These thirty-one verses in Matthew 5:17-48 tell us a very important truth, that our righteousness must surpass that of the Pharisees and teachers of the Law. The passage’s main point can be found in verses 17 to 20 and Jesus gave us 5 examples to illustrate this point in verses 21-48. We cover the first two examples in this sermon.
The Early Church had two kinds of fellowship life. In Acts 2:46, it says: “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts”
The first kind is fellowship in the temple. They worshiped and praised the Lord together, somewhat like our worship services on Sundays. The second kind of fellowship is inside the believers’ homes. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts – this is an example of small group fellowship. A healthy Christian must maintain these two kinds of fellowship life.
Today we start a series of sermons on the life of David. Let us start by seeing how David was chosen and anointed by God to be king. 1 Samuel 16:1 records how God wanted Samuel to go to the house of Jesse because He had chosen one of his sons as king. Who was this chosen one? It was David, of course. No one can say anything about the Lord’s choice, the Lord will have mercy on whom He will have mercy, and He will have compassion on whom he will have compassion. Today, let us view this from a different angle: Was David qualified to be chosen by God?
We are all familiar with this scripture passage. Jesus clearly defined our identity as Christians – we are the salt of the earth, we are light of the world. We must take note of a very important verb in this passage, “are”. We are the salt of the earth. We are the light of the world. Jesus is not saying we must be the salt and light of the world. This is an issue of life – if we are not salt, we are not light; no matter what we do we cannot become salt and light. Salt and light are our identity, we are salt and light. Salt cannot lose its saltiness, light cannot be hidden. We are salt, we are light. What are the uses of salt and light?
