The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) is probably the most famous teaching of Jesus. Recently it is something that has been coming up over and over again in things I am studying or listening to. It started with a book by Skye Jethani called What if Jesus Was Serious. Then the VOX Podcast started a series walking through the Sermon on the Mount. Finally yesterday, TobyMac released a song that was inspired by the Sermon on the Mount.
Since it seems to be a theme, I decided to look into some other resources to study. I love BibleProject, so I did a search for resources by them and stumbled upon a sermon by Tim Mackie on the Sermon on the Mount. In it he shared a quote by an orthodox Jewish rabbi (He didn’t say the name of the rabbi and no matter what I tried to search on Google I could not find it).
“The history of Christianity is a history of Christians trying to evade the sermon on the mount and avoid living according to its plain meaning.”
Orthodox Jewish rabbi
I think of how many times I have read the Sermon on the Mount, or heard sermons based on passages from it, and that quote hit a little too close to home. Jesus doesn’t pull any punches in the Sermon on the Mount, yet quite often I don’t take what He said seriously. In What if Jesus Was Serious, Skye Jethani says, “Very often, what gets Christians into trouble is not holding to God’s commands, but rather stridently holding to the assumptions we’ve inferred from God’s commands.” TobyMac said his song “I’m Sorry” was inspired because “The words of Jesus from Matthew 5, 6, and 7 struck me as if I had never read them before… I realized just how far we have strayed from what Jesus is asking of us.”
Jesus challenged almost everything about the society He lived in but did it in such a loving way that we are still seeing the impact. As Christians, that has to be our model if we want to see lasting change. Rather than try to give you my take on the Sermon on the Mount, I am going to point you to the resources I have been using and encourage you to take a deep dive into it yourself.
You can get What if Jesus Was Serious by Skye Jethani HERE.
“God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him,[a]
for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.
4 God blesses those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
5 God blesses those who are humble,
for they will inherit the whole earth.
6 God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice,[b]
for they will be satisfied.
7 God blesses those who are merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
8 God blesses those whose hearts are pure,
for they will see God.
9 God blesses those who work for peace,
for they will be called the children of God.
10 God blesses those who are persecuted for doing right,
for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.
11 “God blesses you when people mock you and persecute you and lie about you and say all sorts of evil things against you because you are my followers.
Matthew 5:3-11 – Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
until next time…