Sermon On The Mount

Jesus tells it like it really is in the Sermon on the Mount. "You have heard it said" but "I say to you."

Enough of what men have said about the Law of Moses, this is what it was really meant to say and how our hearts should react to it.

I highly recommend Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and His Confrontation with the World by D. A. Carson. It was one of the text books for my class I am taking (not for credit) from ITS. The class lectures are also great, by John Stott. The Sermon on the Mount has a definite purpose and it is often misunderstood. The Law was put in place to show sin and most of all to show that we have no righteousness of our own. Any Pharisee who thought he might be righteous in God's eyes by keeping the Law perfectly would be shocked to learn what God's real expectations are as presented by the One who would know, the Son of God. There is no one who is righteous.

The behavior expected by God, perfection as depicted in the Sermon, is only attainable with the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives after we completely admit we are broken and unable to meet this standard on our own. We become poor in spirit and meek due to the knowledge of our own unworthiness in God's sight. It is only then that we can obey God in His power, not our own.