The Sermon on the Mount
The sermon on the mount is the great manifesto of the kingdom of God. It was verbalized by Jesus at the beginning of his ministry to correct the prevailing misconceptions regarding the Messiah’s mission. In many ways Jesus used this sermon to set the tone for his ministry and to give both his disciples and the people a context within which they could engage with the new kingdom of spiritual regeneration Jesus had come to set up.
The sermon on the mount took place after Jesus had given his disciples and much of the crowd, enough examples of his power and authority to create an air of expectation. They were all waiting for a grand announcement regarding his mission and kingdom. They were expecting him to renounce Rome and perhaps throw down the gauntlet before the arrogance of the Caesars.
For so long Israel had been chafing against the restraint of a foreign power, grappling with the cognitive dissonance created between the twin realities of being the chosen people of God and yet being subjugated to a heathen power. All their hopes as a nation were centered around a temporal Messiah who would come and set the world to rights. They thought Jesus was that man and in so many ways He was, just not the way they thought He should be.
When Jesus led the way up the hillside above the Lake of Galilee there was a palpable sense of hope and excitement. Everyone listened with bated breath, praying that their fondest hopes were about to come to fruition and yet, when Jesus opened his mouth the words that spilled out were so far from what they expected to hear that it brought their day dreaming to a screeching bone rattling halt.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”
Not only was there no proclamation regarding a hostile takeover of the Roman Empire, there was also a shattering of everything that the Jewish leaders of the time were promoting within the religious realm. To the Jewish mindset during the time of Jesus, only healthy, wealthy Jews were considered to be highly favored by God and if you didn’t fall within at least one of those three categories then you weren’t considered to be on God’s radar. There was no room in their religious vernacular for a blessing on the poor, in spirit or otherwise.
Jesus’ hearers were looking at waging a holy war against a tyrannical heathen empire and yet here was Jesus blessing the peacemakers and promising the meek that they would inherit the earth.
Jesus’ hearers were also of the opinion that those who were favored by God were entitled to a measure of spiritual pride and rejoicing in their own goodness and yet here was Jesus talking about poverty of spirit and mourning. It was as though he had come down and detonated a nuclear weapon in their midst. It was mind blowing for so many reasons.
But Jesus took it a step further when he intentionally began to argue in favor of some serious paradigm shifts. After prefacing his arguments with the words “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17) Jesus said “You have hear it said of old “you shall not murder and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment. But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment (Matthew 5:21-22)
Over and over again Jesus went on to repeat this refrain “you have heard it said but I say” By doing this he was opening before them the reality that the law was deeper than what they understood it to be. Establishing the law was so much more than simply following a predetermined set of rules, it was about a total regeneration of their hearts. Something that they could never accomplish on their own. Which is why He had come, not only to pay the penalty for their sins but to save them from their sins as well.
Jesus was also establishing his spiritual authority over the religious leaders of the day and even over the interpretation of the Old Testament scriptures. By saying “you have heard but I say” Jesus was intimating that He was the true interpreter of Scripture.
Jesus led his disciples and the people on a deep dive into what it truly means to be a citizen of God’s Kingdom. He revealed that the Kingdom of God operates on principles that are totally unlike any of the principles that any earthly kingdom operates upon. It is a Kingdom of self sacrifice and humility. A kingdom where a man extends himself on behalf of those who hate him. A kingdom where grasping God’s glory and his righteousness is the paramount goal, overshadowing every other earthly consideration.
It is a kingdom of childlike faith in God, where citizens look to God for the provision of every earthly necessity. Where they trust that the God who clothes the grass and feeds the birds will also feed and clothe them. Being unburdened from the anxiety daily survival, the citizens of God’s kingdom are free to focus on what truly matters; extending the Kingdom of God to the lives of others.
But above all, it is a Kingdom where citizens build their lives upon the word of God. Jesus clearly sets this out in the final segment of the sermon when he tells his audience the parable of the wise man and the foolish man.
It was a great way to end one of the most powerful and cogent presentations of a national constitution in history; because in many ways that is exactly what the sermon on the mount was, a declaration of the constitution of the Kingdom of God.
The backbone of God’s kingdom is His word and those who are truly wise will not just hear what He has to say but they will choose to build their lives on His word. It is this choice alone that is able to act as a safeguard against the inevitable tempests of life.
No human being is exempt from trial or trauma, we all experience it to varying degrees. Jesus ends the sermon on the mount by telling all of us, that the only way to truly wheather these tempests, is to build our lives on the principles and truths of his word. It is this alone that can keep us standing even in the heart of the storm.
