A pure church is a strong church and Christ’s first command to the church concerns every believer’s responsibility.

True followers of Jesus are characterized by a willingness to be personally wronged without retaliating. Believers do this because they trust that no injustice, attack, or insult will ultimately go unpunished by God, but it is not our role to bring that about in our timing or our way.

In this lesson, we explore the rivalry between Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus and the extraordinary ways God providentially used this conflict to advance the true gospel and mission of the church.

In the era of big tech, it’s difficult to know what to believe and whom to believe. But this is no new problem. The bent of sinful human nature has always been toward using words to twist the truth to suit our desires and agendas. Jesus reinforces the call for honesty that has always been central to the Law of God. Being a trustworthy person begins with trusting God’s will and God’s ways over our own.

Jesus’ teaching on divorce exposes our tendency to avoid the true intent of God’s law in attempts to legitimize what we want to do. He calls us to repentance and shows us God’s wisdom for the married, divorced, and unmarried.

Mike continues his teaching in Matthew as Jesus reveals the importance of taking care of the children and how important they are to God.

God’s will for every Christian is to be sanctified, which is growing in holiness and diminishing in sinfulness. This requires taking decisive, practical actions agains temptation and sin, prioritizing eternal values over worldly, temporal ones.

Jesus’ words about lust strike at the heart of the corruptions of our society. Our actions condemn us, but God’s law points even deeper, to the level of our lustful motives, intentions, and deceptions. Only the power of Christ can deliver us from the destructiveness of our lust and cleanse our hearts.

Mike continues his teaching in Matthew where Jesus issues warnings and promises about how our sins influence others.