The Four Gospels Seminary Course

Sermon on the Mount pt. 2 

www.ulcseminary.org

·        Here is a sample from the Four Gospels Course. With this course, you also receive a textbook. This course takes a look at the Four Gospels and applies them to your every day life. The teachings of Jesus were intended to be used on a daily basis by those who follow him, so learning what the different meanings are (or just a different way of looking at something) is very valuable. The text is a unique translation of the gospels, directly from the Greek, and has a slightly different way of looking at those famous words.

“And when you pray, don’t be like the fakes who love to pray standing in the temples and on the street corners so as to show off for everybody.  Believe me, they have already been paid their wages.  When YOU pray, duck into the store-room and lock the door and pray to your Father on the sly. And your Father, watching on the sly, will pay you back.  Your communication with God is between you and God.  Those who pray loudly and publicly are not praying; they are putting on a show.  Praying is about talking to God with an open heart. 

·        “When you pray, don’t babble on like pagans who think they can make themselves heard with a great glut of words.  Don’t act like them, because your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.

·        “So pray like this:

                    Our Father in the skies,

                    Let Your name be sanctified.

                    Let Your kingdom come,

                    May Your will be seen

                    On the earth, just as in the sky.

                    Give us day by day the next day’s bread,

                    And forgive our debts

                    The same as we forgave the debts that others owed us.

                    And do not put us to the test,

                    But snatch us from the Evil One’s clutches, let it be so. 

          The Lord’s Prayer was intended to set a mood.  While not strictly necessary, it’s a way of tuning into to God.  It’s kind of like turning on your IM on your computer.  You can send your communications other ways, but this is a direct way to get your message across.

·        “If you forgive people for stepping out of line, your heavenly Father will forgive you too.  But if you don’t forgive other people, your Father also won’t forgive you for stepping out of line.  How can you possibly forgive yourself for anything if you don’t extend the offer to other people?  “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”  Jesus repeats the same concepts in a variety of ways.  In many ways, he talks about karma.  This is another example.  If you don’t forgive, there will be no forgiveness to come back to you.

·        “When you fast, don’t be like the grim-looking fakes who disguise their faces so they’ll look to people like they’re fasting.  When YOU fast, put on a fragrance and wash your face, so you DON'T look to people like you’re fasting, except to your Father on the sly.  And your Father, watching on the sly, will pay you back.  Again, the question becomes whether you are doing things for yourself or for the recognition of others?  When you fast for others, you only make yourself hungry for nothing.  If you fast privately, to cleanse yourself of toxins and to create a different sort of meditation space for yourself, then it’s likely to work because it’s for yourself.  It’s like the people who are very pious and make a big deal out of going to church.  Who are they going for?  My mom had a roommate in college who was quietly religious.  It was several months before my mom realized that the woman even went to church.  This is because she went to 5:30am mass, even in a snowstorm.

·        “Don’t save up your treasures on the earth, where moths and rust eat away at them and thieves tunnel in and steal them.  Save up your treasures in the sky, where no moth and no rust eats away and thieves don’t tunnel in and steal.  Because where your treasure is, your heart will be too.  This is a more eloquent way of saying, “You can’t take it with you.”  You’ll never hear a man say on his deathbed that he wished he’d worked more.  Good deeds, good friends and great relationships are what matter.  These are what will teach you your valuable spiritual lessons.  It’s those lessons that travel with you when you leave this world.

·        “The lamp of the body is the eye.  So if your eye is in one piece, your whole body is lighted; whereas if your eye is bad, your whole body is in darkness.  So if the light inside you is dark…what a lot of darkness!  “The eye is the window to the soul.”  If you look closely, you can usually tell when someone’s light is bright or if it has gone out.  If you have gone dark inside, you are consumed with loneliness.

·        “No one can serve two masters: either he’ll hate one and love the other, or he’ll put up with the one and despise the other.  You can’t serve God and the Almighty dollar.  “That’s why I tell you, don’t trouble your heart about what you will eat and drink or clothe your body with.  Isn’t the soul more important than food, and the body more important than clothing?  Look at the birds in the sky:  they don’t plant, don’t harvest, and don’t fill silos, and your heavenly Father still feeds them.  Don’t you make more difference to Him than they do?  Can any of you, by being vastly concerned, add a foot to your height?  And why do you worry about clothing?  Study how the lilies of the filed grow:  they don’t work, and they don’t spin cloth.  But I am telling you that not even Solomon in all his glory was every dressed like one of them.  If that’s how God clothes the wild grass of the field, there today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won’t He do much more for you, unbelievers?  This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have money.  You don’t need to give up everything to love God.  What this means is that if your whole focus is on material things, then you don’t have any attention left for matters of the spirit (of God.).  The Universe is created in abundance.  Everything we need is here. 

·        “So don’t worry, saying, ‘What will we drink?  What will be wear?’  The pagans ask for all these things, but your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.  Ask first for the kingdom of God and His justice, and these other things will be delivered to you.  So don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow can worry about itself.  Each day’s evil is enough for the day.  This particular phrase has been misused frequently over the years.  People use this passage as an excuse to do nothing. They spend all their money in a variety of ways, then says that tomorrow can take care of itself.  Or they lay around and do nothing and claim the same thing.  What these people are ignoring is that they haven’t asked for the kingdom of God and His justice.  In other words, they haven’t taken care of today, yet!  Be in present time.  Take care of what is in front of you and the future automatically takes care of itself.

·        “Don’t judge, so that you won’t be judged; you will be sentenced to the same sentence that you sentence others, and by whatever standard you measure you will be measured.  Why do you look at the splinter in your brother’s eye but don’t notice the log in your own eye?  And how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me get that splinter out of your eye,’ with that log there in your own eye?  You fake, first get the log out of your own eye, and then you can see about getting the splinter out of your brother’s eye!  This passage is a personal favorite of mine.  How often do you see people giving advice about something they themselves have issues with?  Or you hear selfish people judge others for being selfish?  People can readily see even the smallest issues that other people struggle with, yet fail to see the huge issues they have themselves.

·         “Don’t give the holy of the holies to dogs, and don’t throw your pearls at the feet of pigs, or else they’ll trample them with their hooves and then swing around and knock you down.  This passage is frequently quoted as being, “Don’t cast your pearls before swine.”  For a long time, I wondered what this meant.  Pearls are used to represent knowledge or truths.  There’s a saying I heard once that amused me to no end.  It says, “Don’t ever try to teach a pig how to sing; it’s a waste of time and it annoys the pig.”  If you have knowledge of something, whether it’s spiritual or about worldly things, and this knowledge is important to you, be aware of who you share it with.  If you share your truth with people who are not in a position to appreciate and hear what you’re saying, then they are likely to belittle what they don’t understand and try to make you feel foolish for having told them.

·        “Ask and you will receive, look and you will find, knock and you will be admitted.  For the asker always gets, the seeker finds and whoever knocks is admitted.  Is there any person among you who, being asked by his son for bread, would give him a stone, or being asked for a fish, would give him a snake?  If you, villains that you are, know enough to give good things to your children, how much more will your Father in the skies give good things to those asking Him!  This passage brings to mind the song, Bridge Over Troubled Water.  The song can be talking about being a good friend and, on the surface, it appears to be so.  What if you look at the song as being from God to you?  God is on your side.  And God is always willing to give you help if you need it.  God is always listening to you and is ready to help.  Often, we are like three-year olds.  A three-year old is always ready to say, “I can do it.  I can do it.”  They never want to accept help until they are nearly defeated.  When they do ask for help, there is always someone there ready to lend a hand.  So next time, do they ask for help?  Not usually.  Throughout life, there seems to be a constant struggle to know when to ask for help and what we should ask for.  When it comes to matters of spirit or matters of the heart, you can always ask God for help, even if you think you can do it yourself.   As for WHAT to ask for?  Ask for what you NEED.  God will always give you what you need.  You probably won’t get the race car or win the lottery, but if you need a shoulder to cry on or you want to feel loved, God always grants your prayers.

·        “So everything you want people to do for you, you do the same for them, because that’s the law and the prophets.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  What comes around goes around.  You reap what you sow.  Are you starting to see the pattern?

·        “Go in the narrow door; because the door is wide and the road is broad leading off to destruction, and many people are going that way. Whereas how narrow the door and how constricted the road leading off to life, and how few people find it!  Take the road less traveled.   It’s easy to take the easy money, to do less than your best, to do enough to get by or to ignore a situation that might force you to grow.  It’s much harder, yet more rewarding, to step up to the plate, to go the extra mile, to follow your passions or to admit you’re wrong when you are and be willing to learn from your mistake.

·        “Be careful of pseudo-prophets who come to you in the clothing of lambs and are rapacious wolves inside.  (Wolf in sheep’s clothing.) You’ll know them by the fruit they bear: you don’t get grapes from a thorn-tree or figs from a thistle-bush, do you?  Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, while the rotten tree bears bad fruit.  A good tree can’t bear bad fruit, and a rotten tree can’t bear good fruit either.  Any tree not bearing good fruit gets cut down and thrown into the fire.  So definitely you’ll know them by the fruit they bear.  I believe this is where the concept of ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree’ comes from.  This is also the idea of something looking too good to be true.  It’s not that good things can’t happen, but if you look at where it’s coming from and ask yourself if it makes sense, then you’ll be able to tell.

·        “Not everyone saying ‘Lord, Lord’ to me will get into the kingdom of the skies, but only those who do the will of my Father in the skies.  Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord didn’t we prophesy in your name and exorcise demons in your name and work many wonders in your name?’ “And I will say to them, ‘I must confess I never met you; go away from me, workers of lawlessness.’  It’s not enough to merely give lip service to good deeds or to do good things for reasons that are self-serving.  There are a lot of people who make a production of going to church, giving to charity or working for fundraising functions that are doing it for their ego alone.  Jesus was talking about doing things from your heart.  It is only then that you are doing God’s work.  God’s work is always work of love.

·        “So anyone who hears these words from me and does them, will become like a sensible man who built his house on bedrock, and the rain came down and the floods came and the winds hurled themselves at the house, and it didn’t fall because it was grounded on the rock.  And anyone who hears these words form me and doesn’t do them, will become like a stupid man who built his house on sand, and the rain came down and the floods came and the winds beat at the house, and it fell, and its downfall was tremendous.”  If you build the foundation of your life on truth, love and hope, everything you do that stems from that will be strong and solid.  If you ignore truth, inflict misery on others, and base your life on ego-centered things, your life and dreams will dissolve like sand through your fingers.

Four Gospels Study Course