The Impossible Teachings of Jesus

You Can't Obey the Sermon on the Mount - And That's Good News

By: Andrew Farley

The Sermon on the Mount isn't hard--it's devastating.

In The Impossible Teachings of Jesus, Andrew Farley takes readers straight into Christianity's most admired--and most misunderstood--sermon. For centuries, the Sermon on the Mount has been treated as a spiritual rulebook, a blueprint for moral success, and a road map to becoming "more like Jesus."

This book turns that entire assumption upside down.

Pluck out your eye. Anger is murder. Be perfect like God.

That's not inspiration. It's a demolition job.

Farley shows that the Sermon on the Mount was never meant to produce better behavior. Instead, it was designed to shatter self-righteousness, expose our total inability, and drive us to the only place grace can actually be found. Jesus wasn't raising the bar so we could try harder; he was removing every illusion that we could succeed at all.

If the Sermon on the Mount has ever left you exhausted, discouraged, or afraid you're failing God, this book finally explains why. With clarity, humor, and biblical precision, Farley reveals how Jesus's words function in their pre-cross context--and why reading them as a Christian self-improvement plan creates confusion, burnout, and toxic faith.

This book will show you why:

• Mixing law and grace never works
• The Sermon on the Mount is not a motivational speech but a mirror
• "Try-harder Christianity" was never Jesus's point

Taken seriously, the Sermon on the Mount dismantles every strategy for self-improvement and leaves no room for performance-based faith. And that's exactly where the message of Jesus begins--not with what you can do for God, but with what he has done for you.