Introduction: When I was a new military chaplain and still finding my niche of ministering to soldiers and their families, I was at a chaplain’s training event one time and I heard a fellow chaplain address us in the audience by saying he was going to teach on “the greatest sermon ever ignored.” That phrase arrested me. What could he have possibly been referencing, I asked myself. Turns out he was referencing Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. It is, to be sure, one of the most-cited, quoted, more often misquoted, and decontextualized series of words in the world. The Sermon on the Mount could arguably be the most foundational piece of writing the world has ever been given. The words are that powerful, that enduring, and that transformative. So when the other chaplain began his homily, and I had my copy of Scripture open to Matthew 5-7, I was intrigued by what he was going to say.

The words of that chaplain I have long forgotten but the words of the Sermon on the Mount have only grown in their influence. Several observations from just a surface level reading of the text follow in this post. After those observations in forthcoming posts, I offer some more thoughful observations. After those, I will ask some questions on which believers might ponder. And finally, I invite skeptics and non-believers to interact with some questions.

Surface Level Observations:

1. I’m always struck by how Matthew portrays the Lord Jesus at the beginning: “Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him” (Mt 5:1, ESV). What strikes me is that Jesus came to sinners. He saw the crowds. His mission was the rescuing of sinners. So, his vision, his outlook, his mission was to bear witness to the truth about all things as the Word (logos) incarnate. And Matthew calls our attention to the fact that Jesus himself sat down and taught.
2. Secondly, we see in verses 2-11, nine times Jesus teaches upon blessing. That is, what does it mean to be blessed, truly blessed? Does it hinge upon social status, upon wealth, upon health, upon power? Was Jesus peddling the health and wealth prosperity false gospels in the vein of Smilin’ Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, and the Trinity Broadcasting Network shills? No. The exact opposite. Jesus’ teaching hinged on spiritual forces at work in the world. Jesus went to the heart of the issue: what we delight in. It had, in short, to do with who and what we worship. Where is our heart of hearts? To use the language of Jonathan Edwards, where are our affections?

Idolatry is both the most obvious and most subtle of realities. It is not hard to see what we sinners idolize. We spend our time and resources pursuing almost everything except truth and redemption. I remember listening to George Carlin’s piercing satire of “more stuff” in his comedy. We get “more stuff” so that we can be happy and ‘blessed’ but then we need more space for “more stuff.” He gave the wonderful illustration of passing an RV on the highway, pulling a car behind the RV, and on both the RV and the car was, you guessed it, “more stuff.” We have to be careful here and not push the logic too far, of course. Jesus does not command his people to abandon the world or all of its offerings and seal themselves off from the world, but rather to go to the world with truth. Why? In order that some will hear and be saved.

The blessing comes not by giving in to the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life (1 Jn 2:16) but by delighting in the ways of God (Ps 1). David pictures the blessing of God this way in poetry:

He is like a tree/planted by streams of water/that yields its fruit in its season,/and its leaf does not wither./In all that he does, he prospers./The wicked are not so,/but are like chaff that the wind drives away (Ps 1:3-4, ESV).

And in the Mt 5:2-12, the question of how blessing comes and where it is found is psychological depth unlike anything you’ll find in Jung, Freud, or Erikson. Jesus, you see, got to the core of humanity by turning our gaze right back upon the fountainhead of where we will look for answers. Will we replay Genesis 3 all over again by believing the serpent? Will we demand to be as gods and purport to know best, or will we live by the words of God and receive ultimate benediction?

See, Matthew 4 comes before Matthew 5 for a reason–namely, to show us that Jesus succeeds where we fail. He endured the temptations of Satan and passed the many tests. We don’t. Adam didn’t, Eve didn’t. But Jesus did. Ergo, in order to be salt and light to the world, we must be “in Christ.”

Encouragement: Will we ever live up to the standards of the Sermon on the Mount in this life? No. Jesus was not a progressive. He was quite aware of human depravity. The Tower of Babel was an object lesson and historical reality that makes that quite clear. But just when you slow down and focus on the profundity of what God was and is doing in the person and work of Christ, you see that Christ came to us sinners. He taught them and us. He sat among sinners. He loved them. He satisfied the obedience that God commands for holiness. And we have his words of how blessing and blessedness come to all who are in Christ through the power of the gospel. It’s God’s work on behalf of sinners. Its genesis and apotheosis are God, and from God flow rivers of benediction.