Bible Study 8:00 AM PST 11/22/2025

Hello All Below are the study notes for 8:00 AM PST 11/22/2025. I pray you are gathering enthusiasm for Matthew, especially how he will be informing us of Jesus' plan for His followers and all of the earth's people in the next three chapters. Please have your Bibles handy. Pray also for the health of all of our brothers and sisters impacted by some malady. Miracles do happen! Please join us, our Zoom Link is below for this Saturday's session at 8:00 AM PST 11/22/2025. Please remember that we bless each other and our community with your presence. May the Holy Spirit bring you His wisdom and His understanding. Join us!!! Zoom Link: For Study, Prayer and Fellowship - 8:00 AM PST 11/22/2025: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82968961343?pwd=LzcwVjJKcWVESDRURlhDcXlNV0JUdz09 Meeting ID: 829 6896 1343 Passcode: 77299ere: Bible Study Notes: 11/22/2025 – Prologue - The Beatitudes [Matt. 5:1-12] are steps into the kingdom, the stairway to spiritual life. In our Bible studies, we may perceive that there is an historical distance between the New Testament and our contemporary culture. The Sermon on the Mount contains Jesus’ foundational vision and thus offers helpful insights for those seeking to discern how to live out the light of Scripture within the darkness of today’s world. Supplemental Prologue – Definition of religion – The belief in and worship of god or gods, or any such system of belief or worship. Cambridge Dictionary. Catholicism - believe their faith is more than just a religion, it is a way of living, a source of community and a guide for moral decisions. What shapes that faith? The Magisterium. It is the molding system of Western Civilization. Protestantism - emphasizes justification of sinners through faith alone and salvation comes by unmerited divine grace, the priesthood of all believers, and the Bible as the sole unfal-lible source of authority for Christian faith and practice. It was a response to perceived errors and abuses within the Roman Catholic church. We begin with a definition of meekness. This sermon is the moral portrait of Jesus' own people. The contrast between His vision and our lives is so stark that many have tried to soften the demands it makes on us until it has been skewed beyond recognition in the minds of many Christians. Whoa unto him who tries to soften Jesus’ message. We shall try to investigate the Sermon on the Mount in light of the way Jesus meant it to be heard, requiring us to ask difficult questions of ourselves about discipleship, ethics, and salvation. This may be harsh, but Bonhoeffer was openly writing and discussing “religion-less Christianity”, in 1944. (70 years) That statement set off a theological and ideological firestorm. Bonhoeffer in 1928 described those who fashion their religious life as practiced only in the ‘best’ room of the house, which had nothing to do with work, everyday life, and normality. He characterized this as religion in a salon, a sugar-coated faith that turns the Nazarene into a bowdlerizer figure. Sabine Dramm; Dietrich Bonhoeffer: An Introduction to His Thought, Peabody, MA, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 2015. (Bowdlerized - to remove words or modify parts considered unsuitable, offensive or objectionable. Cambridge Dictionary) This involves using words or themes to make the content more suitable for certain audiences. The Johnson Amendment (1954) was misinterpreted by most clergy in America, to our detri-ment. It was to prohibit 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates. The beatitudes are not blessings pronounced upon different kinds of people – the meek, the merciful, the pure of heart, etc. They are stages in the experience of a single class of people: those entering the kingdom and at each stage are blessed. The kingdom is the blessing, and each step into the kingdom participates in its blessedness. This blessedness comes with our actually taking the step, it is not postponed, or promised as a future reward. Jesus used the present tense, when He said, “Blessed are …” Jesus was not just a great teacher (many try to label/limit Him) and if we try to describe Him that way, we misunderstand Him. His teaching [Matt. 5:1] began with the famous ‘Sermon on the Mount.’ [Matt. 5, 6, and 7]. Many think with this sermon Jesus is trying to get us to behave better; they miss the point. The ‘blessings’ of which He speaks are, ‘wonderful news’. If some are like that, they should be happy and celebrate. Jesus is not sug-gesting timeless truths about the way the world is or about human behavior. Mourners often do go uncomforted; the meek do not all inherit the earth; and often those who long for justice will carry that longing to their death. Jesus makes an announcement! It is not a philosophical observation. It is something that is starting to happen, not a truth of life. It is gospel, it is good news, not good advice. With Jesus' first words to His disciples, “Follow me!” He was informing them that as the living God, He was doing a new thing and His iterating this list of ‘wonderful news’ is part of His invitation. His summons! He was saying that God was at work in a fresh way and that it is, what it looks like. Jesus is beginning a new era for His people and God’s world. From this time forward, all the controls that people thought they knew are going to work in another way. In our world today, most people think that ‘wonderful news’, is about success, wealth, long life and victory in battles. But now Jesus is offering ‘wonderful news’ for the humble, the poor, the mourners, the peacemakers. The word for ‘wonderful news’ is often translated, ‘blessed’, and that is part of God’s ‘wonderful news’. God’s work in and through Jesus is to turn the world upside down, turning Israel upside down, to pour out lavish blessings on all who turn to Him and accept the new things which He is doing. Jesus is not offering a list of the sort of people God normally blesses. He is announcing God’s new covenant. In [Deut.] the people came through the wilderness and arrived at the edge of the promised land; there God gave them a solemn covenant. [Deut. 4:1-2] In which He listed the blessings and the curses that would pour down on them if they were obedient or disobedient. [Deut. 28] Now, Matthew has shown us Jesus coming out of Egypt. [Matt. 2:19-20] Through the water and the wilderness [Deut. 3,4] and into the land of promise [Matt. 4:12-16]. Thus, His new covenant. We are all prone to ask when? Many Christians answer – in heaven, after death. At first, we read [Matt. 5: 3, 10-12] there are the words, “… kingdom of heaven” which seem to imply that the, “kingdom of heaven belongs to the poor of spirit and the persecuted and there is a great reward, in heaven’ for those who suffer persecution for Jesus’ sake. Do we misunderstand the use of the word, heaven? Heaven is God’s space, where full reality exists, and it is close to our ordinary earthly reality and interlocking with it. We expect one day a new heaven and earth.[2 Peter 3:13] together forever and the true state of affairs, currently out of sight, will be unveiled, [Matt. 5:5] It says the meek shall inherit the earth, and that is not possible in a disembodied heaven after death. We should not read the Sermon on the Mount (Matt.) unless we cross reference it with the uplifting Sermon on the Plain (Luke) (Luke 6:17—23). And the following admonishment [Luke 6:24-26]. The entire Sermon on the Plains. [Luke 6:17-49] Meekness – a posture of humility, gentleness and patient reliance on God. Neither passivity or timidity. A power, under control, a trust in God. Bible Hub We will read that later in the prayer that Jesus taught His followers. [Matt. 6:7-15] We pray that God’s kingdom will come, and God’s will be done, “… on earth as it is in heaven. The life of heaven – the realm of where God is already king; is to become the life of the world, transforming the present ‘earth’ into the place of beauty and delight that God has always intended. Those who follow Jesus are to begin to live by this rule in the here and now. That is the whole point of the Sermon on the Mount, especially these beatitudes. They are a call to live to live in the present in the way that it will make sense in God’s promised future. Note: Has not the future arrived in Israel, at that very moment, in the presence of Jesus of Nazareth. It may seem upside down, but we are called to believe that in fact it is the right way up. Try it! 12/13 AMEN Love, hank Hank Hohenstein, OFS Land Steward 161 Osprey Vista Shady Cove, OR 97539 Cell: 541-973-5442 hankhohenstein@gmail.com