If Jesus’ description of flamboyant, hypocritical praying sounds like grand theatre, that’s because it probably was. “And when you pray,” Jesus said in Matthew 6:5, “do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men” (italics mine). Although some Jewish…

“When you give to the needy…” Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount. This simple introductory phrase is striking both for its assumption and its audience. The audience first: We must remember that at the time Jesus sat down to deliver this teaching, he was speaking to two groups of people. Closest to him…

With increasingly hyperbolic language, Jesus addressed the issue of unchecked anger and its potentially disastrous results as part of his Sermon on the Mount. He even went so far as to declare that angrily insulting another by calling that person a fool (raca) could lead to the punishment of Hell. The reference for Hell that…

In Matthew 5:22, Jesus is quoted as saying that anyone who is “angry with his brother” has committed a sin that’s equivalent to murder. Bible scholar and teacher, Warren Wiersbe, offers this insight on that teaching: “There is a holy anger against sin (Ephesians 4:26), but Jesus talked about an unholy anger against people. The…

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