Day 3...Culture...Pride

Day 3! Hopefully you are still reading along in the Gospels and considering what you are going to do differently for the remainder of the Lent season. 

Today's reading is Matthew 5 thru 7. There is to much to talk about in this text,there is no way to do it justice in a few paragraphs. Here we have the greatest sermon ever preached! At this point Jesus has called His disciples and has been teaching, healing, and proclaiming the Gospel of the kingdom and great crowds are now following Him. Chapter 5 picks up with Him seated on a mountain and beginning to teach. 

Matthew 5

The sermon starts with 9 statements known as the Beatitudes. These short statements really summarize the nature of everything Jesus is going to say in the coming message. These statements would be similar to church handouts or bulletins. They highlight the heart behind the words that are going to follow.

Verses 13-16- Jesus refers to His followers as salt and light. For time sake I am not going to explain, but do a study on both salt and light. It is amazing what they do! They both literally change environments! We are not called to an existence of survival! We are to be vessels representing Christ's glory that can not help but change the environments around us!

Matthew 6

We see Jesus calling out the same cultural Christianity issues as John the Baptist. "Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from you Father who is in heaven." Don't give to the needy in order to be seen, don't pray in order to be seen or heard by others. Righteousness occurs when you come into the presence of the Father, not through anything that man can offer!

We also get introduced to something Jesus will expound upon many times in future teachings and conversations! We see we can not  be a slave to anything but Jesus, not money, not worry, nor anything else. Our heart will be where our treasure is found!

Matthew 7

Unfortunately it seems that Christians would just prefer to forget this text or use it way out of context! It seems we either want to have strong opinions about everything and judge everyone according to our standards. Or we want to say that we are not ever to evaluate or judge others and we defend ourselves with that. WHAT JESUS IS RULING OUT IS PRIDE, WE ABSOLUTELY CAN NOT VIEW OURSELVES AS BETTER THAN OTHERS!

And this sermon ends with a call that cultural Christianity and lip service are not what offers salvation! A verbal confession of Jesus as Lord does not always indicate a repentant heart! We need to be doers of the WORD!