September 22, 2012
Title: Week 3 — God’s Favor for Spiritual Zeros
Series: The King’s Speech
This week we moved from Jesus’ teaching about the gospel of the kingdom in chapter 4 of Matthew to explaining what life in the kingdom looks like in chapter 5. Jesus’ sermon begins with eight pronouncements of blessing known as the Beatitudes. They reveal eight fundamental emotional attitudes and convictions of the soul, as well as character qualities of the inner person. Jesus paints a portrait of his followers from the inside out. He is describing who they are before he details how they live. We will explore the context of these words and then encounter the first Beatitude: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”