Studies In The Sermon On The Mount

General Introduction

p.6

It is a good thing to read the Bible daily, but it can be quite profitless if we merely do so for the sake of being able to say we read the Bible daily.

p.7

The heretics were never dishonest men; they were mistaken men

p.8

We are not under the law in the sense that it condemns us; it no longer pronounces judgement or condemnation on us. No! but we are meant to live it, and we are even meant to go beyond it.

p.11

The Sermon on the Mount is nothing but a great and grand and perfect elaboration of what our Lord called His 'new commandment'. His new commandment was that we love one another even as He has loved us.

p.12

The man who is truly forgiven and knows it, is a man who forgives.

p.12-13

The Lord Jesus Christ died to enable us to live the Sermon on the Mount. He died. Why? 'That he might...purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works,' says the apostle Paul—the apostle of grace (see Titus 2:14). What does he mean? He means that He died in order that I might now live the Sermon on the Mount. He has made this possible for me.

p.13

I am never tired of saying that what the churhc needs to do is not to organize evangelistic campaigns to attract outside people, but to begin herself to live the Christian life. If she did that, men and women would be crowding into our buildings. They would say, 'What is the secret of this?'

General View and Analysis

p.16

I do not hesistate to say that, unless we have understood and grasped the Sermon on the Mount as a whole, we cannot understand properly any one of its particular injunctions.

p.17

It is wrong to ask anybody who is not first a Christian to try to live or practise the Sermon on the Mount. To expect Christian conduct from a person who is not born again is heresy.

p.19

I mentioned in chapter one the fatal tendency to put up law ans grace as antitheses in the wrong sense. We are not 'under the law' but we till meant to keep it; the 'rightousness of the law' is meant to be 'fulfilled in us,' says the apostle Paul in writing to the Romans.

p.20

Again one of the essential and most obvious things about a Christian is that he is a man who lives always realizing he is in the presence of God.

p.21

What is of supreme importance is that we must always remember that the Sermon on the Mount is a description of character and not a code of ethics or morals. It is not to be regarded as law—a kind of new 'Ten Commandments' or set of rules and regulations which are to be carried out by us—but rather as a description of what we Christians are meant to be, illustrated in certain particular respects.

Introduction to the Beatitudes

p.24

In biblical study, it should invariably be the rule that you must start with the whole before you begin to pay attention to the parts.

p.24

Happiness is the great question confronting mankind.

p.25

It is the Roman Catholic Church that canonizes certain people, not the New Testament.

p.26

None of these descriptions refers to what we may call a natural tendency. Each one of them is wholly a disposition which is produced by grace alone and the operation of the Holy Spirit upon us.

p.29

The glory of the gospel is that when the Church is absolutely different from the world, she invariably attracts it. It is then that the world is made to listen to her message, though it may hate it at first. That is how revival comes.

Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit

p.33

As we go on to expound it, we shall see that it really means an emptying, while the others are a manifestation of a fullness. We cannot be filled until we are first empty.

p.34

The Bible nowhere teaches that poverty as such is a good thing. The poor man is no nearer to the kingdom of heaven than the rich man, seaking of them as natural men.

p.35

They say, 'If only I had so-and-so,' and they are jealous of those who have it. Now if they are in that condition they are not blessed.

p.36

And if one feels anything in the presence of God save an utter poverty of spirit, it ultimately means that you have never faced Him.

p.40

That, then, is what is meant by being 'poor in spirit.' It means a complete absence of pride, a complete absence of self-assurance and of self-reliance. It means a consciousness that we are nothing in the presence of God.