Chunks: The Sermon on the Mount

Episode 1: Inauguration

Cameron Lee — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 20:10:55 -0700

The Sermon on the Mount, found in chapters 5 through 7 of the gospel of Matthew, contains some of the best-known and most challenging teaching of Jesus. In it, he teaches the essence of what he calls “the kingdom of heaven.” In this first episode, we’ll explore how Jesus not only preached the kingdom, but was himself the King.

Episode 2: The kingdom is at hand

Cameron Lee — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 20:12:02 -0700

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus’ sermon about the kingdom of heaven doesn’t appear out of nowhere. Matthew tells the story of Jesus in such a way that the kingdom is the theme right from the start, in the genealogy of chapter 1, the beloved Christmas story of chapter 2, and even the temptation story of chapter 4. And both John the Baptist and Jesus preached that the kingdom of heaven had come near. All of this comes before the Sermon on the Mount, as Matthew’s lead-in.

Episode 3: Bookends… and everything between

Cameron Lee — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 20:13:09 -0700

The Sermon on the Mount contains multiple references to the kingdom of heaven. From that alone, one might see that the kingdom is the central theme. But there’s another way to see this. The sermon both begins and ends with references to the kingdom. These are the “bookends” of the sermon, and in the Bible, bookends like this typically tell you the theme of what comes between.

Episode 4: You call that “blessed”?

Cameron Lee — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 20:13:48 -0700

The sermon opens with a set of “beatitudes” or statements about blessing. But what Jesus says about people who can be counted as “blessed” may seem odd—he describes things that don’t sound anything like blessedness. But if we’re going to understand what Jesus is saying, these strange statements have to be read against the background of the Old Testament.

Episode 5: The haves and the have-nots

Cameron Lee — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 20:15:30 -0700

To understand the so-called “Beatitudes,” it’s helpful to read them alongside the similar statements of both blessing and woe that we find in Luke 6. Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann gives us a helpful way of understanding these strange pronouncements: they are words of blessing for the “have-nots” of society who need some good news from God. But what about the “haves”? How will more privileged people take what Jesus has to say?

Episode 6: A humble hope

Cameron Lee — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 20:17:11 -0700

Remember the idea of bookends? Even the Beatitudes have their own bookends. These bookends let us know that the Beatitudes themselves have the kingdom of heaven as their theme. But when we look at how the bookends are different from rest of the Beatitudes, we learn something more: the blessing they describe is one that necessarily involves hope.

Episode 7: Then how should we live?

Cameron Lee — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 20:17:59 -0700

As we’ll see as we go through our study of the sermon, Jesus is teaching his hearers about the nature of true righteousness. This is reminiscent of the Old Testament prophets like Micah, who accused the people of empty religion. The theme of righteousness also bookends the Beatitudes—and what we’ll see in the Beatitudes is a progression from humility to a righteous life.

Episode 8: Agents of shalom

Cameron Lee — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 20:18:33 -0700

The first half of the Beatitudes declare a truth that anyone familiar with the Old Testament already knows: God is the champion of the poor and needy. Things aren’t as they should be, and the righteous person longs for God to set things right. But this isn’t a passive wish; the righteous will want to get in on the action, to join God’s work of bringing peace (the rich Old Testament concept of shalom) to a broken world.

Episode 9: Blessed are the merciful

Cameron Lee — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 20:19:16 -0700

In the Beatitudes, Jesus teaches that the “merciful” are blessed. A righteous person is also a forgiving person, as we will see in Jesus’ parable of the unmerciful servant from Matthew 18. Do we recognize how much we’ve already been forgiven? And do we live accordingly in our relationship to others?

Episode 10: A pure heart

Cameron Lee — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 20:19:52 -0700

Jesus says that the “pure in heart” are blessed. His words are reminiscent of Psalm 51, in which David repents of his sin with Bathsheba. But it’s not necessarily just a matter of sin; a pure heart is also an undivided heart. We live in a world of endless distraction, with our attention constantly pulled in multiple directions. Do we ever take time to focus entirely upon God?

Episode 11: Making peace

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:46:32 -0700

What does Jesus mean when he says "Blessed are the peacemakers"? As we’ll explore in this episode, we might understand God to be reclaiming the world from the brokenness of sin, restoring the world to the wholeness it was meant to have. We cannot, as humans, fix the world. That’s God’s job. But we can participate in his work by doing our part to bring moments of peace in our relationships.

Episode 12: Delighting in weakness

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:47:09 -0700

Perhaps the most striking and counterintuitive of the Beatitudes is Jesus’ statement that those who are persecuted for righteousness and their allegiance to Jesus should rejoice! How is that possible? In this episode, we’ll use the apostle Paul as an example of someone who suffered greatly for the gospel, and yet was still able to consider himself blessed.

Episode 13: Salt of the earth

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:47:39 -0700

You may have friends or relatives that you think of as "salt of the earth" kind of people. It’s meant as a compliment, to say that they’re honest, trustworthy, and so on. It’s a way of saying that the world needs more people like that. The saying goes back to Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount. It’s one of two metaphors he uses to give his hearers a vision of the life and character to which God is calling them.

Episode 14: The light of the world

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:48:23 -0700

The gospels, especially the gospel of John, portray the world as a place darkened by sin. And in John’s gospel, Jesus will declare himself to be the light of the world. But here in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls his hearers to be the light of the world. They are to live in a righteous way that brings glory to God the Father.

Episode 15: Everything written must be fulfilled

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:48:50 -0700

In the gospels, Jesus had argument after argument with the Pharisees. They were respected as the interpreters of God’s Law, but their teaching had led the people away from the kind of righteousness God wanted. At the beginning of the sermon, then, Jesus has to make clear to the people that even as he challenges what the scribes and Pharisees taught, he is upholding God’s law down to the last detail.

Episode 16: How righteous is righteous?

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:49:20 -0700

Before Jesus could teach the true nature of righteousness, he had to reassure his hearers that his teaching upheld God’s law—and he expected his hearers to be obedient to the Law as well. In a way that must have been shocking to his hearers, he declared that they wouldn’t get into the kingdom unless they were more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees. But what does that mean?

Episode 17: Asking the impossible?

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:49:55 -0700

When it came to following the Law, some folks probably thought they were doing as well as could reasonably be expected for someone who hadn't been trained as a Pharisee. Most of his hearers, for example, would have thought themselves innocent of violating the law against murder. But Jesus upends even that assumption by asking if his hearers ever got angry enough to call someone an “idiot.” For even that would make them guilty before God.

Episode 18: First things first

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:50:24 -0700

Jesus unsettled his hearers with the idea that the heart of the commandment against murder was about unrestrained anger. You would think that what he would say next is to recommend that everyone work on managing their anger. But he pulls another surprise: to live righteously, people should seek reconciliation with those who are angry at them.

Episode 19: Making friends of enemies

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:51:00 -0700

One of Jesus’ examples about the need for reconciliation describes a person being taken to court for an unpaid debt. He says nothing about the legal merits of the case. But if we were in that position, would we have the humility to admit our fault? And would we have the desire to make amends as needed?

Episode 20: Thou shalt not covet (part 1)

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:51:28 -0700

In the Ten Commandments, God’s people are forbidden to commit adultery. Yet even someone with as legendary a reputation as King David was guilty of that sin. In this episode, we’ll zero in on the story of David and Bathsheba to ask what might seem like a question with an obvious answer: what was the nature of David’s sin? The teaching of Jesus suggests that we may need to look deeper.

Episode 21: Thou shalt not covet (part 2)

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:52:03 -0700

We live in a world dominated by electronic devices. Through them, marketers and advertisers continually manipulate our desires. And while we may consider ourselves innocent of violating the commandment against adultery, we may not be innocent of unbridled desire. In this episode, we’ll explore how Jesus’ reference to the sixth and seventh commandments may also be a reference to the tenth: the commandment against covetousness, the desire for things that don’t belong to us.

Episode 22: Radical sacrifice

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:52:30 -0700

What does it mean to be a faithful Christian? How high does Jesus set the bar for true righteousness? Jesus has already taught the commandment against adultery in a way that was far more radical than what the people had learned from the Pharisees. As we’ll see next, Jesus gets more radical still: he suggests that serious sacrifice may be necessary if one is to be obedient. Does he really mean what he says?

Episode 23: What about divorce?

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:53:14 -0700

In our world, divorce is commonplace, even among Christians. Not surprisingly, then, Jesus’ teaching about divorce is controversial. In this episode and the next, we’ll unpack that teaching against the background of the Law of Moses and how it may have been misinterpreted and misused in Jesus’ day.

Episode 24: Hardness of heart

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:53:42 -0700

The rabbis of Jesus’ day had different views about divorce, and some of the teaching gave men a tremendous amount of power and freedom in ridding themselves of their wives. The culture, after all, was strongly patriarchal. To read Jesus rightly today, it’s necessary to recognize how his teaching was not trying to establish a new law, but to point to matters of the heart.

Episode 25: I mean it, I swear!

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:54:19 -0700

Have you ever heard someone swear “on a stack of Bibles” that what they were saying was true? Or have you heard someone say, “I swear to God”? Verbal formulas like these are meant to convey that the person’s word can be trusted. People in Jesus’ day used similar formulas when they made oaths or vows. Unfortunately, it was possible to get lost in the technical details of what was and wasn’t a binding oath—and Jesus wanted something different from his hearers.

Episode 26: Say what you mean, mean what you say

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:54:48 -0700

Many of us have suffered from broken promises—or from the violation of what we took to be a promise. The Law of Moses required people to fulfill their oaths, but the legalism of the Pharisees actually made it possible for people to weasel out of their commitments on technical grounds. What Jesus wants instead is a people whose word can be trusted. How else will others believe that God can be trusted?

Episode 27: Justice or mercy?

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:55:23 -0700

The idea of an “eye for an eye” kind of justice is an ancient one, found even in the Law of Moses. And the principle may make intuitive sense: if you hurt me, I get to hurt you back in equal measure. But in the Old Testament at least, this is a less a matter of having the right to revenge than setting a limit on what kind of retribution was permitted. Moreover, as we’ll see, Jesus sets a higher standard of righteousness.

Episode 28: Don’t retaliate

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:56:00 -0700

An eye-for-eye kind of retaliation may seem fair, but in his teaching about righteousness, Jesus calls his hearers to something higher. He asks them to forgo retaliation. We must be careful here, for in saying this Jesus is not teaching that Christians should ignore injustice. But he wants his hearers to have a vision for how the pursuit of shalom is radically different from the world’s way of thinking.

Episode 29: Move the needle

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:56:39 -0700

Have you ever been attacked in a way you felt was undeserved? Everyone should have the right to be treated with fairness and justice, and one day God’s justice will reign. But what do we do until then? It can be dangerous to turn the hard sayings of Jesus into new laws of behavior. In this episode, therefore, I will suggest that as peacemakers, we should always be asking ourselves what behavior—even in the face of injustice!—would move the needle toward greater shalom.

Episode 30: Us and them

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:57:07 -0700

Research has demonstrated again and again how easily humans form in-groups and out-groups, and the Pharisees seem to have reinforced that tendency with their teaching, saying that we should love our neighbor but hate our enemies. But Jesus teaches differently. Those who would be truly righteous must love their enemies as well.

Episode 31: Cutting corners

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:59:22 -0700

The command to love our neighbor can be found in the Old Testament—but there is no command to hate our enemies, contrary to what the Pharisees may have taught. It’s understandable that the Pharisees would teach that Jews should love their fellow Jews and hate Gentiles. But to do this takes even the command to love one’s neighbor out of context, as we’ll see.

Episode 32: There shall be showers of blessing

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:59:46 -0700

It’s natural to love our friends and hate our enemies. But in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls his hearers to live with the kind of righteousness that lets others see the character of God our Father. God’s gifts of sunlight and rain are for everyone, even for those who rebel against him. Can we live with the same merciful character?

Episode 33: A hard prayer

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:00:37 -0700

It’s not easy to love one’s enemies. We remember the things people have done to hurt or wrong us. But Jesus is not asking us to be best friends with those who have abused us. If we don’t know where to start in loving our enemies, Jesus has a suggestion: pray for them.

Episode 34: The highest standard

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:01:05 -0700

Some of us struggle with some degree of perfectionism. And if so, what Jesus says at the end of Matthew 5 may be particularly disturbing: he suggests that we are to be “perfect” like our heavenly Father. And that’s in the context of teaching that we should love our enemies! Does he mean that we have to be flawless in love, even in loving our enemies, to be accepted by the Father?

Episode 35: Reimagining righteousness

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:01:43 -0700

Before we move on to Matthew 6, let’s take an episode to review. What Jesus is giving his hearers in Matthew 5 is a vision for a kind of righteousness that is different from what they’ve learned from their religious leaders. We can’t turn his teaching into a new legalism, as if he were asking us to out-Pharisee the Pharisees. Rather, we need to let his words transform our imagination of what true righteousness could be.

Episode 36: Right religion

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:02:10 -0700

It’s common these days to make a distinction between “religion” and “spirituality,” as if the former was bad and the latter was good. But that’s too much of a simplification. Christianity has always included a variety of religious practices, and always will. Having said that, however, Christianity is more than a set of religious behaviors. That’s important to remember as we transition from chapter 5 of Matthew to chapter 6.

Episode 37: Piety, public and private

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:02:41 -0700

What kinds of things do Christians do that people might consider “religious”? Pray, go to church, read the Bible? Yes, all these, and more. But in the first part of Matthew 6, Jesus will teach that it’s possible to do good things for the wrong reasons. It’s one thing to engage in religious practices because we want others to think of us as pious people; but it’s another to do them in a way that only God sees.

Episode 38: Tooting your own horn

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:03:16 -0700

Jesus gives three examples of public piety to distinguish between hypocritical and true righteousness: charitable giving, prayer, and fasting. All three were common religious behaviors in his day. In this episode, we’ll tackle the first. Jesus encourages generosity—but do we give in a way that draws attention to ourselves?

Episode 39: Praying in public

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:03:50 -0700

Some of us are reluctant to pray out loud in front of others, worried that we may not “get it right.” That fear already suggests how our concern over what others think may get in the way of being able to pray freely to God. But some people pray in order to be noticed by others—a practice which Jesus labels as hypocritical.

Episode 40: Praying in private

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:04:14 -0700

Some prayers are public, which is as it should be. But there will always be the temptation to turn it into a performance of piety, using more sophisticated words than we would normally use, or using the catchphrases that mark us as part of the in-group. We might even try to sneak in a mini-sermon, or a bit of gossip disguised as prayerful concern. Against such things, Jesus teaches his hearers to pray in secret to God alone.

Episode 41: Blah blah blah

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:05:00 -0700

Jesus has already condemned the practice of praying in public in order to be noticed by others. But it’s not just about where one prays, but how. In this episode, we explore his next critique: some people pray in a way that just piles up religious sounding words. He reminds his hearers that there’s no need to try to impress God with their words; the Father already knows what they need.

Episode 42: Praying to our Father

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:05:30 -0700

Many of you listening to this can probably recite the Lord's Prayer from memory. But do we ever think about what we’re saying when we pray those words? The prayer sits at the center of the sermon, and indeed, some of the prayer’s themes are central to the spirit of the sermon itself. We’ll begin exploring the prayer here, and will continue to examine it closely over several episodes.

Episode 43: God isn’t “Daddy”

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:06:01 -0700

Jesus taught his hearers to pray to God as their heavenly Father, using the Aramaic word, “Abba.” Some have said that this means “Daddy,” but biblical scholars generally agree that this isn’t quite right. So what’s the significance of being able to address the God of heaven as our Father?

Episode 44: Names matter

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:06:30 -0700

In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray that God’s name would be “hallowed.” That’s a word that contemporary speakers of English almost never use. But the prayer is an important one. It recognizes that God is holy, and thus so is his name—and we are praying that his name would be revered as holy by others. We’ll explore that idea both here and in the next episode.

Episode 45: His name is holy

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:07:07 -0700

What does it mean to treat a name as holy? The idea may be a little odd to people who live in a day and culture in which names function like labels and have little real significance in themselves. To begin to get a feel for this, we need to go back to the Old Testament, beginning with the story of God revealing himself to Moses for the first time.

Episode 46: Is God’s story the story we want?

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:07:28 -0700

As human beings, we are all naturally storytellers. We inherit stories from our families and from the cultures in which we live. And there is a sense in which the Bible not only tells stories, but is a story. That’s one way to understand the Lord’s Prayer. It’s not just a set of religious words to be recited by rote. In and through the prayer, we are immersing ourselves in the story of God.

Episode 47: Your will be done

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:08:05 -0700

Often, we speak of “God’s will” as something we seek when we have an important decision to make; we want to know what the “right” decision is, the one that God wants us to make. But this is far too narrow a way of thinking of God’s will, and that’s not what we’re praying in the Lord’s Prayer. The question is, “What does God want from his people?” And Jesus has already taught much of this in the earlier part of the sermon. Can we pray that we would be obedient to his teaching?

Episode 48: Heaven on earth

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:08:34 -0700

Part of the Lord’s Prayer sounds like were asking for “heaven on earth.” But that sounds like we’re asking for God to turn the world into a vacation paradise. Rather, we are asking that God’s will would be done on earth in a way that matches how God’s will is done in heaven. And if we assume that God’s will is done perfectly in heaven, what does such a prayer ask of us?

Episode 49: Big-picture prayer

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:09:08 -0700

The first part of the Lord’s Prayer is what I call a “big-picture” prayer, a prayer not just for the things we want or need, but for the world. The second half of the prayer then seems to turn to the smaller matters of our daily needs. But it’s important, even when praying for these, that we not lose the big-picture perspective with which the prayer began…

Episode 50: The bread of life

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:09:32 -0700

In the previous episode, I suggested that we need to keep a big-picture perspective throughout the Lord’s Prayer. When we pray for our daily bread, for example, we can remember that Jesus himself claimed to be the bread of life. Even praying for our daily needs can be done against the background of God’s provision for the world and for the future.

Episode 51: Not by bread alone

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:11:23 -0700

In Matthew 4, the chapter just before the Sermon on the Mount, we read the story of Jesus being tempted by Satan in the wilderness. Jesus had been fasting for forty days, and the first temptation was for him to do a miracle to satisfy his hunger. He refused, quoting a speech given by Moses centuries before. Both of these stories give us some important context for understanding the prayer for our daily bread.

Episode 52: Ordinary mercy

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:11:45 -0700

Bread isn’t the only thing we need every day. We also need forgiveness, and Jesus teaches his hearers to pray for that too. But even as we pray for God’s mercy, we are reminded to be merciful to others; in that way, the prayer echoes what Jesus already taught in the Beatitudes.

Episode 53: Forgiven and forgiving

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:12:23 -0700

In an earlier episode, we reflected on Jesus’ parable of the unmerciful servant from Matthew 18. In this episode, we revisit that parable, because its ending is similar to the warning that Jesus gives after the Lord’s Prayer: if we don’t forgive others as we should, God will not forgive us. But how can we understand that warning in a way that doesn’t contradict a gospel of grace?

Episode 54: Forgive and forget?

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:12:48 -0700

We’ve all heard the saying that we should “forgive and forget.” But forgiveness can be difficult, precisely because it’s also difficult to forget how others have hurt or offended us. In this episode, we’ll look at the story of a well-known evangelist who struggled to forgive those who had tormented her, and revisit Jesus’ teaching about loving our enemies.

Episode 55: Trials and temptations

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:13:21 -0700

The Bible speaks of both “trials” and “temptations.” But both of these English words can be used to translate the same word in Greek—making translators have to choose one on the basis of the context. So how might we understand the prayer that God wouldn’t lead us into temptation? Would God actually lead us to be tempted?

Episode 56: Security

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:13:46 -0700

Our world is one in which people often learn to derive their sense of security from material things. But again, Jesus wants his followers to have a big-picture perspective. That’s why he taught them to pray the Lord’s Prayer. And that’s also why, immediately after, he taught them not to focus on the accumulation of earthly “treasure,” but to pursue heavenly treasure instead.

Episode 57: Eyeballs

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:14:40 -0700

We now live in what some have called an “attention economy”—a world in which marketers and advertisers compete for a few moments of our attention as we stay glued to our electronic devices. But how we direct our attention has always mattered. That’s important to understanding what may seem like an odd saying of Jesus, that the eye is like the lamp of the body.

Episode 58: Divided loyalties

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:15:09 -0700

How often do we live with divided loyalties? Jesus has spoken about the treasure we pursue, and the way we direct our attention. We may want God, but we want more than God. Jesus uses strong contrasts to make a point: we can’t serve two masters at the same time. If we give all our attention to material things, are we enslaved to them? And is there anything left for God?

Episode 59: This is my Father’s world

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:15:42 -0700

Matthew portrays the Sermon on the Mount as being preached outdoors; that’s how Jesus often spoke to large crowds. And as he turns to the universal subject of the worries and anxieties of life, he makes use of what’s at hand for sermon illustrations. There are lessons to be learned from the birds and the flowers, if we can remember the hand that created them.

Episode 60: Fragmented

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:16:09 -0700

Throughout the sermon, Jesus has been trying to teach his hearers to imagine the big picture and pray and act accordingly. We can be pulled in so many different directions by our worries and concerns, and he wants us to be able to transcend that. Thus, he says, “Don’t worry.” We’ll draw on the story of Martha of Bethany to explore what he means.

Episode 61: Why worry?

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:17:39 -0700

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells his hearers not to worry about food and clothing. He points them beyond the necessities of earthly life to the bigger picture of God’s gracious providence over all creation. He knows that we worry about many things, but teaches us what we might already know, if we thought about it: worry accomplishes nothing.

Episode 62: Do I have enough faith?

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:18:13 -0700

Some of us have been taught that any prayer will be answered if we just have enough faith. And against that background, it’s easy to criticize ourselves or others for having too little faith when prayers seem to go unanswered. Jesus even calls his hearers people “of little faith” for worrying. Is he scolding them? Or is he inviting them into something greater that they can’t yet imagine?

Episode 63: The worries of the world

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:18:48 -0700

It’s possible to read Jesus as preaching a lofty and ideal kind of kingdom in which people transcend such earthly needs as food and clothing. And again, it’s true that he wants his hearers to live every day in light of the big picture of God’s sovereign work in the world. But he is asking his hearers to live with a wholehearted trust in a loving Father who knows even their most basic of needs.

Episode 64: Seeking the kingdom

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:19:13 -0700

Jesus’ instruction to seek God’s kingdom above all is one of the best-known lines of the sermon. But we have to read it rightly. It can sound like he’s saying, “Do a good job of seeking the kingdom, and God will reward you by giving you your basic needs.” But is that what he means?

Episode 65: You will have trouble

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:19:48 -0700

Jesus has told his hearers not to worry; it’s unnecessary and pointless. But that’s not to say that worrisome things won’t happen. Whether large or small, troubles will come our way. Can we still trust God in the midst of them? Can we still seek the kingdom?

Episode 66: Finding fault

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:20:17 -0700

Many if not most of us have been judged unfairly at one time or another. And we have done the same to others, though we may not have known it. At the beginning of Matthew 7, Jesus warns his hearers not to be judgmental of others. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no place for wise judgment.

Episode 67: Baked-in bias

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:20:50 -0700

In teaching about hypocritical judgment, Jesus uses the humorous metaphor of someone with a plank in his eye trying to take a speck out of someone else’s eye. Indeed, there’s a well-established principle of psychology that’s reminiscent of what Jesus teaches. But it’s important to notice that Jesus doesn’t tell his hearers to stop trying to remove those specks...

Episode 68: Pearls before pigs

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:21:14 -0700

One of the oddest verses in the sermon refers to dogs and pigs—and not surprisingly, scholars have debated its meaning for centuries. The language seems harsh and off-putting, and it’s easy to imagine the Pharisees having a field day with it. Whatever we take Jesus to be saying, however, it shouldn’t contradict his command to love our enemies.

Episode 69: What has God promised?

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:21:47 -0700

We sometimes come to Scripture looking for promises that God will give us whatever we ask. Virtually any Bible verse about God's care and compassion can be turned into a "promise" that obligates God to grant whatever we ask for, as long as our prayer is earnest and faithful. And indeed, it sounds like Jesus is saying something like this in the sermon. Is that what he means?

Episode 70: Loaves and fishes

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:22:12 -0700

In the sermon, Jesus teaches his hearers to pray for what they need. And he insists that God, as our trustworthy and loving Father, gives only good gifts to his children. But again, that doesn’t mean that God will give us anything we pray for…

Episode 71: Do unto others (part 1)

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:23:36 -0700

One of the most famous lines from the sermon is what we know as the Golden Rule. Others before Jesus had taught similar principles, including the great Rabbi Hillel. But Jesus’ teaching was more demanding morally than Hillel’s. The teaching is simple and straightforward, but requires self-discipline to put into practice; are we willing to treat others the way we would want to be treated?

Episode 72: Do unto others (part 2)

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:24:01 -0700

The Old Testament contains 39 books, many of which are quite different from each other in style and content. Who would dare to distill all of that wondrous complexity down to a sentence or two? As we’ve seen, Rabbi Hillel would, and so would Jesus. With both the Golden Rule and what he elsewhere called the two greatest commandments, Jesus summarized the heart of God’s intent for his people. In this episode, I suggest that the Golden Rule needs to be kept together with the command to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Episode 73: Love your enemies. Really.

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:24:30 -0700

We may not have enemies of the kind that crucified Jesus. But we do have people we don’t want to love. We know that Jesus commanded us to love our enemies. How might the Golden Rule give us a place to start?

Episode 74: Final warnings

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:24:52 -0700

We expect to be encouraged and uplifted when we listen to sermons; we don’t hear someone preach “hellfire and damnation”—like the famous sermon by Jonathan Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." But Jesus ends the Sermon on the Mount with four dire warnings of doom and destruction for those who don’t listen to what he said.

Episode 75: It’s your choice (part 1)

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:25:23 -0700

Psalm 1 portrays life as a continual choice of which path we will walk: the path of righteousness that leads to blessedness, or the path of wickedness that leads to destruction. That image permeates the whole collection of psalms—as well as the first warning of Jesus at the end of the Sermon on the Mount.

Episode 76: It’s your choice (part 2)

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:25:53 -0700

Sometimes, the gospel is presented as a choice between two destinies: heaven and hell. Choose Jesus and go to heaven, or refuse Jesus and go to hell. But the Christian life is more than just choosing where to spend eternity; it’s choosing to follow Jesus in all of our daily decisions and challenges.

Episode 77: Wolves in sheep’s clothing

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:26:26 -0700

Jesus’ second warning is about false prophets, whom he likens to wolves disguised as sheep so they can infiltrate and devour the flock. False prophets claim to speak God’s truth, but spread lies, potentially leading the sheep astray. Be careful, Jesus warns. It’s not just about what people say they believe; it’s about how they live in relationship to others.

Episode 78: A fruitful ministry?

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:27:03 -0700

How can one tell between a sheep and a wolf? Jesus answers the question by shifting metaphors: you can tell what kind of a tree you’re looking at by the fruit it produces. His words help us understand one of the challenges of the church today. Why have there been such devastating, high-profile ministry failures? Because we were looking for the wrong fruit.

Episode 79: Applause, applause

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:27:39 -0700

What do we count as admirable or worthy of applause among Christians? What kinds of things win the approval of others? Jesus’ third warning, again, suggests that we may be looking at the wrong fruit, for not everyone who seems to have a “successful” ministry actually has a relationship to Jesus.

Episode 80: I’ve never known you

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:28:04 -0700

Jesus’ third warning overlaps with the second. Whereas before he warned against false prophets, now he warns against false disciples, some of whom claim to have prophesied in his name. Indeed they claim more than that: they say they have done miraculous things in his name. People can do what seem on the surface to be amazing works of ministry, but not have a relationship with Jesus—and in the end, he will send them away.

Episode 81: Obedience in the ordinary

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:28:34 -0700

I imagine Jesus’ hearers being shocked by Jesus’ words in the third warning. How can people who do such amazing things as casting out demons and miraculous healings be rejected by him and called “evildoers”? Would we have reacted similarly? If so, we need to be reminded of what Jesus says in the rest of the sermon: faithfulness isn’t about showy demonstrations, but about obeying the teaching of Jesus in the way we relate to others.

Episode 82: Flood warning

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:29:09 -0700

Jesus’ first warning at the end of the sermon was that there are two roads from which to choose. Only one leads to life; the other leads to destruction. Similarly, his fourth and final warning—the closing words of the sermon—warn that there are two ways of building a house, one wise and one foolish, and the foolish way leads to destruction.

Episode 83: With authority

Cameron Lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:29:47 -0700

The sermon is over. But before moving on to the next part of the story, Matthew adds a closing comment, an observation about how the crowd reacted to Jesus’ preaching. The people were amazed, because they saw something in Jesus’ demeanor and heard something in his words that their teachers refused to recognize: this was a man with the authority of God.