After the darkness and difficulty of Joel 1-2:18, we come out into the light - God has been leading us, along with the people of Joel’s time, to face up to our sin, so that we can come, finally, to the joyful confidence of a relationship with him that his marked by his forgiveness and blessing. In that relationship, he never stops pouring good out on us.

This recording is of low quality, due to technical issues, but should be audible throughout.

When we really come to know God, we come to realise that we are worse than we ever thought, but more loved than we could ever imagine. Judgement is real, and God will do away with all evil, cruelty and oppression; but mercy is deeper than we can possibly measure, and his forgiveness and love more wonderful than we could dream.

The little book of Joel starts with a terrible natural disaster. Where are we to turn, when everything goes wrong?

Joel shows us that in the darkest moments, we are called to come back to God, and turning away from ourselves and our selfishness, to rediscover peace and hope in him.

All through life, we experience the call of two different ways of life - wisdom, with all its wonderful promise for the future, and folly, which promises us pleasures now, but which, in the long run, brings only grief. Which will we choose?

Even in the hours he was dying on the cross we see Jesus focused on others - full of grief and concern, of longing for those who killed him to be forgiven, and promising to the trusting thief that he would be with him in paradise. His every action, every word, points to his death in the place of others, carrying their guilt and punishment. His death was entirely for us.

In our final look at the Sermon on the Mount, we see Jesus challenging call is an invitation, not just to live in a better way, but to have a real, trusting, relationship of love with God as our heavenly Father.

Jesus calls us to live as he does, to lives that show his goodness; but those lives are to be gracious lives, not judgemental ones. His teaching helps us to avoid becoming self-righteous, and instead makes us more and more like him, welcoming and loving to sinners - even those who hurt us.

Jesus wants us to know the reality of having God as our loving Father - and that reality is one that frees us from the desire for money, since the future we have with him is better and more certain than anything we can heap up on earth; and it frees us, too, from worry - for he cares for us better than we can care for ourselves.

Hypocrisy is a constant danger in religion, in prayer, in giving; we see it in others, and hate it. But it can be hard to see in ourselves, and even harder to escape.

Jesus shows us the secret of escaping hypocrisy - knowing the love of our heavenly father, who sees everything we do and promises to reward us.

Jesus’ standard of goodness is far beyond us - impossible, in fact. Seeing it makes us recognise our need for forgiveness; and then it calls us to aim higher for true goodness than we ever have before. But he, the one who lived this righteousness perfectly for our sake, is there for us with his love, his compassion, and the power of his spirit, to help us become better people than we have ever been before.