CV Community Church

Jesus will teach us, his disciples, how to pray. In it, he will show us how to lift the name of God, His glory, and then ask for His glory to come down upon a fallen earth, as well as acknowledge our need for help and protection. Jesus gives us this wonderful blueprint of how we should come to God, not babbling like the pagans but with referent fear, speak to our Lord, bring Him into each and every circumstance of our life, ask of Him the things that we need, was also not forgetting to glorify Him. When we do this, we see that our life and our heart go on from strength to strength, and that during this time on earth, though it has its struggles, even has its highs, we can take God into each season through prayer.

In Matthew 6: 1-18, Jesus will continue to show us that we cannot meet God’s standard. The way He does this, is when people do things to receive glory for themselves, instead of to glorify God. Either we want to be seen by other people to be good, or we like to puff our own ego up internally and Jesus says that this is not right, and that those who do this, they’ve received their reward in full. Meaning that there is nothing left for the Father to give them. For those who are perfectly humble, for those who live to the glory of God, they will earn their own place in heaven but we all know that none of us, except Jesus, were able to live in this way. So again, this week, Jesus points us to the only way by which we can be saved, and that is through Him.

Jesus continues in Matthew 5 to show three areas where Israel’s teachers were misappropriating the Mosaic Law – they were using the Law of Moses to get around the true intention and heart of the law, making up excuses and ways to wriggle around doing the right thing that had to do with their heart-hardedness towards divorce, their lying lips in oath keeping and also when it came to justice. The teachers and leaders of Israel were misguiding and misappropriating God’s intention. And finally, Jesus gives an example where they were even changing the word of God, much like a false teacher, and instead of love thy neighbour as you love yourself, they had twisted it to say love your neighbour and hate your enemy. This, of all, was so corruptive because it made God’s law out to be one of hate, which it never was supposed to be.

And Jesus ends His time in Matthew 5 to give the standard that is required to enter the kingdom of God, and it is “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect”. He is not mincing words. He means what He says, and it is a complete condition of entrance if we are going to work our own way into His kingdom. We know and we will discover in this sermon that Jesus has set the bar to a level of impossibility that we could never hope to attain for ourselves, but the wonderful mercy and love of God is that He has accomplished everything we need in order to get to heaven through His son who is sharing this very sermon. So, Jesus sets the impossible standard, but then is the solution to that standard when we place our faith and trust in Him, He forgives us, just as the leper was cleaned of his leprosy, so Jesus, when we ask Him, comes and cleans us and forgives us of our sins.

As we continue our way through Matthew 5, Jesus will show us that God is not just interested in the external but the internal condition of the heart. We see two great examples of anger being liken to murder in God’s eyes and even a look of lust as though we have committed adultery. Jesus raises the standard and bar of God’s expectation for us to get into heaven, but He does not do this to guilt us or shame us instead He said these things that we may reach out for help and that is the help that Jesus came to offer Himself.

Jesus has just finished speaking about how we are to be salty, not mixing in with the world, and shine the glory of God that comes from within us because of our relationship with God. As humans, we cannot help comparing ourselves – how well am I doing these things? And even at the Beatitudes – am I meek enough? Am I pure in heart enough? Jesus wants to tackle this in the very next verses when He goes on to say that not one dot or one tittle of the law will be bent out of shape, not until everything is fulfilled and He said for those who want to move the goalpost, bend the rules and teach others to do the same, they would be called least in the kingdom of God. Alternatively, those who keep the laws or commands and teach others to do the same, they would be called greatest.

We could imagine that after Jesus talked about the greatest, we probably want to fall into that group when we enter the kingdom of God. But then He said that no one will enter the kingdom of God unless their righteousness exceeds the Pharisees and the scribes. And at that, Jesus crushes everyone’s hopes because no one is exceeding their righteousness. It seems like they do not even have a benchmark in heaven. Then the Lord goes on to speak about the matters of the hearts, that it is not enough to just follow God’s law, but we also must have a pure heart and pure motives, which again, no one has. By the end of Matthew 7, we see that those who try to come with insufficient righteousness and cry out ‘Lord, Lord…’, though they bring mighty works and miracles, Jesus will cast them out, but for those who build their lives on the rock upon His work, they will stand the test. But if we are honest, remembering this is before the cross, no one meets the standard of the law nor the standard of pure intention or pure heart. So, what is Jesus doing? This is what this sermon answers.

Y’all starts with you and we starts with me. In any group we must see our own place and so it is for the church. Each of us have an important place that God delights in and that we serve in for His great name. In Matthew 5, Jesus describes in the third person plural a group of people who have these attributes, we may even call them attributes of the citizens of His Kingdom, or subjects of His Kingdom. Then He goes on to speak about persecution, being hated on account of righteousness, but He turns that to the second person plural as He is looking directly at His disciples which includes us today and says this would be the consequence of following after me. From there, Jesus speaks on salt losing its saltiness and reminding us that lights should not be covered. All of these culminate into a group that look very different to the world that do not mix or blend with the world, that is the salt losing its saltiness, nor do they hide away from the world, like a light or city on a hill that is clearly visible for everyone to see, and that the world may see our collective good works and give glory to the Father in heaven.

As we began by saying y’all starts with you and we starts with me, Jesus is speaking in a collective sense but in this sermon, we are going to ask ourselves, ‘am I making sure that I am not letting the world into my life in a negative way?’, ‘are we hiding the light, our union with Christ?’ Now, remember, we cannot generate saltiness or light-bearing, that is God’s Holy Spirit dwelling in us and our relationship with Jesus going forth in power, but we can smother it with worldliness, or we can hide it because of shame or fear. Jesus encourages you to not do those things but instead be salty, shine light, and you along with your brothers and sisters at church will do that all the more together in community as a group in the church.

Jesus goes about declaring the nearness of the Kingdom of God, and then we see miraculous signs and wonders as Jesus heals the sick, the lame, the blind and casts out demons from people. This is unlike anything we have seen before where He is a true King, a true world power but not like those who rule over us in this world. Jesus has supernatural miracle-working power, and He is exercising His authority over this realm before the eyes of all in Israel. On top of this, Jesus will go on to describe to us the difference between someone who is just following behind Him because of the miracles and someone who is a subject of the Kingdom and has the heart and empowerment by the Holy Spirit following after Jesus. We pray that this is a tremendous blessing to you and that God will richly reward you for seeking out and following after Jesus as one of His Kingdom subjects.

Jesus said “follow me” to His disciples and we, who are also His disciples, have heard those same words and done what He has asked, and that is to get on the road with Jesus, to follow Him. We would also love to call other people who may feel unworthy or unfit for God’s love, to come and follow Jesus. Jesus did not come for the healthy but for the sick. He came for those who realise their need for God’s love and God’s compassion, His grace and His forgiveness. And so, if you have not already, would you begin the journey with Jesus? Remember, He is not waiting for you in some sense to come to Him because He has already asked you this day to follow Him. Would you take His hand and get on that road? Because of all days, today is the day of salvation.

Jesus’ ministry begins with a rather rocky start – in His hometown of Nazareth, He is almost thrown off a cliff because of how he spoke in the synagogue, information that they were not ready to receive that He is the one who has come as the Messiah. Moving now to Capernaum, Jesus fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah that a great light has been seen in Galilee of the Gentiles. We also will have Jesus calling the people to repent, picking up from where John left off, now that John the Baptist is in prison. In this sermon, we will discuss what repentance actually means and how we can apply it to both sharing the gospel with those who do not believe and also apply to our own lives as we go on with a mind changed to serve God instead of serving our old former ways.

Matthew will go on to give us every hope and encouragement to put our faith in Jesus. In our lives, we have compromised our integrity, our righteousness and holiness before God, but in this section, Matthew 4, we will see that Jesus will be tempted just as we have been tempted, yet, He will remain faithful to His integrity, His righteousness and holiness. This is wonderful for us to come to understand that Jesus is the perfect High Priest and our sacrifice for sin that He would endure, because of His love for us, temptation from Satan himself. This also gives us every confidence to live a life for Him, knowing that we are freely forgiven by Jesus, we have a clear conscience before God because Jesus has made us clean. In addition, we can share what we know the good news of the gospel to others, pointing them to our perfect saviour, and getting busy understanding God’s word for ourselves, so that when Satan tries to trick or tempt us, we would have the weapons of war that God has given us, and that is our knowledge of His love and His word dwelling richly within us.