Big Idea: It is not enough to hear and approve Jesus’s teaching; it must also be lived out.

Understanding the Text

The sermon that began at 6:20 concludes with a series of parables and pithy sayings that together challenge those who heard the sermon to model their lives on what they have heard. The following chapters will contain several shorter sections of Jesus’s teaching as well as many examples of his dealings with other people, and so a fuller picture will be built up of what it means to be a disciple and to adopt the radical values of the kingdom of God. An increasingly sharp distinction will thus be drawn between God’s true people and others, between the saved and the lost. The parable of the two houses that concludes this sermon gives a memorably stark portrayal of those alternat…