Come Learn Rest Ministries

Don’t suppose for a minute that I have come to demolish the Scriptures—either God’s Law or the Prophets. I’m not here to demolish but to complete. I am going to put it all together, pull it all together in a vast panorama. God’s Law is more real and lasting than the stars in the sky and the ground at your feet. Long after stars burn out and earth wears out, God’s Law will be alive and working. Trivialize even the smallest item in God’s Law and you will only have trivialized yourself. But take it seriously, show the way for others, and you will find honor in the kingdom. Unless you do far better than the Pharisees in the matters of right living, you won’t know the first thing about entering the kingdom.  ~Matthew 5:17-20 (the Message)

What a rich passage of Scripture from the Sermon on the Mount this is!  The Law and the Prophets are the framework for right living with God and others.  And Jesus, the perfect fulfillment of what it means to love our neighbor as ourselves, invites you and I to honestly evaluate whether we know the first thing about entering the kingdom of God or not.

Jesus boldly proclaims that the love the Pharisees displayed for God and others was only skin deep.  However, his followers are empowered by the Holy Spirit to go deeper, to risk loving God and others in a way that is more real and more lasting.  So will you and I love in order to be seen by others or will we love for the sake of others with all our heart, soul, mind and strength?

There is nothing trivial about our life with God.  Right living and loving transforms lives.  By choosing to go deeper, you and I experience the fullness of joy in Jesus who was here on earth to fulfill the Law and the Prophets so we don’t have to even try.  What an amazing grace this is!  Amen and amen.