Practicing sabbath is a gift from God to his freed people.

Friends, we live in a "free country" and yet we each experience a long list of things that we would like to be free from. Truly free in Jesus is the freedom we long for deep inside.

You are golden!!! Your faith is more precious than gold!!! YOU are a precious stone in God's spiritual temple, and your obedient life to God is building something that will never fade away.

We need to understand that Jesus is ending this sermon with a serious call to action. It is not enough to have heard these teachings, but we have to "do" something.

To be a disciple of Jesus requires obeying all the commands of Jesus. Paying attention to all his teachings. As we look today at the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, we have to start with asking ourselves how we relate to these teachings. Are they optional? Are they goals to set for sometime in the future? Are they fiction? Can they be disregarded?

The Beatitudes are a pronouncement, based on observation, that a certain way of being in the world produces human flourishing and felicity. These were common in ancient literature, including in Jewish texts. What is uncommon is who Jesus described as the ones who are flourishing.

The Sermon on the Mount provides a lot of guidance for everyday living. But it does so with the end firmly in mind. This is an important understanding for biblical theology - we are never just living for the here-and-now, even while we are encouraged not to worry about tomorrow. We have in view God's grand purpose to redeem and restore all of creation and to bring his people into full and right relationship with himself and each other.

The women came to the tomb that day carrying spices. Those spices represent several things: grief, tension between faith and doubt, tradition and duty, and questions. What have you brought to the tomb?

We are considering Gethsemane, and Jesus' prayer there, and looking at it through the lens of Philippians 2.

Even when face to face with a resurrection miracle, there are those who doubt. Jesus prayed a specific prayer before calling Lazarus out, and it was for those struggling to believe.