Many people regard the Sermon on the Mount as the greatest moral teaching in human history. We have scarcely skimmed the surface of what Jesus teaches us here about living as his disciples. We have heard the challenge that righteous living in the light of the Kingly Rule of God is a whole new ball-park compared to the old rule-keeping of the Pharisees. The standard we must aim at is God’s perfect righteousness and holiness. We have seen how right living must begin with our thoughts and our attitudes. Hatred is as sinful as murder and lust is as bad as adultery and we must get rid of any greed. Then we have seen that when it comes to our spiritual practices like giving to the needy, or prayer, or fasting, how we do these things is as important as doing them. Last week we heard the challenge to seek treasures in heaven and not treasures on earth. To trust in God for all our needs and to seek first his Kingdom and the right living it demands. And that will include caring for people in need, especially in these days of Coronavirus.
The Sermon on the Mount ends with four warnings about the importance of obeying Jesus’s teaching. I will focus on one of them but first let me remind you of the other sayings which I am sure are all very familiar. The first is this.
Matthew 7 13 ‘Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Choosing the right path through life really is a matter of life and death. It is the choice between destruction and eternal life – the wide road which most people are following and the narrow path which Jesus warns us only a few people ever find. So we need to make sure we are on the right path. That means choosing the right gate to start the journey and then keeping on making sure we are sticking to the right road.
I will come back to the warning about false prophets in a few minutes, after reminding you about the sayings which follow.
Matthew 7 21 ‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?” 23 Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!”
Here is a very solemn reminder about what really matters in our Christian lives. People may think they are doing fine. They may put their trust in even seemingly impressive things they say they are doing for God. But that is not what God is looking for.
23 Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!”
I never knew you. On the day of judgment, the person’s relationship with God is the only thing which will matter. It is not how much we know about Jesus, but whether we have a personal relationship with him. Does Jesus know us? And do we know Jesus?
In Matthew 12:50 Jesus will say that his true family are “those who do the will of my Father in heaven” Do we know Jesus – are we truly members of his family? We find the idea of knowing God as having a relationship with God most clearly in John’s Gospel, but it is also in Jesus’s words in Matthew 11:27 ‘All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
Knowing Jesus, having a personal relationship with Jesus, that is what is truly important, both in life now, and on the Day of Judgment.
The fourth warning in Matthew 7 is probably the most familiar.
Matthew 7 24 ‘Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.’
The wise man is the one who builds his house on the rock. But the important bit of building our life wisely is not just hearing the words of Jesus, or knowing those words or studying those words or even learning those words by heart. What matters is putting the words of Jesus into practice. Don’t just hear what God says – do it! Just do it! Because if we don’t live out Jesus’s teaching in our daily lives, then when the storm of Judgment Day comes, everything we have worked all our lives to build will be washed away.
But how can we be sure that we are on the right road in life? How can we be certain we have a personal relationship with Jesus? How can we build our lives wisely on the rock? This is where Jesus’s second warning of the four comes in. We have to be very careful of who we allow to guide us on the path. We need to be on our guard against people who would mislead us and deceive us.
Matthew 7 15 ‘Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognise them.

Watch out for false prophets. Those who claim to bring messages from God but are lying. Actually, the risk is broader than people who claim to be prophesying. In Acts 20 Paul uses the phrase “savage wolves” who “distort the truth” to describe people who would bring false teaching into the church. Many of the letters in the New Testament warn about false teaching. In the third warning we just looked at in verse 21, using Jesus’s name, and even prophesying and casting out demons and working miracles, are not proof that people are Christians or that they are actually doing the will of God.
The history of the church has been plagued by false teachers, and sadly there are still very many around in the world today. We need to be on our guard against people who would lead us away from God.
16 By their fruit you will recognise them. Do people pick grapes from thorn-bushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognise them.

Ultimately a person’s character will be expressed in their actions. Ungodly actions come from an ungodly character. By their fruit you will recognize them. In Matthew 3:8 in the preaching of John the Baptist “fruit” represents behaviour which demonstrates true repentance. In the parable of the Sower and the different kinds of soil, fruit is the result of living according to the word of God which has been sown. In the parable of the vineyard fruit is the life and loyalty which God expects from his chosen people. Bad teaching will result in bad living. Good teaching will lead to the kind of righteous living which Jesus is talking about all the way through the Sermon on the Mount. By their fruits will you know them. But fruit takes time to develop. There are so many warnings against false teachers through the New Testament because it can sometimes take a long time before you find out what quality of fruit a tree will produce. So we should always be on our guard.
Galatians 1:6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.
There are many false gospels being peddled in the world today. Perhaps the most common is the idea that as long “as you are nice to everybody” you will be saved. It’s an appealing idea. Jesus preached love, people say, so all God asks any of us to do is love people. Love is all you need. (Actually, that wasn’t Jesus – that was the Beatles.) Love IS very important. But Jesus also made clear in the third warning we just read that what really matters in our relationship with him. God gave his son so that our sins could be forgiven and so that we could receive the free gift of eternal life. And people receive eternal life by putting our trust in Jesus and becoming his disciples – not just by doing our best to love everybody. Because our love by itself will never be enough. Being saved is all about entering into a personal relationship with Jesus and having faith in him. So beware of false gospels. Beware of wrong ideas about Jesus, which make him out to be less than he truly was, the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. By their fruit you will recognise them.
2 Peter 2:1 there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them.
Watch out for preachers and teachers who refuse to recognize the authority of the Bible as the Word of God. Beware of those who seek to drag the church down to the ethical level of the world around. By their fruit you will recognise them.
2 Timothy 3:4 lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.
So watch out for false prophets, wolves in sheep’s clothing, Jesus says. This matters more than ever in our post-modern world which is obsessed with personal choice. Everybody is entitled to their opinion, people say, and everybody’s opinion is as valid and important as anybody else’s. The only thing we are allowed to be certain about is that we aren’t allowed to be certain about anything any more. We live in a world of spin and an age of image manipulators. For very many people, facts don’t matter. Some people live as if facts don’t even exist. It doesn’t seem to matter what is actually true any more – all that matters is what seems like it is true.
The world is suffering from “truth decay.” In our series on the Armour of God we talked about “the belt of truth” and we said that we are now living in a dangerous world of “post-truth”. Objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals. We saw that happening over Brexit and in the American elections. We are seeing that now in the fake news and false information being spread about coronavirus and vaccinations especially over social media. In this post-modern world reasoning is irrelevant. Image is everything. People are make life and death decisions not based on facts or logic but based on their feelings which depend on outward appearances.
In these days, false teachers of post-truth are leading Christians astray over all kinds of issues, from the inevitability of judgment to the existence of hell to sexual ethics. False teachers tell us that whether something is actually true or false or right or wrong doesn’t matter. What the Bible says on an issue doesn’t matter. What Christians have believed for 2000 years doesn’t matter. All that matters in post-truth is how something makes people feel. It this plausible? Is this convincing? What is my gut feeling about this? We must not be deceived. Christians need to stand up for the truth and be on our guard against false prophets and false teachers. By their fruit will you recognise them. Go through the narrow gate and stick to the narrow path. Your relationship with Jesus is the most important thing. So build your house on the rock!

“Consider the lilies of the fields”

Here in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus took an everyday object, a common little flower, and turned it into a parable for his disciples. Of course in our 21st Century world, it may seem a much less familiar object to us. What is “a lily of the fields”??? Our concrete jungles, our houses with their double glazing and cars with their air conditioning, have cut us off from the natural world, the seasons and the elements. If we do see flowers they are usually either cut and dying or else artificial!

One year, David received a very profound birthday card. It was a picture of a man working at a computer with his back to the sun streaming into the house through the window from the beautiful garden. And the man is saying to himself,
“It’s fantastic! I can find out the exact weather outside this exact house at this exact moment – all on the Internet!”

So to US Jesus says, “Consider the lilies of the field”

When did you last look at a flower. I mean, really LOOK at a flower? There is so much we can learn from the wonders of Creation. But our lives are full of busyness which crowds God out. We surround ourselves with noise which drowns out the silence of eternity.

What is this life, so full of care
We have no time to stop and stare?

Today Jesus says to us, “Consider the lilies of the field”. For when we do, we can learn so many things. The first truth we learn is that
GOD IS OUR CREATOR
In my book Prepared To Give An Answer I discussed the question, HOW CAN I KNOW THAT GOD EXISTS?

BEST: Evidence from the life and ministry of Jesus – point to Jesus!
NEXT BEST: Evidence from personal experience – our own experience of the difference Jesus makes, and the experiences of other Christians through the ages and great Christians today.

NEXT BEST is LOOK AT CREATION

Read Romans 1:18-20. what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities- his eternal power and divine nature- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Many classical philosophical “arguments for the existence of God” are based on the idea that God revealed Himself in His Creation. “The argument from first cause” says that everything happens as a result of something causing it, and if there was no God then nothing could ever have come into existence. “The argument from design” looks at aspects of creation, from e.g. the greatness of the universe to the minute intricacy of the human brain. Design requires a Designer. Similar arguments can be made from beauty, conscience and spirituality, which could never have “evolved”. So if we want to be sure that God exists – we should look at the glories of Creation!

Maybe flowers aren’t your scene! Maybe it isn’t plants that reveal God’s design to you but planets and stars and galaxies! Or puppies? Or other animals, like squirrels, or red pandas, or the crazy Australian Quokkas. Or perhaps you are inspired instead by sub-atomic particles? Or the beauty which is mathematics. But the whole of creation speaks to us of God as Creator, his power, his wisdom. Praise God for the wonders of Creation!

Psalm 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. 3 There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. 4 Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, 5 which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion,

Consider the lilies of the fields, says Jesus. Then that also reminds us that,
GOD IS OUR PROVIDER

MATT 6:25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will
eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?

We area nation of worriers! One week I promise I will give you a sermon on “God’s answer to stress” or “Dealing with Anxiety”. But here in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus gives us God’s answer to stress and anxiety.

26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

Said the Robin to the Sparrow, “I should really like to know
Why these anxious human beings Rush about and hurry so.”
Said the Sparrow to the Robin, “Friend, I think that it must be
That they have no Heavenly Father Such as cares for you and me.”

We have so many worries and fears. I read some interesting statistics on worry.
An average person’s anxiety is focused on :
40% — things that will never happen
30% — things about the past that can’t be changed – but leave us with guilt
12% — things about criticism by others, mostly untrue
10% — about health, which gets worse with stress
ONLY 8% — about real problems that actually have to be faced

Jesus’s words are so wise!
34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Here is God’s answer to our worries.

28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

The wonders of creation remind us that God is our provider! God will take care of us!

GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS, O God my Father,
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see;
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided,
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!
Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above,
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.

God is our creator. God is our provider. If we ever doubt that – consider the lilies of the fields. These lead us to our third point which I also made from this passage last Sunday morning.

GOD SHOULD BE OUR PRIORITY

Matt 6:28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the
field grow. They do not labour or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
I wonder if Jesus spoke these words with our own generation in mind. A generation dominated by fashion, by image, by brand names. People chasing around to find acceptance, popularity, friendship on the basis of the style of clothes they wear. People desperately searching for an identity but looking in all the wrong places.
See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these.

31 so do not worry, saying, `What shall we eat?’ or `What shall we drink?’ or `What shall we wear?’
32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.

When we know God as our Creator and our provider, we don’t need to chase after these things as the rest of the world does. We will obey Jesus’s command:

33 seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

When we know God as creator and provider, we don’t need to worry all the time. Instead we can devote ourselves to serving God. God must be our top priority. We seek his kingdom and his righteousness, and we can trust that the God who cares for the birds of the air and the lilies of the fields will take care of us too and give us everything we need!

God – our Creator, our Provider, our TOP Priority. That’s the way it should be. But sometimes we can get distracted. What can we do to refocus our lives on God again?

The promise and the invitation are there in Jesus’s words – consider the lilies of the fields!

Of course the most important things are not what we can LEARN ABOUT by considering the lilies of the fields, but what we can EXPERIENCE as we do so. Encountering God as Creator. Experiencing God as Provider. Realising in our hearts as well as in our heads that God must be our first priority.

“Consider the lilies of the fields” Jesus said. And that is exactly what we are going to do for a few minutes! Ideally at this point we would all go out and sit in a field of lilies. But it is dark. If you wanted to go into the garden and pick a flower, or if you already have some actual flowers in the house you could look at, then I suggest you do so for the next five minutes or so. If you can’t do that, then i invite you to find some pictures of flowers on the internet and take some time looking at them and reflecting upon them.

“Consider the lilies of the field.”

The Coronavirus crisis has had devastating effects on the economies of every nation on the planet. In Britain businesses large and small are failing and familiar names are disappearing from the High Street. Unemployment is rising at an unprecedented rate and the situation is going to get much worse before it gets better. Very many people are struggling on insufficient income and very many have used up whatever savings they may have had. In many ways the current crisis is even more serious than the credit crunch and the downturn we saw in 2008 because the cause is completely beyond human control. Some words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount are especially appropriate for this season.
Matthew 6 19 ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Here Jesus is teaching us about the importance of getting our priorities right. The first and most important thing is that
We must live out in our own lives the teaching of Jesus.
Martin Luther astutely observed, “There are three conversions necessary: the conversion of the heart, mind and the purse.” Of these three, it is often the case that our generation finds the conversion of the purse the most difficult.
19 ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.
There’s a true story that comes from the sinking of the Titanic. A frightened woman found her place in a lifeboat that was about to be lowered into the raging North Atlantic. She suddenly thought of something she needed, so she asked permission to return to her stateroom before they cast off. She was granted three minutes or they would have to leave without her.
She ran across the deck that was already slanted at a dangerous angle. She raced through the gambling room with all the money that had rolled to one side, ankle deep. She came to her stateroom and quickly pushed aside her diamond rings and expensive bracelets and necklaces as she reached to the shelf above her bed and grabbed three small oranges. She quickly found her way back to the lifeboat and got in.
Now that seems incredible because thirty minutes earlier she would not have chosen a crate of oranges over even the smallest diamond. But death had boarded the Titanic. One blast of its awful breath had transformed all values. Instantaneously, priceless things had become worthless. Worthless things had become priceless. And in that moment she preferred three small oranges to a crate of diamonds.
What are OUR priorities in life? What is really important to us?
20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
In these troubled times, our world desperately needs to hear this truth that spiritual things are more important than material things! The story is told about some Christians who were traveling in the Middle East. They heard about a wise, devout, beloved, old believer, so they went out of their way to visit him. When they finally found him, they discovered that he was living in a simple hut. All he had inside was a rough cot, a chair, a table, and a battered stove for heating and cooking. The visitors were shocked to see how few possessions the man had, and one of them blurted out, “Well, where is your furniture?” The aged saint replied by gently asking, “Where is yours?” The visitor, sputtering a little, responded, “Why, at home, of course. I don’t carry it with me, I’m traveling.” “So am I,” the godly Christian replied. “So am I.”
21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
When the billionaire Paul Getty died people asked, “How much did he leave?” The answer of course, was “Everything!” Where are your treasures? When this earthly life ends will you be going TO your treasures? Or leaving them behind?
As the country began to emerge from the credit crunch of 2008 the Archbishop of Canterbury’s New Year Message was inspiring. “Our hearts will be in a very bad way if they are focused only on the state of our finances. They’ll be healthy if they’re capable of turning outwards – looking at the real treasure that is our fellow human beings.”
Where are our treasures? We have seen already in the Sermon on the Mount that our thoughts and our attitudes are as important as our actions. Hatred is as much a sin as murder. Lust is as bad as adultery. And when it comes to money and possessions, everything starts with our attitudes.
22 ‘The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
To have “good” eyes is to be single minded – to be focussed on God and to be generous. To have bad eyes is to be ungenerous or selfish or greedy. We need to have our eyes fixed on God, not on money and possessions;
24 ‘No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
The false god of Money is a good servant but a poor master. Someday people will realise that the bars that shut many people out of the kingdom of heaven are made of silver and gold. The Bible tells us that greed is a form of idol worship. The word in the saying is actually not money but the false god Mammon. You cannot serve God and Mammon. Mammon can be thought of as the false God of Money, but actually the concept is broader and includes all wealth and all kinds of earthly possessions.
We must be prepared to demonstrate that our trust is in God, not in the false gods of this age, the false gods of Money, Entertainment and Shopping. The story is told of an occasion where St. Thomas Aquinas was walking with a prelate through one of the grand cathedrals of his day. Referring to a coffer filled with precious coins, the prelate remarked, “Behold, Master Thomas, the church can no longer say, as St. Peter did, ‘Silver and gold have I none!’” St. Thomas was apparently quick with his reply. “Alas, neither can we say what follows, ‘In the name of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk.’”
Following Jesus will mean putting our trust in God to provide us with the material things we need in life instead of spending our time and energy chasing after them.
31 So do not worry, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
As individual believers, and as churches, we should examine ourselves. Where are our treasures? Are we putting our trust in God or in the false god of Money? But as well as living out the teachings of Jesus in our own lives, we have a second obligation.
We must take care of the poor and needy
It doesn’t matter the reasons why people are poor. It doesn’t matter if it is their fault or somebody else’s fault or nobody’s fault at all. God causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous equally. God cares for everybody and we must care for everybody.
There are many people in need because of the current economic crisis – even in North Springfield! We must be prepared to help them. Those who have lost their jobs. Those who have used up all their savings. Those who find that their pensions are not enough to cope. Those who are struggling in isolation. As the body of Christ, WE must take care of those in need.
James 2 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?
If you know of anybody in the church who is need. Please let me know. The church can help. If you know of neighbours who are struggling, the church can help. We have the Fellowship Fund – we can use it to help those in need. Our friends Richard and Heather Cameron were missionaries in Nepal. Richard was headteacher of the school at Pokara, working with my university friend Jerrry Clewett who used to be our BMS link missionary. I once asked Richard what proportion of the budget of the church in Pokara was set aside for what we would call the Communion Fund. He replied, “Something over 100%”. The church there used their regular offerings to pay its bills. But then when people were in need for simple things like food or medical bills they would have special offerings specifically to help those poor people. They would help anybody in the village, not just members of the church. And over a year the special offerings to help the poor always added up to more than the regular offerings to cover all the running expenses of the church. Many churches
We must make sure that our treasures are in heaven and we must help the poor and needy. In this way our lives should be,
A witness to the world about the importance of treasures in heaven
We need to show the world that our lives are not controlled by the greed which grips so many other people. It was the 1987 film “Wall Street” in which Michael Douglas’s character Gordon Gekko gave the slogan on which so much of the world economy has been built:
“Greed is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind. Greed is good.”
That is the attitude which says “Enough is never enough”. That greed has made worse so many of the problems the world is grappling with now.
FreePort Designer Village, now relabeled just Braintree Village, once used this advertising slogan. “Ours is a shallow meaningless consumer society where we are defined by our possessions. Enjoy!”
People nowadays seem to be “born to shop”. When there are no Covid restrictions, shopping is now officially Britain’s number one most popular recreational activity and what more people are missing in lockdown more than anything else. People spend their time in shopping Malls or garden centres or DIY superstores not to buy anything but just for entertainment. In today’s shopping mall culture, our neighbours are much more likely to be worshipping in the Temples of Lakeside and Bluewater than in churches. It really is as if people derive their identity and their worth from their wealth and possessions and that shopping is essential to existance, “I shop, therefore I am, Tesco ergo sum.”
There is this popular phrase “Retail therapy”. The idea that we NEED to shop, that shopping is GOOD and HEALTHY for us, the idea that when we are sad or depressed, the best thing we can do is go out and spend, spend, spend! Very many people are seeking comfort again in this Coronovirus lockdown by shopping online. The Bible tells us that idea is mistaken. Seek first instead the Kingdom of God and the righteous living it demands.
Bernard Levin (who is not a Christian) once wrote in the Times, “Countries like ours are full of people who have all the material comforts they desire, and yet lead lives of desperation, understanding nothing but the fact that there is a hole inside them and that however much food and drink they put into it, however many motor cars and television sets they stuff it with…it aches.” In other words, happiness will not arrive in a M&S carrier bag, in a BMW or in a pair of Reebok trainers. We cannot fill the hole in our souls by putting a hole in our purses and wallets.”
That is the spiritual message the church should be proclaiming in these troubled times when more than ever people are reconsidering their priorities. People are realising that greed is NOT good – that the most important things in life are things like family and health which money can’t buy! There is so much more to life than Money and Entertainment and Shopping. Now is the time for the church to be more bold than ever to proclaim that message!
20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The essence of all of Jesus’s teaching, and especially of the Sermon on the Mount, is this incredibly challenging saying in Matthew 5:48. Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
The standard of righteous living which is our correct response to the Kingdom of God is nothing less than the righteousness and justice and holiness and love which God our heavenly Father demonstrates. We have seen how this must begin with our innermost thoughts and attitudes. Hatred is as sinful as murder. Lust is as bad as adultery. Last week we thought about putting other people before ourselves, turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, giving to everybody who ask from us and loving our enemies with the same kind of sacrificial love as God himself always shows.
Jesus then goes on to think about “deeds of righteousness” – three of the spiritual practices which will express our discipleship. These were activities which all Jews would routinely do as part of their religion. Giving to the poor and needy. Praying. And fasting. Jesus does not tell his followers to stop doing these things. On the contrary, he encourages and expects all of them from Christians. Giving to the needy, and fasting, should be regular parts of normal Christian living just as much as praying is. But again, Jesus takes these activities to a whole new level. When it comes to giving, or to prayer, or to fasting, Jesus says, as the old song puts it, “It’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it.” It isn’t enough just to give to the poor, or to say prayers, or even to practise fasting. HOW you do these things matters just as much.
Matthew 6:1 ‘Be careful not to practise your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
How we do things is important. The practices of our faith must never be ways of showing off to other people. We should never be doing things so that other people will see us and praise us. The moment we do anything so that other people will watch us, then we have missed the point completely. Our spiritual activities must be between us and God, and nobody else. Let me say a little bit about each of these deeds of righteousness.
2 ‘So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honoured by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.
Giving to the poor and needy should be something that every Christian does. This should be in addition to giving to the church. It is also good to give to support the work of the church, but that is for other reasons. It is good to give generously to help people who are poor and disadvantaged and marginalised, because God cares about everybody and especially about people who are poor. We read in many places in the Old Testament about God’s compassion for widows and orphans and refugees, people in every society who are often powerless and suffering in poverty. But how should we choose who to support by our giving to the needy?
It can be very easy to give our money to large anonymous charities and never really know anything about the needs of the people we are helping. I am convinced the Bible would encourage us to actually get involved with helping specific people. That is why NSBC has always supported the local work of CHESS, the Chelmsford Homelessness Emergency Support Scheme run by the churches, and equally Chelmsford Food Bank. I am so happy that folk have supported the appeal for rucksacks as gifts for the Diligence Academy in Zimbabwe so generously, as well as the other projects of the Sakubva Helper UK Charity. In past years the Marbles Project has helped orphans and poor people in Bulgaria. And thank you also for all your support for the Arise Project and Kapumpe Christian Primary School in Zambia. Their Christmas Buckets Appeal has just come around again, providing essential foods to some of the poorest families in Kaniki near Ndola. It is good to find out who our gifts for the poor are going to, not least so that we can continue to pray for them.
It is also good to be able to support Christian charities when we can. Many secular charities caring for the poor get support from lots of people. But Christian charities and projects and relief work are often only supported by churches and individual Christians. When we give to these we are not only helping to meet the needs of the poor but also supporting a Christian witness, often in countries where it is hard to preach the good news of Jesus. Galatians 6:10 exhorts us to do this. As we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.
We can also give directly to support people experiencing different kinds of need. I know of many Christians who generously support other families directly, paying their bills for them or buying food or clothes or even other things like carpets and furniture – whatever is needed. But in all our giving to the needy, the principle will apply. “It’s not what you do, but the way that you do it.”
Jesus says, 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Our giving to other people must never become a way of showing off. We give as an expression of our gratitude to God for his wonderful love for us. And we give to share his unconditional love with those in need. Nobody else should ever know what we are giving. There is a story about the great preacher Charles Spurgeon and his wife. They kept chickens and would always sell the eggs. Even if a poor hungry person came to the church begging for food, they refused to give away any of their eggs. Some people considered them to be greedy for this. They accepted the criticisms without defending themselves. Only after Mrs. Spurgeon died was it revealed that all the profits from the sale of eggs went to support two elderly widows. The Spurgeons where unwilling to let the left hand know what the right hand was doing. Our giving should always be in secret.
As well as giving, jumping to the end of our reading, Christians should also practise fasting. This should be as much a part of everyday Christian living as giving and as prayer. As part of their religious observance the Pharisees in Jesus’s time would used to fast for two days every week and Jesus presumes that his followers will also fast. Fasting just means going without food, and sometimes even without drinking, for a period of time. If it’s for more than a day, you would usually drink water even if you didn’t eat anything. A 24 hour fast could last from one evening meal to the next. A 36 hour fast could mean missing out all the meals in one day. Fasting is a very helpful spiritual practice. It helps us focus our minds on God. Whenever we feel a pang of hunger or thirst it reminds us of our dependence on God. Some people would use the time they would have spent preparing food and eating to pray. We might be seeking God’s guidance, or maybe praying for something specific. Fasting is a way of demonstrating to God that we are sincere and passionate about the things we are praying about. But that is why it is important that our fasting is something which is personal and private.
16 ‘When you fast, do not look sombre as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
When we are fasting that is just between us and God. We won’t tell anybody about it. We will have another church day or even a week of prayer and fasting again in the New Year, if not before. But God must be the only one to know whether we are fasting or not. Like our giving, our fasting should always be in secret. And so should the third, and perhaps the most important, spiritual activity which Jesus mentions – our praying.
5 ‘And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Our prayers should never be a way of showing off to other Christians. Of course it is good to be able to join in prayer together with other Christians. Praying in our services is good, and prayer meetings are good. But the heart of prayer is our personal conversations with God. . 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.
Jesus also has a rebuke for people whose prayers are lengthy or elaborate or full of fancy words.
7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
Our prayers should be short and simple. It is God our heavenly Father we are talking to, not anybody else who happens to be present. One feature of the American presidency is that they hold regular prayer breakfasts in the White House. On one such occasion, a famous Senator who was known to be a strong Christian was leading in prayer when the President interrupted him. “Speak up, man, we can’t hear you.” The Senator replied, “I wasn’t talking to you, Mr President.”
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus goes on to introduce the most famous Christian prayer of all, which we call the Lord’s Prayer. 9 ‘This, then, is how you should pray:
The Lord’s Prayer gives us a prayer which Christians can pray whenever we want. All Jews would pray their set prayers every morning and every night, and we can assume that Jesus did the same. But the Lord’s Prayer also gives a pattern for our prayers.
It starts by focusing on God, and on his glory
‘ “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
The next phrase is borrowed from the Jewish daily prayer, the Kaddish,
10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
We go on to bring our requests to God for the things we need. Our physical material needs:
11 Give us today our daily bread.
And then our deepest spiritual need – for forgiveness.
12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
It is interesting that that prayer comes with a condition, which is so important that Jesus repeats the point.
14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Finally we pray for God’s strength to become more holy.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
This prayer Jesus teaches his disciples to pray as a pattern for our prayers is obviously very important for Christians. I preached five sermons on it back in 2014 and these are online, but I have also put them in a booklet which I will email out to everybody and put on Facebook for us all to look at again.
For this morning I want to finish by pointing to one thing Jesus says three times in connection with these spiritual practices. After talking about giving to the poor, and praying, and fasting, each time Jesus says this. Your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Three spiritual practices. These deeds of righteous living will bring great rewards for everybody who makes them a regular and central part of their spiritual lives. Giving. Praying. Fasting. But remember, it’s not what you do, but the way that you do it!

A greater righteousness – your mind matters! Matthew 5:21-30
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus sets out the pattern and the standard for Christian living for all who follow him. But as we saw two weeks ago, Jesus doesn’t in any way replace the Old Testament commandments with a new set of rules. Nor does he just raise the bar for right living a bit higher than that of the most religious people of his day, the Pharisees. What God expects of his people as they live under his rule as King is in a different league altogether. Christian living is a whole new ball game.
Matthew 5:20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus is asking for a different kind of righteousness altogether. My old professor Dick France paraphrased the words of Jesus like this. “Do not imagine that simply keeping all those rules will bring salvation. For I tell you truly: it is only those whose righteousness of life goes far beyond the old policy of literal rule-keeping which the scribes and Pharisees represent who will prove to be God’s true people in this era of fulfillment”
As we said last time, it is not that Christians have to achieve this new level of right living in order to be saved. We are only ever saved by grace alone through faith alone. But now we are saved, the standard we must aim at is the standard of righteousness of God himself. Matthew 5:48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
We are seeking to live like Jesus who embodied the Sermon on the Mount in everything he said and did. We are not trying to live by some set of rules but rather by the simple question, “What Would Jesus Do?” So the Sermon on the Mount gives us a number of examples and principles and we each need to work out how these will apply in our own lives. And the first general principle we find is in many ways the most demanding. Because Jesus teaches us that God doesn’t just care about our actions and our words. Righteous living starts with our thoughts and with our attitudes.
Matthew 5:21 21 “You have heard that it was said to our ancestors, Do not murder,, and whoever murders will be subject to judgment. 22 But I tell you, everyone who is angry with his brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Whoever insults his brother or sister, will be subject to the court. Whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be subject to hellfire.,
In God’s eyes, anger and hatred are just as much sins as murder. When we are seeking to please God in everything we say and do, we have to start by taking control of the things we think about and over the attitudes we have towards other people. And Jesus then teaches us that this principle applies just as much in the area of sex.
27 “You have heard that it was said, Do not commit adultery., 28 But I tell you, everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Sinful thoughts are as serious as sinful actions. The Seventh Commandment says do not commit adultery, but we can break that commandment in our heart by dwelling on lustful thoughts. The root problem in murder is anger and hatred. The root problem in adultery is lust. To avoid sin we must deal with the underlying issues and resist the temptations to sinful thoughts and sinful attitudes.
We thought about this four years ago in our series of sermons on the Ten Commandments when we came to the tenth Commandment. Nine of the Ten Commandments are concerned with actions – the things God’s people should and should not do or say. But the principle that holy living begins with holy thinking was already there in the Tenth Commandment. Sinful actions and sinful words arise from sinful thoughts. So the Tenth Commandment says, “Do not covet.” Coveting, craving, hankering after, longing for, simply means an illegitimate desire for something which belongs to somebody else. Coveting other people’s stuff.
Exodus 20:17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
The Message: “No lusting after your neighbor’s house—or wife or servant or maid or ox or donkey. Don’t set your heart on anything that is your neighbor’s.”
Sinful actions and sinful words spring from sinful thoughts. Indeed we see this right from the very beginning of human history when sin entered the world when the devil tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. Genesis 3 6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.
Sin entered God’s perfect creation at the moment when Eve took something she was not allowed to have. She saw the stuff and she coveted the stuff and so she took the stuff. God’s perfect Creation was wrecked by sinful thoughts.
The Letter of James explains how temptation works like this.
James 1 13 When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.
So temptation begins with evil desires and sinful thoughts. If we want to live holy lives, the challenge is not to give in to those evil desires or sinful thoughts. The first impulse is not a sin. But dwelling on a sinful thought so that it becomes a sinful desire is asking for trouble. Martin Luther once said, “You can’t stop a bird from landing on your head, but you can stop him from building a nest in your hair.”
The old saying is true. “Sow a thought, you reap an action. Sow an action, you reap a habit. Sow a habit, you reap a character. Sow a character, you reap a destiny.”
If we are serious about living holy lives and resisting temptation we need to start with our thought life.
“The mind is a garden that could be cultivated to produce the harvest that we desire.
The mind is a workshop where the important decisions of life and eternity are made.
The mind is an armoury where we forge the weapons for our victory or our destruction.
The mind is a battlefield where all the decisive battles of life are won or lost.”
Paul wrote in Romans 12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Your mind matters! Our minds need to be renewed.
“Don’t let the world around squeeze you into its own mould, but let God remould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity.” (Romans 12:2 in J.B.Phillips translation)
In the Beatitudes at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had already said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (Matthew 5:8)

As the old hymn puts it:
Blessed are the pure in heart For they shall see their God
The secret of the Lord is theirs, Their soul is Christ’s abode
Still to the lowly soul He doth Himself impart
And for His dwelling and His throne chooseth the pure in heart.
In our modern thinking the heart is all about feeling and emotions. But in Jesus’s time the heart was the centre of human thinking and choosing and deciding. A pure heart was all about pure thinking. About character and personality. Becoming holy through and through. Developing a pure heart is about developing a Christ-like mind. A mind and character unspoiled by sin. God sees our thoughts and our attitudes as clearly as He sees our actions. So our thoughts and our attitudes affect our relationship with God just as much as our actions. Being pure in heart is about a mind unspoiled by sinful thoughts and equally a mind unspoiled by sinful attitudes. Unspoiled by pride or selfishness or greed. If we want to become holy through and through, if we want to develop the mind of Christ in our own lives, we need to keep sin out of our thinking. So we need to watch carefully what we read, what we listen to and the company we keep. In today’s world we need to think hard about what we watch on television and read on the internet. We can’t pray “lead us not into temptation” if we deliberately put ourselves into situations where we know we are likely to be tempted.
What will this kind of righteous living look like in practice? The battle to live a holy life begins with holy thoughts.
1 Peter 2 11 Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.
Abstain from sinful desires. This tells us that evil desires are something we can choose to abstain from, just as some people choose to abstain from alcohol, or indeed some of us might need to abstain from chocolate cake. The challenge is that abstaining from sinful desires is a much more inward and personal battle. Other people can’t see what we are thinking about. But God still does.
Our minds need to be renewed. If we want to avoid falling into sin we need to get rid of the deceitful desires of our old self. And it also helps to give our attention good and wholesome things.
Philippians 4 8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
We can crowd sin out by filling our minds with good and wholesome things. By reading the Bible. By reading Christian books and magazines and wholesome websites and blogs. By joining in Bible study and discussion and sharing in fellowship. By worship and praise and prayer.
Righteous living starts with pure thinking. And the stakes could not be higher! As Jesus immediately goes on to say this.
29 If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.
Here Jesus is using a form of language called hyperbole. Hyperbole just means making a point by using exaggeration or overstatement, by using words which are not meant to be taken literally. We say, “it’s raining cats and dogs”. We know that isn’t literally true – it just means it is raining very heavily. The Jews used hyperbole a lot, and Jesus did too. Remember how Jesus criticized his opponents, “You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” These verses are hyperbole. Through the centuries Christians have not generally felt led to obey these commands and mutilate themselves. The language is extreme to emphasise just how serious a problem sin is. If the things we are looking at are causing us to have evil thoughts, we would be better off blind. If we are tempted to sinful actions we would be better off if we lost our hand than if we sinned. Of course that is because sin carries the death penalty – and not just murder or adultery as in the Law of Moses. All sin bring the consequence of separation from God which is eternal death. Jesus is saying we would be better off blind than dead. Better off maimed than dead. Sin is that serious!
Jesus is using exaggeration and overstatement. But his point is very clear. Avoiding sin is a matter of life and death. Hatred is as much a sin as murder. Lust is as much a sin as adultery. Holy living has to begin with holy thinking. When it comes to this whole new ball game of righteous living – your mind matters!

Mahatma Gandhi once said, to the British Viceroy of India, “When your country and mine shall get together on the teachings laid down by Christ in this Sermon on the Mount, we shall have solved the problems not only of our countries but those of the whole world.” Many people regard Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters 5, 6 and 7 to be the greatest moral teaching in history. Very many people who would not call themselves Christians still know some of the greatest sayings. Love your enemies. Turn the other cheek. Go the extra mile. Augustine of Hippo described the Sermon on the Mount as “a perfect standard of the Christian life.” John Stott wrote, “The Sermon on the Mount is the most complete delineation anywhere in the New Testament of the Christian counter-culture. Here is a Christian value-system, ethical standard, religious devotion, attitude to money, ambition, lifestyle and network of relationships–all of which are totally at variance with those in the non-Christian world. And this Christian counter-culture is the life of the kingdom of God, a fully human life indeed but lived out under the divine rule.”
A few years ago we looked at the first part of the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, in a series of sermons on The Upside-Down Kingdom. I will share those sermons in a booklet this week. Over the next couple of months we will study the rest of these chapters, although a whole year of sermons would not begin to do them justice. Today we will begin with an overview of the message of the Sermon on the Mount. Some people see similarities between Jesus and Moses going up a mountain. Moses went up Mount Sinai and God gave him the Ten Commandments and the Jewish Law. Some people think that here Jesus is replacing the Old Testament Law by giving Christians a new set of rules to live by. But that isn’t the case at all. Jesus said,
Matthew 5 17 ‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.
In his ministry Jesus often said things which challenged the Jews, especially his greatest opponents the Pharisees. And after his death and resurrection, the first Christians wrestled with an important question. Do Christians have to obey the Jewish Law? So this saying was important not only during his ministry but also for the church through the centuries. Jesus makes clear he had not come to dismantle the authority of the Old Testament. Not the Jewish Law which was contained in the first five books from Genesis to Deuteronomy. Nor the Prophets with all their teaching on the future hope of salvation. Jesus was not demolishing the Old Testament. Rather, he had come to be the fulfilment of all that the Law and the Prophets had promised. The Old Testament prepared the way for Jesus. In his earthly life and ministry and even in his death, Jesus would fulfil everything which the Jews were expecting from their Messiah, their Saviour. Jesus would be the only person in history who would, or even could, obey the letter and the spirit of the Jewish Law. In doing that, Jesus was the Saviour who the Law and the Prophets pointed towards. As a result, after Jesus came the function of the Old Testament changed. The Law and the Prophets were not abolished, but the task of pointing forward to Jesus was completed.
Dick France was one of the world’s greatest authorities on Matthew’s Gospel. I had the immense privilege of being a student of Dick’s at London Bible College. In his commentary on Matthew, Dick paraphrases chapter 5 verse 17 like this. “Far from wanting to set aside the law and the prophets, it is my role to bring into being that to which they have pointed forward, to carry them on into a new era of fulfillment.” He continues, “On this understanding the authority of the law and the prophets is not abolished. They remain the authoritative word of God. But their role will no longer be the same, now that what they pointed forward to has come, and it will be for Jesus’ followers to discern in the light of his teaching and practice what is now the right way to apply those texts in the new situation which his coming has created. From now on it will be the authoritative teaching of Jesus which must govern his disciples’ understanding and practical application of the law.”
In other words, Jesus has obeyed the Law and fulfilled the Law. So now his disciples do not have to obey all the Jewish Law. Instead we must follow Jesus and obey Jesus. But before we breathe a sigh of relief and think that will be easy, Jesus goes on to explain that far from being an easy option, following him raises the bar for Christian living to a whole new level.
Matthew 5: 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
The New Revised Standard Version translates this as, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees,
The New Living Translation puts it, 20 For I tell you that if your righteousness does not go far beyond that of the scribes and Pharisees.
None of these is strong enough. The word means to abound or to overflow. Jesus is saying that the standard of right living which the kingdom of God demands isn’t just higher than the Pharisees were aiming at. It’s in a different league. The right living God expects of Christians is a whole new ball game!
The Pharisees were the most scrupulous and religious Jews in the world. Going beyond their righteousness would sound like an impossible task. But Dick France explains it this way. “The paradox of Jesus’ demand here makes sense only if their basic premise as to what “righteousness” consists of is put in question. Jesus is not talking about beating the scribes and Pharisees at their own game, but about a different level or concept of righteousness altogether.” People who are only keeping a set of rules, however successfully they do that, haven’t even started as far as the Kingdom of God is concerned.
We must say two things at this point. The first is that Jesus is NOT laying out a standard of life which Christians have to achieve in order to be saved. That isn’t now grace works. God saves us out of his free love. As we put our trust in Jesus, God forgives our sins and gives us the completely free gift of eternal life. We are not earning or deserving our salvation – we never could. We are saved through God’s amazing grace. But once we have this new life, the way we live should be different to the way we lived before. And that standard of right living is so much higher than that of the Pharisees, who in Jesus’s time were the most committed and religious Jews. Our lives should show the difference Jesus makes.
The second point which is vital to understand is that the Sermon on the Mount does not just replace one set of rules in the Jewish Law with a different set of rules which Christians must follow. Reading Dick France’s paraphrase, “Do not imagine that simply keeping all those rules will bring salvation. For I tell you truly: it is only those whose righteousness of life goes far beyond the old policy of literal rule-keeping which the scribes and Pharisees represent who will prove to be God’s true people in this era of fulfillment”
Life in the kingdom of God is not about a list of rules to follow but a way to live. The Sermon on the Mount gives us a model of the perfect Christian life because it shows us how to live as Jesus lived. It gives us general principles and each of us have to work out for ourselves how to apply those principles in our own lives. How to love our enemies. How to enter through the narrow gate and walk on the narrow path. How to store up treasures in heaven. How to do to others what you would have them do to you. How to build our lives on the rock and not on the sand. So the Sermon on the Mount is a manifesto for radical discipleship. It is a change of perspective – a reversal of everything the world tells us to believe and do. It shows us how to live like Jesus did. To make it absolutely clear how much of a challenge this will be, at the end of Matthew 5 Jesus makes a statement which sums up the whole of his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount and everywhere else as well
Matthew 5 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
That doesn’t just take the standard of righteous living up a notch or two from obeying a set of rules. It really is a whole new ball game! The bar for righteousness is God’s righteousness – God’s perfection, God’s holiness. Just as perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Again, to be clear, Jesus is not saying that we have to achieve this level of moral perfection or spiritual maturity in order to be saved. We are saved by God’s grace alone. But Jesus is saying that now we are saved, the standard for right living which we should all be aiming for must be nothing less than God’s perfect righteousness. And if we want to see what righteous living according to the Sermon on the Mount would look like, we just need to look at Jesus, the visible image of the invisible God. Jesus Christ, the Son of God who lived a sinless life will be our example. In every situation we face, the simple slogan asks the right question. “W.W.J.D? What Would Jesus Do?” Oswald Chambers put it this way. “The Sermon on the Mount is a statement of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is having His way with us.” This is how disciples should live.
Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer.” It isn’t enough just to know what Jesus was teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. We have to live by it. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “Humanly speaking, it is possible to understand the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways. But Jesus knows only one possibility: simple surrender and obedience – not interpreting or applying it, but doing and obeying it. That is the only way to hear his words. He does not mean for us to discuss it as an ideal. He really means for us to get on with it.”
Taking righteous living to a completely different level. A whole new ball game! We will see more of what this means in our daily lives in the weeks to come.
Matthew 5 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Matthew 5:1-16 were the texts of an earlier series of nine sermons called Upside-Down Kingdom which can be found in the list of Series Subjects to the left. This series begins at Matthew 5:17 with A Greater Righteousness – A Whole New Ball Game.