The psalmist wrote, "Oh how I love Thy law."  Seriously?  (Psalm 119:97).  When I think of the Law, I think tend to think of the system of sacrifices and rituals associated with the Levitical system.  I think back to a hymn we used to sing titled, "Once for All", the first line was, "Free from the law, O happy condition!"  Yes, I am glad we don't live under that old system but are we really free from the Law?  This week we are studying a very interesting transition passage.  I call it that because we are moving from the "blessed" introduction of Jesus' "manifesto" to the body of the message.  Jesus made it very clear that He had not come to destroy the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill.  How would He fulfill this and what should our attitude be regarding God's law?  We don't have all of our questions answered in the content Jesus delivered on the hillside that day but between His other teachings and the further explanation of the apostles, the picture becomes more clear.  We should in fact love the law of God because it desccribes the moral character of God.  To love God is to love His character.  To love His character is to love the Law and to love the Law is to want it's intent fulfilled in our own hearts.  The intent of the Law was not to simply change external behavior, it was to describe what those made in God's image should actually be like...in a word, righteous.  God wants people to be like Him, not just having an appearance of goodness but actually being good!  The "Manifesto of the King" describes what that will look like in every day life...get ready .

In Sunday's sermon I'll be reading from a blog I read about the above question.  Interestingly the man writing the article claimed to be a "Christian."  He wrote, "We are, in the big big picture, insignificant beings floating in insignificance in a universe that is vast beyond human comprehension."  A "Christian" is a follower of Christ so there is no way that the man who wrote that blog can be a Christian.  He might be "saved" (but I doubt it), but he is certainly not a "follower of Christ."  That may sound judgmental to you but there is no way we can read the Sermon on the Mount ("The Manifesto of the King") and arrive at the conclusion that we are "insignificant beings floating in insignificance."  There was a Latin phrase of the first century that went something like this "There is nothing more valuable than sun and salt."  Jesus is the smartest teacher of all time and knew how to contextualize truth to His audience.  Probably with that phrase in mind, Jesus said to this humble band of followers on the hill, "You are the salt of the earth...You are the light of the world."  That does not sound insignificant to me!  In fact, it makes perfect sense in light of the rest of the Scriptures to believe that Jesus was promoting the value and significance of these "blessed ones."  In writing about this paragraph (Matthew 5:13-16), John MacArthur noted that the key emphasis of these metaphors is the subject of "influence."  God didn't take us straight to Heaven when we believed because we have a role to play in the earth today.  We are here to be a perserving, life-enhancing, light-giving force for the glory of our Dad in the heavens.  Give that some thought the next time you think you are a "nobody."