Sermons from First United Presbyterian Church

Watch the Sermon here The First United Presbyterian Church “Beatitudes: Gentle and Righteous” Rev. Amy Morgan February 1, 2026 Matthew 5:5-6 Jesus taught them, saying: “Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” Order matters. As Presbyterians, of course, we delight in doing things “decently and in order,” but Biblical scholars also relish the opportunity to dissect a passage of scripture, revealing its structural framework. Oftentimes, what they find is that the Biblical writer was very intentional about the orderly placement of each phrase and the use of a particular word.   But New Testament scholar David Wenham admits that some might view Matthew’s rendering of Jesus’s Beatitudes as “a bit of a mess, a jumbled-up collection of blessed thoughts.” He notes, “there is repetition with two of them having the identical promise ‘for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ – did the author...