14. Sermon on the Mount

[Image Above]  Photo from Capernum looking down on the Sea of Galilee, possibly where Jesus sat down to teach his disciples

“Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.” [Matthew 5:1]

Some of the most profound words ever spoken weren’t amplified through a sound system or broadcasted across continents. They weren’t well-rehearsed or polished and read from a teleprompter. They weren’t spoken from a stage or blasted through a stadium from the mouth of an impeccably dressed man. No, these words, words that would echo through the centuries and cut to the heart of everyone who heard them, were spoken by a man seated on the rocky ground of a Galilean hillside. They were spoken to a motley band of men and women gathered near to hear his raw and transformative teaching.

Before the moment when Jesus sat down on the hillside with His disciples to deliver the Sermon on the Mount, He had been preaching the gospel and healing the sick throughout Galilee. Matthew writes that Jesus’ fame had spread and “great crowds followed him.” In Matthew 4:25 we read that the crowd was made up of local Jews from Galilee, the Greek “heathens” from Decapolis, Jews from Jerusalem and Judea and people from beyond the Jordan, who were also likely Gentiles, or non-Jewish foreigners. The crowd that followed Him was a mix of all types of people from throughout the region.

The crowd was following Jesus for all sorts of reasons. They followed Him because He had fed them and in hopes that He would heal them. Some of them were there because they were fascinated by Him—they were entertained by His miracles and they hung around waiting for more. Some of the crowd was there waiting for political revolution, waiting in hope that Jesus would save them from Roman oppression.

Jesus didn’t respond to the crowd by giving them what they wanted. He didn’t cave to the temptation to entertain them or take the opportunity to amass as many followers as He could. Instead, He climbed up a hillside and sat down. When He sat down, His disciples came to Him. Who were His disciples? They were the ones who stepped out of the crowd and climbed up the hill to be with Him. Not everyone came. Many people, likely the majority of the crowd, stayed behind, waiting for Jesus to come back and perform more miracles. They waited patiently for Jesus to return and heal their bodies. And maybe they received the healing they were so desperate for. But they may have missed the true, deep healing that Jesus was offering to His climbing companions. To those who were willing to peel away from the crowd and sit with Him, he offered so much more than healed bodies. Through the words that follow, the words we collectively call The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was offering an entirely new way of seeing the world. He was offering healing, miracles, and a revolution, but not the sort the crowd was looking for. The transformation Jesus offered wasn’t a transformation of external circumstances. Jesus was offering to completely transform the hearts of His listeners.

And He still offers this to each of us today. As it was two thousand years ago, the invitation is open. Jesus is still gathering a diverse and beautiful group of people to Himself. He calls men and women from every race and ethnicity, every tribe and every nation to follow Him up the hill and immerse themselves in His transformative words. But in order to do that, we have to be willing to pull ourselves away from the crowds of people on the plains and engage in an uphill trek. We have to sit at His feet in stillness and let His words, hard words, sink deep into our hearts. And then, we have to be willing to follow Him back down the mountain, back into the chaos of the crowds, ready to live radically different lives.