Hey everybody I'm Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible hour podcast. We are in Matthew chapter 5 working our way through the book of Matthew one little bit at a time every weekday in ten-ish minute chunks I do my best we get in what we get in and so we are in Matthew chapter five it's called the

sermon on the mount and Jesus is giving his first public speech at least it's

recorded he's given this big

grand description of this kingdom with upside-down values and different currencies

that people trade in and it's it's very difficult to wrap one's brain around, but we're far enough into it that we're starting to get a sense that these values are beautiful.

That even for somebody who's not a Christian, maybe rejects all of this stuff. There's something really transcendent and

right and good about this thing and so wherever somebody's coming from I think it's

really worth hearing Jesus out on what's going on. Now where they get a little bit tricky is that some of you

were going to come at this text from a lot of Christian and religious assumptions,

theistic assumptions, and you're going to be like, wow, I'm tracking with him on this and this and

this and this. Others of you are going to come at this from the

perspective of the beat-up skeptic who would like it if there's a god but you just don't know quite

what to make of it and you're not prepared to concede all of the points that Jesus is assuming. Some of you are going to

commit this from the perspective of I'm really pretty sure there is no deity

anywhere in the universe and naturalism is the explanation for everything and you're going to

reject a lot of the assumptions behind this passage. But if you're here and

you're participating in this, look I know what kind of stuff I'm putting out

and if you're listening to it, from any of those

camps, it's because you're a thoughtful person who can think beyond your own set of assumptions

to run the simulation of a different set of assumptions and test its merits.

I would really encourage you to do that deeply with this sermon on the mount stuff

while still taking into account that I am a Christian.

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