The Essence: Unpacking Jesus' Sermon on the Mount

The teaching of Jesus of Nazareth is unparalleled and universally acclaimed in the history of our world. Born into relative obscurity and poverty, no one has impacted the world to the same extent as Jesus. Amidst all he said and did, his close friend Matthew (a former social outcast) captured his teaching--delivered on a hillside just above the town where he lived, overlooking the Sea of Galilee. The fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of Matthew's Gospel, commonly referred to as the Sermon on the Mount, have been described as the essence of all that Jesus taught about God and how we relate with him. Every Christian (and every preacher!) must wrestle with the words of Jesus given on a Galilean hillside. If a person grasped nothing else of the words Jesus spoke, apart from that contained in the Sermon on the Mount, he or she catches the essence of his timeless message. This book unpacks the essence of Jesus' teaching and its remarkable application in our current age--a resource for individual Christ-followers, preachers, and a discussion-starter for small groups.