Matthew 5: Living as God’s Kingdom People

The grand story that God’s Word is telling is the story of God’s work in the world to redeem humanity and restore the world.

Matthew chapter 5 is where some of this stuff gets really, really hard and really challenging. There is so much stuff in here that requires explanation. This is an incredibly long chapter, and there are so many different things that need to be talked about that we are not going to be able to dive into every single thing with quite the degree of detail that we would like to. But what we can do is kind of soar over it and get a really big-picture view of what is going on in Matthew chapter 5.

But before we do that, there are two things that we really need to understand. There are two things that it’s extremely important for us to grasp in order to understand almost any of what Jesus is saying here.

Don’t Get Lost in the Details

Number one is this: don’t get lost in the details.

When you open up God’s Word, when you read a passage from God’s Word, the passage is a forest. The little details are the trees.

Now, the trees are good. The trees are important. The trees make up the forest. But if you get obsessed with every individual tree that looks interesting, what happens? You miss the broader forest, right?

So as you read through a chapter of the Bible, treat it like a forest. Appreciate the forest. Get a lay of the land of the forest. Do not get lost in all the tiny little trees, all the tiny little details.

If there is one detail that you don’t fully understand in a passage, that’s okay. The point is, you want to understand the big point that each passage is making.

Jesus Teaches Through Shocking Images

And number two, we have to understand that Jesus teaches in a very particular way. Jesus teaches in a very specific way.

Jesus is teaching in a way that was extremely common at this point in time in first-century Israel. Jesus teaches through extreme, shocking images. Jesus teaches through extreme exaggeration. He teaches through extreme hyperbole.

You might remember that word from, like, ninth-grade English class. When you use hyperbole, it means that you are using a really big, over-the-top image or example or idea to make your point.

So Jesus says things that sound nuts. He says, like, “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.”

Jesus does not literally want you to cut off your right hand, right?

Jesus says, like, “Give to anyone who asks. Never say no to anyone who asks you for something.”

Does Jesus literally want you to give literally anything you have to literally anybody ever who asks? No, of course not. He’s not telling you to go be abused and taken advantage of and so on and so forth.

He’s making a point about generosity. Your core motivation needs to be generosity, so on and so forth.

You don’t literally need to cut off your hand. His point is, you need to be willing to cut anything out of your life that is harming you, that is robbing you of your purpose, that is dishonoring the Lord, that is drawing you into sin or addiction or destructiveness.

So He’s using extreme, shocking images because they’re memorable, right? You’re going to remember the guy who told you to cut your hand off. You’re going to remember the guy who said, “Yeah, no, if somebody asks for your house, give them your house. Somebody asks for your clothes, give them your clothes. If somebody asks for your camel, give them your camel.”

You’re going to remember that extreme, shocking image, but you don’t literally want to do these hardcore, extreme, crazy things. What you want to do is you want to live out that core principle, that concept.

So you need to understand those two things: do not get lost in the details, and two, recognize that Jesus teaches by using shocking, exaggerated, hyperbolic examples and stories.

The Sermon on the Mount

The first thing to understand is that Matthew 5 is part of a larger section. Matthew 5–7 is something called the Sermon on the Mount.

Essentially, what happened is that after Jesus launched His ministry, after He called these first few disciples, He goes out and He’s in a large public place. He’s on a mount. He’s on a mountain where He can teach a massive group of people.

He gets up and He starts teaching about the kingdom of God.

Remember from Matthew chapter 4, Jesus launches His ministry and He says:

“Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”
—Matthew 4:17 (WEB)

He says God’s rule and God’s reign is breaking into our fallen and broken world through Me, through the Savior Jesus.

And He starts calling disciples and making His disciples into His kingdom people and His kingdom workers. His disciples go out, and they join Him in doing His kingdom work.

He heals the sick, and that gives us a glimpse of the kingdom where there is no more sickness and suffering.

He casts out demons, and that gives us a glimpse of the kingdom where the forces of darkness have been destroyed and locked away and crushed and dethroned and so on and so forth.

He goes and He preaches the truth about God, which gives us a glimpse of the kingdom where our lives are saturated with God’s presence and God’s goodness rather than separated from Him because of the fall and so on and so forth.

They go and they pull people out of the cycle of poverty, and they care for their basic needs, and that gives us a glimpse of God’s kingdom where there is no more poverty, there is no more injustice, there is no more powerful and powerless, there is no more overclass and underclass, and so on and so forth.

He’s giving people a glimpse of God’s kingdom.

And now, as Jesus gets up on the mount and He starts to preach the Sermon on the Mount, He is preaching to His people, to His disciples, to His followers, to everyone who has come to believe in Him by this point, and He is saying, “Here is a glimpse of what the kingdom looks like and what it’s like to live as a kingdom person.”

He says, “You are My kingdom people. We live as kingdom people.”

And He says, “How do we live as kingdom people in this world? How do we live in a way that reflects God’s kingdom instead of simply reflecting the brokenness of this world?”

He says, “You are My followers and My kingdom people. Now here’s how you follow Me. Here is how you live your life.”

Blessed Are the Poor, the Mourning, and the Persecuted

So He gets up and He starts preaching, and He says some really strange and shocking things.

First things first, He says strange stuff like:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the gentle,
for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful,
for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be called children of God.

Blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake,
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
—Matthew 5:3–10 (WEB)

If people are lying about you and persecuting you and so on and so forth, your first thought is going to be that I am cursed, right?

He says, “No, you are blessed.”

Why?

Because the kingdom of God is for you.

The kingdom of God is for the persecuted, for the poor, for the beaten down, for the people who’ve been ground into a powder by our fallen and broken world and pushed over to the margins.

He says, “This fallen and broken kingdom has put you at the bottom, but My kingdom reaches out and lifts you up and dusts you off and places you at My table.”

You are exalted by this God who sees you and loves you and cares about you.

And He says, “My kingdom is breaking into this world through you. You have the great privilege and honor of bringing God’s kingdom ministry, His rule and His reign, into our fallen and broken world. You are not just a reject anymore. You are not just an outsider anymore. You are part of God’s work to redeem humanity and restore the world.”

God’s Kingdom Does Not Come Through Violence

And this is all the more important because He is preaching to a group of Jewish peasants and others there in Israel.

The nation of Israel was not a nation anymore. The nation of Israel had been conquered by Assyria, who then got conquered by Babylon, who got conquered by Persia, who got conquered by Greece, who got conquered by Rome.

So now what used to be the nation of Israel is an occupied territory.

So they are not free.

They are essentially servants. They are a couple of steps above literally being slaves all over again. They are oppressed by the Roman government.

So as a result, there were a bunch of terrorist groups. There were a bunch of revolutionary groups. There were violent groups of revolutionaries and terrorists who were going around and assassinating people in the street, lighting buildings on fire, destroying people’s lives, so on and so forth, because they were trying to form a militia that could go and topple the Roman government.

There were Jewish revolutionaries. They believed that God was going to topple the Roman Empire through them and was going to bring about His kingdom by force. They wanted to conquer the governments of this world with violence and strength and power so that they could install the kingdom of God.

But Jesus says that is not the way that My kingdom is coming.

Jesus says, “My kingdom is not coming through conquest. My kingdom is not coming through violence. My kingdom is not coming by overthrowing the other governments. My kingdom is not coming by force. My kingdom is not coming through power and control.”

He says, “You are not called to form an army and go topple these other governments to bring My kingdom.”

He says, “My kingdom is going to come through your humble work on My behalf. As people persecute you and insult you and lie about you and beat you down,” He says, “as you suffer the persecution of this world, somehow your suffering and persecution is going to usher in My kingdom more and more and more, little by little by little.”

He says, “You are My kingdom people, and the way you bring My kingdom more and more and more into this fallen and broken world is by living according to My kingdom ways. Like, you live this kingdom lifestyle.”

He says, “You live in a way that reflects God’s kingdom, and when you do that, it further ushers His kingdom into our fallen and broken world.”

This is a big concept. This is kind of a confusing concept. This might not make a ton of sense right now, but just keep at it and eventually it’ll click into place.

What God Has Always Been Like

Jesus says, “This is how you live as one of My kingdom people.”

And He starts laying out the core principles of the kingdom.

Specifically, what we need to understand is that as Jesus introduces what God’s kingdom is like and what it looks like here in Matthew 5 and 6 and 7, He is showing us what God has always been like.

Jesus is showing us what God is like.

Jesus is showing us what God values.

Jesus is showing us how God created us to live.

He’s showing us what God wants.

So all the way back to Genesis, God has always been like what Jesus presents here in this Sermon on the Mount. All the way back to Genesis, God’s deep desire has always been for us to live the way Jesus outlines here in the Sermon on the Mount.

During the Old Testament times, God gave the Law of Moses, and He gave these other guidelines and things like that for people to live, to keep order and to help us not harm ourselves and not fall apart and so on and so forth.

But in all of that, God was giving, Jesus says, a concession, right?

God was—it’s like God was giving us a temporary rule that would protect us in the early days.

But when we look at the Sermon on the Mount, this is what God is truly calling us to do and how God is truly calling us to live.

Again, this is a big, confusing concept, and it’s going to take days and days and weeks and months and years for us to wrap our head around.

But so the Sermon on the Mount is showing us what God is truly like and how He truly wants us to live.

There are, I guess you could say, four kingdom principles that Jesus gives to us. These are four principles for what it is like to live as God’s kingdom people, for how to live as God’s kingdom people.

1. We Are Driven by Reconciliation, Not Hatred

Number one, Jesus says as kingdom people, we are not driven by hatred anymore.

As kingdom people, we are not driven by disdain anymore.

As kingdom people, we are not driven by broken relationships anymore.

Instead, as kingdom people, we are driven by reconciliation and restoration.

As kingdom people, we are called to be reconciliation people. We are called to be a people who do everything we can to have restored relationships and reconciled relationships.

So this is verses 21 through 26.

He says:

“You have heard that it was said to the ancient ones, ‘You shall not murder;’ and ‘Whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.’”
—Matthew 5:21 (WEB)

And that’s true, 100%.

But actually, there is more than that.

He says, “Don’t let your heart be consumed by hatred,” right?

He says, “Don’t let your heart be consumed by hatred in a way that causes you to look at your brothers and sisters and your neighbors and the people around you as fools and idiots and so on and so forth.”

He doesn’t mean literally you should never be angry.

He says, “Don’t let your anger consume you towards other people. Don’t let your life be driven by anger and hatred and disdain.”

At the same time, He says if you were going to the temple and you are making an offering, and you realize you’re in a feud with somebody, right? You realize there is a major relationship that still stands unreconciled, and you haven’t actually worked to try to reconcile and restore it, you should make that your number one priority.

You should go straight over there and try to work things out with them, try to reconcile with them, try to seek forgiveness, and so on and so forth.

He’s saying your life should be driven by reconciliation.

We should be a people who are driven by reconciliation.

We should be a people who are driven by forgiveness.

We’ve been forgiven by the Lord, and we should give that same forgiveness to others where we can.

He’s not, once again, He’s not saying that you should just go and allow yourself to constantly be abused and mistreated and so forth. He’s not saying that you should enable people who are abusive and so on and so forth.

But what He is saying is that the norm for us is that we get caught in this cycle where we allow relationship after relationship to fall apart. We allow relationship after relationship to succumb to bitterness and anger and hatred and disdain.

He says instead of being driven by hatred, you should be driven by restoration, be driven by reconciliation.

That’s number one.

As kingdom people, we are not driven by hatred.

We’re driven by restoration.

2. We Are Driven by Faithfulness and Loyalty

Number two, He says as kingdom people, our—I’m not even sure how to put this exactly, but I guess you could say, like, as kingdom people, we’re not called to be driven by lust or power.

We’re not called to treat people as disposable.

We are called to faithfulness and loyalty.

We are called to giving love.

We are called to self-sacrificial love that does not let go, that does not abandon people, and so on and so forth.

This is verses 27 through 32.

He talks about a few things.

Number one, He says:

“Everyone who gazes at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.”
—Matthew 5:28 (WEB)

Now, don’t misunderstand this.

He is not saying that looking at somebody and noticing that they’re attractive is exactly the same thing as having an affair with them.

That is not what Jesus is saying.

He’s talking about the fact that adultery starts somewhere, right?

Unfaithfulness starts somewhere.

Cheating starts somewhere.

Where does it start?

It starts when you look at someone, and instead of just saying, “Wow, that person is attractive. Anyways, moving on,” instead, you get stuck, right?

You start to obsess.

You start to fantasize about them.

Suddenly this person has stopped just being a person in your mind. They’ve become an object in your mind for sexual gratification.

And eventually, it’s not enough to just look at them. It’s not enough to just think about them.

Eventually, you find yourself carried, almost like by a people mover at the airport or like a lazy river. You find yourself carried over to them, and eventually you end up in an affair, right?

He’s saying adultery starts somewhere, but you need to cut that off at the source.

Rather than lusting after people and objectifying people, you need to be treating them as humans.

And beyond that, right, you need to be driven by a kind of radical faithfulness to your spouse, to your partner, to your wife or your husband or whatever.

He says you need to be driven by radical faithfulness and loyalty.

And so going over there and cheating on them with that person shouldn’t even be something you allow to get past step one in your mind.

He says cut it off right there at the source.

Radical Faithfulness in Marriage

And at exactly the same time, He says something that shocks a lot of people nowadays.

He says:

“It was also said, ‘Whoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorce,’ but I tell you that whoever puts away his wife, except for the cause of sexual immorality, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries her when she is put away commits adultery.”
—Matthew 5:31–32 (WEB)

So this is weird.

What is Jesus talking about?

Jesus is talking about a major problem that existed at that point in time.

So in the ancient world, men could divorce their wives. Women could not divorce their husbands. Men could leave their wives for any reason, but wives did not have the right to leave their husbands.

And so what ended up happening was that it was very, very common for men, especially powerful men, especially wealthy men, to go through wives like toilet paper, right?

In the same way that a lot of celebrities, a lot of presidents, a lot of others, even like a lot of famous pastors, have had four or five or six wives.

Like, you seriously think there was something so terribly wrong with six different women in a row?

No, dude.

The common denominator is you, right?

So men would go through wives like toilet paper, and then they would just discard them afterwards.

They were treating their wives like accessories, like objects, like products.

Jesus says, “No, no, no, no, no. You need to be faithful to your one wife,” right?

Don’t be lusting after other people and then going off and cheating.

And at the same time, you need to be loyal to your wife. You need to stick with your wife unless she betrays you in a way that makes it impossible to repair the relationship.

He says the only time you should ever abandon your marriage is if the other person fundamentally betrays you in a way that makes it absolutely impossible to repair the relationship.

“We have a hard time getting along” is not a good reason to abandon a marriage.

You need to learn how to get along.

That is part of what it means to grow up as a human and mature as a human.

Betrayal, though, is a fundamentally different thing.

So a lot of Bible translations, I think, actually do us a little bit of a disservice.

They translate this word that Jesus uses, porneia, to “sexual immorality,” but that’s actually way too narrow of a way to describe that.

Really, the best way to put this would be radical betrayal.

Porneia could mean a really, really long range of things.

It usually meant that you went and cheated, but it could mean a lot of different things.

And so, you know, when we talk about betrayal, that can involve cheating.

That can involve physical or emotional abuse.

That can involve abandonment, right?

If somebody abandons you, that is a betrayal, right?

It can mean all sorts of different things.

But the point that Jesus is making is that as His kingdom people, we should not be throwing other people away.

We should not be treating people as disposable.

We need to be radically faithful to our spouses, and we need to be radically loyal to our spouses.

We are not going to abandon our marriage, our covenant, our relationship, just because we’re going through a difficult time.

We are not going to abandon our marriage just because we feel like we want to try to do something different with our life.

We are not going to abandon our marriage just because they’ve gotten older and their looks have started to fade and stuff like that.

We are going to be faithful to our spouses through absolutely everything.

And the only thing that could ever cause us to walk away from our marriage is radical betrayal.

So as kingdom people, we are driven by faithfulness, loyalty, self-sacrificial love for our spouses.

That’s number two.

3. We Are Radically Trustworthy

Number three, He says as kingdom people, we need to be driven by radical honesty, radical openness, radical trustworthiness.

Once again, He uses a big, shocking, exaggerated example.

He says:

“But I tell you, don’t swear at all: neither by heaven, for it is the throne of God; nor by the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.”
—Matthew 5:34–35 (WEB)

Don’t even—don’t swear any oaths.

Don’t make promises.

Don’t anything like that.

Just let your yes be yes.

Let your no be no.

Okay, once again, Jesus isn’t literally saying you should never make a promise.

Like, if you say, “Hey, I promise I’ll be there at 4:00,” you don’t need to go repent because you’ve sinned against the Lord.

That is not the point He’s making.

Again, don’t get lost in the details.

Look at the point.

At that point in time, essentially social trust between people and neighbors and so forth had gotten so threadbare that nobody trusted each other anymore.

So the only way that you could borrow somebody’s donkey was if you made a binding legal oath in front of everybody.

The only way that you could rent part of somebody’s property is if you made a huge binding legal oath in front of all these different people so that the other person was on the hook.

The only way that you could get any kind of loan or anything like that was making a binding legal oath and so on and so forth.

So it’s like literally every aspect of life at this point, you were having to make this huge, public, official oath to everybody else because no one trusted each other anymore because there had been so much fraud, so much betrayal, so much, you know, all of this.

Jesus says that is shameful.

He says the world may live that way, but as My kingdom people, you should not live that way.

He says you should live in a way where, man, people don’t even need an oath from you.

People don’t need a promise from you.

They don’t need anything like that because they know that your yes means yes and your no means no.

They know that if you say something, you mean it.

If you say something, it’s true.

If you say something, you’re being sincere.

They know that you are a radically honest person.

You are a radically trustworthy person.

You are a radically open person.

And so every word that comes out of your mouth, they know they can genuinely believe and trust in.

He says Christ’s kingdom people should be a radically trustworthy people.

That’s number three.

4. We Love Our Enemies

And number four, He says as kingdom people, we deal with our enemies, our attackers, even our persecutors, in a different way than the world does.

We deal with people who mistreat us in a different way than the world does.

Instead of hating our enemies, we love our enemies.

We pray for our enemies.

We bless our enemies.

We even serve our enemies.

When our enemies need help, we help our enemies.

When our enemies are thirsty, we bring them something to drink.

When our enemies are hungry, we feed them.

When our enemies are about to lose their house, we help them keep their house, and so on and so forth.

He says we deal with our enemies in a different way than the world does.

This world solves everything through violence.

It solves everything through fighting.

It solves everything through power moves.

But as God’s kingdom people, we do not.

Instead, we love our enemies in a way that makes everybody in the world look on and say, “What is—what’s going on with them? Why are they like that? Why are they so different?”

And so He gives a couple of, once again, really extreme, exaggerated examples.

He says, “If your enemy forces you to carry their pack one mile, you should actually go on and carry it two.”

He says, “If your enemy slaps you on your right cheek, you should offer him your left cheek as well.”

What’s He talking about here?

He’s talking about something I think is really interesting.

He’s talking about how to resist your enemy in a way that is Christlike and kind and loving.

Go the Second Mile

In the first century in Israel, Israel was an occupied territory, and they were an oppressed people group.

The Roman government oppressed the Israelites.

One of the ways that they did that was that at any time, a Roman soldier could show up on your farm, arrest you, take you out to a road, and force you to carry their heavy military packs for one mile down the road.

They couldn’t force you to go any more than one mile because after that they could potentially, like, exhaust you into, you know, collapsing and so on and so forth, and then you wouldn’t be able to work your field, and they wouldn’t be able to tax you on what you make, and so on.

So they were only allowed to make you carry their pack for one mile.

But still, if a police officer showed up, put you in handcuffs, carried you somewhere, and then made you carry all of their stuff for a mile, you’d be pretty pissed off, right?

You would feel used and abused.

That’s how it was for every single Israelite in the first century.

On any given day, at any given moment, a Roman soldier may show up and force them to go do hard manual labor for them for one mile down the road.

Jesus says:

“Whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two.”
—Matthew 5:41 (WEB)

Think about everything I just said.

What happens if you get to the end of that mile and you say, “Actually, I’m going to go on, and I’m going to go a second mile”?

Now that soldier has a problem because they’ve already forced you to go one mile, and they are not allowed to force you to go any further.

They are not legally permitted to make you go any further.

They’re not legally permitted to let you go any further.

If you go more than one mile with their pack, now they’re breaking the law.

Now they’re a criminal.

And if the Roman government finds out that they let you carry their pack for a mile and a half, for two miles, for three miles, for four miles, they could get in an unbelievable amount of trouble.

Best-case scenario, they could get demoted.

Worst-case scenario, they could get imprisoned, or they could get publicly flogged, or they could get executed to make an example of them.

So what is a soldier going to do when you say, “Actually, I’m going to carry this two miles”?

They’re going to say, “No, no, no, no, no, no, please give me that pack back right now. I need you to give me back the pack that you were carrying.”

And you say, “No, no, no, it’s fine. I’m going to keep going. I’m going to keep carrying it. Don’t worry about it. I got you. I’m going to go two full miles.”

And then they’re going to have to run after you to try to catch you, and they’re going to look really silly, right?

And when they get there, they’re going to say, “Please, please give me back that pack. Please take it off. Please give it back to me.”

They’re going to start begging you to give their pack back to them.

What just happened?

They held all the power, and now you hold all the power.

You just turned the tables on them.

You just flipped the script.

And they’re going to realize right then and there, “I better never seize this guy and make him carry my pack again because it is way more trouble than it’s worth.”

And then if you teach other people to do the same thing, they’re going to do it, and they’re going to say, “Okay, we can never let them carry our packs anymore because it’s more trouble than it’s worth.”

And eventually your whole family is going to start doing it, and they’re going to say, “We are never going to make them carry these packs again because it is way more trouble than it’s worth.”

And then your whole village starts doing it, and they’re going to say, “Okay, we can’t make anybody from this village carry our packs because if we do, it is going to be way more trouble than it’s worth.”

So they’re just going to leave you alone from then on out.

This is a way of peaceably resisting your enemies and your persecutors.

You are resisting them in a way that is consistent with God’s kingdom.

Turn the Other Cheek

In exactly the same way, in the ancient world, if someone slapped you on your right cheek, that was the greatest insult they could give you.

The right cheek—no Roman citizen was ever supposed to be slapped on the right cheek.

Why?

I don’t know.

It was just a cultural thing.

Nobody with honor or dignity was ever supposed to be slapped on the right cheek.

It was a profound insult.

If you slapped someone on the right cheek, you could be legally punished for it because of how serious of a thing it was.

You slapped your slaves on the right cheek.

You did not slap your equals on the right cheek.

You slapped your equals on the left cheek.

You would slap people who were equal to you on the left cheek.

So if your slave did something you didn’t like, you would just, bam, you would slap him on the right cheek.

If your brother did something you didn’t like, you might slap them on the left.

There was a fundamental difference.

The left cheek had dignity.

The right cheek had shame and dishonor.

So Jesus says:

“Whoever strikes you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
—Matthew 5:39 (WEB)

What are you doing?

You’re saying, “Hey, you just treated me like a subordinate. You just treated me like a slave. You just treated me like somebody with no honor. I want you to slap me on the left cheek like an equal. I want you to slap me like someone with dignity. I want you to slap me like someone with honor.”

You are demanding to be treated with honor and dignity and equality.

It’s weird to think about, but Jesus is teaching us how to resist our enemies and our persecutors in a way that reflects His kingdom rather than this fallen and broken world.

Once again, this is a big concept. This is hard to wrap our heads around. So this still may not make a ton of sense right now, but keep at it, and it will.

Living as Kingdom People

But that is Matthew chapter 5.

Jesus is showing us how to live as His kingdom people.

He is showing us how to live in a way that reflects His good kingdom and His character.

Keep reading, keep studying, keep meditating, keep talking to the Lord about the things that you are reading.

What are some questions you have about this passage?

What are some things that don’t make sense to you?

What are some things that you don’t understand?

What are some things that really stuck out to you, that really resonated with you, that really maybe convicted you?

You felt like the Lord was really working on you through something.

What do you feel like the Lord is saying to you through this passage?