Are you dealing with turbulence and instability in your own life today? Today’s passage teaches us how the Christian can prepare and cling on to in times of distress, worry and fear. 

What do we think of fruits? We may be most familiar with seeing them at the supermarket, all cleaned up and packaged, but we may not be familiar with the process of growing and getting them. Our modern experience with fruits is rather weird, and we just assume that they are within reach whenever we want it.

Christians also often speak about fruit. When did you last think about fruit in your own life? What is produced from you in your thoughts and deeds? 

What worries you as you think about life in the kingdom, as you think about your walk and even in your church? In this section, we will consider Jesus’ own words of warning for His disciples. 

What does peace mean to you? We may describe it as a sense of stillness and happiness, devoid of worry and anxiety where we feel that we are at rest. It is also not just a feeling, but a full and emotional experience that extends beyond what we feel. It also affects what we think about, and also how we think about anxiety too.

In this section of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus addresses the peace of the kingdom and how we attain it.

How would you define prayer? It’s an action, certainly, but what is its outcome? What is the product of this? And what is distinct about Christian prayer? Some may say that it’s communion with God and also communicating with God, as we address our Father in a personal way. But what does Jesus say? And what’s your prayer life like?

When did you start to have a picture of yourself? It is not that easy to remember life before you saw yourself. There was a time when we didn’t have an idea of yourself, but then we did. From then on, life seemed to be a process of self-discovery, and at puberty, there seems to be an increased divergence between our sense of ourselves and who we are. 

We often call this hypocrisy, and Jesus has a lot to say about this two-faced living and calls us to be like a child — to simply be before God. 

What kind of Christian are you? What kind of follower are you? Do you live your Christian life Coram Deo before God, aware of only the blazing white-hot centre of God’s glory? Or do you I’ve with a divergent sense of self? 

Anger, lust, divorce, oaths, retaliation and loving our enemies — these are the 6 antitheses that Jesus picks up in Matthew 5. The formula is “you have heard that it was said” and then Jesus goes to explain a bit more. He is dealing with the Pharisaical expansions to the law. Jesus also typically gets to the heart of the Old Testament law. When he does it, it should make us sense the ethical burden of this law. If we understand the heart of the OT law, we will see the need of the gospel. 

The words “marriage” and “purity” could elicit a range of responses from us now. These are topics that are often brought up and discussed in our world today. What then, does the Bible say? How does that align with or challenge our understanding? 

This is what we will focus on in this section of the Sermon on the Mount, and we will see how God’s plan has been to redeem us through marriage. 

In the last few weeks, we have seen that the Sermon on the Mount is all about the Kingdom of Heaven. We saw that the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ specific address to his followers, about the kingdom of heaven and how to enter in. Specifically, where we left off last week was Jesus setting out that the righteousness offered by the scribes (writers of the law) and the Pharisees (strict religious sect of the Jews) was insufficient to grant entrance into the kingdom. Jesus made clear that the enter the kingdom, one needs righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. From here on, Jesus will build on the topic of righteousness in specific contexts. 

What was the main message of the Sermon on the Mount, one of the most famous of Jesus' teachings? At the heart of Matthew's Gospel is the message of the kingdom. God has established His reign and rule on earth, not as an idea or concept, but in the actual domain of His dwelling and self-disclosure.

With this message as its backdrop, we understand that the Sermon on the Mount spans different sections in its extended development of this message. Following the beautiful words of these Beatitudes, the next section of Matthew develops the idea of what life in the kingdom is like, what Jesus' disciples are to be and what will guide and govern their living. 

We can often come to the Beatitudes knowing that they are teaching, and important teaching, but without a clear sense of the context or larger theme that frames Jesus’ first recorded sermon. In this section, we’ll take a look at the Beatitudes, and we’ll see how the Beatitudes and their content are closely related to the reception of the kingdom of heaven.

This passage shows us what Jesus begins to dow after the events of His baptism and temptation. Jesus appears on the scene after years of anonymity. He begins His ministry at the age of 30. In His baptism, He identified with His people. In His temptation, He succeeded where Adam and Israel failed. 

How would you summarise the career achievement of Jesus? What is the essence of His life and ministry?  And, how would you describe the follower of Jesus? 

The first 100 days are important to new governments and leaders. It signals how the rest of their term will turn out, and it is often a stressful period. What was Jesus’ first 100 days like? 

The kingdom of God has finally come. His domain of truth and justice has arrived. The domain of sin, rebellion, and suffering has ended. And for all who enter the kingdom, they have life, rest, and peace. 

This is the big message of Matthew’s gospel, and we’ve been catching a foretaste of this message in the first 3 chapters. If the kingdom is central, then even more so its King. That’s why the gospel quickly zooms in on Jesus. 

But the challenge of reading the gospel is that we tend towards familiarity, and our sense of familiarity sometimes creeps into boredom. The baptism of Christ, turn it around, inside out, stretch it, zoom in, zoom out, and then consider what it means for us. 

Here’s the central question for us: Why does the baptism of Jesus matter? And why does it matter for us?

We continue in our study in Matthew and in this study in Matthew 3, we are going to take a look at the message of the Kingdom that the messenger brings. It is important for us to understand who this messenger is, why he came and what he came to say. Otherwise, we will miss his message, the message of the Kingdom.

We live in a world that is not that dissimilar as Matthew 2. We live in a world where people still perform senseless acts of evil and wickedness. Sometimes in safe and comfortable Singapore, we assume that every day we get up, it will be just like the day before. And when we read of great tragedies, we are reminded that Christians have the resources to wrestle with this. These resources are also available to us to deal with suffering, tragedy and disaster. 

This section is the part of the Christmas story that nobody really wants to preach on. The myrrh brought by the wise men, doesn’t just signal a future death, but one that takes place soon. Jesus is a King and He brings a great Kingdom. He brings a new rule and reign of God and brings a new political system that the world has not seen before. The very first thing that comes with this new kingdom is shadow and opposition. We will see from this section how we suffer for and with Christ Jesus.

What comes to mind when we think of the word joy? In our passage today, we will see the reactions of two starkly different groups as Jesus Christ is born, that of the Jewish King Herod, and the Babylonian magi. In them we witness the stark contrast of how they respond to good news of great Joy — the nations take joy in God’s true King while prideful men do not.

In this study of the book of Matthew, we’ll see how faith looks like in God’s kingdom. What do we put our faith in? Is it sure? And how does that influence how we live today?

We begin a new study in Matthew’s Gospel by looking at the patrilineal genealogy in Matthew 1. But to help us set the context of the Old Testament, we will also read Psalm 78. Psalm 78 is a history lesson for fathers to pass on to their children and for our purposes, this Psalm provides a framework to understand Israel’s story and the history of God’s people — from rebellion to the rise of God’s Davidic King.