Tag: Sermon on the Mount

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Wolves and Fruit – Matthew 7:15-23

Last week, we heard Jesus lay out the binary choice we have – the wide, easy, popular path or the narrow, challenging one that follows Him. This week, he warns against the voices and influencers that would draw us onto the wrong path – voices that may even look and sound like they have our best interests in mind.

Jesus uses two images here – first the pastoral image of sheep and wolves, then plants and their fruit. Jesus uses that sheep/wolf imagery multiple times in the gospels, warning in Matthew 10 that his followers will be sheep among wolves. This is a direct echo of Jesus’ warning about the narrow gate and the challenges that come with it, but also the reassurance earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, not to worry, and that those persecuted are in fact blessed. He promises that the Holy Spirit, the real time, relational Person of the Trinity, will be with us and give us the words and the way to navigate this narrow path crawling with wolves. There is pushback to love and justice and mercy in this world. There is pushback to the good news of the gospel.

We also get this sheep/wolf metaphor in John 10 – Jesus calls himself the gate for His sheep, as well as the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep when the wolf comes. The “hired hand” is scared off because he has no stake in or real love for the sheep, but Jesus knows and is known by His sheep.

We get two flavors of false prophets here – both those who are actively antagonistic to the truth of Christ, even if they disguise themselves as His followers, as well as the “hired hands,” the leaders and influencers who are only there for the material gains – even if they aren’t actively malicious, their lack of real love and foundation means they abandon the flock when needed most. They lack the courage to stand up for the truth of Christ and continue down the narrow path.

The next metaphor Jesus uses is that of plants and fruit, along with the clear warning that not everyone who claims to follow Him is really doing so. Not everyone who claims to know Jesus really does. Jesus warns about this in multiple parables in Matthew 25 – the Ten Virgins, the Talents and the Sheep and Goats. In each of these, we have people who actively say “Lord, Lord” but who find that they never truly knew the person of Christ. The measure we give is the measure we receive. When we truly engage in relationship with Christ, His love spills out into action, concrete compassionate behavior that loves the broken, the poor and the oppressed.

There is an unbreakable connection between knowing Jesus and doing His will. Jesus paints us a picture of sheep, constantly vulnerable and under threat, with threats on either side. There are temptations everywhere – temptations to abandon that vulnerability, to reject the promises of the beatitudes, to seek a world that is right side up rather than the upside down world Jesus promises, where poverty is blessing and powerlessness is power. Our good shepherd is calling us to “stay on target,” to keep following Him and ignore the wolves around us.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, July 27, 2025

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Narrow Gates – Matthew 7:13-14

We often allow ourselves to live in an illusion and thus make decisions based on avoiding pain and hardship rather than what is best. M. Scott Peck writes:

Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.

That comes from Peck’s book The Road Less Traveled, named for Robert Frost’s poem that echoes Jesus’ words here about the paths that we choose, the ways that we can go.

Early Christians were often called People of the Way, a reminder that life with Christ is a journey, along a path. We choose the path, we choose the gate, but then we must continue along that path making choices all along the way.

But the gate and the path Jesus calls us to is narrow – constricting because of the persecution that path brings with it. And perhaps because of that, it is unpopular. Jesus is clear here about who his followers are – they are not the dominant culture, they are not the popular, not the trending.

Justice is difficult. Loving our enemy is difficult. Humans are built to love, but our fallen nature makes that hard. Compassion is looked down upon and hatred becomes easier than the love we are built for.

But walking the narrow path means turning our lives over to Jesus and the Holy Spirit, seeking God’s will for our life over our own. This, Jesus promises, will lead to problems. If everyone in your life is happy with you, are you really on the path Jesus wants for you?

As we look at the choices and paths we have ahead of us, may the words of Christ guide us to the narrow path and the narrow gate. May he give us the wisdom to discern the party courage to choose the more difficult road,

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Ask, Seek, Knock in Pursuit of Christ – Matthew 7:7-12

This passage – along with many others like it across the gospels – is a challenge for many of us who have asked, sought, knocked and have not been given what we want. Think of how many things you have prayed for that have not gone the way you hoped or expected. But God does not always answer our prayers the way we expect.

Many of us have been taught false things about prayer. “If you don’t ask, you won’t receive.” “If you use specific words and language, you will receive.” “If you pray hard enough and REALLY believe God will answer your prayer as you desire.”

If you don’t ask, you won’t receive. But what about those who don’t ask and still receive? What about the birds of the air and the flowers of the field? Jesus tells us not to worry, and to trust, which certainly cuts against this false teaching.

“If you use specific words and language, you will receive.” God is not an ATM, and prayer is not a formula. God is a Person, who seeks relationship with us.

“If you pray hard enough and REALLY believe God will answer your prayer as you desire.” God does not want us to grovel. God is inherently good and desires to give things to His children. You don’t HAVE to ask. but God would like us to because that means we’re communicating with Him. God is not an ATM of riches.

Jesus addresses this question towards the end of the Sermon on the Mount, in the context of his teaching on prayer, his teaching on worry, and his teaching on the love of God.

We should ask God questions – the answers may not all come in this life, but we can trust that He will ultimately answer. We should seek Him and His gifts. We can trust that He will give us good gifts, even when we do not understand them when we receive them, even when they are not the gifts that we wanted.

God plants seeds even in the midst of sorrow and challenge. Even if we don’t fully understand how or why He does some things, answers some prayers but does not answer others, we can trust that His gifts are good. We can trust that He wants to hear from us, wants us to ask, seek and knock, because He loves us and gives good gifts to his children.

— Sermon Notes, Amanda Moffat, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, July 6, 2025

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Judge Not – 7:1-5

We are all prone to play the comparison game – in our personal lives, in our professional lives, even in our churches. It’s particularly easy for churches like ours where we really are reacting, even recoiling from the way other churches have behaved and treated people. It’s very easy to judge ourselves as righteous and others as unrighteous, despite what Jesus says here.

It’s challenging, because how do we strive for righteousness if we cannot assess what is righteous and what is not, and compare ourselves to that standard? In fact, Jesus specifically goes on to tell us to assess trees by their fruit, to watch out for false teachers, to not throw our pearls before swine. How do we do those things without judging? If our righteousness is supposed to exceed that of the teachers of the law and the Pharisees, how do we do that without judging?

The Greek word here is krinō, and it can mean simple discernment, but it can also mean condemnation. It is more the latter Jesus is speaking to – when we do make assessments as we must, we should not pair that with condemnation and an overall determination of the worth of the individual in question.

Jesus wants to open our hearts up to each other and to God, to enable us to live to the full. So when he says “by the standard you judge, you will also be judged,” this is a relational issue, not just a set of rules. If we are judgemental and hard hearted, that stance and behavior impacts all our interactions with others. When we are thinking like Ebenezer Scrooge in our hearts, others can sense that and will respond in kind.

The Symptoms of an Ebenezer Scrooge Aura:

  1. Consistently think the worst of people.
  2. Only address people’s mistakes and faults.
  3. We identify a person by their worst moments
  4. We assume the hidden motives of other people
  5. We are harsh with people around the things we ourselves struggle with.
  6. When we play “us” vs “them”

If we have received generous grace, should we not be generous in doling out grace ourselves? This includes having charitable assumptions about the behavior of others, rather than assuming the worst about why other people do the things we do.

One thing about this that is particularly challenging is finding ways to be discerning in how we spend our time and who we engage with and let influence us on one hand, without falling into “us vs them” games and judgemental condemnation of people for differing beliefs and values.

None of this is easy. Condemnation is easier than discernment, just like destruction is easier than creation. It requires letting the Holy Spirit work within us to break down our own internal strongholds, to build up internal edifice of compassionate discernment.

It is easy for us as Christians to weaponize our understanding of right and wrong, but Jesus here calls us to a more nuanced response. We cannot be blind to sin or hurt, but must respond to it with grace, patience and creativity.

May Jesus equip us in this challenging task and may we be a force for His love in all of our interactions.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, June 22, 2025

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The Lord’s Prayer – Matthew 6:5-15

Our engagement with scripture is highly dependent on our own context as well as the context of the scriptures themselves.

Jesus starts his discussion of prayer by addressing some of that context. He is not speaking into a blank slate, but rather into a context where assumptions have already been made and wrong understandings are already in place. First, he attacks public piety, prayer done in public to increase our own reputation and prestige. Today, we aren’t likely standing outside the church praying loudly, but we certainly do the equivalent on social media, bolstering our own “personal brand”. When we do that, Jesus says we’ve already gotten our own rewards. But we can trust God to hear us and take care of us.

The second lie Jesus takes on is the idea that we need to pray in a particular way to get through to God. The Hellenistic influence is clear here, as the pagan practice of long rambling prayers to distracted, fickle deities was apparently being copied by the Jewish community. But God is not distant, He is near and already knows what we need before we open our mouths.

Then Jesus walks us through step by step how to pray. He starts off simply – we pray to our Father in heaven. Not Caesar or Zeus, not the gods of the stock market or political power. Now, you may argue that we don’t do that – but what if every tab refresh is its own little prayer? Who are we really seeking?

Next, “hallowed be your name.” This is a weird thing to say in English – we never say things like this except in this prayer. The closest we come is Halloween or the “Deathly Hallows” – maybe it would be better known as “let your name be known as holy.”

Next, “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Put another way, “God please show up!” We want to see God work His will in our lives, in our struggles, in our relationships.

From there “give us today our daily bread.” It’s a simple prayer, asking for just enough, calling back to the days in Exodus when God sent manna daily, but only for the day. It’s entirely counter-cultural and was in Jesus’ time as well. Why ask for so little from a God who is so rich? But by asking for only what we need, perhaps God works in us to give us more than we know.

Next, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” This is a prayer about obligations and relationships. Relationships themselves are a network of obligations between people – and God’s covenants with his people are mutual obligations. We fail to meet these obligations all the time, and others fail to meet theirs to us. This prayer extends the grace of God to both ourselves and to others.

Finally, “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” We will be tempted to deviate from the Jesus Way, from the instructions Jesus has been giving during the Sermon on the Mount. And we will be assailed by the real spiritual forces of evil that seek to keep us from relationship with God.

And then instead of what we expect, the doxological “for yours is the kingdom, etc” Jesus ends in a way that is perhaps unexpected. He goes back to these questions of obligations and the inevitable hurt that comes with living in relationships the way Jesus is calling. If we forgive those hurts, then we too will be forgiven. If we refuse to forgive, though, we will find our own forgiveness hard to come by.

It comes back to relationships – with God and others. Prayer is not a mechanism for building our reputation or fire seeking material gain, but for entering into relationship with God and seeking to tools to engage in Holy relationships with others.

— Sermon Notes, Tim Hsieh, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, June 1, 2025

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Creative Resistance – Matthew 5:38-48

Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount is set against the backdrops of hostile authority. On the one hand, the Jewish religious leaders are oppressive & hypocritical, coming in for direct attacks and opposition from Jesus, while on the other hand the entire nation is occupied by the Empire of Rome, extracting exorbitant taxes and brutally crushing and sign of dissention.

This is why the Jewish people, even Jesus’ disciples, were looking for a messiah who would take on these oppressors and lead the people of God in revolution. But Jesus here makes it very clear that He is doing things very differently.

In the NFL, it’s well known that the penalty flag tends to go to the retaliator rather than the instigator. The same is often true in life – but Jesus’ call here goes beyond that. Jesus is calling us to avoid being defined by our enemies. Our actions should spring from love of God and love of others rather than in kind, giving hatred for hatred and violence for violence.

Jesus is calling us to creative resistance – he reimagines the traditional “eye-for-an-eye” responses to evil as nonviolent, subversive resistance that follows the Kingdom Way.

The eye-for-an-eye concept is found in the Torah, but also in law codes across the ancient world, including the Code of Hammurabi. The original intent of the concept was to enforce proportional enforcement of the laws, putting a ceiling on punishment to prevent an accelerating cycle of violence. It’s a very transactional, systemic method of ensuring proportional retribution. Jesus, though, is calling us to something even greater.

When Jesus describes the strike on the cheek, he’s describing a specific circumstance, where someone in power, very likely a Roman soldier who had the right to strike a Jewish person, or a master with the right to strike a slave, would backhand someone and be immune to legal ramifications. Corey Farr writes:

Then, one day, like so many other days, your master backhands you. He expects you to cower and whimper and slink off back to your duties. Maybe he expects you to get on your knees and beg forgiveness. But instead, you look him in the eyes and turn your head to put your left cheek forward. You’ve already insulted him by failing to break down, so he has the right (in his mind) to slap you again.

But he can’t slap you with his left hand, because that is unclean for both of you. And he can’t backhand, because your right cheek is away from him. To strike again, his only option is to slap you with the palm of his hand. And this was not the way to slap a slave. This was reserved for equals. If he chooses to slap you again, he is forced to upgrade your status. He has to bump you up to a higher class citizen in order to get his revenge.

This “victory” may seem small, but it isn’t. You have asserted your humanity and reminded the master you are not an object to be owned and controlled.

Likewise, the “go an extra mile” and “give up your cloak” are subversive responses that undermine the power structure at play, that appeals to the humanity of your enemy, providing a path for them to turn from their own wickedness, the truest form of love.

Jesus ultimately turned the Empire upside down, but He did it through these regular ongoing acts of love. We must follow Christ and His Church as we fight oppression ourselves, singing songs of hope in the darkness, loving out those songs in our daily lives.

–Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, May 18, 2025

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A People of Yes and No – Matthew 5:33-37

In this part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is walking through a set of case studies on the thesis that he is the fulfillment of the Law. This section addresses oaths. In this case, he does not directly quote a specific passage though there are many that say relevant, similar things:

You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God. (Exod. 20:7)

Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. (Lev. 19:12)

When a man makes a vow to the Lord or takes an oath to obligate himself by a pledge, he must not break his word but must do everything he said. (Num. 30:2)

If you make a vow to the Lord your God, do not be slow to pay it. (Deut. 23:21)

What had happened in the previous years is that the inclination to avoid dishonoring God’s name had led to a game of finding loopholes, swearing by different things – heaven, earth, heads, gold – in order to give people an “out” if they end up breaking the oath. But Jesus says, no, that’s not how this works – it’s all connected to God, it’s all a statement of either truth or falsehood.

Jesus is calling us to be a people worthy of trust. It’s a sad fact that the people who protest the most about their honesty and integrity tend to be the ones who are least trustworthy.

We have also all seen how trust has eroded across our culture. Media, political leaders, religious leaders have all made assertions and promises that have ultimately been lies.

Jesus wants us to be something greater, a community held together by covenant loyalty. We are called to be a renewing agent among each other and in the world. We are not here to carefully navigate a set of arbitrary rules in order to make life easier for ourselves. It’s ultimately about our heart, not about checking the right boxes that let us behave like we wanted to in the first place.

Instead, Jesus just wants us to say yes or no and then follow through. There are no words so meaningless that we can be dishonest without care. There is not a special category of statements that really have to be true, and so all the rest can be lies or ignored.

Jesus wants us to be a people of integrity and truth, a people of Yes and No. Our words reflect on ourselves, our fellow believers, and ultimately Christ Himself. Let us live and speak in a way that reflects the truth and Faithfulness that He embodies.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church Lynnwood, WA, March 2, 2025

Images created with Midjourney.

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Little Tiny Murder Pins – Matthew 5:21-26

One of the key concepts we need to understand is that God, above all, wants a relationship with us. We follow God and His precepts not so we will have all the answers to having a good life, not to rack up heaven points, not so we can earn anything, but so that we can have an intimate, real time relationship with the God of the universe.

That is much of the point in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Previously, we discussed how Jesus explained how He sought to fulfill the Law, not abolish it. In fact, we must be holier than the holy people: “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Jesus is emphasizing a deeper kind of righteousness than what the Scribes and Pharisees focused on – a righteousness at the heart level, not merely checking boxes or avoiding specific, circumscribed actions. As the prophet Ezekiel wrote: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.”

Elsewhere, Jesus addresses this concept again with the rich young ruler. He was insecure and was seeking the next material task he could complete in order to seal the deal with God. That man followed all the earthly rules as well as anyone could but Jesus pushes him towards dependence and towards relationship with him.

Back to the Sermon, this is the beginning of a pattern of antitheses – “you have heard it said… but I tell you…” He addresses Anger, Adultery, Divorce, Oaths, Retaliation and Loving Enemies. We’ll start with anger this week.

He starts with the basics. Murder, Jesus notes, is wrong. So far, so good. But anger, expressed as evil words and actions, is of a kind with murder. Our frustration and fury may not lead us to kill, but it’s the same reaction, just spread out across many in our lives. Not a single event, but little tiny murder pins spread all across our lives.

Our anger, if not addressed, festers inside and acts as a barrier to relationships with others and with God. Unattended anger can effectively “kill” relationships.

Jesus is not only concerned with external acts but with our hearts – but He also gives us practical ways to head off these heart issues in our daily life. When we have conflict, we should prioritize addressing that conflict over any other form of worship. Our vertical relationship with God is intimately connected to our horizontal relationships with others, and if we have hardened ourselves to the one we cannot but be hardened to the other.

Second, Jesus instructs us to keep short accounts – to remove the barriers between us and others, to seek reconciliation when we are in conflict, rather than pressing our rights. He does this in the context of courts, debts and lawsuits but the principles are applicable across contexts and relationships.

Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law, and the ultimate goal of the Law is to facilitate relationships with God and others. But that standard remains unattainable – which means we need to refer back to the Beatitudes, and Jesus’ words: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

But what about righteous anger? Does Jesus mean we shouldn’t come to church and worship when we are angry at injustice? Isn’t Jesus just talking about individual relationships? What about Jesus’ cleansing of the temple?

But ultimately, Jesus is talking broadly about matters of the heart. We can experience inappropriate anger in interpersonal relationships, but we can also experience that same anger even on behalf of good things, even when angry on behalf of the vulnerable. We cannot let ourselves behave sinfully even under the color of good things. We must again refer back to the Beatitudes to understand how to be compassionate even as we struggle for commission and righteousness in our society. How do we channel our righteous anger into righteous compassion rather than unrighteous resentment?

There are not simple answers for this, but if we seek that real time relationship with God and continue to refer back to the Beatitudes, we’ll at least be on the right track.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, February 16, 2025

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Salt & Light – Matthew 5:13-16

The Sermon on the Mount starts in an odd way for a Sermon. The hill Jesus is speaking from is crammed with people trying to hear. No opening joke or anecdote, no catchy hook, but a list of counterintuitive statements. Blessed are the poor? It’s the rich who are blessed, that’s why they are rich. Blessed are those who mourn? Those who celebrate do so because they are the ones who are blessed. But the crowd eats it up because they are an oppressed people – they are poor, they are mourning, they are hungry.

Then Jesus pivots to a statement directly to the crowd. “You are the salt of the earth.” The Greek here is second person plural (you all), emphatic and present tense. And what does it mean to be salt? Salt is a transformative agent, enhancing flavor and preserving food. In ancient times it was far more important than we think of it today, far more valuable and essential for what was then modern life.

So Jesus is telling the crowd, “You all, right here, right now, your identity, purpose, value is to be a transformative agent on this earth.” How do we do that? By living out those odd statements Jesus just gave – by living out the beatitudes.

But what good is salt of it loses its flavor? The word “good” here means “what use is it?” The term for “lose its flavor,” mōrainō, literally means “to become foolish” and is our source for the word “moron.” What does it mean to become foolish? By failing to live out the beatitudes.

Next Jesus tells the people that they are “the light of the world.” They are the thing that drives out darkness. Again, this is a small, oppressed group and Jesus is using the same term that Cicero used to describe Rome itself! This small group of seekers is somehow the city on a hill.

But it comes with the same kind of warning – don’t hide that light. Don’t cover it over with worldliness, don’t hide it in a church building – let it shine out

Instead, Jesus gives the first command of his Sermon: “Let your good and beautiful deeds shine! So that all people will experience and recognize God, the true Father’s redemptive love and power.” This is the first time we get the word “Father” in the gospel of Matthew, very possibly as a purposeful contrast with Caesar, who was seen as the father to all. But Caesar is the evil, authoritarian, oppressive Father – Jesus is speaking of the loving Father who brings out the beatitudes.

What good and beautiful deeds can you do to encourage others to see our father in them?

Now, there were other groups out there who also had to find a way to live under the empire. The Essenes headed out to the desert, didn’t want to be complicit in empire – they hid their Lamp, and many think that Jesus’ words here were an implicit rebuke. The Saducees bowed the knee to empire, being nationalistic, securing power and economic gain for themselves. The Pharisees kept to a strict holiness and piety code, believing that their personal holiness would bring change. Then the zealots – they sought active overthrow of the empire. They were prophetic voices calling for change, but were willing to useviolent means, which Jesus clearly rejects.

We can be tempted in all these directions – we can seek to hide or avoid society. We can throw in with the world and seek power and wealth. We can retreat to our own holiness with no regard for the hurt around us. We can adopt the violent means of the world and lose our very purpose.

What should we do instead? Again, looking back to the beatitudes, living out those counterintuitive words, seeking to be salt and light in the world.

— Sermon Notes, Tim Hsieh, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, February 2, 2025

Image by Midjourney.

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The Sermon on the Mount – Matthew 5:1-2

The Sermon on the Mount is arguably the most important sermon ever given. In it, Jesus lays out his radical ethical and moral vision.

To understand what Jesus is doing in this sermon, it may help to look at how children are raised. When a baby first receives instruction, it tends to be about “no!” Don’t touch that, don’t put that in your mouth, don’t go there.” As time passes and children grow, the boundaries change and get more complicated – “Do your homework, no more screen time, be home by 10.” But at some point we want these things to change – we want our children to move out and have their own lives, their own identities, making their own decisions and setting their own boundaries.

Similarly, when the United States became a nation, the Constitution was put in place to create a framework for running the national, Federal government, enabling the creation of laws, the interpretation of laws and even the amending of the constitution itself. But it does not give instruction for every situation and is not meant to be.

When Jesus climbs up to the top of a hill to teach, it evokes Moses bringing the law down from Mount Sinai and the prophets of the Old Testament. Jesus is bringing a new word, a new manifesto for the Kingdom of God. The emphasis becomes humanity internalizing the desires of God rather than acting from external instruction from the Law. The movement is from the law written in stone to the law written in our hearts. Jesus instructs us to take the principles set forth in the law and to understand those well enough to apply them in our lives to live as God’s people.

The Sermon on the Mount is a radical reinterpretation of the Mosaic law, and a radical restatement of it. Jesus’ focus is on the heart of the matter, where the law has focused on the external behavior. In many ways, it is even more extreme, but it is also designed to enable us to adapt to new questions and new situations.

As we grow from a baby to a teenager to an adult, our questions grow from what we’re going to touch or not touch, into hard questions of how we respond to sin in ourselves, to corruption in the world, to complex relationships.

Following the Sermon on the Mount means moving from scripted moral answers to moral improv. It means internalizing the will and desires of God to the extent that we respond to those difficult questions in a godly way. It’s a message from Jesus “you’re not babies anymore.”

Maturity is a challenge, and many of us long for the simpler, easier answers from when we were young. But Jesus calls us to something greater and over the next few weeks we will dig into how He does that in the Sermon on the Mount.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, January 5, 2025