Introduction

How important are the true motives of the heart? And how important is it that your actions align with your motives, values, etc…? To some, the discrepancy between the two may be seen as hypocrisy. The idea of saying one thing and doing another. Have you ever done anything like that?

The truth is that we’re all hypocrites from time to time. One minute you’re singing worship songs and the next minute you’re yelling and screaming at the guy who cut you off on the freeway. On some level, this is what it means to be living as a human in a fallen world where we are being formed and sanctified as we follow Jesus. We will mess up, it’s going to happen, and for that we seek forgiveness from God and others.

On the other hand, we are told to “be holy as Christ is holy.” We are called “new creations” and we know that “greater is the power in us than the power at work in the world.” The yoke of Jesus may be easy and His burden light, but the path of being made holy is a difficult one. The old self dies a painful death as we are conformed into the image of Christ. In our passage for the day, Jesus reforms some of the primary teaching coming from the rabbis of His time. He calls us to consider the posture of our hearts in matters of sin and righteousness. It is so important that we keep the way of Christ with perseverance and steadfastness. As the apostle Paul says, “...I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”

The yoke of Jesus may be easy and His burden light, but the path of being made holy is a difficult one.

Main Teaching

This is a long section, let’s read it altogether at once to get the general flavor for what Christ is saying.

Wow, we just covered a lot of ground. If you’re only looking at section headings, you’ll see that Jesus addresses anger, adultery, divorce, and oaths. Any one of these four sections would be more than enough for an entire sermon, so what are we doing tackling all of them at once? We’re looking for the heart of what Jesus is saying to the crowds. We’re trying to understand how His teaching two-thousand years ago may impact our lives today. We want to know what it means to “keep the way” of Christ. Let’s jump in.

In our passage from Matthew we see that many of our issues stem from our heart, mind, and mouth ... View this full sermon with PRO Premium