Sermon on the Mount

The Context of the Sermon on the Mount – Part 1

The Sermon on the Mount is considered to be one of Jesus’ most important discourses and one of His most foundational teachings, considered to hold the essence of Jesus’ teaching. Even many who are not Christians believe this sermon is one of the most important messages ever taught. There is perhaps no passage in the Bible that is quoted more and understood less than this teaching in Matthew 5-7.

The Content of the Sermon on the Mount – Part 2

The Sermon on the Mount is one of the key teachings of the Bible. Jesus preached this sermon on a mountaintop in Galilee when He challenged people who professed to be His disciples to be strategically placed between the love of God and the pain of the hurting people in the world. He challenged His disciples to partner with Him and be conduits of His love. He concluded His sermon with a call to commitment. It changed the lives of many who heard it.

I Can’t, But He Can

Jesus begins by teaching His disciples eight attitudes called, the “beatitudes,” or “blessed attitudes,” because each one is introduced by the word “blessed.” Jesus is promising to bless the disciple who has each of these attitudes. This word “blessed” can actually mean “happy,” “spiritually prosperous,” or “in a state of grace.” Each attitude also includes a promise that describes the form in which this blessing will come into the life of that disciple.

Ministers of Comfort and Recipe for Rest

Believers sometimes have the misguided opinion that their faith is weak if they show signs of mourning. This beatitude not only supports mourning it links it to a blessing. Mourning a loss is normal and there are things God wants us to learn from the loss. We must let God use our mourning to move us in three ways. First, mourning helps us ask the right questions about life. Second, it helps us to seek God’s answers. Third, it also helps us to accept the blessing God has provided including our salvation.

Exceptional Righteousness

When we are meek, seeking God’s leadership, we develop a hunger for righteousness, the desire to live our lives with the goal of pleasing God. We want to know what is right and do what is right. What you do and how you act are important to God. We are called to do what is right not just what is expedient. That is what it means to hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Channels of Love and The Catheterized Heart

The word “mercy” means “unconditional love.” When David writes in Psalm 23:6 that mercy will follow him all the days of his life, the word he uses for “follow” actually means “pursue.” God’s unconditional love will pursue David all of his life. This is the kind of love for others that we must have too, if we are to be like God.

Ministers of Reconciliation

Mankind is alienated from God. That’s why those who are disciples of Christ have been to the top of the mountain must come back down with a purpose. If we have been reconciled with God, made right in our relationship with Him, it makes sense that God would use us to help others be reconciled with Him. He will also help us find reconciliation in our own relationships and use us to help others find reconciliation in theirs. The seventh beatitude speaks to the mission of those who are part of God’s solution.

Persecuted Peacemakers and Promises

There is a reason the beatitude about peacemakers is followed by a beatitude about persecution. Those who become ministers of reconciliation often suffer painful consequences because they have identified themselves with Jesus Christ. Being a peacemaker may put Jesus’ disciples in the middle of dangerous fighting. Sometimes they even lose their lives. The disciple who has the beautiful attitudes confronts people with a model of what they should be. When people in theworld are confronted with a true disciple, they can acknowledge that this is how they should live, or they can attack the disciple who is like Jesus. Very often, they do the latter.

The Character and the Culture

The Beatitudes were the essence and central part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. With these eight attitudes, He has described a godly character that can change the world. In this next section, He provides commentary and application on His sermon.

Salt and Light

Salt is a preservative that keeps meat from spoiling, and Christians with the attitudes of Jesus are like salt to the world. When disciples with Christ-like attitudes are “rubbed into” the people of the world as salt is rubbed into meat, their influence will keep the world from total corruption. They become a valuable commodity Jesus uses to revolutionize the culture. The second metaphor indicates that Christians are the only source of light for multitudes living in darkness. As with the first metaphor, Jesus’ words literally mean that “you and you alone” are salt and light. If His disciples do not fulfill their role as salt and light, no one else is left to fulfill it. The people who have Jesus’ attitudes are sent into the world as God’s solution in order to shine for all to see.

The Law of God and the Lives of Men

Many people think Jesus was contradicting the Old Testament in these verses, but He was only confronting the teaching of the religious leaders. He was telling His disciples: “Everything I am teaching you is found in the Word of God, but what I am teaching is in direct conflict with what your religious leaders have been teaching you.”

The Law of God and Your Brother

Jesus taught that it is critical for believers to cultivate and maintain strong, loving relationships. The religious leaders in the time of Jesus taught that as long as you did not murder or injure your brother, your relationship with him was acceptable to God. But those who have Jesus’ attitude of mercy are to show it; not to do so will affect our private worship. We must make sure we are not alienated from anyone who Jesus calls our “brother.” Anger and feelings of disgust toward our brothers and sisters must be addressed if we want to have a relationship with them that ispleasing to God.

The Law of God, Your Adversary, Women, and Your Wife

We live in a competitive world. Sometimes our relationship with competitors, or adversaries, becomes hostile, and they are determined to sue us or even put us in prison. Disciples who are peacemakers do not get angry or try to get even with their enemies. Instead, they determine never to be the source of conflict with adversarial people. Jesus also taught us how to relate to the opposite sex. As with other sins, Jesus goes to the source: our hearts. If we really want to be part of the solution as salt and light, we must learn how to control our sexual desires.

The Law of God and Your Word

The religious leaders in Jesus’ day had an elaborate system in which some oaths were binding and others were not. It was an absurd, complicated system that did not honor God’s command not to bear false witness. Jesus insisted that His disciples be people of the Word and people who keep their word.

God-Likeness

These verses are perhaps the most difficult in the teachings of Jesus to interpret and apply. They teach the highest ethic this world has ever heard. The religious leaders had been teaching that the Law says to love your neighbor (which it does) and to hate your enemy (which it does not). Jesus corrects the misunderstanding and calls for total commitment from His disciples. Loving our neighbors and even our enemies according to God’s standards is impossible, except for one thing: we have Jesus living in us.

What Are You Doing More than Others?

If we follow Jesus and have His attitudes, we will be changed. We will become the salt of the earth and like lights that shine in the world. That means that we will not live the same way that others live. We will do more because we have Jesus living in our hearts. We will have a greater love than the world knows and show greater grace and mercy than the world understands. In so doing, we will become like our Father in heaven.

The Spiritual Discipline of Giving

Jesus has taught His disciples to consider the blessed attitudes that must be in their hearts, and He has taught them to apply those beatitudes in their relationships. Now in Matthew chapter 6, He urges His disciples to look in another direction toward their relationship with God. They are to live their commitment as disciples by following certain spiritual, or vertical, disciplines and values.

The Spiritual Discipline of Prayer and The Manner of a Disciple’s Prayer

Jesus taught His disciples how to pray with a prayer we often call “The Lord’s Prayer.” But this prayer really should be called “the Disciples’ Prayer” because Jesus never prayed it Himself. He said this is how we should pray. Jesus tells us to pray in a place where we can shut the door and be alone, where there is no one to impress but God.

Forgiveness and Fasting

Like giving and praying, fasting also must be vertical, directed toward God and not to impress others. As with the other disciplines, God will reward what He sees, the motives of our heart. As giving provides an opportunity for us to measure our commitment to God, fasting gives us an opportunity to measure the degree to which we value the spiritual more than the physical aspects of our lives. It also demonstrates the sincerity of our prayers.

Spiritual Values

One of the reasons people have so many problems is that they do not have the right values. Disciples who have the right attitudes within them are living with the right values. That is why they can have a salt and light influence in the world; their priorities are based on eternity and not on earthly treasures.

Kingdom Values

One of the reasons people have so many problems is that they do not have the right values. Disciples who have the right attitudes within them are living with the right values. That is why they can have a salt and light influence in the world; their priorities are based on eternity and not on earthly treasures.

The “Me-First” Club

The Coming and Going of the Disciples

Jesus told His followers to make a commitment to look up. That is how we receive the spiritual disciplines and values that come from God. Jesus used continuous verbs for asking, seeking, and knocking in order to challenge His disciples to look up continuously and with perseverance. Seeking is repeated and intense asking, and knocking is repeated and intense seeking. Jesus was calling His disciples to be people who are passionate for God. He promised that everyone who asks, seeks, and knocks in this way will be answered. Then Jesus summed up His ethical teaching with one sentence: Do to others what you would have them do to you.This is known as the Golden Rule.

Deciding for Jesus

Having given three calls for commitment, which ended with the Golden Rule, Jesus now gives a hard invitation. This is a challenging call to become committed disciples, solutions and answers and to reach the world for Him. It is a pointed challenge that asks, “Are you going to be part of the problem or part of the solution?”