Judges 11:29-40 & Matthew 5:33-37 (ESV) - Does it matter that people are truthful, or that we can trust one another? Of course it does. If I couldn’t trust you, nothing could ever get done in society. But if we are trustworthy people, why do we take oaths and vows? Because, it seems, truthfulness and integrity only matter if you take an oath or make a vow. “I didn’t swear that I would do anything, so I don’t actually have to do it.” “I didn’t really mean what I said because I didn’t say it like this.” Humans limit truth. We only have to be as truthful as the vows we take. But this is how the sinful world behaves and thinks. And for those whom Jesus redeemed to be His people, it should not be like this. This Sunday, we will see that our oaths can be a spiritually deadly limit on truth. And we will see that Christians are called to honest simple speech, no matter what they say. - NOTE: technical difficulties at 37:00 cuts the sermon short and the video jumps to the closing prayer. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Matthew 5:31-32 (ESV) - When we pray for God to heal us of our sin and, as David said, create a clean heart in us, the Lord is faithful to do just that. But often, the cleaning process is less like a quick feather dusting and more like using an alcohol wipe to clean a nasty cut. It might be the best way to clean the infection, but it’s really painful. And the deeper the cut and the greater damage, the more pain we feel as it is cleaned. And few sins have the potential to cause as much damage to so many people as divorce. Few people today go through life without being affected by divorce in one way or another, whether as a divorced spouse or as a “bystander” to it. And because of how deeply painful and personal it is, it’s tempting to bypass this next passage in Matthew’s Gospel. But Jesus loves His children too much to let any of their wounds go untreated, especially the ones that cause us the most suffering. As we prepare to read Matt. 5:31-32, let’s be ready for the Lord’s correction where we’ve failed, yes. But let us also be ready to see Him treat our wounds in this delicate area of life.

Matthew 5:27-30 (ESV) - Returning to our series on the book of Matthew, we find ourselves at Jesus’ next, “You have heard it said, but I say…” passage. This time, He will explain what was intended by the 7th commandment, “You shall not commit adultery.” When we hear that commandment, perhaps our minds go to all sorts of places. Maybe we see no need for the 7th commandment any more. We have grown past the need for such limits. Perhaps we are certain that we have kept it well enough that we don’t need to hear any more about it. It could be a special point of heartache because we know that we’ve failed, to our own shame and heartache. Whatever our background or history, we must come to Matt. 5:27-30 as we do the rest of the Scripture: with the knowledge that Jesus Christ has conquered sin, death, and the grave, and the Holy Spirit is renewing us in the name of Christ. As we prepare for Sunday worship, let us be asking the Lord to show not only how we need help, but, more importantly, how He gave us everything in the Lord Jesus.

1 Corinthians 10:23-33 (ESV) - We have so much division in our society, particularly along issues of race, politics, and the pandemic. What do we do when we believe something is not sin, but others think it is? 1 Cor 10 teaches us to love and serve our neighbor, even at the cost of our personal freedom. But implementing this leads to a life of impossible constraints. There’s more to this issue. [The Apostle] Paul is governed by something greater, a sense of mission.

Ephesians 3:6-14 (ESV) - emphasis on v.8-10

Matthew 5:21-26 (ESV) - When we read the Ten Commandments, some of them seem relatively easy to keep. For Jesus’ contemporaries, the 6th commandment, “You shall not murder,” would have seemed like one of the easy commands. Get to the end of your life without taking a life, and you should get all clear there. But, Jesus, the infallible interpreter of God’s word, showed them that there is a lot more behind the command not to murder. They hadn’t done nearly as well as they thought. As we will see, murder comes from a root of anger and disgust for our fellow man, and that anger is no less offensive to our Creator than actual taking of a life. We need the forgiveness of our Lord for how we have been angry at other people, and He promises that He will indeed have mercy on anyone who repents.

Matthew 5:17-20 (ESV) - Has the Old Testament Scriptures been abolished? Has its authority been nullified, its declarations overturned? After all we have the New Testament, don’t we? Anything we need to learn about Jesus, the New Testament teaches us clearly, far more so than the shadows and riddles of the Old. Why keep using the Old and stick with the New? If anyone had the right to say this and nullify the Old Testament, it would have been Jesus of Nazareth. As the Son of God, He had authority to interpret and apply the Scriptures like no one else. And rather than do away with the authority of the Old Testament, He reaffirmed it. My prayer is that we will see why He did so, and understand the value that Old Testament Scriptures has to us who live in the New Testament era.

Matthew 5:13-16 (ESV) - Suppose that a person goes to the doctor because he isn’t feeling well. The doctor does all her tests and discovers that the patient has somehow ingested a toxic substance, and his body isn’t able to fight it off alone. What will the doctor do? She’ll prescribe a counter-agent, something to fight off the effects of the toxin and give the body a fighting chance to recover. In our next passage, we will read Jesus’ sermon on how His disciples were to be salt and light to the world. As salt and light, they were meant to oppose the effects of sin on earth in ways that are unique to a follower of Christ. In a sense, they were to be a counter-agent against the corrupting effects of sin. As people called the sons and daughters of God, we must be salt and light in our world too. May God give us hearts to see and obey His word to us as we seek to be faithful to Him in our lives.

Matthew 5:10-12 (ESV) - As we’ve explored the Beatitudes, we’ve seen that they aren’t abstract ideas; these traits and behaviors that Jesus commends are very practical. They have immediate implications for how we come before the Lord and how we think of ourselves before Him. As we grow in the Beatitudes, they will change our deeds and habits in a noticeable way. More than being noticeable, those changes will be uniquely Christian and cannot be truly replicated by non-Christians of any sort. These last few verses of the Beatitudes tell us how those changes will impact the world around us, and how the world will respond to us. This won’t be an easy passage to work through, but the path that Jesus calls us to walk, the path of the blessed man or woman, is one that He will walk alongside us the entire time, right until He brings us into the presence of the Lord forever.

Matthew 5:6-8 (ESV) - When we began to study the Beatitudes last Sunday, we saw that the man or woman who has the blessed life has experienced a change of heart. Before, they used to be prideful and arrogant about their spiritual state; now the blessed person realized how much they lacked in the presence of the Lord. That lack led them to humility and a willingness to change their opinion of themselves and the world. But that was only the beginning of the Beatitudes. As we continue to explore what the good life looks like this Sunday, we will see that the desires of the blessed person have changed. He wants the things of God, and the Lord who has given him those desires is happy to satisfy them. As the blessed man’s desires are satisfied, he becomes more like Jesus Christ, the man who gives him that good and godly life. As those who have been called by Jesus to faith, let us ask Him to make us ready to learn what sorts of things He would give us and pray that He would teach us to love these things like He does.