Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0439: Memorize the Sermon on the Mount

Episode Date: November 12, 2015

Allison wants to memorize the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). I present a memory system for these chapters, along with sample mnemonics and resources for quizzing. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Master of Memory 439. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Allison requested learning materials for memorizing the Sermon on the Mount. So the Sermon on the Mount is three chapters from the book of Matthew, chapters 5 through 7. And I thought in this episode I'd just present the main key verses from this chapter and present the sort of mnemonics that I might use to memorize these,

and in fact that I did use to memorize which topics go with which key verses throughout chapters 5 through 7 of Matthew. The idea here is that if you can remember the topics from each of these chapters and have a key verse that the topic sort of hangs on, or that basically summarizes the topic of that particular section, then you basically know the three chapters pretty well, if you just know all of the key verses and all of the topics. And even if you don't have the entire passage memorized, you do have these key verses memorized. And even if you don't have the entire passage memorized, you do have these key verses memorized. And even without memorizing the key verses, if you just remember their references, then if someone asks you, for example, where it's written about the Lord's Prayer or about

worrying, you would know to go to chapter 6 near the beginning or chapter 6 at the end in verse 34 for where Jesus talks about worrying. So chapter 5 of Matthew has about nine topics. You have the Beatitudes, the idea of salt and light, Christ talking about how he has not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it, fourth, murder and anger, the idea that, you know, when you hate somebody or when you're angry at somebody, that basically corresponds to the sin of murder. Then adultery and lust, kind of a similar, you know, connection that he's drawing there. And then divorce, and then oaths, and then retaliation, and then finally the command to love your enemies. Those are all in chapter five. Then chapter six has five topics. First, giving to the needy, then the Lord's prayer,

then fasting, then treasures in heaven, and then worrying. And then chapter 7 has eight topics, first judging others, then ask and you will receive, then the golden rule, and then the narrow gate. And then he talks about false prophets. And then he talks about the whole I never knew you thing, where people will claim to be followers of Christ, and he'll say, I never knew you all along. And then the house built on the rock. And then finally, where the crowds are astonished at the authority of Jesus' teaching. To associate each of these topics with their references,

what I would recommend that you do is associate an object with each of the numbers of the key verses. And I already have a bunch of sort of object pegs that you can use, that I personally use to memorize these verses, and that you can use if you just kind of look up how to use these number pegs or how to memorize these number pegs at masterofmemory.com slash start, which explains a lot of this stuff. Now, you'd use these object pegs for the verses, but not for the chapters. The chapters are going to be associated with locations.

So you could have a whole room and going around that room for chapter five and then a separate room for chapter six. So you always know which chapter you're in by which room you're in in your mental memory palace. Or you might just associate them with actions, which is actually what I did. It didn't work as well as locations, but just for the sake of kind of practicing and just memorizing these references really quickly, I did it in about 20 minutes while I was on a car ride. So it shouldn't take you way too long if you know how to use these number pegs. But what I did was, for the chapter 5, I used the action of blowing into something, because my object for 5 is a whistle, and so I used the action 5 of blowing into something.

So what we have is, for the Beatitudes, the main verse, I would say, is verse three of chapter five. So if the action is five of blowing into something and the verse is three, my object for the number three is a semi-truck. So if you imagine blowing into a semi-truck, so the semi-truck is open and somebody's blowing into it, blowing cold air into it, and you have all these people who are in there and are not very well off because they're living in a semi-truck. That's the idea of the Beatitudes. So you have the humble, you have the poor in spirit, and they are somehow being blessed, actually. That's the Beatitudes. Again, action is blowing, so that's five, and then the

object is a semi-truck, so that's three. So chapter five, verse three. Now if we go to chapter five, verse 16, that's the verse where it talks about let your light shine before men. So I imagine blowing on a tissue, and a tissue is the object for 16. So you just associate the number 16 with a tissue, and you have blowing, and you imagine some light coming out of the tissue and salt falling out of it. So it's the subject of salt and light, but specifically let your light shine before men. And that's chapter 5, verse 16. And then the idea of Christ fulfilling the law, you have a twig, so you want to associate the twig with Christ fulfilling the law. Maybe you're writing the law with a twig, and you associate that also with blowing on the twig, just for the sake of associating it with

chapter 5. And then murder and anger, the verse is 22, which for me is an onion. So I imagine that someone's cutting up an onion, but they're also blowing on it because they're somewhat angry at it for putting up all these fumes that are making them cry. And so that ties it to the anger and murder. And then adultery and lust, you have a knife. That's verse 28. And then divorce, you have verse 32, which for me is a menu. And so for that, I just imagined a bunch of sort of receipts inside a menu. And those receipts are actually certificates of divorce. And then we have oaths, which is a hammock. So I imagine someone crossing their fingers through the net of a hammock.

And so that sort of association with a hammock and with oaths or swearing was pretty easy for me to make. And then retaliation, I had a mop. So you have people fighting each other with mops and blowing on each other's mops also to sort of make the air evaporate from the mops that they're fighting with. And that's because a mop is 3-9 for verse 39. And then loving your enemies is verse 44, and you have a rare stake, and that's my object for 44, as you would, again, learn from masterofmemory.com slash start. So again, what we're doing is we have all of those nine different topics, and we have those different objects that are being used to refer to the references, the particular verses, but the action that you're doing with those objects indicates the chapter,

because everything where you're blowing on something is from chapter 5. Now, for chapter 6, we only have about, we have five topics, I would say, and for these, my action for number 6 is waving something back and forth as if you're fanning yourself. The key verse related to giving to the needy, I would say, is verse one from chapter six. And my object for verse one is a dish of acid. So you have this sort of this acid that's going to melt anything that it touches or dissolve anything that it touches, and if you're waving that back and forth in your own face as if to fan yourself and to glorify yourself for being so good at giving to the needy, that's going to burn you. And that's kind of the idea that's being talked about here. If you just wave your own glory around in other people's faces saying, look at me, I'm giving to

the poor, then that's your whole reward. That's the idea that's being communicated there. Next, we have verse 9, where he's talking about prayer and about the Lord's Prayer. And for that, I just have a bar of soap. That's the number 9. And so you might just imagine that you're praying with your folded hands, but you're holding a wet bar of soap between those hands and waving it back and forth. Then the next topic is fasting. And so you might imagine that you're sort of fanning yourself with a tissue, and you're doing that to keep your face looking healthy so that people don't notice that you're fasting,

which is what Jesus is talking about in that verse. Then the next one is treasures in heaven. So for me, I imagine that you're waving a nut back and forth for the verse 21 and if you're waving that back and forth out of that sort of acorn that you're waving back and forth there are a bunch of gold coins coming out of it so that helps me remember the treasures and then the last one is worrying and my object for the number 34 for verse 34 of chapter 6 is a hammer. So you might imagine that there's a giant hammer that's kind of hanging over your head and waving back and forth,

and you might be worried about it falling on you. So that's easy to tie to the concept of worrying. Now to save time and to let you use your own imagination for the rest of the verses, I'm not going to give you my mnemonics for the verses from chapter 7, although I will say that my action was sticking a foot in something, so you can kind of use that for everything in chapter 7. But the verse for chapter 7, the first topic was verse 1 as far as judging others, and the object for verse one is acid, again a dish of acid. And then the second topic is ask and you will receive, and the object for that is a sock, that's verse seven. And then the golden rule is verse 12, and my object is a tuna can, so tuna for the number 12. Verse 14 is the narrow gate, and the object for the number 14 is a tire.

Then false prophets is the object of a doll for verse 15. And then I never knew you is object for 21, a nut. And then the house built on the rock is 24, verse 24 of chapter 7, which is a wiener sausage. And then where the crowds are marveling at the authority of Jesus' teaching, we have verse 28, which is a knife. Now keep in mind that all of these objects and actions are just meant to give you a reference in your head so you can quickly remember how to look up these topics. And so it's very effective. And like I said, I was able to memorize it myself in about 15 or 20 minutes just on a car ride. I just pulled up the flashcards that I created and using these objects that I already had in mind, I came up with my mnemonics and I memorized

all of the references for these topics in a very short period of time. If you'd like to use the same flashcards that I used to memorize these references and get a really good head start and a really good beginning on memorizing the Sermon of the Mount, just go to masterofmemory.com slash sermononthemount, all one word, and it'll redirect you to a quizlet set with all of these flashcards of these key verses that represent the topics from the Sermon on the Mount. And then as far as the mnemonics go, if you want to have help turning the numbers into objects that are much more memorable, you should go to masterofmemory.com slash start, and that'll give you a beginner guide to learning all of these numbers so you can associate

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