Friends Church Sermons

To understand the fullness of what Jesus teaches next we must again return to the context of the teaching. Jesus is sitting on the mountain as a Rabbi – a teacher – surrounded by His Talmid (disciples). He is instructing them in a new way of interpreting the scriptures that they have been taught all their lives. He starts with an extraordinary claim “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees you will not enter the kingdom of heaven”. The message – your rabbi’s are wrong. They are wrong about blessings, they are wrong about the law, they are wrong about prayer and fasting, they are wrong about security, and they are wrong about their role in the preservation of society. “Do not judge lest you be judged.” This is perhaps one of the most misunderstood teachings of Jesus in all of scripture. Partially that is because of the pendulum effect. You have to understand the context – the Pharisees had set themselves up to be the judges of all men. They set the standards (faulty) and they were t