Congregational Bible Experience - Day #2: Matthew 5-7

Introduction:The NT passage for today covers the whole of Jesus' famous "Sermon on the Mount" (Matthew 5-7). Every line in this section is worth prayerfully mulling over as there is so much to challenge and encourage us in our walk with the Lord, but that would take days to finish!. So, as you ask God to help you understand what you are reading, pray also that He would direct your thoughts to something that He particularly wants you to consider today. Why not return to these chapters on your 'day off'' for another read through?
Every blessing.

 Today's reading will be familiar, at least in parts, to most readers of the Bible:  it's Jesus' famous "Sermon on the Mount".

The opening chapters of the Gospel assured us that Jesus is the promised, long-expected King who would come to win people back to God and overcome the enemies of God and those who are faithful to Him.  From now on, faithfulness to God means submitting one's life to King Jesus and in faith following Him as His disciple. We cannot claim to know and serve God if we keep Jesus at arm's length (7:21-23).  But what does the King require of those who commit to Him? What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? That's what the Sermon on the Mount begins to answer.  There will be so much more to learn about discipleship in Matthew's Gospel, but this is where we start. And the first lessons have to do with our hearts …

So much of what Jesus says in these chapters is not telling believers what to do as it is in describing what disciples become as they live under the Kingship of Christ. The Pharisees were known and, in measure, commended for their religious righteousness in their relentless pursuit of obeying God's Law (5:20).  But their 'obedience' was only on the surface of their lives; their hearts remained unchanged and harboured all sorts of internal sins such as anger, lust, revenge and hatred (5:21-48) which festered away unchallenged and untouched.  The righteousness that Jesus commends is an obedience to God's Law that flows from a repenting heart transformed by Jesus and which seeks to please Him because His blessing (5:3-10) is what our hearts desperately long for and delight in.  We do not obey God in order to be loved and blessed by God; we lovingly obey God because we know we are loved and blessed by Him.

And so, as we obey the Lord from the heart and desire to please Him, we will be quietly and selflessly generous in our attitudes to others, because we know that God knows what we do and that is all that matters (6:1-4); we will recognise our dependence upon God and will fervently pray that our lives are given to seeing His will is done rather than serving ourselves (6:5-18); we will forgive others because we know the riches of grace that God has extended to forgive us; we will not worry or be anxious, because we know God to be our Father and that He can be trusted to provide what we need to live for Him (6:19-34); and we will not be judgemental over sins or lack of commitment of others (7:1-6), because we know our own hearts and how so very easily we can slip away from faithful following.

What Jesus is teaching is not "a" way to a better or more satisfying life.  In fact to live like this, like Jesus, for Jesus, is to invite suspicion, opposition, even persecution (5:11-12). Rather, He is saying, in light of eternity, there is only one way to live: His way, through trusting in Him.  To live life in any other way is lose life and will lead to disaster (7:13-14, 21-27).

The crowds were 'amazed' at what He said (7:28-29).  Are you?