Almost certainly, the Sermon on the Mount was not spoken by Jesus as it was written in the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus likely said this collection of saying over the entire three years of his ministry, but Matthew put them together as though he did it, as Shakespeare said, in one fell swoop. Probably he didn’t. Jesus likely said these things in many different places and to many different kinds of audiences.

Jesus told a parable about a farmer who sowed seeds in his field. Because the field did not have uniformly good soil everywhere, some seeds produced far more grain than others. People are like seeds, said Jesus. “As for what fell among thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature” (Luke 8:24).

Let’s face it. There are many other ways of learning about God and Jesus Christ than just sermons. People can read the Bible or other books, they can attend classes or lectures, they can participate in discussion groups. Through these and other methods, they can hear about God and learn about Him. Then why have sermons? Why go through this exercise once a week, fifty-two weeks a year?

Text – “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” – Matthew 25:29

In this series of teaching sermons I have given many of my own thoughts on the themes of the sermons. I’ll give another one now. I do not believe Jesus rose from death on Easter; I believe he was raised. He was resurrected by God; he did not resurrect himself by his own power. That is a teaching I hope you will ponder long and hard, whether or not you agree with it. But what I just said (which I have said before) is an opinion; it is not what I or anyone else would claim to be an undeniable Gospel truth.

Here is a possible explanation for Jesus’ command to the disciples to remain silent if they thought he was the Messiah. He himself was not certain of that, and therefore he didn’t want anyone else claiming it to be true. Many of you may disagree with that idea, and I well understand why. But having thought long and hard about this issue for years, I am not convinced Jesus did perceive himself as the Anointed One of God, although I personally am convinced that is who he was and is. Mark probably believed Jesus was the Messiah, although he never said so, but Jesus may have been agnostic on that claim; he didn’t know whether or not it was true. It may have been a secret even to Jesus.

Xenophobia usually is resisted with more xenophobia. Peoples who innately fear other peoples tend to disdain or even commit war against one another. Nationalism comes much more readily to most of us than does internationalism. Currently the Ukrainians are being viciously reminded of that every day. However, Isaiah had previously written that the Messiah would be “a light to the nations.” Isaiah did his best to try to establish strong ties between Israel and their neighbors, but it was always a hard slog.

The Gospel of Mark is what might be called “the lean” Gospel. That is, of all four Gospels, it usually supplies the least amount of background information about the life of Jesus. For example, when it tells how Jesus called a tax collector named Levi (better known to us as Matthew) to become one of his disciples, it just says he did it. Specifically, Marks says that Jesus “saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting in the tax office, and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he rose and followed him” (2:14.) Period; end of story. No explanation of why Jesus called Matthew, or why Matthew (Levi) agreed to become a disciple; he just got up from his tax office, walked out the door, and presumably never went back again. There had to be much more to that story than Mark wrote, but he didn’t bother to fill in any of the blank spaces.

According to the Gospel of Mark, after Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, he was tempted for forty days in the wilderness by the devil. And after that Jesus returned to the region of the Galilee, where he had grown up in Nazareth. Mark tells us that he began preaching “the gospel of God.” Note: Mark does not say, “the gospel of Jesus Christ”; he says, “the gospel of God.” Immediately after that Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). In Mark, as in the other two Synoptic Gospels, “the kingdom of God” is the primary thrust of Jesus’ preaching. Please keep that always in the forefront of your mind.

For the past five weeks I feel as though I have been contending in a hellish situation against 21st century technology. I found out that the telephone company with whom I had my email account is going out of the email business. Therefore I need to establish a new email address with a new phone company. However, to connect with them both Lois and I had to buy new cell phones, she because she has an old flip-phone, and I because I have the oldest Iphone ever invented. Furthermore, before I can hook up with the new company and have a new email address, I must wait until March 8 to get the two technological devices necessary to go online. I might note I was never thrilled to be online in the first place, although I realize its many advantages. Still, it seemed to me, and it still seems to me, that my world is going to hell in a handbasket.

You may have many questions about certain aspects of Abraham’s story, but you’ll likely find few totally satisfactory answers. Either we accept the general truth of what is being reported, or we don’t. If we don’t, we find ourselves left to our devices, and the going gets exceedingly tough. We all need God, hard as He is to understand sometimes.

We begin 2022 as we began 2021. A pandemic is raging all over the world, but a new variant, Omicron, is rapidly spreading. For people who have received both vaccinations and the booster, it does not produce serious illness. But for those who refused to be vaccinated, it can be lethal.