Tag: The Sermon on the Mount

The Good News About High Standards

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Last week, as we continued our summer teaching series, A Kingdom Vision, we started working through the second half of Matthew 5. We often look at these verses as a series of only loosely connected blocks of teaching from Jesus. What we came to discover, though, is that in this section Jesus is doing something really important. He is helping us see and understand that self-righteousness is not the way into God’s kingdom. That’s not how God’s kingdom works. His kingdom is a kingdom of grace. After establishing this fact, Jesus gives us six examples to prove His point. Let’s work through those today as we finish up the rest of Matthew 5 together.

The Good News About High Standards

We have been watching a series on the Angel Studios streaming service called Guarded lately. It’s a basic romantic-drama. One of the main characters is the billionaire owner of a tech company, and one of the prominent plotlines so far revolves around his relationship with his father. No matter what he does, no matter how successful he becomes, his father is only ever critical. He seems to almost delight in pointing out every flaw he has or mistake he makes. His character hasn’t said it out loud, but you can tell that he feels like no matter how hard he tries, he’s never going to be good enough for his dad. 

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An Elevated Standard

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This week we are continue our summer teaching series, A Kingdom Vision. The rest of Matthew 5 in the Sermon on the Mount continues a series of seemingly disconnected blocks of teaching from Jesus. Well, they share a stylistic connection, but beyond that, they seem independent of one another. But something Jesus says at the beginning (and which we are going to talk about today) and the end, tie them all together in a way that is as unexpected as it is difficult to hear. Brace yourself for what comes next because it is going to challenge some of your most fundamental operating code. Let’s talk about how we don’t get into God’s kingdom and why that matters so much.

An Elevated Standard

Let me start out of the gate here by saying something you have probably never heard a preacher say in a sermon, and definitely not as his opening statement. Are you ready for this? Here goes: My goal this morning is to make you feel discouraged and depressed. Aren’t you glad you came today? But that’s okay, next week…I’m going to make it even worse! I’ll bet you can’t wait to hear that now. (But you definitely want to be here, because we have a special gift for guys next week about which I am personally very excited.) 

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The Blessings Flow Out

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This week we are kicking off a brand-new teaching series for the summer. When Jesus invited people into God’s kingdom, He didn’t stop there. For those who were interested, He gave them a clear and compelling vision of what life in His kingdom would look like. While we get bits and pieces of this grand vision in various places throughout the Gospels, the apostle Matthew gathers the largest and most comprehensive presentation of it in one place in the Sermon on the Mount. For the next few weeks, we are going to be exploring the Sermon on the Mount together in order to see what life in God’s kingdom is really like. Thanks for joining me on this journey.

The Blessings Flow Out

I went to college at a really interesting time. I landed at our Baptist Student Union in a season with a whole bunch of really forward-thinking student leaders and an incredible campus minister. One of the ministries that was created during this season was a seeker-oriented service on Thursday nights called Damascus Road, that was designed specifically for non-believers. It was aimed at getting them interested in the Gospel. Now, I know that we are several years’ removed from the height of the seeker-sensitive church model, and I am well aware of some of its most pressing weaknesses including inviting people into a watered-down version of the faith. With this in mind, we actually created a second service on Tuesday nights called Fuel, that was unapologetically Chrisitan in its framing. It was just a worship service. We used Damascus Road to serve as a funnel to Fuel, and saw several people come to faith by that approach over the four years I was there.

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Morning Musing: Matthew 9:9

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“As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, “Follow me,” and he got up and followed him.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

When thinking or talking about religion, it is easy to just lump everything into one category. For the sake of convenience we divide the world into the religious and the non-religious, the sacred and the secular. In doing this, however, we can fall into the trap of thinking that all religions are basically the same. After all, they are all religions. How different can the really be from one another? The short answer is incredibly different. And the most different of all is Christianity. It is so very different because at its core it is not about keeping a bunch of rules. It is about following a person. I had a great chance to share this remarkable idea with a bunch of fantastic kids this past week. Let me share with you what we talked about.

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Morning Musing: Matthew 6:5-6

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“Whenever you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by people. Truly I tell you, they have their reward. But when you pray, go into your private room, shut your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

There are numerous books out there offering readers an intro on how to pray. I even read one simply called that: How to Pray. A quick Amazon search for “prayer books” turns up more results than you can click through. As you read through the Scriptures, there are lots of examples of prayer to study and emulate. Many of these books examine one or another of these prayers. The reason for all of this interest is pretty straightforward: We want to know how to pray. We want to know that our prayers are meaningful and have some reasonable chance of accomplishing their aim. We want to know that when we speak aloud in an empty room we’re not just talking to ourselves. Well, at the risk of doing little more than dripping a drop of water in an already flooded market, let’s take a second this morning and talk about prayer.

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