesus’ life, ministry, words and miracles are contextualized. It is in the action step of repentance that we are able to receive the reality of the Kingdom coming.
I prepared an online Bible Study through the Sermon on the Mount. If you would like to work through the study, it is archived at this link.
