The sermon on the Mount opens with the eight Beatitudes. They are actually a prose poem in eight verses and constitute a general summary of the Christian teaching. A general summing up, such as this, is highly characteristic of the old Oriental mode of approach to a religious and philosophical teaching, and it naturally recalls the Eightfold Path of Buddhism, the Ten Commandments of Moses,and other such compact groupings of ideas.
Jesus concerned himself exclusively with the teaching of general principles, and these general principles always had to do with mental states, for he knew that if one’s mental states are right, everything else might be right too. Unlike the other great religious teachers, he gives us no detailed instructions about what we are to do or not to do.
… the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.
…the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship him.
God is a spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth
(John 4:21, 23-24).
As humans, we yearn to be told what we should and should not do. Jesus knew that what we do results from how we think and feel. His instructions address theses causes of our actions. Until we are addressing the cause of our actions, we are merely treating the symptoms. When we become a new person in Christ, we are effectively changing what we think and how we think. The behavior that results from such activity will always be correct if we worship in spirit and in truth instead of action based on our limited human understanding.
Praying in spirit for truth,
Z gardener
Good Morning Garden 
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