The Greatest Sermon Ever Preached

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:

Matthew 5:1-2

We come to this great sermon by Jesus known as the “Sermon on the Mount”. It covers Matthew 5-7. And it is such a rich and powerful sermon. It is undoubtedly the best sermon ever preached by the best preacher that ever lived.

I want us to study this sermon because it is so rich with practical information for us to learn how to live our Christian lives. The Sermon on the Mount covers such a wide variety of topics. Listen to these topics that we will discuss in the upcoming study:

How to be blessed (or happy)

What a Christian is

How to deal with persecution

How to affect those around you with the Gospel

Anger

Forgiving Others

Lust

Divorce

Revenge

Swearing

Loving our enemies

Giving to the needy

Praying

Fasting

Anxiety

Judging others

False Prophets

False Conversions

Solid Foundations

That’s a wide range of topics! I think you will learn, as I will when we go through this study about many things that the Lord will convict us and teach us.

By way of introduction, I want to set the context for where we are in Jesus’ ministry. I won’t spend much time on this but I think it is helpful to know where we are in the story.

I just want to look at a few verses to set this up. You’ll remember that Jesus in has just been led up by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil. And the devil tried 3 different ways to snare Jesus into sinning against his deity. He tried to con Jesus into sinning, much like he did to Adam and Eve in the garden.

And so, Jesus passes the test. He defeats the temptation by using God’s Word as his weapon and tells Satan to take a hike.

Matthew 4:17 ESV

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

Then we come to that says “

This was the beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry. He was beginning a teaching and healing ministry that would culminate in his death and resurrection as the Messiah.

But you’ll notice he begins his ministry with this one word - Repent.

True repentance is needed for every sinner who desires to come to Christ. Repentance is a requirement because we have to lay down our self-sufficiency and pride to take on Christ-dependence and humility.

So that gets us to the start of .

Matthew

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:

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:

The Audience

The People

You’ll notice there are two groups of people that Jesus is addressing.

The Crowds

Jesus had compassion on the crowds.

Very likely this sermon was preached on the hillside near the sea of Galilee, it would have made a great place where people could gather and sit to hear Him.

You’ll notice that Jesus “saw the crowds”.

Jesus had compassion on the crowds throughout the Bible

Matthew 4:23–24 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.

Matthew 9:36 ESV

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

Matthew 14:14 ESV

When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.

Jesus constantly had compassion on the multitudes. We see that from the Bible constantly. Numerous times Jesus calls the crowds to him and deals with their pain and their ignorance.

Aren’t you glad Jesus is compassionate to us? Aren’t you glad he doesn’t just side step us when we have an issue or a hang-up?

But the crowds are a secondary audience. They are there because of the great miracles and healings being done, they want what Jesus can give them. The crowds are there to observe, but they aren’t the real audience.

The purpose in the crowds hearing of this sermon would have been for them to understand the drastic difference between how a Christian lives vs. a non-Christian.

The Disciples

The disciples are the real hearers here though. They are the primary audience that Jesus is preaching to. We see that they gathered around him and sat down for him to teach them. This is discipleship at it’s best.

Why is it important that the disciples are the real audience?

Because the Sermon on the Mount describes the characteristics of the Christian life. That’s what we start off with in these Beatitudes in verse 3-12.

The disciples needed to hear Jesus’ description of the Christian life because they were going to teach others to live this way. He was instructing them in how a Christian should live. What a Christian should BE!

The sermon on the mount isn’t primarily about what a Christian does, but who a Christian IS. Jesus is going to teach his disciples the CHARACTER of a Christian.

Also, Jesus wanted to prepare the disciples for days of suffering, persecution, hypocrisy, false conversions, and many other things - all in this ONE sermon.

This is of great importance to us today. We see so many people today living in opposition to what the Bible teaches. So much hatred, violence, so much evil. And we wonder, why don’t these people just stop it?

Why can’t we all just get along?

The reason they don’t live up to the standards of the Bible is because they can’t. Sure, they can be informed by education, they can be reformed by the prison system, they can be influenced by the environment around them. But when we turn on the news and see all of this bad around us happening every day, we can’t blame education, we can’t blame government, we can’t blame the environment, or the culture. - The blame lies within the heart of man.

Until the heart of man is changed, he cannot live according to God’s standards. We need to stop expecting the unbelievers to live against their nature.

Now, having said that - there is a real problem today when we think about the Christian and non-Christian. Primarily in the distinction between the two. Today there isn’t enough difference between the average Christian and the average non-Christian.

This sermon on the mount is going to teach us that the Christian is RADICALLY different than the unbeliever. The Christian has a new nature, new desires, a new way of life. And to be honest, Christians today aren’t living up to this radical way of living that we see Jesus teaching us.

Christians today are watered down by the World. We want the world to like us and we want to fit in with the world so we blur the lines to make ourselves seem like we belong to the world.

And that’s exactly the opposite of what Jesus wants us to do. WE ARE TO BE DIFFERENT! RADICALLY DIFFERENT!

Can I make this personal for a second? If you are a Christian here today, and you aren’t radically different than your non-Christian neighbor then you aren’t living the life Christ has saved you to live. You aren’t living like someone who has been redeemed from eternal punishment and been given a new lease on life. Eternal life!

The Purpose of the Sermon

The disciples were the main audience because Jesus wants to make it clear how a Christian

The main thrust of this Sermon on the Mount was for Jesus to refute the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees.

See, the scribes and Pharisees taught that religion was all about what we “do”, thus holding up all of these traditions and rituals to measure up.

The religious teachers of that day were pressing down on the people with all of these external things that they had to do to be righteous.

To them it was all about the “doing” instead of the “being”

And Jesus refutes all of that, and says several times in this sermon “IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT YOU DO ON THE OUTSIDE, IF THE INSIDE ISN’T RIGHT”.

Listen to these verses directly from Jesus to the Pharisees.

Luke 11:39 ESV

And the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.

Matthew 23:27 ESV

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.

This is like

The sermon on the mount shows us the true character of a Christian. We need to read the Bible because the Bible reads us. We must look into these words that Jesus preached because He shows us ourselves and where we fall short.

Crowds

How do we apply this to our lives?

So, one of the main purposes of this sermon was to clearly define the Character of a Christian, that was so different than what the Pharisees were teaching.

The Pharisees were focused on outward tradition and rituals, and Jesus was focused on the character of the heart.

See, if Jesus can get our heart right - then our outward actions will follow. If He can get our character right, then conduct will follow.

Character first, Conduct second.

But if we are just trying to do the right thing from our own strength, without dealing with the condition of our heart - we will never live like Jesus wants us to.

The Sermon on the Mount focuses primarily about WHO the Christian IS, then the flow of what the Christian DOES comes naturally.

Introduction to the Beatitudes

Look with me at for little while here and we will just set this up for next week.

Let me ask you a question. Do you want to be blessed?

It’s a simple question and I bet you every one of us in here would answer with a resounding YES!

Yes, we want to be blessed.

Let me go a step further, this word “blessed” can also mean happy. Do we want to be happy?

Yes, we want to be happy. I don’t think any of us want to be miserable. We don’t want to be unhappy.

Let’s read these verses and then I want to talk about what this “blessed” word means in these verses.

Matthew 5:3–12 ESV

3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. 6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. 7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. 8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. 10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Blessed Word Study

This word “blessed” is translated from the Greek word makarios. It means “happy, fortunate, blessed”. So we could rephrase all of these “Happy are the poor in spirit” and so on...

You say, why does that mean anything?

Well, it means that Jesus wants us to be blessed. He wants us to be happy. Do you believe that?

Jesus wants us to be happy, and not in the way that you typically think about being happy. At least not in the same way the world thinks about happiness.

Jesus wants us to know true blessing. He wants us to find true blessing and happiness in HIM.

The world gives us their method for happiness doesn’t it?

What are some things the world says will make you happy or blessed?

Money, material possessions, fame, popularity, power, influence, vacations, etc.....

The world says “get this and you’ll be happy”, “get that and you’ll be happy”. That’s what advertising is, it is a lure to buy something in hopes that you will desire it and think it will end your search for happiness.

The world is in a constant search for happiness.

So, it’s no wonder that Jesus starts here with these verses. He starts with what makes the Christian blessed or happy. He starts with TRUE HAPPINESS.

By the way, when we are talking about happiness here, we are not referring to the happiness that is related to your circumstances, or what “happens to you”. That type of happiness is fickle, and it comes and goes. This type of happiness is the type that the Christian always has. It is the type of happiness that the World, or circumstances, or the devil, or anything else can take away.

So, let’s look at these blessings really quick.

Blessed are the poor in spirit

Blessed are those who mourn

Blessed are the meek

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness

Blessed are the merciful

Blessed are the pure in heart

Blessed are the peacemakers

Blessed are the persecuted

Blessed are the slandered

Two Different Lists

Does that sound like the same list that we named earlier? Money, material possessions, fame, popularity, power, influence, vacations.

Let’s be very clear here. The Christian does not get his/her happiness from the same sources that the world does. The Christian doesn’t find blessing, or happiness in the same things that the world does.

Why is that? It’s because we have a new nature. We are Children of the Kingdom of God. We have a new master, a new King. We have a new reason to live, and a new way to live.

The Christian is altogether different from the non-Christian because we are from two different worlds.

We don’t belong here. Our citizenship is in Heaven. We are pilgrims in an unholy land as Sean Connery put it in Indiana Jones.

So, the blessedness here that Jesus is talking about is strictly for Christians. We find our happiness in something other than what the world offers.

That’s why we were talking earlier about this sermon being mainly for the disciples. It’s because the disciples were foreigners in an unholy land. They were surrounded by Pharisees who were living like they were saved, but on the inside were spiritually dead. They were surrounded by people who had no use for spiritual things.