Sermon OTM - Matthew 7:12-14

You may hear something today you haven’t heard before

So I’m going to try to make this as clear as possible
- we need to consider the larger context that surrounds and informs verses 12-14
• not only the context of this chapter, but in Jesus’ entire Sermon
- the first big idea is this:
• the key to interpreting these verses is love
• it may not look like it at first, so we jump to other verses to shed light on these
◦ but those similarities turn out to be coincidence and not real connections
◦ if we stay with the themes of the Sermon, we will see how these verses fit 

Three times in Matthew we find the phrase, “the Law and the Prophets”
- two of those times occur here in the Sermon
• in one other place he says “the Prophets and the Law” -- reversing the order
◦ there Jesus is referring to John the Baptist’s ministry, and he said,
"For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John" (Mt. 11:13)