Sermon on the Mount (Part 1)

to allow that next summer session, we will follow this up with looking at chapters 6 and 7, which is the second half of the

Sermon on the Mount. So, this will just be halfway. Attendant to this, I'm in the process of publishing a series of blogs on the church website.

That's going to be a more fuller treatment of the Sermon on the Mount, so this is going to be your overview, and then to fill in the gaps, there's going to be a regular update over on the blog.

So, hopefully those things together will help give you a better appreciation and facility with this very, very important passage of Scripture.

Let's begin with a word of prayer. Father, I thank you so much for this day. I thank you for the opportunity to preach your word today and to teach this sermon that is so special and precious to the church.

I thank you for your grace towards us in Christ. I thank you for the life that you give us by your

Spirit. We thank you for the love that you have poured out in our midst, and we rejoice that we may be called your children to know you as our

Heavenly Father. And we pray all these things, looking to Christ, the one with whom you are well pleased.

Amen. There are a lot of famous passages in the

Bible. The Bible is made up not only of, you know, 66 books, but there are many passages that are famous.

The Sermon on the Mount is just one of them, but there are many others. If you had to pick one off the top of your head, what would be a good name for, what would be a name that would just stand out, a famous passage in the

Bible? Okay, yeah, John 316 is kind of its own little world, right?

Shouldn't be. Read it in context, but it's there, right? Yeah. Okay, what else?

Yes, right? Yeah, so this, so a famous saying, so John 316, famous saying.

So what about, like, actual sections of Scripture that have a famous title for them? The 23rd

Psalm. Oh yeah, that's very, very famous. And you'll find the 23rd

Psalm may be posted someplace that is ultimately a very anti -Christian, a very secular place, but the beauty of the

Psalm is compelling, and so they'll have it posted. Alright, yeah, the

Description of Love, that passage there. See, these are ones I don't even have in my suggestions,

I'll have to add that. This is good. Hmm? Hebrews 11, the, right, yeah, the faith chapter, the great hall of faith, as it sometimes has been described.

So, hmm? Yeah, the prodigal son, the stories of Christ, and so on.

So we can just, by giving a name, giving a title, we can recall a chunk of Scripture kind of all at once, because it's under that heading.

Others that we might think of are the creation account, Genesis 1 and 2, the flood,

Genesis 6 through 9, the plagues of Egypt, Exodus 7 through 12, and of course, not only the 23rd

Psalm, but the 100th Psalm is also, yeah, it's a very, very famous Psalm, the 100th Psalm. The servant songs in Isaiah, Isaiah 40 through 55, it's a pretty big chunk.

And then all of that discourse that you have in three different Gospels.

There's the Passion, all four Gospels, massive sections of the Gospels dedicated to the

Passion of Christ. We have Mars Hill, Paul defending the faith to the

Greek philosophers, very famous. I think the most two famous passages

I would contend in history and literature in the Bible are going to be the Ten Commandments and the

Sermon on the Mount. These are going to be just posted everywhere, often isolated, partially quoted, but very, very famous, often appealed to by those who even who don't submit to Christ necessarily, but will often be appealed to as kind of a basis for ethics, as everyone's trying to find some kind of ground upon which to contend for morality and truth and so on.

They'll pull from whatever seems to work. Interestingly enough, the

Sermon on the Mount has its own famous passages within. Of course, the

Do Not Judge passage is a favorite. It's the New John 316 of our age, but there are other famous passages within the

Sermon on the Mount. So we have things like the Beatitudes, right?

The Beatitudes, the section of Scripture where Jesus is saying, you have heard it said, but I say unto you, that has its own name, the

Antitheses, has a famous name in history. We also have the

Lord's Prayer, right? Or the Model Prayer, perhaps it can be called, and that is a passage within the passage.

And of course, the Golden Rule, right? If someone's going to reach for a snippet of the

Sermon on the Mount and try to employ it as ethics, maybe they would grab that. The Sermon on the

Mount was not always known as the Sermon on the Mount. It, of course, got its title. You'll see that the headings in your

Bible, very often you'll have headings describing what this passage is. Unless you're in the

Psalms and it's about Asaph playing on a particular instrument, that stuff isn't original, right? So the headings are just trying to help you anticipate and organize, but it's not original to the text.

The name Sermon on the Mount officially got its title from Jerome and Augustine, as they used that to describe the area that Jerome was translating or that Augustine was preaching.

But there was actually a commentary on Matthew written by Origen in the 2nd century and where he actually titled this section, he gave it a heading, the

Sermon on the Mount. If you search for resources on the

Sermon on the Mount, you're gonna find a long list of books and other types of material.

There's far too many to catalog. I just looked at one bibliography that was over 130 cited resources.

It's probably one of the most written about sections of Scripture. And I think the reason why is because it's so easily identifiable.

There's a clear beginning and end to this section. It's the longest recorded continuous discourse of Jesus, right?

This is where he, you know, where you have him being recorded speaking from beginning to end, and it's the longest section that he does that in all of Scripture, so it gets a lot of attention.

But also, it's not just the saints, but it's also the sundry that are impressed with the text.

The beauty of the text, the phraseology, the significance of it is very lasting.

So what we want to do is try to make sure that we understand where the Sermon on the Mount fits within the larger context of Matthew, and so we've got to get to know

Matthew. The Gospel of Matthew is an old friend of mine. We met really first of the first time in late 2008.

My mentor, my pastor, Pastor Phil, told me when my first pastor, he said, when you get there after you finish preaching

Philippians, because that was our project that we did before I got there, he said, preach some gospel, preach gospel.

So I picked Matthew. I won't get into too much trouble if I preach Matthew, and boy did

I know nothing, nothing. And so although we became lifelong friends,

I was in there from 2008 to 2012 preaching Matthew, there were many passages that seemed a little remote to me.

It's like I see trees, men like trees walking, kind of didn't really know what I was doing, but somehow made it through, and the people there are very gracious.

There are certain parables that Jesus told about the kingdom, and especially all of that discourse that remained very much out of focus.

But one of my most difficult times, I think, was the Sermon on the Mount. There was so much material written about it, so many diverging opinions, it seemed, especially in some parts of the

Sermon on the Mount, people really went just different directions, and it was hard to understand as a young man, very, very dependent upon the commentators to try to learn what are the safe boundaries.

I just didn't know what to make of that. Well, it's better to read the

Sermon on the Mount not on its own, but to see it in light of the Gospel of Matthew.

The Gospel of Matthew, I think, was written sometime around the mid -50s. There was an early church brother named

Papias, and he said sometime around 100 AD, he said that he thought that Matthew had written his gospel originally in Hebrew for Jewish converts, and that it was quickly translated into Greek for the benefit of all the church.

And others, after him, kind of repeated what Papias said, and said, well, maybe that was the case.

And so, there are other theories about the Gospel of Matthew, which

I won't bore you with, but are entirely wrong. If the way that Papias tells the story,

I like the story. It's like, you know, it's written early, written for people who would have found great significance in all of these repeated phrases of, thus it was fulfilled, and then it was quickly translated into Greek for everybody's benefit.

Makes sense to me. The purpose of Matthew, I'm already hinted at.

Matthew's purpose in writing his gospel is not so forthrightly stated as Luke's is. Luke, talking to Theophilus, says, this is how

I'm writing my gospel and why. And John, of course, at the end of his gospel says, you know, many of the things that Jesus did, but these were written so that you would know that Jesus is the

Christ, and believe on his name, and have eternal life. But we can figure out

Matthew's purpose pretty quickly by seeing the repetition of his formula, that it might be fulfilled.

That happens well over a dozen times in Matthew, not just in the early chapters, but throughout the book.

And there's also another pattern that attends that, and it's this, something or someone greater is here.

And that one happens even more frequently than, thus it was to fulfill.

So those two patterns together kind of tell you what Matthew is trying to say with his gospel.

So the main theme of Matthew's gospel alerts us to his purpose, which is that of talking about the kingdom, the kingdom.

And that word is used well over fifty times in Matthew's gospel, expressed in phrases like, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, or the gospel of the kingdom, or the kingdom of heaven is like, the kingdom, the kingdom, the kingdom, really comes to the fore when you read through Matthew's gospel.

Now, there are a lot of other related and repeated themes that are very much supportive of those three main ideas.

Thus it was to fulfill, someone greater is here, and kingdom. When you put all those three together, everything else in Matthew really supports those three ideas.

So we can safely conclude that Matthew's purpose was to demonstrate that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the

Old Covenant, that he is the sovereign mediator of the New Covenant, and that his ministry comes in the form of the long -promised kingdom of God from heaven that Daniel 244 talks about.

So Matthew wrote his gospel to the Jew first, but also to the Gentile. He wrote so that we would all know that Jesus Christ is the

King, the fulfillment of God's promises, and the Savior for the world.

That's his purpose in writing his gospel. And it's put first in the

New Testament. It's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I think the reason why

Matthew was written, its purpose, accords perfectly with its placement in the

New Testament, because somewhere along the line of the writing of the New Testament and its grouping together,

Matthew was given pride of place. Somehow, somewhere along the way, Matthew gets stuck at the front, and it makes sense that that would happen.

Given the importance of understanding the New Testament's relationship to the Old Testament, which book would best make that transition?

If that was the question to ask, Matthew is an excellent candidate to answer that need.

Obviously, someone may propose Paul's letter to the Romans or his sermon to the Hebrews.

Mark may have been more pithy. Luke may have been more chronologically focused. John may have been more theologically focused.

But Matthew's focus on Christ as King fulfilling the Old Covenant in superlative fashion provides the way of interpretation for the saints, provides the hermeneutics, the way of interpretation for the saints.

How do we interpret the Bible? Well, when we get to Matthew, at the connecting point between old and new, and we read

Matthew, we're told by example and repeated emphasis how to interpret the

Scriptures, and Matthew is a great teacher in that. And Matthew does not stand alone.

This gospel is in bountiful partnership with Mark and Luke and John.

Now, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the synoptic Gospels because they share a lot of the same stories, a lot of the same sayings of Jesus, and John does not contradict it at all, but it seems that John enhances a lot of the synoptic material with several robust theological discourses from Jesus, all the

I Am statements you may remember in the Gospel of John. How do we think of the

Gospels? Now, you may have come across a publication here and there where they try to take all four

Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and they stitch them together in what's called a harmony of the Gospels, trying to demonstrate how it all came about in what time frame and order.

But it's best to view the Gospels not as security footage from four cameras to be spliced together, okay?

That's not what they were written as, and so if you put them to that expectation, you may be disappointed, but they're far better than that, okay?

They're not security camera footage. These are four thoughtful and accurate documentaries which are meant to be taken in as a full series.

Watch one right after the other and see how it all comes together in harmony.

Each Gospel is to be received both as a whole and also as in partnership, and I think one of the questions that this answers is that when you go to the

Gospel of Luke in Luke chapter 6, there's something called the Sermon on the Plain, and there are some

Beatitudes there, and there's some similar material there as we find in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, and so efforts from the security camera footage style of interpretation is, well, these have to be the exact same sermon and the exact same event, so Jesus has one foot on a hill and one foot on a plain, and even though there are things that are missing or added or different, we're gonna find some way to put these together and make them the same sermon because they have to be the same event.

Actually, they don't. If you listen to anyone teach or preach for any length of time, they're going to repeat themselves, repeat themselves.

You've noticed that about me, and I'll be and you'll notice about any teacher or pastor, especially as they get older, they tell you something and they think it's the first time they ever told you this, and you're like, yeah, this is about the tenth time you told me this.

Jesus repeats himself. It's okay. He has favorite themes. He repeats himself.

Just because we find similar ideas in Ephesians and Colossians doesn't mean they're the same letter, okay?

These are still important ideas, so we don't have to try to find some way to artificially synthesize the

Sermon on the Plain or the Sermon on the Mount or those kinds of things. Now, when there is, for example, it's interesting,

I thought that Luke says this was given on a plain and a flat area, and then

Matthew says now this was given on a mountain, and then we say it's got to be the same thing. No, it says it was different places.

It's okay. Now, when you go to all of that discourse and all three authors say this was on the

Mount of Olives, you're like, oh, it was on the Mount of Olives. So, you know, let the text be your guide. What did it say?

The Gospel of Matthew begins and ends with a focus on Jesus Christ as King.

We start off with his royal lineage, his royal identity, and we end with Jesus Christ risen from the dead, saying all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth, okay?

So we begin and end in Matthew with an emphasis on Christ as King.

Very rough outline of Matthew. You could read it like this. The King arrives, chapters 1 through 4. The kingdom announced, chapters 5 through 25, and the kingdom accomplished in verses 26 through 28, through his death, burial, and resurrection, okay?

This middle section where the kingdom is announced is structured around five discourses.

A discourse is just Jesus is talking and everyone's listening, okay?

You're going to have conversations. You're going to have back and forth between Jesus and his disciples.

You're going to have questions from the crowd. You're going to have miracles and confrontations and things like that throughout

Matthew, but there are five major discourses. This does not mean this is the only time that he talks, okay?

But these are just the major sections where there's a lot of it. And so, Sermon on the

Mount is the first major teaching section, and we have Discipleship 101 in chapter 10, all the parables, the kingdom of heaven is like, chapter 13, the discourse on the church.

Remember the Matthew 18 instructions about how we're supposed to be for one another, and then all of that discourse in chapters 24 through 25.

So, if you think about Matthew, remember it's all about the king, how the king shows up, he talks about his kingdom, and then he accomplishes his kingdom.

And when he talks about his kingdom, there are five major discourses, and everything else just kind of filters in around it.

So that helps us understand that right after we have a full treatment on, hey,

Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the promised king, here he is. Once that's very, very well established, immediately we have the

Sermon on the Mount. And the Sermon on the Mount is the beginning of this major section of the kingdom being announced and described and applied to the lives of his listeners.

So this really helps us appreciate the placement of the Sermon on the

Mount, and maybe helps to prepare expectations of what Jesus is going to be talking about, and what he intends through this message.

The sermon is quite impressive.

It consists of 2 ,500 words in the original Greek that we have copies of.

The sermon represents the longest continuous discourse of Jesus recorded, spans three chapters of Matthew, and contains some of Christ's most famous sayings.

It only takes 15 minutes to read, and the wisdom of our Lord here has captivated almost 20 centuries of Christian thought.

It's pretty impressive. So what we're going to try to do is catch the overview, catch the big idea, and then spend some time in our series going through each particular passage and trying to dive a little bit deeper into what is going on.

I think what we'll do first of all, I'm going to kind of reverse my order in my outline a little bit, and I want to talk about the sermon overview first, and we're going to come back to chapter 5 verses 1 and 2 and work our way into the text proper.

And that'll help us when we transition from that into the Beatitudes next week. So let's think first of all about this sermon overview on your outline under the introduction, letter

C, sermon overview. Think about the semantic structure or the way that the sermon is constructed, and then think about its theological significance.

So the thought structure and then the theological significance. On the back side of your handout, you'll see three proposals from other authors, from other students of the word, how they think that the

Sermon on the Mount ought to be structured. And you can catch an idea of some of the main themes and the major divisions of that.

But Matthew carefully builds up to the Sermon on the Mount so well that we should expect as well that his composition of the sermon, his gathering together of what

Jesus said, would also be equally careful. These are the very words of Christ preached at least on one occasion.

We know that he would preach this more than once, and we see example of that in Luke, of similar themes.

But we know through the reading of Scripture, it is the

Holy Spirit's inspired prerogative to have authors of the

Scripture to carefully craft summaries and digests of Christ's words and deeds.

Very, very often we have, and with many other words, or these are the ones that we've recorded but there was more that he said and did, and we remember that this is not an example of, say, okay, anybody who preaches ought to preach 14 minutes, only

Jesus gets to go 15. Right? We're not supposed to derive something from that significance.

Or to say, well, Jesus never talked about subject X, therefore it's up for grabs.

As if he had no opinions on the matter, and therefore silence is permission. We shouldn't infuse all manner of odd or strange inferences.

We shouldn't think that way. This is very carefully constructed for our benefit, and I think very memorable.

It was the goal of many in a age to memorize the

Sermon on the Mount, to have that as a part of your childhood education, to start with the Beatitudes and just continue on through and memorize the whole thing.

Memorizing is good, meditating is even better, as we begin to think about what does it actually mean.

So one proposal for the structure, you see the chiastic structure at the top, wherein it's simply an observation of parallel themed or parallel structures and how orderly it is all put together.

The second proposal just has three major sections and just says, here's basically generally what we're looking at thematically.

And then the last example is trying to hybrid both of those. I list these as examples for you and you can use as a resource if you're reading through the

Sermon on the Mount to kind of see how folks are trying to structure them.

For example, if you're reading through the blessings, the Beatitudes, and you see that it's in parallel with the warnings in chapter 7, that might be an interesting exercise to read the

Beatitudes and then go over to chapter 7 and then read the warnings and just read those and think, okay, this seems, is this intentionally paralleled here?

Should I look at these in contrast to each other? What can I learn from that? So just as an example of how you might use this resource.

So the way that I've decided to structure it, which is the front side of the handout, is really more along the lines of how

I'm trying to prepare for the study. So I've got 18 different passages to look at, because I've got nine weeks this year and nine weeks next year, so that's a very practical reason.

So I am trying to acknowledge some natural divisions in the text and I'll try to describe also the semantic structure and the relationship of each passage to each other as we go through, so you can get a sense of the thought flow.

But that's the reason why I'm using the outline that I am. I do think that there's some major division between chapter 5 and chapter 6 and 7, and I think that there's a major division in chapter 5, the two parts, and a major division between 6 and 7.

Very often you'll find that whatever a monk put the chapter divisions in missed terribly, and at the times they got it right.

So, you know, chapter divisions are not inspired. Sometimes they're helpful, other times they're just distracting.

So, but in this case I think they were helpful. Let's also talk about the theological significance of the

Sermon on the Mount. There's so much interest in the

Sermon on the Mount from people who are not believers, who do not hold to the inerrancy of Scripture, or don't have any interest in submitting to the teachings of Christ or the

Church or anything. They just, but they still have an interest in the Sermon on the Mount as a piece of very important ancient literature, full of beauty, full of potential for ethics, and so on.

So it has broad appeal, and because it has broad appeal, it has various interpretations. So why?

Well, I think when you get the chance to read it out loud to yourself, it becomes clear how appealing it is.

It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's profound. It's significant. It hits home in ways that other literature does not.

This is a place in the Scriptures that is extremely, extremely blessed.

Now, all Scripture is inspired by God. All of it's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and training, and righteousness.

All of it is. And some of it is just more dense, full of grace than other places are, but all of it is

God's words. There can be a variety even as all of it is the Word of God. For example, we would not get as much through a deep meditation on Saul's visit to the

Witch of Endor. We'd get something out of it, get some pretty interesting things out of it, but it wouldn't be as productive as a deep meditation on the

Sermon on the Mount. Just, it's okay to observe that and recognize that, and there are some passages of Scripture that are just that much more dense and rich.

And the beauty of the sayings of Christ ensures their perennial utility in everyday language and literature.

For example, how often do we find in places that we didn't expect to see it, phrases like, blessed are the peacemakers.

We're listening along as someone says something about the salt of the earth. We hear, you know, do unto others.

We hear a lot of judge not, and that one's everywhere. Not even looking for a quote from Scripture, and someone says something about pearls before swine.

This is all from the Sermon on the Mount, and that's just a few of the many common sayings.

Other derivatives from the Sermon on the Mount that have developed in our English language is, not to toot my own horn.

Where'd that come from? Chapter 6, right? Someone says, go the extra mile.

How much is that in the, he gave you the shirt off his back. This is all stuff out of the

Sermon on the Mount. He has totally suffused our language because of the power of the sayings and its beauty.

Now, what these expressions mean to those who actually use the sayings usually is a matter of one's own private interpretation.

It gets to mean whatever I want it to mean, and I think that if they were taken into context, that people would find

Jesus to be somewhat frustrating to them. That's not what I mean when

I say it like that. Well, he said it in the first place, so I think he gets to say what it means.

I think Christ's message of his kingdom surprises or frustrates many casual readers.

There's an interesting study back from the 1980s at Texas A &M literature class. The students were asked to read the

Sermon on the Mount, and just the avalanche of negative response to it.

And this is, you know, 50 years ago, all right? I mean, a long time ago, late 70s, early 80s, 45, 40 years ago, and just saying, you know, this man, this is not good for ethics, this is not good for morality, this guy

Jesus is wound too tight, or whatever the slang was in the 80s.

Some of you all will know it, I don't know what the slang is. Now, for those who hold

Jesus Christ in the highest regard, the theological significance of the Sermon on the Mount is very, very important.

We really, really want to know what he means when he says this.

I want to follow him, I really want to believe what he's saying. And this is a very important passage of Scripture, because our interpretation of the

Sermon depends on several factors and has a big impact on how we understand the nature of Christ's kingdom, our connection to it.

In many ways, the way we interpret the Sermon determines, or is determined by, our interpretation of the rest of Holy Scripture.

It's one of those passages, like the Ten Commandments. And why is it so important?

Think about what an interesting intersection of moments this is in the

Sermon on the Mount. Think of this. Jesus is explaining the most basic ideas about why he came and what he's up to.

So, he's explaining his kingdom, his authority, and his supremacy, the themes of Matthew. Jesus is explaining all of this to the

Jews who grew up under the Old Covenant and will soon be faced with the official arrival of the

New Covenant in Christ's death and resurrection. So, the Sermon addresses what it means to be

God's special creature as mankind. The Sermon speaks to the role of the law given under the

Sinai Covenant. The Sermon discusses true worship and offers a new understanding of what it means to be

God's people. It is ground zero for comprehending the interaction of the Old and New Covenant in the lives of New Testament disciples.

So, this is very dense ground. It's very rich ground. Significantly, we need to remember this, the

Sermon is delivered prior to the cross while keeping an eye towards Christ's ascended reign.

And we need to remember that however we interpret the Sermon should be consistent with how we interpret the rest of the

Bible. So, that's where you end up with an array of interpretations, even among Christians who are unified in many ways.

There's going to be an array of interpretations about the Sermon on the Mount. And in good faith,

I think that all the brothers and sisters in Christ who have a slightly different reading are ultimately wanting to glorify

Christ. They want to see Christ glorified and honored, and they want to follow him and see his gospel spread.

And so, I'm not going to condemn somebody for having, a brother in Christ, for having a different reading of the

Sermon on the Mount. I will feel free to say, I think the ship you're sailing on to get there is leaky and slow.

Okay? And that is important for family in Christ to challenge one another.

Are we being clear on the Scriptures? Let's conform ourselves to the Scriptures in our thinking, in our affections, in our behavior.

Let's be according to the Word as much as we can, and we can challenge one another in that in good faith.

Okay, now let's look at verses 1 and 2 of Matthew 5, and let's look at this mountain.

I remember these first two verses from my childhood, efforts to memorize the Beatitudes, which

I know now that it was my father who taught me the

Beatitudes at some level, because when I first tried to quote it just from the hip without any review to my wife,

I missed, blessed are the merciful. I just missed it. And I was like, hang on a second, there's only seven, there's eight, which one did

I miss? I had to sit there for a long time, so I remember to be merciful, so maybe that says something about me, I don't know. But when

I was mentioning to my dad, I was teaching through this, and we were recalling, trying to memorize it, he shot from the hip.

He also missed, blessed are the merciful. So I know exactly where I got it from. But the first two verses,

I thought were always odd, and seeing the multitudes, he went up on the mountain, and when he was seated, his disciples came to him, and he opened his mouth, and he taught them saying.

And to me, those six phrases were just kind of randomized poetry, kind of like a nonsensical nursery rhyme, something to get down and get past so you could get to the

Beatitudes. But we don't have throwaway scripture.

We don't have empty air, the Holy Spirit's not trying to, you know, fill out his 5 ,000 word essay with, you know, just filler words.

And so there's significance here that I think that we need to pay attention to. These two verses carry a great deal of theological freight, and most of it's already been loaded in the fulfillment depot of Matthew chapters 1 through 4.

We have nowhere near enough time to go through that, so that's all on the blog. But, Matthew chapters 1 through 4 is a very, very robust amplification of who

Jesus Christ is as King through seven significant fulfillment passages. So by the time you get here, you should be well primed to just see everything that's being written as significant.

So, the multitudes we've met in chapter 4, Jesus has been teaching and healing and delivering.

Great multitudes are following him from all over the place, and he goes up on a mountain to teach them.

Obviously, this is going to be a good opportunity, a broad slope. It's probably

Mount Eremos. It's a mountain just called the Mount of Beatitudes now, but he's up on this mountain, he's elevated above the crowd, and so he's able to teach them.

Now, when he sits down, this is the way that Jewish rabbis taught. American preachers get up behind a wooden pulpit, and some of them wander all over the place and smack the thing.

My homiletical professor in Memphis, Tennessee told me that preaching in the

South is basically clearing a space and having a fit, and he cautioned us against adopting that model.

But a Jewish rabbi, when he was ready to teach, he sat down. In a synagogue, the seats would line the walls and round in a circle, and there'd be one seat slightly elevated from the others, and there the rabbi would sit in the seat of Moses.

Jesus references this in Matthew 23. So, when he sits down and he opens his mouth to teach them, everyone knows, ah, it's instruction time, it's teaching time.

So, they all come around, we have the multitude, and we have the disciples. Two groups related, but different in devotion and number.

Later on in Matthew 10, we learn there are 12 disciples in all. But I think more curious than Jesus' posture, which serves a clear purpose in the text, hey,

I'm ready to teach, is Jesus' open mouth. I mean, in one sense, it would be as expected for a

Jewish rabbi to sit and teach as it would be for him to use his mouth to teach. But why are you, why is it in there?

Of course he opened his mouth to teach them. Why, why put that in there?

Holy Spirit's not throwing away words. Matthew's not wasting space. There are three related ideas going on in these first two verses, and we need to hone in on them, and we're going to have to do so somewhat briefly.

But the first is that Christ going up on a mountain to teach the multitudes is a very clear nod to Moses.

This is the most clear typological fulfillment going on in the text, meaning that there was a shape, there's a shadow called

Moses, and Christ is the substance. There was a type called

Moses, Christ is the anti -type, he's the fulfillment of it. So, he went up on a mountain after what?

After he spent 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness, in Matthew 4.

That ring a well? Moses also went up on a mountain and returned after 40 days and nights to teach the multitudes who've been organized into 12 tribes.

Jesus is teaching the multitudes and 12 disciples. Someone's going to say, well,

Moses didn't take the multitudes with him up Mount Sinai to teach them up there, and they weren't too keen on what he had to say.

Like, thank you for making Matthew's point. Jesus is better than Moses, he is a better mediator.

In fact, you know, he, even though, think about this, he brings the multitudes up the mountain with him and they're not scattered in fear like they were at Sinai.

That's quite the point. Also, notice that Jesus is the one who endures the wilderness alone as a faithful servant, and unlike old

Israel, Christ, as the true Israel, did not succumb to murmuring and complaining in the wilderness when the hunger struck.

You're picking up what Matthew's laying down? Okay. Matthew shows

Jesus' supremacy to Moses throughout the Sermon on the Mount. It's gonna be a major theme, but that is built on intentional comparison made by several thematic points of contact.

Moses handed the baton of leadership off to who? Joshua. Hosea was his name,

Yeshua became his new name, the same name given to the Christ child, Yeshua, Jesus, the successor of Moses.

That was very intentional. It is Yeshua who leads his people into his rest, right?

Joshua led the people into their inheritance, Christ leads the people into all the promises in him, his rest.

Matthew has already alluded to this dynamic in Matthew chapter 1, and you should call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

John the Baptist, who was the best of the best, prophet of the

Old Covenant, he honored Christ as the amen of heaven's pleasure, baptizing him, fulfilling all righteousness in Matthew 3, so we should not expect for Jesus to pitch his tent next to Moses, but rather in the place of Moses.

It's not Jesus and Moses up on the mountain, it's Jesus now. There was once Moses, and now here is

Jesus. Not that Jesus is mad at Moses, but he is the satisfying fulfillment of Moses, even as the temple was the satisfying fulfillment of the tabernacle, right?

The temple was more glorious than the tabernacle was, that whatever remnants of scrap remained from the tabernacle were brought into the temple, and nobody said let's go back out into the wilderness to the tabernacle once the temple was there.

And like fashion, there's no need to go back to the Old Covenant once the new has arrived. This theme of satisfying fulfillment is even, well, it's even more emphasized if there's an article on the fulfillment passage in Matthew 3.

It's even more strong, you can go read that. The place where John the

Baptist baptizes Jesus is the place where Joshua crossed with the people of Israel into the Promised Land.

Pretty, pretty clear connections being made. Now, we're seeing that there's a fulfillment of Moses in Christ, but also we have this matter of the open mouth.

Why is there an open mouth? Well, there's an echo in two different passages.

First, we have Proverbs 8, verses 6 through 8. Jesus opened his mouth in order to teach.

Why waste the ink to say so? It's not a waste. Proverbs 8, verses 6 through 8 says,

Listen, for I will speak of excellent things, and from the opening of my lips will come right things, for my mouth will speak truth.

Wickedness is an abomination to my lips. All the words of my mouth are with righteousness. Nothing crooked or perverse is in them.

And this is wisdom, who is personified as Lady Wisdom, in contrast to Miss Folly in Solomon's instructions to his son.

But notice how wisdom opens her mouth from the high hill in the first two verses of Proverbs 8.

Does not wisdom cry out? Understanding lift up her voice. She takes her stand on the top of the high hill, beside the way where the paths meet.

Why is that so important? Because wisdom is the prerequisite for kings, Proverbs 8, verses 15 and 16 says.

And Jesus Christ is the king of God's kingdom, who has the fullness of all God's wisdom in him,

Colossians chapter 2, verse 3. Therefore, the blessings of wisdom, listed in verses 17 to 21 of Proverbs 8, anticipate the beatitudes of Christ's kingdom in Matthew 5, verses 3 through 10.

Think about how the placement of wisdom, and think of Christ. Jesus is the one who does all things well.

The Father's pleasure in the Son at his baptism is the signal of the new creation.

The Spirit hovered over the waters. Welcome to the new creation.

There's an amen of the pleasure of the Lord in wisdom from the beginning of creation,

Proverbs 8 says. And wisdom's conclusion establishes her word as blessing in life, essential for escaping destruction.

So Jesus says much the same as he concludes, you better build your house on the rock, rather than leave yourself for destruction.

So, as wisdom fulfilled and incarnate, the Creator Jesus Christ fashions his kingdom, he opens his mouth to craft the new creation with his words.

How did the first creation come about? With words. How does he fashion a new creation? With his words, words of blessing and wisdom and righteousness.

So, the first illusion of the open mouth on the hill is to Christ as the fullness of wisdom and Creator.

The second is the other major theme of three in the Scriptures, covenant.

So, creation, covenant, fulfilled in Christ. Well, Psalm 78 is a very lengthy psalm and, of course, we won't have time to, it will be months singing through it when we finally get to it and come back around the horn.

But this contemplation of Asaph starts this way in Psalm 78 verse 1. Give ear,

O my people, to my law. The word Torah is instructions.

Incline your ear to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old.

This is said of Christ in Matthew 13, which we have heard and known and our fathers have told us.

We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the

Lord and his strength and his wonderful works that he has done. And so, give ear, listen to the words of my mouth,

I open my mouth, and then he begins to to say things. Now, when we think about this law that Asaph gives, when you read through Psalm 78, he doesn't go into the

Ten Commandments. He begins to talk about the stories of creation and the stories of the patriarchs.

And nevertheless, the faithfulness to the old covenant is Asaph's primary concern throughout

Psalm 78. The whole issue is that the plagues of God that were upon Egypt are echoed by his judgments upon Ephraim, the northern kingdom.

Remember, the kingdom split? Northern kingdom, southern kingdom. And so Asaph is saying, all these plagues hit

Ephraim. They hit Egypt way back. Now they're all hitting Ephraim. And what's going to happen now? How will

God keep his covenant promises and blessings for his people when he's judging Ephraim this way?

And then he says in Psalm 78, well, he's going to keep his promises to Judah through Judah and through Judah's favorite son,

David. Now, David is dead at this point. This is Asaph.

David's not around. And so, he's saying God's going to keep his promises and covenant blessings to Judah and Judah's favorite son,

David. Everyone pay attention to David. That's where the fulfillment is. David's in the tomb.

David's in the grave. And as Peter preached in Acts 2, he's still there. So what was this about?

This was about the Messiah, the son of David. And so, the message of Psalm 78 as a whole puts the attention of the worshiper upon the kingdom blessing arriving through the line of Judah and David, while stressing the need for these blessings given so much deserved judgment upon the old covenant transgressors.

And so, when Jesus starts teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, it's, I'm here, and here's blessing, blessing, blessing, blessing, eightfold blessing.

All the blessings come through the faithful son. It all comes through the

Messiah. And then he says, you need a superior righteousness. You need a righteousness far better than what the scribes and Pharisees have.

And so, he brings all of that in his kingdom. So, all these connections showing

Christ as the sum of God's wisdom and creation, the fulfillment of God's promises in the covenants, and God's new lawgiver in the new covenant.

These are connections just from the first two verses, but they have their weight and significance not by themselves, but because the first four chapters are jam -packed full of the very same things.

So, it's kind of hard to start off with verses 1 and 2 of Matthew 5 and see a lot of significance in Jesus going up on a mountain, sitting down, opening his mouth, and teaching the multitudes.

It's like, okay, I mean, this is just the throwaway front -end script and on to the

Beatitudes. The point is that Matthew 1 through 4 should have been heavily meditated on first.

I'm trying to give some support to that. And when you get to the Beatitudes, the

Beatitudes are something, I think, like a sonic boom that come out of nowhere unless you've been riding in the cockpit the whole way from Matthew 1.

If you've been riding in the cockpit from Matthew 1, you've accelerated the whole way through and you understand why you're going this fast and this much is happening.

If you just start right in, you just start in Matthew 5, 3, let's go, and you're just like, whoa, what is this?

Where did this come from? What does it all mean? So, hopefully when we get to next week, we're going to be looking at the

Beatitudes as a whole. We're going to be stressing how they fit together as a whole and their message as a whole.

We won't have time to take the Martin Lloyd -Jones strategy of preaching one or two sermons for each

Beatitude, but if you have Martin Lloyd -Jones sermons on the

Sermon on the Mount, enjoy. I know that I did. So, alright, let's close with the word of prayer.

Father, I thank you so much for this day. We thank you for our opportunity to study your

Word. Lord, I pray that you would help us to rejoice in your truth as we look to Christ.