1 - Introduction - Living like a real Christian 1 - Introduction - Living like a real Christian | Page 7

yourself, you need the power of God within you to make the Christian life, as
per the beatitudes, a “blessed” experience.
2. The religious context. At the time of Jesus, there were four religious groups.
The Pharisees: these were the legalists who emphasised obedience to the
law. The Sadducees: they were the liberals who focused on the here and now
and discounted the supernatural. Thirdly, there were the Essenes: these were
the aesthetics and they wanted to separate themselves from the world. The
fourth were the Zealots: these were the radicals of the religious world who
felt that it was legitimate to fight against the political system of the day. Most
of these religions worked from the outside in where the emphasis was
dealing with the externals of life rather than the internal heart condition of
the person. Every one of the beatitudes is an attitude that comes from a
change of heart. This change of heart leads to enormous behavioural changes
and this became the point of departure between the teachings of Jesus and
the religious leaders of the day. Jesus emphasised that out of the heart should
flow rivers of living water, illustrating for us the immensity of the necessity
for a heart change to be the foundation of our Christian experience.
Recently in our church we preached a theme called “Rooted”. This theme
illustrates to us what Jesus was saying: as with a fruit bearing tree, the fruit is
perceived to need attention. In the religious world of Jesus’ day this is all they
did; they tried to fix the fruit. Jesus’ teaching was simply: do not worry about
the fruit, let