Sermon on the Mount

If I were to go through and summarize the contents of the Sermon on the Mount, which covers 3 chapters in Matthew, I might say something like this:
- Understand true blessing - the Beatitudes
- Make an impact - Salt and Light
- Be holy - Understanding the purpose of the Law
- Adjust your boundaries - Shifting what you thought was right and wrong to a deeper level
- Live covenant - Lord’s Prayer, treasures in Heaven
- Lead with love - Judging others, Golden Rule
- Trust God - Trees and fruit, knowing God, Building upon Jesus

There are VOLUMES written on this one sermon. The smartest people in Christian history have written and taught on it. I studied this sermon extensively in the 7 years I spent in theological education.

It’s a lot to live up to, if you really think about it.

Understanding true blessing
Is it understanding how I can be blessed?
How to do x, y, and z to get the blessing?

Making an impact, salt and light
Be different? Be a zebra in a world full of donkeys?

Being holy
Is it figuring out how to change my behavior enough to be good?

Adjusting boundaries
Is it moving the line on what is right and wrong?

Living covenant
Am I living conditionally or unconditionally with God?
Am I still all in with Jesus when things go bad?
Am I threatening the covenant with how I flirt with sin?

Leading with love
Am I judging others? Do I really love them? Do they love me?

Trusting God
Do I really trust God or do I trust my ability to fix my issues?
Am I constantly anxious and worried or is my faith really in him?

My whole life I saw the Sermon on the Mount as a list of behavioral changes I needed to make in order to live the Christian life. Be meek, inherit the earth. Be pure, see God. Be thirsty for righteousness, be satisfied. Be a peacemaker, be a son of God.

And then there were the other teachings in the sermon like;
Be salt and light, don’t be angry, don’t lust, don’t retaliate, love your enemy, give to the needy, fast and pray, and here’s how to pray, don’t be anxious, here’s the golden rule, trees and fruits. All of it was centered around my behavior.

Many people see Christianity as just this: a religion of behavior modification.

And as Jesus gets to the end of the sermon in Matthew 7:21-23, we read:
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

Wait a minute…
I did the things you said do…Look at my record. Prophesy, casting out demons, mighty works…I went to church, I joined a DGroup, I served in Kids Ministry...I went to Meetups, and made dinner for that lady who had surgery...I modified my behavior, Jesus…

What is this saying?
This entire Christian life, has to be about more than behavior modification.
We see this in the Sermon on the Mount.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German pastor and martyr, said this of the Sermon on the Mount:
“Humanly speaking, it is possible to understand the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways. But Jesus knows only one possibility: simple surrender and obedience - not interpreting or applying it, but doing and obeying it. That is the only way to hear his words. He does not mean for us to discuss it as an ideal. He really means for us to get on with it.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes, American Jurist said:
“Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer.”

Both seem to imply that this sermon is all about doing what Jesus said, not just modifying our actions.

It would be easy to see the Sermon on the Mount as like the New Testament version of the Old Testament Ten Commandments in Exodus 20.
Here are some:
- You shall have no other God's before me.
- Remember the Sabbath day and keep it Holy.
- Honor your father and mother.
- Thou shalt not murder.
- Thou shalt not commit adultery.
- Thou shalt not steal, etc.

The Sermon on the Mount carries the same sort of vibe to it:
- Do this and you are blessed
- Be salt and light
- Don’t be angry or lustful
- Don’t get divorced or take oaths
- Don’t retaliate, love people instead
- Give to the needy
- Pray and fast like this
- Don’t store treasures on earth
- Don’t worry
- Don’t judge
- Ask God for what you need
- Do unto others
- Watch out for bad trees
- Know God
- Build your house on the rock
- Do these things and you’re good bro.

That last part isn’t in there. Mainly because “Just do this and you’re good” isn’t how Christianity works.

If you think Christianity is about changing your behavior, making you a good girl or boy, or winning approval from God for your good deeds, you are missing the entire point. This is why obeying God when you haven’t experienced his love is impossible. “If you love me, obey my commands.” Love is always first.

Author Oswald Chambers
“If Jesus is a teacher only, then all He can do is to tantalize us by erecting a standard we cannot come anywhere near. But if by being born again from above we know Him first as Savior, we know that He did not come to teach us only. He came to make us what He teaches we should be. The Sermon on the Mount is not a set of principles to be obeyed apart from identification with Jesus Christ. The Sermon on the Mount is a statement of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is getting his way with us.”

When it comes to the Sermon on the Mount, it was such a massive deal and so important. It is easily one of the 5 moments that changed everything. Why?

Because the sermon was more than behavior modification.
It was about being alive.

We need to unpack that a little.

1. Jesus is life.
John 14:6
I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Life here is zoe, it means:
all life throughout the universe from which life is derived. It always and only comes from and is sustained by God's self-existent life

Jesus is not just alive, he’s not just the life, but he is the source of it, the blueprint of it, the example of it, the definition of it.

There is no life outside of Jesus Christ. Prove it. Ok.

Pre-Jesus
Ephesians 2:1-3
1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

If you keep reading you’ll see verse 4-5, But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

Before you say yes to Jesus - or if you never say yes to Jesus - you are dead. Now, you might argue that you are not dead because of a pulse, breath, etc. That is because you make the mistake of thinking you are a body with a spirit rather than a spirit with a body.

1 Corinthians 15:50
I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

1 Corinthians 6:17
But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.

So before Jesus, you are dead, even if your physical body is alive.

For clarity’s sake:
If you have not confessed Jesus Christ as Lord and received him as your Lord and Savior, which includes actively engaging in a relationship with him, you are dead.

Post-Jesus
Colossians 3:1-17
1 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. (Sermon on the Mount stuff) 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming. 7 In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. (more Sermon on the Mount stuff) 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices (not just behavior but the root of it) 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. 11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
12 Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. (more Sermon on the Mount stuff) 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, (more Sermon on the Mount stuff) to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Christ, WHO IS YOUR LIFE…
Jesus isn’t just the life. Jesus isn’t just life. He is YOUR LIFE.

Fine, what does this have to do with the Sermon on the Mount?

2. The Sermon explained what being alive actually is.
Now that you see Jesus is life, you can see the truth about the Sermon on the Mount. It wasn’t a new set of commandments to match the Old Testament. It wasn’t a series of rules so you could be good.

Jesus was not teaching us how to live. He was teaching us how to be alive.

What does it mean to be alive?
Probably easier to define what it means to be dead. Death is the termination of life. Zero life = death.

That is easy to see in terms of a physical body, but death in God’s eyes has nothing to do with the physical body. (Remember, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. 2 Corinthians 5:8)

Romans 6:23
The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.

Sin is the thing that causes death, and when sin and the flesh engage, it creates death that is deeper than the physical. The death you experience from sin is exponentially more about your spirit than your physical body. Exponentially more detrimental, too.

Matthew 10:28
And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Back to deeper than physical…
Genesis 2:16-17
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Adam and Eve ate and they didn’t physically die. So then what happened?
They were separated.

What does sin do? Sin separates.
This is what actually caused Jesus to sweat drops of blood before the crucifixion. He’d never known separation from the father. ALL we’ve known until we say yes to Jesus is separation from the Father. This is one reason why embracing the Kingdom is so hard. It is something we have to learn, but to learn it, we have to overcome our nature and what we’ve always known. Satan uses sin to separate us so we’ll never experience what Jesus has always known.

Isaiah 59:1-3
1 Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. 2 But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. 3 For your hands are stained with blood, your fingers with guilt. Your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue mutters wicked things.

So as you sin, that sin separates you from God resulting in death, and not just with a tangible body, but with your spirit as well. Separation from God must be spiritual since God is a spirit and we worship through spirit and truth.

So we can define death as separation from God, but also, it is the lack of life from God.

Now we have death’s definition, how do we define life?
Active relational fellowship with the Father and Son through the Holy Spirit.

Life is an active relationship with God where there is nothing separating you from God, nothing hindering your relationship with him. You are engaging daily in his presence and actively eliminating anything that would create separation again. You are denying the flesh and being led by the Spirit, producing the fruit of the Spirit.

THIS is what being alive really is.
It isn’t having money or fame, a big house or fancy car. It isn’t even having a nice family and cute dog. Life is having Jesus.

John 6:35
I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Philippians 1:21
…to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

This is not only the message of Jesus’ ministry. It was the primary message of the Sermon on the Mount.

You may have thought a message on the Sermon on the Mount would be me going down the list of items mentioned giving you a breakdown of the teaching, explaining each piece, and giving you a nice little quip on how to apply it. You can read the Sermon for yourself in Matthew 5-7 and do that. It is not a complex teaching.

BUT what I am trying to show you today goes beyond dealing with your behavior so you can be a better person. I want you to see what it really means to be alive and then embrace that life. I believe this is what Jesus was after on the side of that mountain 200 years ago, too.

But if you are going to come alive, you have to recognize two major facets of his sermon.

3. The Sermon was about culture shifts and absolute truth
Let’s start with truth. What is absolute truth?
Something that's always valid, regardless of parameters or context.

I want to challenge everything you have learned about God so you can determine whether you are really alive or not. That is exactly what Jesus was doing through this message.

Look at the content:
Three sections:
Beatitudes, Antitheses (identifying direct opposites), and Acts of Piety
Topics including: Anger, Lust, Divorce, Oaths, Fasting, judging others, the Golden Rule

A question you have to ask is why these topics?
Of everything Jesus could have taught on in the biggest sermon in his life, he chose “don’t get divorced” and “turn the other cheek.” Why?

We often try to take the text of the Bible and adapt it to our context, but you have to be careful because that can make you lose some of the power of the verses.

Jesus was talking to people who were ruled by Rome governmentally and the Jewish religious leaders spiritually. Jesus had never-ending critiques of the Jewish leaders, especially the Pharisees (name literally means 'the separate ones,’ regarding themselves as morally superior to many in society). They loved to be respected and admired, given important seats, and called Rabbi. Jesus warned people that although the Pharisees preach God’s Law, they do not practice it. Jesus criticized how the scribes and Pharisees loved to make a show of how religious they were, with extra wide phylacteries (parchment with written prayers in boxes that they would wear) and extra long tassels on their prayer shawls. Jesus saw past this show to the real person - and in these Jewish leaders he saw pride, a self-righteous attitude, and no desire to change.

Israel had gotten to a place where there was plenty of religion, but little relationship. He was so flustered he called them things like “dirty cups,” and “white-washed tombs” signifying that they looked the part but were dead, having no relationship with God.

They knew every jot and tittle of the Old Testament but couldn’t recognize the fulfillment of it standing before them.

The Sermon on the Mount was less about the actual talking points we see in the text and exponentially more about the overarching absolute truth about what the Kingdom really was, and how a culture shift had to take place to see the Kingdom come.

Examples like the last Beatitude:
Matthew 5:11-12
11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

We look at that now and just think our faith might cause others to dox us, etc. “Revile,” “persecute,” and “speak all evil against you” in verse 11, they describe “the separation of a man from his basic social group through the control mechanism of banning or expulsion”

If you read the Law you’ll see many violations that would cause you to be unclean, and the penalty was to be sent outside of the camp for a time.
This created a hyper communal mindset in the people, causing them to aggressively shun those outside the camp.

Gary Yamasaki
And what is behind this shunning? A son choosing loyalty to Jesus over loyalty to his own father–a grievous honor challenge–and the father shunning his son as a riposte to the challenge, an act that would force the son to leave the family with absolutely nothing, rendering him totally without status, both economically and socially, causing him to plummet down on the honor scale. To those who have suffered such a fate because they have chosen to follow Jesus, he is here providing them with a grant of honor from God.

Divorce and oaths
Perhaps the point was to see the importance of covenant with God and how the religious leaders had broken that covenant, divorcing God and making an oath with their own lusts and passions.

Lusts and anger
The Kingdom demands you deny your flesh and be led by the Spirit, not give into it. The religious leaders were being driven by their flesh and acting as if they were ultra spiritual.

Loving enemies
If there is one thing a first century Jew hated it was a first century Roman. A close second was a Samaritan. A third a tax collector.
But Jesus said love them all. This was culture smashing.

The Lord’s Prayer
This prayer was never a prescription that had to be prayed exactly but an example of what a right relationship and prayer life looks like.
Worship, reverence, holy fear, honoring God, asking forgiveness, seeking his guidance, trusting him for provision.

The Sermon on the Mount is not about behavior and works, but rather, it is about who God really is and how we can come alive by embracing who God really is.

Stanley Hauerwas
Cheek-turning is not advocated as what works (it usually does not), but advocated because this is the way God is - God is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. This is not a stratagem for getting what we want but the only manner of life available, now that, in Jesus, we have seen what God wants. We seek reconciliation with the neighbor, not because we feel so much better afterward, but because reconciliation is what God is doing in the world through Christ.

Jesus was showing them, and us today, this is what the Kingdom really looks like.

The moment today is the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus’ sermon has incredible teaching. Following these teachings will definitely make a difference in your behavior. But until you allow the Holy Spirit to change your heart, the sermon will only be superficial.

Not worrying indicates you trust God. Not hating indicates you love people. Storing treasures in heaven indicates you get the Kingdom.

Jesus wants you to see the point of the sermon, the big picture, the overarching theme.

It isn’t about changing your behavior. It is about changing your heart.
It isn’t about rules and regulations. It is about knowing and understanding God.
It isn’t about bullet points. It is about absolute truth and culture shifts.
It is the blueprint of what being alive looks like.

So what do you do with this today?

Maybe you realize today that you’ve tried to modify your behavior but you haven’t embraced the absolute truth of the Kingdom.
- You’ve tried to make some behavior changes but nothing sticks.
- You’ve been half in, half out with Jesus, trying to please Jesus and the culture at the same time.
- You’re realizing even now that you have to make a decision to go all in with Jesus.
- Confess him as Lord and receive him as your savior.

Maybe you need to follow through with some of the things the Sermon on the Mount is teaching.
- You’ve been anxious, you’ve hated, you’ve been greedy, you haven’t been praying.
- You’ve been unmerciful or impure, you’ve lusted, gotten angry, you’ve retaliated.
- Confess it and receive his forgiveness

Maybe you thought you were living, but you’ve realized today that there is a whole other level that you’ve been missing.
- What you really want and need in this moment isn’t just to live, but to be alive.
- That is a work of the Holy Spirit in you.
- It will be different for all of you.

“Jesus fill me with your life right now.”

Let’s pray.

What is the Holy Spirit saying to you through this message?

How does he want you to respond?