June 18, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We are going to spend the next two weeks together as a church reading Jesus\u2019 teachings in the Sermon on the Mount! The Sermon on the Mount is the first of Jesus\u2019 major teachings recorded in the gospel of Matthew. In it, Jesus explains the ethics and values of the kingdom of Heaven as opposed to the ethics and values of the world. The values and principles that are to govern our lives as followers of Jesus and citizens of the kingdom of Heaven are wildly different from those that govern the various cultures of our world, including the culture in which we live. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the next two weeks, allow the words of the Lord Jesus to challenge the way you think, expose the worldly and idolatrous values and desires of your heart, and transform you to live in the new way that He has laid before us!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This passage begins a pattern which will carry through the rest of chapter 5 in which Jesus states \u201cYou have heard that it was said \u2018(Old Testament commandment)\u2019, but I tell you (something else)\u201d. What Jesus is doing in these sections is going beyond the surface of the Old Testament Law in order to expose the heart which lies behind it. Today, Jesus tackles the issue of anger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jesus explains that the outwardly sinful act of murder is the direct result of a heart overcome by anger. Jesus says that it is sin whenever we allow anger to move us to lash out at others. The extreme example is murder, but Jesus also points to insulting or cursing others as examples of this sinful attitude of the heart. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jesus is calling His followers not only to refuse to be overcome by anger, but to be about reconciliation and making peace (see verses 23-24), and He warns us that the consequences could be rather severe should we fail to do so. Jesus calls us to master our anger rather than being mastered by it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n