The Kingdom of Heaven - Matthew 5:1-2

INTRO

I don’t know if I will ever forget my first sermon.

I was 19 years old and clueless.

I preached through Acts 4 and I know I fumbled through the whole thing.

People were deeply encouraging.

Since then I’ve preached around 500 sermons.

Of all my sermons these last 17 years none of them hold a candle to Jesus’ sermon.

The Sermon on the Mount is the longest recorded sermon by Jesus (Matthew 5, 6, 7).

It takes a little over 12 minutes if you read all of it out-loud.

It is packed with some of the most well known sayings of Jesus:

Salt of the earth

Judge not

Log in the eye

Seek first the kingdom

The Beatitudes

There is so much in this sermon we will discover over the next 9 weeks coming to the finale on Easter Sunday.

I would encourage you to read through the sermon on the mount multiple times as we go through it

Today we will look at just the beginning of the sermon introducing us into this series.

Here is our Big Idea this morning

Big Idea: We are called to live in the way of the kingdom.

Today we are going to ask three questions to help us approach the Sermon on the mount

Let’s look back at the passage and ask first

1. What’s Going On?

Matthew 5:1–2 (ESV)

Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.

And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:

We need to understand the context of what is happening as we come to the sermon on the mount.

Jesus has a swath of crowds that follow him.

He leaves them, goes up the mountain and begins to teach and as He does the crowds begin to form.

Now we should ask the question, why are their crowds following Jesus?

Well let’s look back

Matthew 4:23–25 (ESV)

And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, those having seizures, and paralytics, and he healed them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.

Jesus’ fame grows

Why?

Because he has been healing.

There is a crowd of people who follow Jesus not because they want to be like Jesus but because of what Jesus can do for them.

So Jesus begins to teach and as he does, the ethics of the kingdom unfold.

The sermon on the mount is a call to be a disciple.

It is what a disciple is to be and do.

It’s deeply important that we take time to hear Jesus’ words.

He begins to teach because he is a Rabbi, a teacher.

This word is used to describe Jesus over and over in the gospel of Matthew.

Every teacher of the Torah, every rabbi, carried his own unique "yoke"—a term drenched in Hebrew tradition, symbolizing his distinctive teachings, his personal way of interpreting the Scriptures, and his insights on flourishing in the richness of God's creation.

These rabbis emerged from the vast spectrum of society, embodying roles as diverse as farmers, blacksmiths, or even carpenters.

Many spent years under the mentorship of a seasoned rabbi, absorbing wisdom before stepping out to teach and gather disciples, typically around their thirties.

Yet, this ancient world knew nothing of our modern credentials or diplomas.

Here, authenticity and the power of the Rabbi’s life and teachings stood as the ultimate validation of authority.

Their teachings often unfurled in parables and challenging stories, with a band of close followers in tow.

Their classroom was the world itself—under the open sky, along dusty roads, drawing lessons directly from the Scriptures and the vibrant school of life.

In the narrative tapestry of the four Gospels, Jesus is consistently hailed as "rabbi."

Yet, He broke the mold.

Crowds were left in sheer amazement, captivated by His presence.

The gospel writers capture the scene:

Luke tells of people marveling at His grace-filled words;

Mark observes the astonishment at His authoritative teachings, starkly different from the usual religious instruction.

The reactions were telling—questions of "Where did this wisdom come from?" and exclamations of "No one has ever spoken like this!" echoed around Him.

Listen to this from John Mark Comer:

Of course, saying that Jesus was a rabbi is about as insightful as saying that he was Jewish (although that’s another truth copious numbers of people forget). But sadly, very few people—including many Christians—take Jesus seriously as a spiritual teacher.

To some, he’s a wraithlike apparition, there to inspire later generations to a fuzzy kind of goodwill. To others, he is a social revolutionary—Resist!—fist up to the Roman Empire then and all empires now. To a large number of Western Christians, he is a delivery mechanism for a particular theory of atonement, as if the only reason he came was to die, not to live.

As a result, many Christians don’t consider Jesus all that smart. Holy, sure. Kind, yes. Even divine. But intelligent? Not really. An increasing number of Christians don’t agree with him on crucial matters of human flourishing. They would rather trust a politician, celebrity, or pastor gone rogue than Jesus the teacher and the disciples who studied directly under him.

They would never even think to consult Jesus on the pressing matters of our time: politics, racial justice, sexuality, gender, mental health, and so on. As it has been said, “What lies at the heart of the astonishing disregard of Jesus found in the moment-to-moment existence of multitudes of professing Christians is a simple lack of respect for him.” _ John Mark Comer

You must ask yourself as we come to Jesus are you a disciple or just a fan?

Am I a disciple, an apprentice following after Jesus?

There is no doubt in my mind that the words of Jesus will challenge us deeply.

But there is no doubt in my mind that to sit under his teaching and seek to practice it will deeply change our lives and our world.

The sermon on the mount dismantles what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called cheap grace.

Cheap grace talks about forgiveness without the need for true repentance, baptism stripped of belonging to the body of Christ,

Communion with no confession, forgiveness without the soul-bearing honesty of repentance.

It's a grace that skips over the demands of discipleship, the weight of the cross, the very heart of Jesus Christ, alive and embodied.

On the flip side, there's costly grace—the hidden treasure for which someone would sell everything.

It's like the most precious pearl that compels the merchant to liquidate all his assets to chase after it.

It embodies the sovereign reign of Christ, prompting us to give up anything that holds us back;

it's the call of Jesus Christ that makes a fisherman leave his nets behind.

This costly grace isn't something you stumble upon and keep without effort.

It's a gospel that needs relentless pursuit, a gift that must be earnestly requested, a door you're supposed to knock on persistently.

What makes this grace so invaluable is its call to follow, and it's a grace because that following leads us to Jesus Christ.

It demands everything from us, our very lives, and in return, it offers the truest form of life.

It's costly because it refuses to excuse sin, yet it's grace because it offers redemption to the sinner.

Most profoundly, it's costly because it cost God His own Son.

We were "bought at a price," signaling that what was a monumental sacrifice for God cannot be taken lightly by us.

And yet, it remains grace, for God deemed no price too high for our salvation, giving up His Son for our sake.

ILLUSTRATION

A little boy was playing in the backyard with his Dad.

They were breaking in the new whiffle ball and bat.

“Here’s what we do, Dad. I’ll stand back here,” the boy said, “you throw the ball, and I’ll hit it.”

The dad threw the first pitch, the boy swung, and he missed the ball by a foot.

The dad then threw the second pitch, and the boy missed again.

The third pitch was no better – the little boy missed worse than ever.

By this point, he was exasperated – at me! He picked up the ball, fired it back at his Dad, and yelled in his young voice, “Dad, you’re doin’ it wrong!”

“What do you mean that I’m doing it wrong, son?”

His answer: “Dad, you’re supposed to be throwing the ball where I’m swinging the bat!”

We laugh, though, but don’t we often treat Jesus the same way.

We’re willing to follow Him as long as His plans meet ours, as long as what He demands fits inside our own box – as long as He’s pitching the ball where we’re swinging the bat.

That’s not the way it works, however.

The Almighty God, the Creator of the world, the Ruler of the universe does not adjust His pitching to where we’re swinging the bat.

We’re the ones who must make the adjustments; we follow God and do whatever He demands, even if His plans stretch us.

So we come to this Rabbi who offers us abundant grace as we learn to walk in the way of the kingdom.

This leads us to our second question

2. What Is The Message?

What is the overarching message of the sermon on the mount?

It is a call to live in the way of the kingdom

Matthew 4:17 (ESV)

From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Jesus has come to establish his kingdom and it is upside down from everything they knew and we know.

The upside down kingdom calls us to die so that we might truly live.

It is the kingdom of grace here now.

It is the kingdom of glory here after.

The already not yet.

Upside Down - Matthew is very intentional in showing us Jesus as better than Moses.

Consider this: as a child, Jesus was providentially delivered from a massacre of children in Bethlehem, a deliverance reminiscent of Moses’ own rescue as a child in the midst of Pharaoh’s mass murder of Hebrew children in Egypt (Exod 2:1–10).

Where Midian was the escape for Moses, Egypt would be the escape for Jesus…upside down.

The parallels between Jesus and Moses continue in Matthew 5:1: “When He [Jesus] saw the crowds, He went up on the mountain, and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him.”

Notice that expression, “He went up on the mountain,” as this very same wording is used in the Greek Old Testament when Moses went up onto the mountain to receive the law (Exod 19:3).

Just as Moses went up on the mountain, Matthew is telling us, so Jesus went up on the mountain, and in the same way that Moses spoke with authority, so now Jesus speaks with authority.

These parallels also extend to the very structure of Matthew’s Gospel, just as Moses authored five books—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—so Matthew’s Gospel gives us five sermons of Jesus, or five main blocks of teaching material.

The message resounds that a new authority is now on the scene, so much so that at the end of the Gospel, Jesus is able to say,

All authority has been given to Me [not Moses] in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I [not Moses] have commanded you. (28:18–20)

Consider the scene of Exodus 19:16-18

Exodus 19:16–18 (ESV)

On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly.

What does this scene look like when the presence of God descends on the mountain for Moses to receive the law?

It looks terrifying!

Exodus 19:19–21 (ESV)

And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. The Lord came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain. And the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up.

And the Lord said to Moses, “Go down and warn the people, lest they break through to the Lord to look and many of them perish.

Now we see the true and better Moses coming to give us the ethics of His kingdom.

We see God come down as a man.

And what is the scene?

Jesus full of wisdom with healing on his wings teaching us the way of the kingdom.

We see the embodied son of God making a way for us.

Matthew is showing us that Jesus is the One greater than Moses, the One who has come and delivered His people, and who has now given them the Word.

Of course, Moses would not chafe at this idea, consider his words from Deuteronomy

“The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him” (Deut 18:15).

There is indeed a new kingdom, a new people.

It was God’s intention all along not just to give commandments to His people, but to create a new people with new hearts, new affections, and new attitudes.

This newness is what Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the rest of the prophets were anticipating.

They looked forward to a new exodus—a greater and final deliverance from sin’s penalty and power—for the people of God.

Jesus proclaims to all of us, repent for the kingdom is at hand.

This leads us to our last question:

3. What Must We Remember?

I notoriously forget lunch “Remember your lunch Billy!”

As we come to the Sermon on the Mount

We have to remember Matthew’s purpose in presenting the gospel narrative.

Just go back to Matthew 1:21

Matthew 1:21 (ESV)

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

This isn't a story of human striving for righteousness; it's the story of divine rescue, of Jesus coming to save us from our sins.

And as we trace this narrative to its climax, we're not left with mere moral instructions or ethical teachings as the final word.

No, Matthew's Gospel culminates with the ultimate sacrifice—the death of God's Messiah.

The narrative doesn't freeze in the midst of Jesus' life or His teachings, as critical as they are.

We don’t just stop reading after Matthew 7.

The Gospel carries us, with intent and purpose, through to the final week of Jesus' earthly ministry, spotlighting the cross as the crux of our faith.

You see, understanding the Sermon on the Mount—or any part of the Gospels, for that matter—apart from the shadow of the cross is to miss the heart of the Gospel entirely.

The cross isn't just an event that happened;

it's the lens through which we read every word Jesus spoke, every miracle He performed, every step He took towards Jerusalem.

So when we approach the Sermon on the Mount, let's not view it as a daunting list of moral achievements to check off to gain God's approval.

This isn't about earning our way into God's favor.

How could we?

The standard is impossibly high, the call too radical.

No, we embrace these teachings—turning the other cheek, loving our enemies, living out the Golden Rule—not as conditions for acceptance but as expressions of a life already accepted, redeemed, and transformed by the one who bore our sins on the cross.

Remember, the anticipation of a people transformed by God's Spirit weaves through the tapestry of the Old Testament, reaching its fulfillment in Christ.

This transformation is key to living out the Sermon on the Mount.

It's not about dismissing Jesus' commands as unattainable ideals but about recognizing them as markers of a life empowered by the Spirit, a life that reflects the grace and power of our Savior.

Jesus emptied himself.

God become man. He dies in our place for our sins.

The enemy loves to take the words of scripture and twist them in your heart.

Remember what we said last week: The route of the enemy is always to pull you aside and tell you lies about who you are and who God is.

Over the next several weeks you will feel the conviction of the Spirit from Jesus’ words.

But we must fight to hear the still small voice over the loud, obnoxious lying voice of the evil one telling us we are failures and fools who don’t measure up.

So when the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: "I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is there I shall be also! _Martin Luther

In Ephesians 4, Paul tells the Christians there what they should do.

In a world gripped by evil (vv. 17–19), he calls Christian’s to an exuberant love dripping with humility that absorbs slights, overlooks insults, and extends forgiveness.

Paul calls his fellow Christians to a radical love because he assumes they are capable of it.

We see that assumption in verse 1:

Ephesians 4:1 (ESV)

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called,

“Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”

It’s a constant theme in Paul’s writings: “For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.

Walk as children of light” (Eph. 5:8).

Paul assumes a definitive work of the Spirit in our hearts.

When Paul looks at the Ephesians, he sees what they really are— saints.

That shapes his call to greatness: he repeatedly encourages the church to be what they already are.

Of course, this side of heaven, we continue our fight with the flesh, but Paul’s affirmation that we are saints gives a positive, encouraging tone to his call to maturity.

Embracing our enemies, resisting temptation, living generously—these aren't beyond us.

They're the very essence of the kingdom life, made possible because of Jesus' sacrifice and victorious resurrection.

We don't practice these teachings to earn God's love; we live them out because we are already enveloped in that love, called to glorify Him in every act, every word, every thought.

We are empowered by His Spirit to actually do it.

Through the grace and power of God, even something as difficult as loving our enemies becomes a testament to our identity as Christ’s disciples, to the transformative work of the Spirit within us.

We are made whole in Christ.

We can hear his call in the sermon on the mount and live as disciples.

We can do this.

We must do this!

Have I been treating God's grace as something to earn or as a gift that transforms how I live?

Reflecting on the idea of costly grace versus cheap grace, where do I see the need for genuine repentance in my life?

In what ways am I merely a fan of Jesus rather than a true disciple, and how can I shift towards deeper discipleship?

What transformation do I hope to see in myself as I seek to live out the ethics of Jesus' kingdom?