Climbing The Mountain

In Chapter 6 of Matthew, Jesus begins a new section. Sometimes the chapter divisions in the Bible aren’t great. This one, however, is. We’ve been studying the passage that began in 5:17, how Jesus tells us He has come to fulfill the Law. Then, He warns His hearers how their teachers were not correctly teaching the Law. They had false teaching. Now, Jesus turns to our lives, how we live out our faith. He warns us not to be hypocrites, possessing merely a superficial righteousness or doing your religion for show, essentially for yourself. We’re going to read a longer section of scripture that includes three bad examples of how we should not practice our faith. In the middle of it is this wonderful aside, the Lord’s Prayer. We’re going to read all of the scripture so you can hear it in context; but, we’re just going to focus on the three examples. We’ll save the Lord’s Prayer for another episode.