Disciples of Grace Today

  Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy - Matthew 5:7 Jesus has an uncanny way of staying focused even as He shifts gears just a bit. Thinking back to the 10 commandments we see the same. The first 4 deal with our relationship with God and the last 6 deal with our relationships with each other. Our love and treatment of one another flows from our fear and obedience to God. Jesus Himself gives an excellent example of this in His parable on The Unforgiving Servant in Matthew 18:21-35. Parables are stories with earthly settings to speak of a spiritual truth. In short in this parable a man owed a king a large sum of money, which he could not pay. He begged the king to have mercy on him and the king being merciful forgave the man his debt, but this same man went out and found his brother who owed him a few dollars. The brother could not pay the debt and begged for mercy, but the man would have none of it! He threw him into prison until the debt was paid. This naturally ...

  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied - Matthew 5:6 Someone wrote a song about not being able to be satisfied no matter how hard he tried. That seems to be the anthem of life sometimes doesn’t it? We fill ourselves with so much and we are still empty. We chase the rainbows of our dreams only to find there is neither a pot of gold nor a pudgy leprechaun waiting for us. We climb ladders that promise success only to find there’s no one up there and we’ve burned people, not bridges, to get here. Just like happiness, we all want a satisfying and fulfilling life and that’s exactly what Christ is promising us here in this statement. Now, before all my Reformed Theology friends think I’ve lost my mind and gone all prosperity-preacher remember what Jesus is doing here. He has climbed this mountain and is giving the people the heart of The Law. The Law was given to show the way we were to live and flourish and worship God. The law was to...