Teaching Notes are Bible studies we taught before GraceLife Ministries began publishing articles online in 1995. Some were presented as sermons, others as group studies.

Our hope is that these older studies will be a blessing to you in your life and ministry. Please use them in any way God leads you.

These teaching notes are part of a study from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount.

[These notes are from a study taught more than 40 years ago. The notes are in outline form.]

(Read John 1:1-3 & Colossians 1:15-17 aloud as a reminder about the Person and Work of Jesus Christ.)

Luke 4:16-21

  • Preach good news to the poor
  • Proclaim freedom for the prisoners
  • Proclaim recovery of sight for the blind
  • Release the oppressed
  • Proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor

(Matthew 4:12-25 — use as reference back to Sermon)

Matthew 5 – 7 … Sermon on the Mount

Quote from noted secular psychiatrist Dr. James Fisher with more than 50 years of psychiatric practice –

“I dreamed of writing a handbook that would be simple, practical, easy to understand, easy to follow. It would tell people how to live — what thoughts and attitudes and philosophies to cultivate, and what pitfalls to avoid in seeking mental health. I attended every symposium it was possible for me to attend and took notes on the wise words of my teachers and of my colleagues who were leaders in their field. And quite by accident I discovered that such a work had already been completed! If you were to take the sum total of all authoritative articles ever written by the most qualified of psychologists and psychiatrists on the subject of mental hygiene — if you were to combine them and refine them and cleave out the excess verbage — if you were to take the whole of the meat and none of the parsley, and if you were to have these unadulterated bits of pure scientific knowledge concisely expressed by the most capable of living poets, you would have an awkward and incomplete summation of the Sermon on the Mount. And it would suffer immeasurably through comparison. For nearly two thousand years the Christian world has been holding in its hands the complete answer to its restless and fruitless yearnings. Here…rests the blueprint for successful human life with optimum mental health and contentment.” A Few Buttons Missing

In this very brief sermon, which takes less than 15 minutes to deliver, Jesus touches on major psychological truths which could help each one of us in our struggle to be released from oppression and freed from the prisons of our minds.

Matthew 9:10-13

Two things that I would like to leave with you from the teaching of Jesus:

  1. We must acknowledge to ourselves that we are in great need and come to God as beggars.
  2. We must put our trust in Christ as the authority and His teachings as absolute.

[Thank you for reading these teaching notes from more than 40 years ago. My prayer is they will be a blessing to you and your ministry.]

GraceLife