More than a Teacher
How many sermons have you heard in your lifetime? If you’ve been going to church for 40 years, you’ve listened to at least 2,000. Can you remember one of them? I bet you can’t even remember one main point from last week’s sermon! A passage that blows me away in the Bible is from the last verse of the gospel of John. It says, “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” This blows me away, 1) because I want to know what those things are! 2) It blows me away because it makes me appreciate the Word that God has given us. He gave us exactly what He wanted us to have from Jesus’ ministry. Of the daily teachings and sermons Jesus gave, what is called the Sermon on the Mount is the longest we have recorded. And I believe God did that on purpose. For us.
We’re starting a new series today that will transform how we understand what it means to follow Jesus. Over the next several months, we’re going to walk through the most famous sermon ever preached…the Sermon on the Mount. But before we dive into the Beatitudes and all the teachings that follow, we need to understand something essential. We need to see who has the authority to make these demands in the first place.
Most people today think of Jesus as a first-century life coach who gave us some really good moral advice. “Love your enemies.” “Turn the other cheek.” “Judge not lest you be judged.” We’ve turned Jesus into inspirational wall art…something you can go buy 50% off at Hobby Lobby. Did He say “Eat. Pray. Love.” in the Sermon on the Mount? (just kidding…) But this view completely misses who Jesus actually is and what He’s actually doing in this sermon.
The Sermon on the Mount isn’t Jesus’ attempt to become the world’s greatest moral philosopher. As John Stott said, the Sermon on the Mount is “the nearest thing to a manifesto that he ever uttered, for it is his own description of what he wanted his followers to be and to do.”[1] This is the King’s description of kingdom living. One commentator describes it as,
“a messianic manifesto, setting out the unique demands and revolutionary insights of one who claims an absolute authority over other people and whose word, like the word of God, will determine their destiny. No wonder the crowds were astonished, not only by the teaching but even more by the teacher.”[2]
Let’s look at these opening verses because they set up everything that follows. Before Jesus tells us how to live, we need to see who has the authority to make such demands in the first place.
Not everyone is ready to hear what Jesus has to say.
Look at the beginning of verse 1: “Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain...”
This detail is absolutely crucial for understanding everything that follows. The phrase “seeing the crowds” tells us Jesus has just finished healing people and preaching about the kingdom of heaven. Massive crowds are following Him from everywhere, “from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan” (Matthew 4:25). The Decapolis was a region of ten Greek cities representing Gentile territory, while the other regions represented the Jewish heartland. People from across ethnic, religious, and geographical boundaries were drawn to Jesus, large crowds of all kinds of people.
This was Jesus’ first year of ministry, and things were starting to boom! Any good church growth consultant would tell Him, “This is your moment! Preach to the masses! Draw the crowd!” (After all, having big crowds means you have a healthy church…right?...) But what does Jesus do? The text says “he went up on the mountain.” He leaves the crowd and goes up into the hill country. Why? Because Jesus knows something we often forget: not everyone is ready to hear what He has to say. What He says is counter cultural. Those who are steeped in the culture don’t want to bow their knee to the Christ. And in order to live as Jesus describes in the Sermon on the Mount, it requires bending your knee to Christ. It requires Him being your Lord.
Look at the end of verse 1: “when he sat down, his disciples came to him.” As Matthew makes clear, one commentator says, “The audience of the discourse is specified not as the crowds but as ‘his disciples.’”[3] The crowds came for the miracles, the healing, the spectacle. They wanted their lives improved, not transformed. They wanted Jesus to fix their problems, not become their Lord.
But the Sermon on the Mount isn’t about life improvement. It’s about life transformation. It’s about true discipleship. An often-overlooked commentary on the Sermon on the Mount comes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It’s overlooked as a commentary because it is a section of his classic book “The Cost of Discipleship.” In it, he tells us who the audience is: “The Sermon on the Mount is addressed to those who have already responded to the call of Jesus.”[4] This isn’t a general self-help talk for anyone who wants to be a better person. These are marching orders for those who have surrendered their lives to follow Christ. The crowds stayed at a distance, but the disciples came close.
Think about these disciples. These weren’t people who just wanted to learn from Jesus. They were people who had left everything to be with Jesus. Peter and Andrew were running a successful fishing business. When Jesus called them, “immediately they left their nets and followed him” (Matthew 4:20). James and John were in the family business with their father. When Jesus called, they “immediately left the boat and their father and followed him” (Matthew 4:22). Matthew was a tax collector…one of the most lucrative jobs in the Roman system. When Jesus said “Follow me,” Matthew “rose and followed him” (Matthew 9:9).
These men didn’t just add Jesus to their already full lives. They abandoned everything that had previously defined them. As Bonhoeffer famously wrote in “The Cost of Discipleship,” “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”[5] This isn’t about adding Jesus to your life. This is about surrendering your life entirely to Jesus.
This is where our modern Christianity has gone so wrong. We’ve turned following Jesus into a consumer choice rather than a life-altering surrender. We ask, “What can Jesus do for me?” instead of “What does Jesus want from me?” As we begin this series, we all need to consider this question: Are you in the crowd, or are you His disciple? Because the Sermon on the Mount will make absolutely no sense unless you’ve first answered the question of who Jesus is and whether you’re willing to truly follow Him wherever He leads.
Jesus has absolute authority.
Look at this phrase in verse 1: “when he sat down” and then verse 2: “he opened his mouth and taught them.”
Here’s something most of us miss because we don’t understand first-century Jewish culture. In Jesus’ culture, “sitting was the posture for authoritative teaching.”[6] Another commentator explains that this “casts him in the role of a rabbinic teacher; sitting was the posture for authoritative teaching.”[7] In Jewish culture, teachers sat while students stood or sat at their feet. When Jesus sat down, He was taking the formal position of a rabbi about to give important instruction. This was an official teaching session. As D.A. Carson says, “In his day, this was the traditional position for a teacher in a synagogue or school.”[8]
But here’s what makes this interesting: Jesus was taking the authoritative teaching position, but He had no formal rabbinic credentials. Most rabbis would quote other authorities: “Rabbi So-and-so says this.” They derived their authority from the chain of tradition. But Jesus quotes no one. He simply says, “I say to you.” Jesus spoke with absolute authority.
When it says “he opened his mouth and taught them” in verse 2, it reinforces this authority. Throughout this sermon, Jesus will speak and teach with authority that goes far beyond that of a typical rabbi. He will say things like, “You have heard it said... but I say to you.” Just “a good teacher” doesn’t do that. C.S. Lewis famously addressed this in Mere Christianity in what is known as his trilemma:
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.”
Jesus is either a liar, lunatic, or Lord. You can’t have Jesus as just a moral teacher because moral teachers don’t claim the authority that Jesus claims. Great moral teachers point to principles, traditions, philosophies. But Jesus points to Himself. He doesn’t just teach the way. He claims to be the way. He doesn’t just explain truth. He claims to be the truth. When the crowds hear this sermon, at the end Matthew tells us they’re “astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matthew 7:28-29). One area we see this is in parallels with Moses.
Jesus is the new Moses giving the new law.
There are blatant parallels here with Jesus and Moses. Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience, so this is extra clear. About the authority of Jesus and the bold statements He made, six times Jesus said He’ll take the Law of Moses, the Law that Jews believed came directly from God, and He’ll say, “That’s not enough. I’m giving you something better.”[9] What kind of person has the authority to revise the commands of God? Only God Himself. If I came up here and said, “I know Jesus says this…but I say this,” you would scream “Heresy!”...or at least you should.
Look also in verse 1: Jesus specifically “went up on the mountain.” This mountain setting carries deep biblical significance. Many commentators have noted the blatant parallel between Jesus teaching on a mountain and Moses receiving the Law on Mount Sinai. One says, “It seems likely that he deliberately went up on a mountainside to teach, in order to draw a parallel between Moses who received the law at Mount Sinai and himself.”[10]
Just as Moses went up a mountain to receive God’s law for Israel, Jesus goes up a mountain to give God’s law for the new covenant community. But there are very crucial distinctions. While Moses “gave them the law,” Jesus “fulfills” it (Matthew 5:17). The mountain wasn’t just a convenient place to teach. It was a deliberate theological statement about who Jesus is and what He’s doing. He has not come to make the law harder, as it could seem when reading His sermon. He came to fulfill the law and to show what living looks like in the Kingdom of God.
Jesus describes what life looks like in God’s kingdom.
When verse 2 tells us that Jesus “taught them,” we need to understand what kind of teaching this is. He’s describing what life looks like in God’s kingdom. D.A. Carson says, “it is the kingdom of heaven, then, that is the great theme of the Sermon on the Mount.”[11] But we need to understand what kingdom means. In the Bible, the idea of kingdom in both the Old and New Testaments is less about a place and more about God’s reign. God’s kingdom is wherever God rules and reigns. The kingdom Jesus describes in His teaching has requirements to get in. “Not everyone enters the kingdom of heaven, but only those who are poor in spirit (5:3), obedient (7:21), and surpassingly righteous (5:20).”[12]
The kingdom isn’t just about receiving eternal life. It’s about acknowledging Jesus as King and living under His authority. This is why mere profession of faith without obedience is not real faith (James 2:26). At its core, the teaching that flows from Jesus’ mouth presents a radical alternative to every culture. As one scholar emphasizes, “the key text of the Sermon on the Mount is 6:8: ‘Do not be like them.’”[13] Jesus’ followers are called to “a radically new lifestyle, in conscious distinction from the norms of the rest of society.”[14]
When Jesus opened His mouth to teach His disciples on that mountain, He was painting a picture of an entirely different way of living. That seems daunting, though. Actually, it seems impossible to live out. That’s the point. It is impossible. Apart from God’s grace.
Kingdom standards are only possible through transforming grace.
Many people have “declared the standards of the Sermon on the Mount to be unattainable,”[15] pointing to the difficulty of being meek, avoiding lustful thoughts, loving enemies, or being as perfect as God is. This misses the point, though. The standards are, as John Stott rightfully says, “attainable all right, but only by those who have experienced the new birth which Jesus told Nicodemus was the essential condition of seeing and entering God’s kingdom.”[16]
Think about it again that Jesus taught “his disciples,” those who had already responded to His call. Stott further tells us, “Jesus spoke the Sermon to those who were already his disciples and therefore also the citizens of God’s kingdom and the children of God’s family. The high standards he set are only appropriate to them.”[17]
The Sermon on the Mount isn’t a ladder we climb to reach God, but a description of the life that flows from having already been transformed by God’s grace. Stott says, “We do not, indeed could not, achieve this privileged status by meeting Christ’s standards. No: it is by meeting his standards, or at least approximating to them, that we give evidence of what God’s free grace and gift have enabled us to be.”[18]
As Bonhoeffer reminds us, “The Sermon on the Mount is not a law for the world, but a portrait of life in the kingdom for those who follow Jesus.”[19] And the grace that it takes to live out the life of the kingdom is, as Bonhoeffer puts it, “costly.” It cost Jesus His life on the cross. And Jesus calls us to take up our cross and follow Him (Matt 16:24; Lk 14:27).
The great preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones puts it this way:
“Here is the life to which we are called, and I maintain again that if only every Christian in the Church today were living the Sermon on the Mount, the great revival for which we are praying and longing would already have started. Amazing and astounding things would happen; the world would be shocked, and men and women would be drawn and attracted to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”[20]
Living the Sermon on the Mount means, fundamentally, “bowing to the authority of Jesus. It means coming to him, taking his yoke, and learning from him.”[21] The mountain is steep. The cost is high. But Jesus is worth it all.
[1] John Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1978), 1.
[2] R.T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 2007), 156.
[3] France, The Gospel of Matthew, 156.
[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Macmillan, 1979), 117.
[5] Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 7
[6] France, The Gospel of Matthew, 158.
[7] Leon Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1992), 94.
[8] D.A. Carson, The Sermon on the Mount: An Evangelical Exposition of Matthew 5-7 (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1978), 15.
[9] These instances are: (1) Murder (Matt. 5:21–26; Ex. 20:13, Deut. 5:17): Beyond not killing, avoid anger and reconcile. (2) Adultery (Matt. 5:27–30; Ex. 20:14, Deut. 5:18): Beyond physical acts, do not lust. (3) Divorce (Matt. 5:31–32; Deut. 24:1–4): Beyond legal divorce, preserve marriage except for sexual immorality. (4) Oaths (Matt. 5:33–37; Lev. 19:12, Deut. 23:21–23): Beyond keeping oaths, speak truthfully without swearing. (5) Retaliation (Matt. 5:38–42; Ex. 21:24, Lev. 24:20, Deut. 19:21): Beyond “an eye for an eye,” do not resist evil but turn the other cheek. (6) Love for Enemies (Matt. 5:43–48; Lev. 19:18): Beyond loving neighbors, love and pray for enemies.
[10] Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew, 93.
[11] Carson, The Sermon on the Mount, 15.
[12] Carson, The Sermon on the Mount, 12.
[13] Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew, 93.
[14] France, The Gospel of Matthew, 153.
[15] Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, 12.
[16] Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, 14.
[17] Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, 14.
[18] Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, 14.
[19] Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 212.
[20] D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1959), 31.
[21] Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Sermon on the Mount: Kingdom Life in a Fallen World (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1987), 5.
