Book excerpt: In The Sermon on the Mount, the Twelve Steps, and the Royal Road, Dan Hazelwood presents a unique blend of early church Christianity and the twelve-step recovering program that explains how the Christian experience changed over the last four hundred years and how the twelve-step process reconnects a spiritually seeking person to a deeper Christ experience that many mainstream churches cannot duplicate. In preparation for this journey into studying the sermon, he takes the reader on a historical church odyssey and highlights significant philosophical, church, and secular events that not only affected Christian thought but also were significant in altering how current Christians view Christ. He also demonstrates why early Christians viewed Christ differently. By providing this background, he prepares the reader to study the sermon in a manner the early church did while simultaneously demonstrating why the twelve steps represent a reconnection to an almost lost and forgotten Christ experience. Complementing this journey is an exhaustive examination of biblical Greek so that the reader may gain a deeper understanding of the sermon in its original, majestic splendor. This challenging and thought-provoking book unlocks the deeper meanings of many biblical passages and greatly enhances a spiritual seekers walk.