​To be Jesus’ disciple, you must deal decisively with sin and where it begins—the heart. The problem is not your eye or your hand—it’s your heart. You need a new heart—you must be born again. Jesus promises a new heart to all who believe Him, receive Him, and are truly born again of His Holy Spirit.

What if you have been truly born again and yet you still struggle with lustful looks and lustful thoughts? You still must deal decisively with sin by confessing, repenting, and proving your repentance by not doing it again. Don’t minimize, rationalize, or entertain the sin, but have a plan of action.

The best plan of action is found in 2 Timothy 2:22:
“Flee also youthful lusts; but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” 

When sin comes, flee! Then pursue righteousness. Replace sinful habits with righteous ones, which include living according to God’s Word (see Psalm 119:9). There is power in the Word of God to strengthen our spirits, renew our minds, and tell our bodies what we will or will not do. There is power in the Word of God to even take our thoughts captive and make them obedient to Jesus. 

​In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus shows how sin starts in the heart. It’s there that Jesus tells us we are just as guilty as if we committed the outward act. The second example Jesus speaks about deals with lust and adultery. 

Not only does Jesus want us to steer clear of adultery, but also of where adultery begins—with one lustful look. Just like contemptuous anger and murder, lust and adultery have serious consequences. We must deal decisively with sin, and yet gouging out our eyes and cutting off our hands isn’t enough.

What are we to do? Thankfully Jesus gets to the heart of the issue, which is the issue of the heart. Watch or listen to our study of Matthew 5:27-32 as we meditate on the importance of dealing decisively with sin.

Forgiveness and reconciliation are two different things. Forgiveness can happen in a moment, but reconciliation is a process—a process that begins with repentance.

Genuine repentance accepts full responsibility for your actions and welcomes accountability. When you repent, you'll stop your sinful behavior without downplaying or dismissing it. You drop your defensive attitude and don’t resent the doubts of others about your sincerity. And you’ll make restitution where necessary. 

There cannot be genuine reconciliation without genuine repentance. But letting time pass without genuine repentance makes reconciliation more difficult. Which is why Jesus insisted on dealing with it right away:

Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First, be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. 
–Matthew 5:23-24

​Forgiveness and reconciliation are two different things. Forgiveness can happen in a moment. Reconciliation is often a process. Forgiveness releases someone else from your “right” to retaliate. Reconciliation is restoring the relationship to the intimacy that was once present. 

There is no way to reconcile a relationship without genuine humility and repentance. Jesus clarifies this in the Sermon on the Mount as He addresses contemptuous anger.

Watch our study of Matthew 5:23-26 as we listen to Jesus instruct His disciples on what to do when sin affects our relationships.

​Sin starts in the heart before it ever becomes an outward act. Jesus highlights this truth not once but six times in the Sermon on the Mount. We are just as culpable, accountable, and guilty when sin starts within us as if we actually went forward with the outward act. 

So, what hope do we have? Can anyone be righteous or even perfect, as Jesus commands in Matthew 5:48? To answer that, we must consider these hard truths that Jesus taught. If we are to continue to be His disciples, we must understand the necessity of the Holy Spirit in transforming us deep within so that sin doesn’t even have a chance to begin.

Watch our study in Matthew 5:21-22 as we consider the devastating influence of contemptuous anger and how to prevent sin from starting in our hearts.

​“You have heard that it was said to those of old…but I say to you…”  

Jesus says this six times in Matthew 5 as He references specific commandments from the Ten Commandments. He isn’t contradicting these commandments, but speaking to those seeking to establish their righteousness by the commandments. 

Jesus spoke to people who had only heard of these commandments from the religious professionals—those who monopolized on their teaching of the scriptures instead of translating the scriptures so the common, but illiterate people, could understand the scriptures for themselves. He’s helping people see that these commandments go deeper than they may have heard.

By using the law they depended on to earn their righteousness before God, Jesus is helping His listeners understand that they are sinners in need of a Savior. Not just any savior—a Savior wanting to forgive their sins AND give them His righteousness. 

This is what Jesus calls us to as well—that in believing Him and receiving Him and His righteousness, we can become sons and daughters of God, adopted with full rights and privileges forevermore!

​Most people think the way to attain eternal life is by being good. This line of thinking evaluates righteousness as a point system, concluding that someone will get into heaven if their good works outnumber their bad deeds. 

But this is nonsense! The law was never intended to be a means to earn righteousness. It was given to guard us, to bless us, and to show us our unrighteousness so that we would be led to Jesus, who will provide us with His righteousness. 

Jesus confronts this current understanding repeatedly in the Sermon on the Mount with this simple statement: “You have heard that it was said to those of old…but I say to you…”  

Watch our study of Matthew 5:21-48 as we listen to the words of Jesus and re-evaluate the current understanding of righteousness.

​The scribes and the Pharisees thought they were righteous because they followed and endeavored to fulfill the law. But righteousness can’t be acquired by following and fulfilling the law unless you follow and fulfill all of the law perfectly. Jesus is the only person who will ever live a life of perfect righteousness.

The Bible says that we all fall short of following or fulfilling all of the laws all of the time. But right after that, it says that “all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (see Romans 3:21-26). In 2 Corinthians 5:21 it says, “God made [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” This verse helps us to understand what Jesus was talking about when He said our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. 

The entirety of the Bible is about God loving the world that He gave His one and only Son to live a perfect life to fulfill the law and the prophets and then to be the sinless substitutionary sacrifice for those who repent from sin and turn towards Him to receive from Him His righteousness. 

​The people listening to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount weren’t “religious professionals”. They were common, everyday, ordinary people—all of them sinners. And yet, Jesus called them the salt of the earth and the light of the world. 

But He was just getting started. Soon after, He told them, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” 

Just how were these ordinary people supposed to exceed the righteous “religious professionals” who centered their entire lives around following the law—especially if Jesus wasn’t going to abolish the law? There must be another way!

Watch our study of Matthew 5:17-20 as we consider Jesus’ words in light of His fulfillment of the Laws and Prophets.

​In Acts 8, we read that Philip preached Jesus to an Ethiopian official. Does that mean that Philip stood behind a wooden box and raised the volume of his voice? No—but it does mean that he opened his mouth and, from the Word of God, talked to this man about Jesus.

Erase in your mind the cultural definition of a preacher because all that this word means is someone willing to open their mouth and talk to someone about Jesus.

When God sends a person by the power of the Holy Spirit to preach Jesus, you never know when or where that will happen—but God does! That’s the best part! He knows who He has been prompting and preparing—and then He sends YOU. And before you know it, you are speaking and telling others about Jesus. And just like that, another life is eternally altered and can be sent by God to preach Jesus to someone else.

​The preaching of the word of God is mentioned seven times in Acts 8. At the center of most of those mentions was a man named Philip. He was one of seven men who were appointed by the apostles to serve physical food so that the apostles could continue to serve spiritual food.

While Philip served, God was teaching, training, and forming him in preparation for what was next. Philip didn’t know it, but God was training him not only to be the first great missionary in the church but also to be the first great evangelist in the church.

Watch our study from Sunday as we consider this man Philip and how the Lord works through His willing servants.

​Before refrigeration, salt was the primary means of preservation. The use of salt stalled the process of deterioration or decomposition. This use of salt allowed society to grow and expand as it provided a way to transport food on long journeys. Salt was considered valuable because it was powerful.

Just as powerful is light. Light drives out darkness. You can go into a dark room and beat the darkness with a baseball bat—but despite all that effort, the darkness will remain. But if you simply turn on a light switch, strike a match, or light a lamp, the darkness is eliminated. 

When you live out the Beatitudes, you are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. You live in such a way that the watching world takes notice as you influence the people around you for the glory of God.

​Light and salt were two sermon illustrations Jesus used in the Sermon on the Mount. But He didn’t use them at random. He chose these because they illustrate the Beatitudes and help us see what our attitudes must be if we continue in this beautiful, worthy difficulty called ‘ministry’ and what kind of influence these attitudes have on those around us.

That influence may come in one of two ways: first, we may slow down the sinful deterioration of others or society, and second, we may be used to see God transform a person or society to drive out the darkness.

Watch our study of Matthew 5:13-16 as we consider what could happen if we intentionally lived out what we learned at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.

​Ministry can only be a work of the Holy Spirit and not of the human will. If it were up to the human will, we would be in a constant state of victim mentality. If ministry depended upon our skills, abilities, or strength, happiness would evaporate the moment persecution comes along. 

And yet, Jesus told us that these things would happen. He said that persecution is part and parcel of ministry—and He said that we can be really happy when they inevitably do occur.

So when we are persecuted for righteousness sake, we are not victims. We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us (Romans 8:37). We can face persecution and be blessed through it. We can survive it with the help of the Holy Spirit—for ministry can only be a work of the Holy Spirit.

​In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus not only prepares us for ministry, but He also tells us how to be really, really happy. To be genuinely content, we must not be self-serving, but self-sacrificing. We must be gentle, merciful, pure in heart, yearn for righteousness, and seek to make peace on God’s terms.

This is what we endeavor to do—even if these attitudes cause persecution and suffering. Jesus gives us full disclosure as we serve others and lets us know that as we love and care for people in this way, we can anticipate and expect persecution.