20/10/2026
Jesus continues in Matthew 5 to show three areas where Israel’s teachers were misappropriating the Mosaic Law – they were using the Law of Moses to get around the true intention and heart of the law, making up excuses and ways to wriggle around doing the right thing that had to do with their heart-hardedness towards divorce, their lying lips in oath keeping and also when it came to justice. The teachers and leaders of Israel were misguiding and misappropriating God’s intention. And finally, Jesus gives an example where they were even changing the word of God, much like a false teacher, and instead of love thy neighbour as you love yourself, they had twisted it to say love your neighbour and hate your enemy. This, of all, was so corruptive because it made God’s law out to be one of hate, which it never was supposed to be.
And Jesus ends His time in Matthew 5 to give the standard that is required to enter the kingdom of God, and it is “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect”. He is not mincing words. He means what He says, and it is a complete condition of entrance if we are going to work our own way into His kingdom. We know and we will discover in this sermon that Jesus has set the bar to a level of impossibility that we could never hope to attain for ourselves, but the wonderful mercy and love of God is that He has accomplished everything we need in order to get to heaven through His son who is sharing this very sermon. So, Jesus sets the impossible standard, but then is the solution to that standard when we place our faith and trust in Him, He forgives us, just as the l***r was cleaned of his leprosy, so Jesus, when we ask Him, comes and cleans us and forgives us of our sins.