The danger of self-deception is the refusal to recognize what God says.  As Jesus addresses the fake righteousness of the Pharisees, He does so to reveal their hypocrisy in light of God’s intentions, and provide crystal clarity to His purpose in coming in obedience to God’s Word by doing what man could not do as the law required.

Observations & Conclusions:

1. God’s Word must be fulfilled 
2. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you can fulfill it – you cannot
3. Kingdom living looks like:
   (1) Practicing living like Jesus
   (2) Helping teach others to live like Jesus

• Thought: (21-26): Anger = Murder / (27-30): Lust = Adultery 
• Word: (31-32): Divorce = Adultery / (33-37): Vows = Lies
• Deed: (38-42): Charity vs Revenge / (43-47): Love vs Hate

Application:
How do I start? 

1. Confess your sins and your inability to attain righteousness
2. Reorient your heart according to the spirit of the law – not the letter
3. Focus your heart on Jesus & feed your soul from God’s Word with God’s people

How do I continue? 

1. Determine your identity according to the Father 
2. Let Christ dwell in you richly
3. Walk according to the Spirit, not the flesh

Mark 2:15-17

“While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Luke 24:44

“He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”

Galatians 3:23-24

“Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed.  So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.”

Romans 8:1-4

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

Romans 3:20

“Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.”

1 John 1:8, 10

“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.”