Every age needs its comfortable assumptions challenged by Scripture's unsettling call to live Christ's way-hence the need for a fresh examination of the famed sermon of Jesus, recorded in Matthew 5-7.

Here are all the familiar truths of the Sermon on the Mount-the "blesseds" of the Beatitudes-the calling to be "salt" and "light"-the unveiling of motive beneath action-the requirement of a second mile and a turned cheek-the connectedness of prayer and forgiveness and trusting God-the command to cease judging and to begin loving one's neighbor. Paragraph by paragraph-and often word by word-Palmer journeys through the sermon, laying open fuller meanings all along the way. The result is the rediscovery of this vibrant oracle which grips the reader with conviction about life as it was meant to be.

"The only way this sermon makes sense is if Jesus Christ himself, who spoke these words, is strong enough to make them really true," says the author. "The good news in the profoundest sense in the Sermon on the Mount is to be found in the one who is preaching the sermon."

In four of the fifteen chapters in The Enormous Exception, Earl Palmer looks closely at the familiar "Our Father Prayer" (see back cover for an excerpt from his chapter on the phrase, "forgive us our debts"). Enriching this concise commentary on the sermon are the author's observations on various Greek words in the text and his theological and psychological insights. "I believe that the best way to read this remarkable sermon is to try to dialogue with the teacher at all the radical edges of his sermon," notes Palmer. The sermon is "hardly mild; there is a good wildness in it... yet at the same time the Teacher is friendly toward those who are undone by the intensity of its demands."