St Jude's Mapperley Archive Blog

Hi folks, Slightly delayed today.... Yesterday we continued our series on the Sermon on the Mount with Matthew 6:19-34 and Jesus instruction not to worry. But he does a lot more than just tell us not to worry – as ever, his words examine the thoughts and motives of our hearts to expose why we worry and to provide some solutions. Here then are Jesus' three reasons why we worry: We're storing treasure in the wrong place (v19-21). Jesus tells us that our hearts follow where we store our treasure. If what we really value is in the stock market, that's what we'll worry about. If it's other people's opinions of us, that's what we'll worry about. Storing up treasure on earth is dangerous – it wears out, breaks and is stolen. But it's also silly – we can store up treasure in heaven instead by following Jesus and setting our hearts on the things of God. We're looking at the wrong things (v22-23). What we look at affects wh...

Yesterday, in our morning services, we continued in the Sermon on the Mount by looking at Matthew 6:1-18 . If I was picking a summary sentence for the whole sermon, I'd pick the opening one "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." It's thinking through what it looks like for us to be "poor in spirit". What does it mean for us to recognise that we can't earn God's favour, that we can never be good enough for him, and yet to live as those he has adopted into his family? In Matthew 6, Jesus turns to what we might call "religious acts" - things like giving, prayer and fasting. We see straight off that there is a wrong way to do them, and a right way to do them. The wrong way is to do them like those who have something to prove to ourselves or to others. That's the path of those who try to show off by flaunting their generosity or asking for their name to be associated with their gift. It...

Morning all! Yesterday, we continued with our series in the Sermon on the Mount with Matthew 5:33-48 . As we saw last time, this section is Jesus showing that trying to live by rules, even rules based on God's Law, doesn't work. The Pharisees made lots of rules (and were good at keeping them), but Jesus says they fall a long way short of what is needed for God's kingdom. Here are some problems with living by rules: If you keep the rules, you end up proud. Being proud is bad, because as we saw in Matthew 5:3, it's the "poor in spirit" - those who recognise that we're spiritually bankrupt – who inherit God's kingdom. Keeping rules leads to pride, not to poverty of spirit. If we keep the rules, we think we've done enough. That was never how the Old Testament Law was meant to be used – it was always meant to reveal what God is like and show God's people some of what it meant to respond to him. Tha...