Upside Down Kingdom: Sermon on the Mount part 5

Doc Ryan with Expedition 44 and Pastor Matt Mouzakis • Get our focus off of the acquisition of possessions and money because they run contrary to the kingdom vision; be generous and store up treasures in heaven. You can only serve 1 master. • Don’t worry or be anxious because God knows your needs and he provides. • Our role as humans is to love and show mercy; we are ambassadors of God’s reconciliation. God alone is judge. • We are called to discern but not condemn. • The sermon on the mount is an invitation to a new way to live- the kingdom way to live • It is not to simply accept and believe in Him but to live like Jesus and do what he says • The only acceptable response of a follower is to embrace this way of life. • “Doing and practicing” are more ordinary terms that would have equaled the definition of righteousness in the mind of a Jew during Jesus time. This righteousness we are called to is to conform our life and behaviors to Jesus’ kingdom vision. • James 1:22​-25 22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25 But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do. • The sermon on the mount is not legalistic or Torah on steroids. To respond to the sermon in the mount is not to respond to an ethical or moral vision… it is to respond to Jesus our King. Our proper response is to declare Jesus and who he is by the way that we live.