True Religion, Part 1: Giving

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True Religion, Part 1: Giving

Please turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 6. We have been studying the Gospel of Matthew and in particular the Sermon on the Mount for the past few weeks. Concentrating on chapter 5 and Jesus’ teaching on the law. In that passage, Christ had contrasted His proper understanding of the law with the Pharisees misinterpretation of the law, and in particularly in Matthew 5:17-48, we saw Christ contrast His teaching in six specific areas with the Pharisees. As Christ moves from Matthew 5 to Matthew 6, His focus turns from the teaching of the Pharisees to the practice of the Pharisees. He had opposed the Pharisees teaching in Matthew 5, now He addresses their practice. In Matthew chapter 5, He had said that they had misunderstood the commands of the will of God. Now He…

God’s Law vs. Human Tradition: Part 6

Please turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5 verse 43 as we continue our study of the Sermon on the Mount. We’ve said that throughout chapter 5 from verse 17 all the way down to the end of the chapter in verse 48, the Lord Jesus Christ is setting forth the righteousness of His kingdom, that is, He’s setting forth the kind of life that His disciples are going to live. He's setting forth the standard of the kingdom. Standards which cannot be produced by our own efforts unaided by the grace of God. Things in our lives, in our hearts, and our behavior that can only be produced by the grace of God active in our lives. Things which can only result when we are united to Christ. The Lord Jesus is not teaching us how we can work our way to heaven. He’s teaching us how people…

God’s Law vs. Human Tradition: Part 5

Please turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5. We have been studying the Sermon on the Mount for the past few weeks, and specifically, since we began our study of Matthew 5 verses 21 and following, we have seen Christ applying the principles of the righteousness of His kingdom, calling His people to true godliness and trying to raise the awareness of those caught up in the web of self righteousness of just how extensive the command of the law is. And in the process, we have seen the Lord Jesus address four areas so far. In Matthew 54:21-26, He has spoken about murder and as He began to speak about the command against murder, immediately He heard people turning Him off saying, “Well, I have never done that before, this command does not apply to me.” And then the Lord…

God’s Law vs. Human Tradition: Part 4

Please turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew 5, verse 33. 5:33. We have been studying the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount. We saw in verses 17-20 that Lord set forth the principle of the righteousness of His kingdom. In that passage, He said that the righteousness demanded of His citizens, the citizens of His kingdom, was far beyond that righteousness expected by the Pharisees. In verses 21-48, He begins to apply the principles that He set forth in general in verses 17-20 to specific commands and…

God’s Law vs. Human Tradition: Part 3

Please turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5, as we continue our study of the Sermon on the Mount. We have said the last two weeks that from Matthew 5, verse 21, to Matthew 5, verse 48, Christ is applying the general principals that He taught in verses 17-20 to six specific issues in human relationships. Over and over we have said that Christ stresses in these passages that the law is spiritual. It is not merely external. It reaches to matters of the heart. And that our…

God’s Law vs. Human Tradition: Part 2

Please turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5. This passage we read this morning is one of those passage’s that reminds us why it’s good to preach through books of the Bible because preachers would like to skip passages like these. There are two reasons I’m encouraged coming to a passage like this today. The first one is these are the words of our Lord and I shall not stray to the right or the left of them and He did not say these words to us to wound us to death, to hurt us, but…

God’s Law vs. Human Tradition: Part I

Turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5 as we continue our study of the sermon on the mount. We are in a section from Matthew 5 verse 17 all the way down to verse 48 where the Lord Jesus sets forth the law of His kingdom, the righteousness of His kingdom. We knew what the Pharisees were teaching in the land of Israel in His own day. What was going to be the pattern of life amongst His followers, however? What was going to be their view of the moral law of God, and He sets it forth in…

Jesus and the Law

If you will turn in your Bibles to Matthew 5. We’ve been studying the Sermon on the Mount for the past few weeks and we’ve said so far that the Sermon on the Mount is our Lord’s word to us about what it means to be a Christian in the world in which He’s placed us. For us that means what it means to be a Christian in this pluralistic and secularistic society in which we live. We saw that He began with a series of blessings which He said belonged to all those who were followers of His, all…

The Kingdom Citizen’s Blessedness

Please turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5. We continue our study in the Beatitudes. The last three weeks, we have looked at the character of the Christian as it is described in the Beatitudes. Today, I want to look at the blessings that are listed in the Beatitudes. We have seen eight blessings pronounced. Seven of them pronounced upon character qualities of the Christian. One of them pronounced on circumstances in which Christians find themselves. Blessed are the persecuted. And…

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