02/02/2025 - Sermon On The Mount - Mountaintop Love

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” - from Matthew 5:33-48 Let your yes be yes, and your no, no. Turn the other cheek. Go the extra mile. Love your enemies. It rains on the righteous and the unrighteous. Be ye perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect (as the King James would have it, on the last one). Here are some of Jesus's most famous teachings. But they are not the easiest. Anything that has "Be ye perfect" at the end of it, isn't going to be the simplest instruction. Even if we understand that "perfect" means "whole," that hardly erases the difficulty. We're fractured and torn people, within ourselves and outside ourselves. Being whole doesn't come naturally to us. But Jesus isn't showing us what comes naturally. He is showing us the supernatural way of the Kingdom of God. These last three case studies in the Law continue from where Jesus left us last week. If last week concerned how we treat others, this week concerns how we pursue the peace of God. One point that can often be missed is that Jesus is not advocating accepting the evil in the world as the way things have to be. Read more at www.fbcmuncie.org/blog.