Rules

This last Sunday I shared briefly regarding my experience teaching 1st and 2nd graders. Several years back I taught these grades and one area that I really that was new to me was dicipline. I remember sometimes i felt like giving extra homework when the class was not behaving or shortening their recess time when they had misbehaved. I say this because Pastor Kevin has been teaching on the Sermon on the mount. All too often I think that Jesus is taking the Mosaic law and is making things just that much harder for us. Take for example the whole murder thing and then telling us that to hate is to kill. Or to look at someone is like comitting adultey. When i was younger and naive i read this and thought that Jesus was having a bad day in which his disciples were probably being morons and He was ticked off at them.

Now I read Matthew and don't see rules, I see Holiness incarnate. I see the heart of a loving God that knows that we cannpt live up to this sermon unless He first takes a hold of our hearts and lives. I see a new way of living made possible only by becoming a new creation through Jesus.

We are not to live by following rules, instead we are to live in the Spirit, by doing this the rules well they stop becoming things we are suppose to do or not do and they become who we are.