Matthew and Luke both give short collections of Jesus teaching early in their Gospels  (Mt 5-7 and the second half of Luke 6) there are similarities, both e.g. have “The Beatitudes”  a series of sayings listing sorts of people who will be blessed by God, near the beginning but each sermon (or summary compilation of Jesus’ teaching) has a distinct focus and interests. In the Gospels we don’t have a transcript of Jesus’ life and teaching, but people’s retelling of Jesus’ life selected and told with the benefit of hindsight – so like all good biographies each Gospel gives us different things.

Did you notice how the B in Mat after the series of less and less surprising reversals Matthew ends the series focused on “you”. After the beatitudes, and the salt and light description of how Jesus’ followers are to be, Matthew spends some time on Jesus and the law (I have other podcasts on Jesus reading Scripture so follow the link 😉 but as well as noticing the way in which Jesus turns laws (that invite us to look for loopholes) into commands (telling us which way we should be aiming) it closes with a command that simply does not work as law: “Be perfect”, not just really good, but perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect!

And then at the start of the next chapter advice not to pretend to be better than we are!

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Tags: Jesus reading Scripture