By James Fairfield.
Jesus starts the Sermon on the Mount with the fact that we have been blessed. When we get to Chapter 6 of the book of Matthew He then explains how these very same blessings can become a distraction from our true mission when they become our focus. As people, we have mastered taking good things from God and perverting them, so much so that we have taken a blessing like food, and worshiped it. Through fasting we retreat for a period of time from some of these good gifts and seek Christ. Fasting is meant to refocus our affections and help us realize our reward is Christ, not in luxuries He brings us. Jesus gives very practical steps in how to use fasting to draw near to God and not further away from Him. He explains that fasting should be done in a way that doesn’t lift ourselves. Fasting “in secret,” and practicing this spiritual discipline the way God intended, helps us to understand more of our reward in being called to a life with and for Christ.
The Sermon on the Mount is the first of five major discourses in the Gospel of Matthew. All five follow blocks of narrative material; all five end with the same formula (Like Matt 7:28–29 And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.) Jesus' Sermon on the Mount deals with ethical issues of deep rooted importance in every age, this “sermon” has caused thousands of books and articles to be written.
