Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:08:36 — 39.3MB)
Subscribe: RSS
“’Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.’”
Matthew 5:17–19 NASB
“Jesus is not speaking against observing all the requirements of the Law, but against hypocritical, Pharisaical legalism. Such legalism was not the keeping of all the details of the Law but the hollow sham of keeping laws externally, to gain merit before God, while breaking them inwardly. It was following the letter of the law while ignoring its spirit. Jesus repudiates the Pharisees’ interpretation of the Law and their way of righteousness by works. He preaches a righteousness that comes only through faith in him and his work.”
NIV Study Bible, 10th edition (1995), “Matt. 5:18–20”
If there’s one sermon you’ll want to make sure you stay awake through it’s the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7) by Yeshua (Jesus). It gets to the heart of the matter about why humanity has strayed from its ultimate potential: a heart that is prone to straying. But part of the long-awaited mission of the Messiah is to be Heaven’s ultimate Anointed messenger, teacher, redeemer of humanity.
Long before Yeshua’s arrival on Earth in the 1st century, another special anointed one led Heaven’s ambassadors to humanity out of slavery and toward freedom, foreshadowing a greater Prophet Who would take humanity the distance to the Kingdom of God. In the Torah reading וָאֶתְחַנַּן Va’et’chanan (“and I pleaded,” Deuteronomy 3:23–7:11), we see the beginning of Moshe’s (Moses’) explanation of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20; Deuteronomy 5), a lesson that stretches almost to the end of the book.