"The Greatest Message Ever Spoken"
Matthew 5:1-2
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Sermon Summary: The fame of the Sermon on the Mount really cannot be contested. Even liberals, who do not believe Christ to be the Son of God, gravitate towards it and give it wide acclaim. As we consider "the greatest message ever spoken," we'll look at its speaker, audience, and overall topic. |
Message begins at approx. the 29 min mark.
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Matthew 5:1-3
Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
As we come to our text this morning, it’s necessary for us to understand that we are looking at one of the premier texts of all of Scripture. The Sermon on the Mount is one of those texts to which history testifies. It may be said to be one of (if not) the most influential and admired messages of all time.
Certainly, it is foundational for Western History. It was interesting, a friend of mine teaches Western Civilization courses at a college. Just this week he sent out a message asking what parts of the Bible would we recommend his Western Civ. Students read along with the Sermon on the Mount.
The question wasn’t whether or not they should read the Sermon on the Mount. It was what they should read along with the sermon on the Mount. It was already understood that they would be reading the Sermon on the Mount. That’s how important he thought it was to the development of Western Culture.
And it is not just inspired Scripture that we are dealing with here. This is one of the finest of all sermons ever preached. Perhaps no other passage in Scripture has been given more attention.
We may even think of liberal theologians and their admiration of this portion of the Bible. We know that most who might be characterized as liberal despise the bible and care nothing for it. They do not even believing the half of it to be truly of divine origin. Most don’t even believe that Jesus was the Son of God. If they believe he existed, and many of them don’t, they would say that he was merely a good teacher or moral fellow. Yet, even this befuddled group of people who know and care nothing for God’s Word will gravitate to the sermon on the mount. That is a testimony to how lofty this text of Scripture really is.
Thus, we want to take time and delve into this great message. And today I want to simply look at what you might call the introductory material. The first two verses and the first word of the third verse will comprise our time today. And these are the three things I want us to consider: the speaker, the audience, and the topic.
Now, many might find these first two verses to be of little necessity. These words are merely setting up the context for the Sermon on the Mount. And so you might be tempted to think there is little value in them or little to glean from them. But I believe it is helpful to spend a little time meditating on them.
And the first thing we should do is simply take note of the speaker.
I. The speaker:
It, of course, does not come as any surprise that the preacher of this famous sermon is Jesus. We all know this. But the first verse tells us something about Jesus. You’ll notice that it says that Jesus, when he had seen the crowds, “went up on a mountain.”
Let’s pause here for a moment. This little bit of information is worthy of note. For they give us some clue as to the speaker’s identity. Especially since Luke, in his gospel, tells us that Jesus spoke these words on a flat area (i.e. a plain). Much of the Sermon on the Mount is also found in Luke 6 and Luke tells us that Jesus “came down and stood on a level place.” That’s almost the exact opposite of what Jesus does here in Matthew.
Now, we recognize that Jesus probably preached this sermon multiple times. Itinerate preachers tend to do that. If I would be asked to preach somewhere besides Hopewell, I’d probably use an old sermon that I have already preached. Jesus probably did this kind of thing too. He may have preached it on a mountain; he may have preached it somewhere else on a level place.
But what’s significant is that Matthew chooses to include the mountain top version. Why is that significant? I think it has to do with Moses. In these opening chapters of Matthew, we have several instances where we are taken back to the books of Moses. Chapter 4 has the temptation of Jesus, which is akin to the time when Moses and Israel wandered in the desert. After Jesus was born, he went down to and came out of Egypt, just like Moses. We are told that Herod massacred babies in order to kill off Jesus, which is parallel to Pharaoh’s attempt to kill off the baby Moses.
There are lots of comparisons to Moses, and I think this is another one. Moses went up on a mountain (Mt. Siani) and it was there that he received the law. He was given two tablets upon which God had put his commandments. And, at Mt. Saini, the people of Israel were constituted as a new nation. In receiving the law, they understood how they were to live as members of that new kingdom. Here then is God’s way of life for God’s kingdom people.
That’s pretty much what is going on in the sermon on the Mount. Jesus is telling us about Kingdom life / kingdom living. What does it look like to be a part of God’s kingdom? Well, the SotM gives us a pretty good idea.
So we learn something about the speaker. Jesus is a second Moses. You might even say he’s the greater Moses. He is Moses in reprise. He’s delivering to us the law; He himself is the law-giver.
All in all, by going up on this mountain and delivering this message, he’s basically saying, “Look guys, I know that Moses has been big in your lives. He was a pillar in the life of Israel. But I want you to understand, I’m here today. I’m standing on this mountain making a declaration: I am the new Moses. I’m the one you should follow now. I’ve come to bring in the kingdom of God. I am here to show you what life in this kingdom is to be like. You are to look to me now, just as you used to look to Moses.
This applies to you as well, as he is the greater Moses. This is important because so many people regard Jesus as a good teacher or a moral philosopher. That’s not what he is. He’s much more than that. He comes with a higher authority than that. Certainly, his teachings are much more than suggestions and merely good guidance for life. He comes as the Son of God. His teaching is very much divine.
That is the way you should regard him. He is not just a speaker. He is the speaker. He is the preacher that is above all other preachers; for his word is truth. It is not just law that he speaks, but he is the very embodiment of that law; the law giver.
So we should make no mistake. Jesus is no ordinary man. The words that he speaks are words by which we should live. They are the Word of God.
II. The audience
Now what do we know about the audience. Well, we know that there was a very large audience. The text tells us that Jesus looked out and saw the crowds. So we know that there was a sizable amount of people following him at this point and listening to his message.
But I want you to focus on the next word that is used to describe the people. They are called “disciples.” This word is worthy of our attention. For it is a word that is really definitive of the Christian life. We may ask, “What is a Christian?” And we could answer that question by saying, “He is many things, but chiefly he is a disciple.”
Well, we should then ask, ‘What then is a disciple?” And the answer is that a disciple is a student; a learner. The people came near to listen because they wanted to be taught. They wanted to learn. They wanted to study under Jesus and gain whatever education he could provide.
This is important because at the end of the book of Matthew Jesus gives the Great Commission. And he says, “Go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” This idea of being a disciple (or a student) continues to be part of the main identity of those who would be followers of Christ.
And as disciples of Christ, we then are to be committed to discipleship. We are to be perpetual learners, seeking to be taught by Christ. That therefore means, that if you identify as a Christian, you will be one who is dedicated to learning what you can about Christ. You will be one who is seeking to listen to His word, understand what is said in it, and (most of all) devoted to following that teaching.
And throughout history, those who have truly been God’s people have sought to live up to this title of disciple. The people of God would seek out Bible teaching whenever and wherever they could. They would take the principles of Scripture and they would meditate on them and apply them in various ways.
In the early ages, those who were Christ’s people would go to the church and to worship as often as they could. They would also carve out time during the week for midweek services or special gatherings where they could hear the word of God read and explained.
When Bibles became more prolific after the invention of the printing press, they began to read them in their homes as well. They would formulate their day around the word of God, having devotions together as families and using the Bible as the main textbook for their children’s education.
Children would grow up hearing the Bible stories read and listening to their parents and grandparents read the Scriptures. Their formal education would center around it too. They would learn to read by simple Bible verses. Even their early lessons in the ABC’s were grounded and shaped by Biblical material. For instance, this is an example of a child’s drilling in the alphabet:
This is characteristic of disciples of Christ. Disciples of Christ are dedicated to learning as much as they can of what he has revealed.
Unfortunately, there are a large number of people in our world today who do not understand this simple concept. There is a large portion of people who go to church that do not care anything for the Bible. They think that the Bible is antiquated and not worthy of any of our attention. There are others whose attention is wrapped up in other things, like concerts and hearing good music. Still there are others who may have made a decision to follow Christ or accept Jesus into their heart at some point in their life, but they have never really become a disciple. They have no earnest for sitting under biblical teaching or listening to the voice of Christ.
But we have to understand that being a disciple is one of the main callings of a Christian. The Word of God is to be all consuming to us. It is to define our lives.
Now, I love that there is such a devotion to discipleship within this congregation. We as leaders are glad that people are seeking to make the Scriptures a fundamental part of their lives. That’s exactly what we are called to do.
I might even say that is exactly what we are called to be. We are to be disciples, ever leaning and gaining the kind of world view that Christ wants us to have.
As we enter into this study on the sermon on the mount, let’s simply have this idea refreshed in our minds. Let’s not let anything replace it. This congregation, like the audience who first heard Jesus, are called to be learners.
Which brings us to our next point, which regards the topic of this great sermon.
III. The topic
Now, I have already mentioned that the overarching theme of this message has to do with the kingdom of God and what it means to be a participant in this kingdom. The whole of the message has to do with kingdom life or kingdom living.
As we walk through this famous sermon we are going to see how that kingdom life is expressed. You might say that the sermon on the mount will teach us the basic ethics for kingdom people. It is a course on how God wants us to live and act as his people.
And you should recognize that these principles are going to be a lot different from the world’s principles. This is how you ought to live as a member of God’s kingdom. Yet we live in the midst of a world that is founded on different principles, promoting different goals, and is essentially a radically different kingdom.
You have to recognize that the kingdom of this world is opposed to the kingdom of God. The things that the world teaches us is radically different from the kind of things that Christ teaches.
For instance, in the next few weeks, we are going to learn about the Beatitudes. We are going to learn about what it means to be “blessed.” And you are going to find that the whole notion of blessing and being blessed is radically different than what you may have been taught by the world. The world wants to say that the blessed person is an aggressive, self asserting person. He’s blessed who is the one who has money and an increasing amount of wealth and power.
But you’re going to find that this isn’t even close to the kind of person that Jesus describes. A blessed person is meek. A blessed person is one who has secured immaterial things. A blessed person is one who may not have a lot of comforts in life. That’s radically different from the American Dream, isn’t it?
Furthermore, we are going to study the ethics of the kingdom. Jesus is going to tell us how the people of His kingdom ought to live. He’s going to talk about anger and marriage and oath taking. He’s going to talk about your life goals (i.e. seeking first the kingdom as opposed to seeking clothes and food and other things we call “necessitates.”). All of this is going to be radically different from what the world teaches us.
Think about the people of Jesus’ time. They probably were not that much different than us. They were the ones who had been given the law of Moses, but they had learned more about the world’s ways than about the kingdom Moses spoke about. They had come to believe that breaking an oath was an okay thing to do. They basically said that you can go into a promise knowing you could get out of it, if you just worded it correctly.
They also thought that certain forms of anger were okay. You can call a person a name, but as long as you didn’t harm them or outright kill them, that was fine. They would say that there’s nothing wrong with lust. Looking at a man or a woman with self indulgent sexual desire wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Now, if you would go further than that, if you would actually commit adultery, that would be a sin in their view.
But Jesus comes along and says, “You all have completely misunderstood what Moses was teaching. The law of the kingdom means living a pure and holy life. And that purity must pervade your whole being, down to the inner life of a man.”
What Jesus does is clarify the kingdom life. And he shows us that His kingdom has certain set of standards. And we are called to live by that standard and not the standards of the world around us.
Conclusion:
Jesus sets before us the topic of Kingdom life. And it promises to be a great study. You might even say that the greatest speaker, has delivered a message on the greatest possible topic. And we who are disciples of Christ have the greatest opportunity (maybe even the greatest responsibility) to listen to him and learn from him.
Over the course of the next several months, may the Lord grant us to be the very best disciples we can be.
Certainly, it is foundational for Western History. It was interesting, a friend of mine teaches Western Civilization courses at a college. Just this week he sent out a message asking what parts of the Bible would we recommend his Western Civ. Students read along with the Sermon on the Mount.
The question wasn’t whether or not they should read the Sermon on the Mount. It was what they should read along with the sermon on the Mount. It was already understood that they would be reading the Sermon on the Mount. That’s how important he thought it was to the development of Western Culture.
And it is not just inspired Scripture that we are dealing with here. This is one of the finest of all sermons ever preached. Perhaps no other passage in Scripture has been given more attention.
We may even think of liberal theologians and their admiration of this portion of the Bible. We know that most who might be characterized as liberal despise the bible and care nothing for it. They do not even believing the half of it to be truly of divine origin. Most don’t even believe that Jesus was the Son of God. If they believe he existed, and many of them don’t, they would say that he was merely a good teacher or moral fellow. Yet, even this befuddled group of people who know and care nothing for God’s Word will gravitate to the sermon on the mount. That is a testimony to how lofty this text of Scripture really is.
Thus, we want to take time and delve into this great message. And today I want to simply look at what you might call the introductory material. The first two verses and the first word of the third verse will comprise our time today. And these are the three things I want us to consider: the speaker, the audience, and the topic.
Now, many might find these first two verses to be of little necessity. These words are merely setting up the context for the Sermon on the Mount. And so you might be tempted to think there is little value in them or little to glean from them. But I believe it is helpful to spend a little time meditating on them.
And the first thing we should do is simply take note of the speaker.
I. The speaker:
It, of course, does not come as any surprise that the preacher of this famous sermon is Jesus. We all know this. But the first verse tells us something about Jesus. You’ll notice that it says that Jesus, when he had seen the crowds, “went up on a mountain.”
Let’s pause here for a moment. This little bit of information is worthy of note. For they give us some clue as to the speaker’s identity. Especially since Luke, in his gospel, tells us that Jesus spoke these words on a flat area (i.e. a plain). Much of the Sermon on the Mount is also found in Luke 6 and Luke tells us that Jesus “came down and stood on a level place.” That’s almost the exact opposite of what Jesus does here in Matthew.
Now, we recognize that Jesus probably preached this sermon multiple times. Itinerate preachers tend to do that. If I would be asked to preach somewhere besides Hopewell, I’d probably use an old sermon that I have already preached. Jesus probably did this kind of thing too. He may have preached it on a mountain; he may have preached it somewhere else on a level place.
But what’s significant is that Matthew chooses to include the mountain top version. Why is that significant? I think it has to do with Moses. In these opening chapters of Matthew, we have several instances where we are taken back to the books of Moses. Chapter 4 has the temptation of Jesus, which is akin to the time when Moses and Israel wandered in the desert. After Jesus was born, he went down to and came out of Egypt, just like Moses. We are told that Herod massacred babies in order to kill off Jesus, which is parallel to Pharaoh’s attempt to kill off the baby Moses.
There are lots of comparisons to Moses, and I think this is another one. Moses went up on a mountain (Mt. Siani) and it was there that he received the law. He was given two tablets upon which God had put his commandments. And, at Mt. Saini, the people of Israel were constituted as a new nation. In receiving the law, they understood how they were to live as members of that new kingdom. Here then is God’s way of life for God’s kingdom people.
That’s pretty much what is going on in the sermon on the Mount. Jesus is telling us about Kingdom life / kingdom living. What does it look like to be a part of God’s kingdom? Well, the SotM gives us a pretty good idea.
So we learn something about the speaker. Jesus is a second Moses. You might even say he’s the greater Moses. He is Moses in reprise. He’s delivering to us the law; He himself is the law-giver.
All in all, by going up on this mountain and delivering this message, he’s basically saying, “Look guys, I know that Moses has been big in your lives. He was a pillar in the life of Israel. But I want you to understand, I’m here today. I’m standing on this mountain making a declaration: I am the new Moses. I’m the one you should follow now. I’ve come to bring in the kingdom of God. I am here to show you what life in this kingdom is to be like. You are to look to me now, just as you used to look to Moses.
This applies to you as well, as he is the greater Moses. This is important because so many people regard Jesus as a good teacher or a moral philosopher. That’s not what he is. He’s much more than that. He comes with a higher authority than that. Certainly, his teachings are much more than suggestions and merely good guidance for life. He comes as the Son of God. His teaching is very much divine.
That is the way you should regard him. He is not just a speaker. He is the speaker. He is the preacher that is above all other preachers; for his word is truth. It is not just law that he speaks, but he is the very embodiment of that law; the law giver.
So we should make no mistake. Jesus is no ordinary man. The words that he speaks are words by which we should live. They are the Word of God.
II. The audience
Now what do we know about the audience. Well, we know that there was a very large audience. The text tells us that Jesus looked out and saw the crowds. So we know that there was a sizable amount of people following him at this point and listening to his message.
But I want you to focus on the next word that is used to describe the people. They are called “disciples.” This word is worthy of our attention. For it is a word that is really definitive of the Christian life. We may ask, “What is a Christian?” And we could answer that question by saying, “He is many things, but chiefly he is a disciple.”
Well, we should then ask, ‘What then is a disciple?” And the answer is that a disciple is a student; a learner. The people came near to listen because they wanted to be taught. They wanted to learn. They wanted to study under Jesus and gain whatever education he could provide.
This is important because at the end of the book of Matthew Jesus gives the Great Commission. And he says, “Go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” This idea of being a disciple (or a student) continues to be part of the main identity of those who would be followers of Christ.
And as disciples of Christ, we then are to be committed to discipleship. We are to be perpetual learners, seeking to be taught by Christ. That therefore means, that if you identify as a Christian, you will be one who is dedicated to learning what you can about Christ. You will be one who is seeking to listen to His word, understand what is said in it, and (most of all) devoted to following that teaching.
And throughout history, those who have truly been God’s people have sought to live up to this title of disciple. The people of God would seek out Bible teaching whenever and wherever they could. They would take the principles of Scripture and they would meditate on them and apply them in various ways.
In the early ages, those who were Christ’s people would go to the church and to worship as often as they could. They would also carve out time during the week for midweek services or special gatherings where they could hear the word of God read and explained.
When Bibles became more prolific after the invention of the printing press, they began to read them in their homes as well. They would formulate their day around the word of God, having devotions together as families and using the Bible as the main textbook for their children’s education.
Children would grow up hearing the Bible stories read and listening to their parents and grandparents read the Scriptures. Their formal education would center around it too. They would learn to read by simple Bible verses. Even their early lessons in the ABC’s were grounded and shaped by Biblical material. For instance, this is an example of a child’s drilling in the alphabet:
- A – A wise son maketh glad his father, but a foolish son is a heaviness to his mother.
- B – Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble therewith.
- C- Come unto Christ all ye who labor and are heavy laden and he will give you rest.
This is characteristic of disciples of Christ. Disciples of Christ are dedicated to learning as much as they can of what he has revealed.
Unfortunately, there are a large number of people in our world today who do not understand this simple concept. There is a large portion of people who go to church that do not care anything for the Bible. They think that the Bible is antiquated and not worthy of any of our attention. There are others whose attention is wrapped up in other things, like concerts and hearing good music. Still there are others who may have made a decision to follow Christ or accept Jesus into their heart at some point in their life, but they have never really become a disciple. They have no earnest for sitting under biblical teaching or listening to the voice of Christ.
But we have to understand that being a disciple is one of the main callings of a Christian. The Word of God is to be all consuming to us. It is to define our lives.
Now, I love that there is such a devotion to discipleship within this congregation. We as leaders are glad that people are seeking to make the Scriptures a fundamental part of their lives. That’s exactly what we are called to do.
I might even say that is exactly what we are called to be. We are to be disciples, ever leaning and gaining the kind of world view that Christ wants us to have.
As we enter into this study on the sermon on the mount, let’s simply have this idea refreshed in our minds. Let’s not let anything replace it. This congregation, like the audience who first heard Jesus, are called to be learners.
Which brings us to our next point, which regards the topic of this great sermon.
III. The topic
Now, I have already mentioned that the overarching theme of this message has to do with the kingdom of God and what it means to be a participant in this kingdom. The whole of the message has to do with kingdom life or kingdom living.
As we walk through this famous sermon we are going to see how that kingdom life is expressed. You might say that the sermon on the mount will teach us the basic ethics for kingdom people. It is a course on how God wants us to live and act as his people.
And you should recognize that these principles are going to be a lot different from the world’s principles. This is how you ought to live as a member of God’s kingdom. Yet we live in the midst of a world that is founded on different principles, promoting different goals, and is essentially a radically different kingdom.
You have to recognize that the kingdom of this world is opposed to the kingdom of God. The things that the world teaches us is radically different from the kind of things that Christ teaches.
For instance, in the next few weeks, we are going to learn about the Beatitudes. We are going to learn about what it means to be “blessed.” And you are going to find that the whole notion of blessing and being blessed is radically different than what you may have been taught by the world. The world wants to say that the blessed person is an aggressive, self asserting person. He’s blessed who is the one who has money and an increasing amount of wealth and power.
But you’re going to find that this isn’t even close to the kind of person that Jesus describes. A blessed person is meek. A blessed person is one who has secured immaterial things. A blessed person is one who may not have a lot of comforts in life. That’s radically different from the American Dream, isn’t it?
Furthermore, we are going to study the ethics of the kingdom. Jesus is going to tell us how the people of His kingdom ought to live. He’s going to talk about anger and marriage and oath taking. He’s going to talk about your life goals (i.e. seeking first the kingdom as opposed to seeking clothes and food and other things we call “necessitates.”). All of this is going to be radically different from what the world teaches us.
Think about the people of Jesus’ time. They probably were not that much different than us. They were the ones who had been given the law of Moses, but they had learned more about the world’s ways than about the kingdom Moses spoke about. They had come to believe that breaking an oath was an okay thing to do. They basically said that you can go into a promise knowing you could get out of it, if you just worded it correctly.
They also thought that certain forms of anger were okay. You can call a person a name, but as long as you didn’t harm them or outright kill them, that was fine. They would say that there’s nothing wrong with lust. Looking at a man or a woman with self indulgent sexual desire wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Now, if you would go further than that, if you would actually commit adultery, that would be a sin in their view.
But Jesus comes along and says, “You all have completely misunderstood what Moses was teaching. The law of the kingdom means living a pure and holy life. And that purity must pervade your whole being, down to the inner life of a man.”
What Jesus does is clarify the kingdom life. And he shows us that His kingdom has certain set of standards. And we are called to live by that standard and not the standards of the world around us.
Conclusion:
Jesus sets before us the topic of Kingdom life. And it promises to be a great study. You might even say that the greatest speaker, has delivered a message on the greatest possible topic. And we who are disciples of Christ have the greatest opportunity (maybe even the greatest responsibility) to listen to him and learn from him.
Over the course of the next several months, may the Lord grant us to be the very best disciples we can be.