Posted by Roberta Grimes • December 06, 2025 • 0 Comment
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Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee.
Holy, holy, holy! merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity.
Holy, holy, holy! all the saints adore thee,
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea.
Cherubim and seraphim, falling down before thee,
Who was and is and evermore shall be.
Holy, holy, holy! though the darkness hide thee,
Though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see,
Only thou art holy; there is none beside thee,
Perfect in pow’r, in love, and purity.
Reginald Heber (1783-1826), from “Holy, Holy, Holy” (1826)
We ought to complete our study of what are the core of Jesus’s most important teachings, so today we augment our four-week review of His Sermon on the Mount by now considering His Sermon on the Plain. First, very briefly, just to orient our reading, the Christian Bible’s New Testament begins with four Gospels which tell the story of Jesus’s life and work, with an emphasis on His teachings. Three of them are called the Synoptic Gospels, and they clearly have similar roots; and two of those, the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, are in some ways near-mimics of one another. So, here in Luke, we find Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount in near-parallel and called the Sermon the Plain. We are perhaps not very surprised to hear Jesus’s words from The Sermon on the Mount being reported in the Gospel of Luke a second time, given how many people were there to hear Him that day! There were many who would have been eager to pass this story down in the family. But it is given to us here as a different sermon, this time delivered in abbreviated form and on a flat plain. This modified re-use of such an important sermon, and the details of the way that it was re-used, should fascinate us. Note the reference here again to the vast size of the crowd, and the distances that they had walked, just to come on that day and hear Jesus speak.
(As you read these words from the Gospel of Luke, a few things will become evident to you. First, it’s clear that the writer of this Gospel had The Sermon on the Mount in hand in something near its final form. He entitled this speech the Sermon on the Plain, and he pointedly had Jesus come down and deliver it on a flat place for contrast; and in addition, he added his own moody flavor here. Note that in his Beatitudes, we have only four “Blesseds” and not eight; and they are harshly balanced at once by four “Woes”. When you read these Beatitudes beside those in the Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, you find that their tone is altogether different, as if they are said by two different people: while Matthew, like Jesus Himself, is entirely positive; here Luke, like the late religion of Christianity, carries the sense that the good times now must inevitably be balanced by pain later on.)
17 Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place; and there was a large crowd of His disciples, and a great throng of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon, 18 who had come to hear Him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were being cured. 19 And all the [a]people were trying to touch Him, for power was coming from Him and healing them all.
The Beatitudes
20 And turning His gaze toward His disciples, He began to say, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 21 Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. 22 Blessed are you when men hate you, and ostracize you, and insult you, and scorn your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of Man. 23 Be glad in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven. For in the same way their fathers used to treat the prophets. 24 But woe to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full. 25 Woe to you who are well-fed now, for you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. 26 Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.
(The three paragraphs that follow Luke’s balanced version of the Beatitudes are a marvelous summary of Jesus’s teachings, gathered and thrown together in a quick summary. So many, many lessons all at once! You could almost write an exploratory paragraph or two about each separate sentence, which makes the Sermon on the Plain almost a brief study bible all by itself.)
27 “But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either. 30 Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back. 31 Treat others the same way you want them to treat you. 32 If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount. 35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. 36Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; pardon, and you will be pardoned. 38 Give, and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure—pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return.”
39 And He also spoke a parable to them: “A blind man cannot guide a blind man, can he? Will they not both fall into a pit? 40 A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher. 41 Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 42 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye. 43 For there is no good tree which produces bad fruit, nor, on the other hand, a bad tree which produces good fruit. 44 For each tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they pick grapes from a briar bush. 45 The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.
Builders and Foundations
(With this summary below, Jesus borrows one more thing from His Sermon on the Mount, He takes the comparison of the man who built his house on the rock and the man who built his house on the sand, and we here see that comparison reinterpreted as building with or without any foundation, after he has first begun this final paragraph with a question clearly brought in from elsewhere. So, again, we know that this Sermon on the Plain in the Gospel Book of Luke was all brought in from elsewhere, and assembled here from incorporated parts once the Gospel of Matthew, at least, already had been written.)
46 “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? 47 Everyone who comes to Me and hears My words and acts on them, I will show you whom he is like: 48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid a foundation on the rock; and when a flood occurred, the torrent burst against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. 49 But the one who has heard and has not acted accordingly, is like a man who built a house on the ground without any foundation; and the torrent burst against it and immediately it collapsed, and the ruin of that house was great” (LK 6:17-49).
We read this astonishing wisdom of Jesus presented freshly here, very similar to The Sermon on the Mount and yet not the same because our angle is different since the Gospel author is different. And we read it with hearts brimming with delight! When Jesus’s teachings are given to us so compressed, it is possible to make this entire Sermon tonight’s quick bedtime reading! Or, we might do that with just one of those three summary paragraphs in the middle, each of them so densely laden with the richness of Jesus’s wisdom brought to us straight from God. Or, what about just that more balanced version of the beatitudes? Let’s read and ponder that, and then commune with God awhile!
These Gospel teachings on gratitude, forgiveness, and love, whether you find them scattered throughout the Books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, or given to you here in very condensed form, are much more than just words! As we know, if you can ever more perfectly live your life in the dynamically peaceful and loving way that Jesus taught, then you can choose to make this your last necessary earth-lifetime, even if you are now in the later part of your life. Jesus’s teachings really do work amazingly well!
I know that from personal experience. In 2011, my beloved Thomas, my spirit guide, put it into my mind to try to live the Teachings of Jesus, literally. I was then a pretty ego-obsessed hard case, as I have written elsewhere. But with Thomas’s help and coaching, and above all with his insistence that I abandon my old ways of thinking and instead that I only live and breathe those Teachings on constant gratitude, radical and complete forgiveness, and the love that naturally flows from always thinking as Jesus taught us to think, omigod, my transformation was radical. And over just a couple of years, it was complete! I could talk for days about the absolute and permanent, the peaceful and joyous difference that living those teachings has made in my life! It was as if, forever, there was a soft barrier of peace and joy between me and every possible care. The proof for me of the power of those teachings was when, unexpectedly, in 2020 I believe it was, my Thomas told me that I had raised my spiritual vibration sufficiently that I am now living my last necessary earth-lifetime.
So then, I had to attempt to teach what I had learned with such amazing ease! Two years ago, I experimented with teaching two Zoom courses on “making this your last necessary earth-lifetime”. And for some who took those courses, the effort was such a success that I got to watch many similar wonderful transformations, and to this day, a core of us continues to meet each week in a community of love that is worldwide. Of late, I have been receiving emails from others who are hoping that we will again offer those courses. My time is pretty well taken up now, but perhaps in 2027? We will have to see where God guides us.
But my dear ones, every Christian Bible on earth contains The Sermon on the Mount (MT 5-7) and The Sermon on the Plain (LK 6:17-49). If you will very closely follow the teachings in either Sermon, then you yourself have the power on any day that you choose to begin your own two-year course of study that can lead you to making this earth-lifetime your own last necessary earth-lifetime before you, too, can achieve sufficient spiritual growth to leave this earthly spiritual grade-school behind, and from after this earth-lifetime you can then grow rapidly toward ever greater eternal perfection. Thomas wants me to assure you that you can do it! And it won’t even be very hard!!
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
All thy works shall praise thy name, in earth, and sky, and sea;
Holy, holy, holy! merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity.
Reginald Heber (1783-1826), from “Holy, Holy, Holy” (1826)
(Many photos are from Vecteezy.com)
