As Jesus continues to elevate the personal standards of behavior that should characterize those who have entered the rule and reign of God, he turns his attention to the important subject of truthfulness in speech. Evil entered God’s good creation through a lie, and it wasn’t long before lying became common practice for those navigating life in a fallen world. In distinct contrast to God and God’s nature, who is truth, and who places a premium on absolute truthfulness. But surrounded by a world in which falsehood and dishonesty are so prevalent and pervasive, it is easy for God’s people to be lulled into apathy toward the inherent evil and destructive consequences of deceit, rather than standing as beacons of light and truth in a dark and dishonest world. Like so much of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:33-37 comes as a wake-up call, in an important message entitled, “Let Your Word be Your Word”.

Having elevated the standards of kingdom righteousness to include the realm of thoughts, desires and attitudes, Jesus now turns the spotlight on several specific personal standards of behavior.  The top of the list being the question of divorce and remarriage.  Surprisingly, or not so surprisingly, the Pharisees took a line of interpretation on an Old Testament regulation that actually resulted in an extremely lax view toward the permanence of marriage.  For all practical purposes, not much different than our modern judicial practice of no-fault divorce –– at least from a male perspective.  It was a standard entirely in keeping with the on the ground realities of marital life.  Jesus’s response came like a sudden crash of thunder.  In fact, so startling that even his disciples suggested that perhaps it was best not to marry.  We’ll look this morning at his important words, in Matthew 5:31-32, in a message entitled, “A Marriage to Last a Lifetime”.

Jesus unmasking of the superficial standards of what passed for righteousness among the rank and file of practicing believers of his day, continues.  Having exposed the attitudinal sins of anger and hatred, he now turns to the hidden realm of the thoughts and desires of the heart.  What someone has aptly described as your private world. It is an area of our life usually reserved only for ourselves, completely unknown to anyone else, and therefore seldom acknowledged or discussed.  But as we’ll see this morning, Jesus took direct aim at that last bastion of secretness, openly exposing it for exactly what it is, in Matthew 5:27-30, in a message entitled, “Straight Talk About a Pure Heart”.

Having dispelled any notion that he was somehow about lowering God’s standards of biblical truth or righteous living, Jesus immediately set out to show exactly how the righteousness of the kingdom surpasses the righteousness of the Pharisees. He addresses six areas of Christian living, each beginning with the words, “You have heard that it was said…but I tell you”, as he takes on the superficial teaching of the Pharisees in order to get after the true meaning, purpose and intent of scripture. In other words, getting to the truth of scripture. We come to the first of those this morning by way of Matthew 5:21-26, in a message entitled, “Getting to the Truth of Anger and Hatred”.

Audio File Only, Recorded 4/11/21

It is sometimes mistakenly assumed that if the church is to be a welcoming place for sinners, then we’ll need to loosen up our standards. Especially when it comes to the matter of scriptural content and lifestyle expectations. That in order for us to be welcoming we must also be affirming. Given the nature of the clientele that Jesus tended to attract, combined with his uneasy relationship with the religious establishment of his day, you might have been tempted to assume that he was soft on scripture and tolerant of permissive living. But in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus himself went out of his way to dispel any notion that his kingdom’s invitation to the sin ravaged and religiously marginalized was in any way a lessening of God’s standards of either truth or righteousness. There is no clearer statement to that effect in all of scripture than Jesus’s words in Matthew 5:17-20, as we’ll see this morning, in a message entitled, “Raising the Bar on Kingdom Living”.

The disciples who gathered with Jesus on the mountainside that day, listening attentively to his sermon, were few in number, limited in resource and possessing very little in the way of power or influence. Yet Jesus made a stunning declaration: they and they alone were the world’s best hope . And not by somehow laying hold of the world’s levers of power and influence, but rather by simply being who God called them to be and doing what called them to do. That might seem hopelessly naïve and unrealistic in a world of high tech and social media, but it is at the very heart of the truth of the kingdom of heaven. This morning we’ll consider what it means for Christians to be salt and light in the ever increasing secular environment in which we find ourselves, by way of Matthew 5:13-16, in a message entitled “Christian Influence in a Secular World”.

The eighth and final defining characteristic of those who have truly entered the kingdom of heaven, what we have come to know commonly as the Beatitudes, is persecution. But not just any persecution, persecution because of righteousness, and persecution because of me, Jesus says. That is persecution that is the direct result of the godliness and Christlikeness of our lives. That’s an important distinction. A great deal of what passes today for Christian persecution may be more about our lack of those qualities than it is about either righteousness or him. Hostility that is the direct result of our lack of wisdom, or lack of love, or lack of Christ-like graces like meekness and mercy. Or even worse, hostility that is a direct response to our hostility. This morning we’ll turn our attention to understanding this key marker of authentic Christian faith, in Matthew 5:10-12, in a message entitled “The Blessing of True Spiritual Persecution”.

In our journey through the Beatitudes we come to the penultimate characteristic of those who have entered the kingdom of heaven, and as a result, are living that reality here and now.  It is the consummation of all of the other Beatitudes.  All of the others are prerequisite to this one, and all of the others have their desired purpose and end result in this one.  It is the goal of all kingdom living.  It is the characteristic most needed in our world today, and yet at the same time, it is the one that seems the very most elusive.  And not least among those who claim to be God’s children. This morning we turn to one of the most needed and urgent words for our times, about the characteristic that should be core to all who have entered the kingdom of heaven, in Matthew 5:9, in a message entitled “The Blessing of True Spiritual Peace”.

God places the highest premium upon truth and truthfulness. Falsehood and deceit are among some of the sins he most abhors. In the list of the seven things that God hates in Proverbs 6:16-19, no less than three of the seven concern an assault on truth and truthfulness, “a lying tongue”, “a heart that devises wicked schemes” and “a false witness who pours out lies”. Hypocrisy, living untruthfully, was the target of some of Jesus’s fiercest criticisms. And yet, we live in a time and place in which concern for truth and truthfulness has never seemed at a lower ebb. Given that, it might come as a complete surprise, to some at least, that Jesus made a direct correlation between the summum bonum of the Christian life, that is to see God, and the essential need for personal truthfulness. This morning we turn to one of the most significant statements in all of scripture, Matthew 5:8, in a message entitled “The Blessing of True Spiritual Purity”.