Taking Jesus at His Word: What Jesus Really Said in the Sermon on the Mount

by Addison Hodges Hart

First, we can choose where we will put our focus in life. We can choose either the light of the kingdom and of God, or the relative darkness of lesser pursuits. • Second, God should be the master of our life’s direction, and we should follow him with undivided mind, or “purity of heart” (5:8). To do this is to “see” clearly and thus to be filled with the “light” mentioned in verses 22-23. • Third, if we have an unhealthy obsession with lesser concerns, which is the temptation whenever we aren’t satisfied with what we need and already have in sufficiency, it will make us anxious, worried, and stressed. Anxiety is the counterproductive expenditure of our energy and inner peace, and it is the antithesis of faith. To be anxious is, in other words, one of the things that fills us with the interior “darkness” of the analogy above, and is what is meant by “serving Mammon.” • Fourth, therefore, our priority in life should be clear to us: it is to seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness (the “light”), to serve him instead of “Mammon,” and to let this kingdom and righteousness satisfy us and banish our anxieties.