Jill Partis
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Where is your Treasure?
Matthew 6:19-24 In today’s excerpt from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus challenges His listeners to think about what kind of treasure they are storing up for themselves. He gives them two possibilities. The first is the treasure of this world, which consists of such things as big houses and cars, designer clothing, money, jewellery…
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How Should We Pray?
Matthew 6:7-15 Many of us are very familiar with this model prayer that Jesus taught and, in spite of His warning about vain repetitions, we may well have recited it without thought more times than we care to remember. However, this prayer was not given for shallow repetition but to teach us how to pray.…
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Who are you Trying to Please?
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18 In these verses Jesus speaks of three common religious practices – charitable giving, praying and fasting. We can see that He assumed His followers would do these things because He says, “when you do a charitable deed” (v.2), “when you pray” (v.5) and “when you fast” (v.16) rather than “if”. But what…
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Love Your Enemies
Matthew 5:43-48 We come today to the last of the six comparisons Jesus made between the Law of Moses and the standards of His kingdom. The Law required God’s people to love their neighbours as themselves (Leviticus 19:18), but Jesus listeners had been taught, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy”. Over the…
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Overcome Evil With Good
Matthew 5:38-42 Here we see Jesus referring again to the Mosaic Law before going on to set a higher standard for His followers. He begins by quoting “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” (see Exodus 21:24; Leviticus 24:20; Deuteronomy 19:21), a law that God had given to prevent violence or…
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Truth Matters
Matthew 5:33-37 Today we come to the third comparison Jesus makes between the Mosaic Law and His teaching and the heart attitude He challenges this time is dishonesty. In ancient societies oaths were used to resolve disputes, to seal agreements or covenants, or simply to affirm the truthfulness of important declarations. Under the Old Covenant…
