“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” so begins the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ longest sermon in the New Testament. And with these words, Jesus introduces us to a whole new way of living – inside out living!
The Sermon on the Mount is a blueprint for building the Christian life that covers three chapters of the book of Matthew, and includes the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus’ teachings about worry, forgiveness, integrity, loving our enemies, storing up treasures in Heaven, and many other topics. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reaches beneath our actions to the attitudes that motivate us. He teaches us how to stop living for ourselves, and how to start living beyond ourselves. And that kind of living is inside out living.
Small groups will find this study, taught by Pastor Lance Witt of Saddleback Church, to be challenging, practical, at times controversial, and always quite surprising.
This curriculum offers three 6-7 week volumes. Each small group will need one DVD (which provides the teaching), and one study guide for each participant.
Note: This series was originally designed to be a four-volume series, but the final volume, "Living with the End in Mind" did not get produced. Each of the other three volumes can be used independently of the others, or sequentially as a 20-week series. Groups who have used all three volumes have benefited greatly from the rich verse-by-verse teaching that carries the group from Matthew 5:1 through to Matthew 6:24.