Sermon on the Mount: Countercultural Kingdom | The Radical Nature of Following Jesus

Those who follow Jesus are given an impossible standard to meet: “Be perfect, as your father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). When we read the Sermon on the Mount, we find how radical it is to follow him. Jesus’s expectation is not that we would meet this standard—this is why he offers grace and forgiveness to us free of charge—but he does want us to constantly have growth and humility as our targets. 

To that end, in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus gives some examples of how following him doesn’t mean just getting by but going to new, radical depths in our discipleship. The examples we study in this sermon are hatred, lust, divorce, and our integrity. People who have familiarity with this passage regularly gloss over it, but if we are serious about living in Jesus’s countercultural kingdom we have to let ourselves brush up against the radical words of Jesus. Pastor Joel breaks it all down here!