Sermon on The Mount | The Paradox of Freedom | Matthew 5:33-42 | Week 6

We’re continuing our series in the Sermon on the Mount.  I’ve spent a lot of time in fear, trepidation, and prayer over these last two messages.  Last week we talked about lust and adultery, and that was really easy, so we decided to build on that and now we’re going to talk about divorce, remarriage, and oaths.  Did you come to hear from the Lord today?  I hope you did, because as much as I’ve wrestled with this passage, I feel like there’s freedom that Jesus wants to bring.  As Isaiah (50:4) said, my prayer has been along that I’d have the tongue of one instructed that I might have a word for the wounded today.  That’s my heartbeat.  Jesus, would you help us as we wrestle with your Scripture and your words.  Lord, I pray against the enemy’s voice of condemnation in the hearts and minds of your people here today.  God, may they not confuse condemnation with the conviction that your Spirit wants to bring because of your kindness that leads to repentance and to life.  Lord, let us not confuse the enemy’s condemnation with your conviction.  We want your words over our hearts and our lives that we might walk in your life and in your freedom.  And all God’s people said. . . . Amen.

The year was 1773.  There were boats sitting in the Boston’s harbor, Griffin’s Wharf, just waiting to bring in 342 chests of British tea.  You know the story?  Where roughly a hundred colonists jumped on those boats and they unloaded, over the next three hours, 90,000 pounds of tea into the Boston harbor.  It was the first act of defiance that the American colonists perpetrated against the motherland of Great Britain.  It effectively began the Revolutionary War.  That war commenced a year later, but it was that act of ‘we don’t want any taxation without representation so we’re going to throw your tea into the ocean,’ it was THAT act, that began that war that we celebrated the victory of on the Fourth of July.  We celebrated by blowing stuff up, to the glory of God, didn’t we?  Nothing quite says we love our freedom like lighting stuff on fire and blowing it up...