Sermon: Re-humanizing Objectified People
Date: August 24
Scripture: Matthew 5:27-32
Speaker: Paul Walker

Jesus continues his antitheses statements by addressing adultery and divorce. The Law prohibited adultery, which is having sex with anyone other than your spouse. Jesus goes further than the law by speaking against the root cause of adultery: lust. Lust is when we look to desire and intentionally foster sexual temptation and arousal through the imagination. Jesus is against lust because it causes us to dehumanize others and treat them like objects. Similarly, Jesus speaks against the dehumanizing practice of men writing certificates of divorce to their wives for "any reason”(19.3). The relaxed practices of divorce in Jesus’ day empowered patriarchal structures and disempowered mutuality in marriage. Jesus has in mind a view of sexuality that is grounded in covenant faithfulness, mutuality, love, and goodness. When our sexuality is grounded in merely gratifying personal desires, we run the risk of going down the path of destruction. Jesus is teaching that when you treat people as objects for your gratification you are moving in a direction that is absolutely contrary to the direction of the Kingdom of God. This is a road that moves away from life and love toward destruction and the fires of Gehenna. So as DMC seeks to follow Jesus— how might we ground our view of sexuality that is life-giving and not destructive? What does it look like to live into a sexuality that is grounded in covenant faithfulness, mutuality, goodness, and love?

Desired Outcome: To encourage folks to live into an alternative view of sexuality and relationships based on covenant faithfulness which refuses to objectify and dehumanize others.

Quotable Quote: “Perhaps, the most important thing to say here, though, is that Jesus certainly didn’t want his hearers, or the later church, to get embroiled in endless debates about what precisely was allowed. Far, far more important to think about how to be the light of the world, the salt of the earth! And in the area of sexual behaviour, the answer is clear, bracing and just as challenging today as in the wider pagan world of the first century. Sexual desire, though itself good and God-given, is like the fire of Gehenna, which needs firmly keeping in place. Saying ‘no’ to desire when it strikes inappropriately— in other words, outside the context of marriage— is part of the most basic Christian discipline.” - N.T. Wright, Matthew For Everyone, pg. 48-49

Sermon: Murdering Our Hostilities
Date: August 17
Scripture: Matthew 5:21-26; Numbers 35:16-28
Speaker: Paul Walker

Murder was a serious offence in the Torah. (Numb.35:16-28) To deliberately kill another human was punishable by death. Even if the killing was unintentional, the guilty person would need to flee to a city of refuge to escape retaliation. Simply put, the Law tried to limit murder from getting out of hand by addressing the act of murder. Jesus enters into this discussion about murder with the first of his antitheses statements. “You’ve heard it said.. but I say to you”. Jesus reveals a fuller expression of God’s will for God’s people. In Jesus, we discover that the prohibition of murder is the surface expression of a deeper divine intent: Anger is counterintuitive to being people of reconciliation. If one master's anger, murder will never occur. Jesus is telling his followers that right-relationships matter even more than a sacrifice offered on the altar (V23-24). To follow Jesus is to be quick to reconcile with those who “have something against us”(v23). As we at DMC seek to follow Jesus— what might it mean to put to death our hostilities? What might it look like to be active agents in reconciliation?

Desired Outcome: To challenge folks to actively pursue reconciliation by putting to death their own anger, hostilities, and brokenness.

Quotable Quote: “In the future Kingdom of God, when all is consummated and when heaven comes to earth, anger will vanish because loving fellowship will flourish. The prohibition of anger here is not so much hyperbolic as it is a foretaste of Kingdom realities.” - Scot McKnight, The Sermon on the Mount

Sermon: Laying Down The Law?
Date: August 10, 2025
Scripture: Matthew 5:17-20
Speaker: Paul Walker

Jesus insists he’s come to fulfill the Old Testament, and fulfill it completely. He hyperbolically says “not one letter or stroke of the pen will pass away until I fulfill it.” He’s going to fulfill the law in a way that goes beyond the righteousness of the Pharisees, not by literally adhering to every letter or stroke of the pen—something Jesus obviously didn’t do. Jesus fulfilled the law by embodying the ultimate intention of the law. Jesus assumes God’s ultimate goal in giving the law wasn’t to simply get people to comply with behavioural rules. The ultimate goal behind the law was to establish people in “righteousness,” which means being people of justice and right-relatedness, or love. In his life, death and resurrection, Jesus illustrates a love for us so that we can live in it. (1 Jn 3:16-17) Our most central job is to receive this love, yield to this love, be transformed by this love, and then imitate this love. It is only through becoming people of Jesus-shaped love do we fulfill the intention of the law.

Desired Outcome: To explore how following Jesus is the fulfillment of what the law and the prophets longed to see.

Quotable Quote: “Some think of Jesus as just a great Jewish teacher without much of a revolution. Others see him as so revolutionary that he left Judaism behind altogether and established something quite new. Jesus holds the two together. He was indeed offering something utterly revolutionary, to which he would remain faithful; but it was, in fact, the reality toward which Israel's whole life and tradition had pointed." - N.T. Wright, Matthew For Everybody