Introduction to the Sermon on the Mount

The Sermon on the Mount is not a random collection of teaching snippets. These are Jesus’ core teachings, organized intentionally to help readers understand emphasis points and to aid memorization. Readers can identify a tree-part repeated structure to the sermon. It contains three major sections, and the middle section (main body) itself has three parts, and each middle part breaks into three parts, as well.

At the center of the center section, we read the famous prayer Jesus taught his followers with.

So for Jesus, what does it mean for God’s Kingdom to come to Earth? To answer, we first remember that Jesus is Jewish and grew up meditating on the Hebrew Bible, the sacred Scriptures of Israel. They told the story of God and his way of life in a heavenly kingdom along with humanity and its ways of life in its own kingdoms on Earth.

God first creates a well-ordered world where the kingdom of God and Earth were one, and he appoints humans to rule on his behalf. When humans rule with God’s wisdom and love — that is, when justice and peace prevail, and love compels all to care for one another generously — they are experiencing God’s Kingdom and God’s will being done here on Earth as it is in Heaven (Genesis 1). But that’s no easy task. Humans start building their own kingdoms, according to their own wisdom (Genesis 3, 4, 11).

God’s response is to help humanity, and he chooses one family, the people of Israel (Abraham’s family), to bring life to every other family on Earth.

God’s wisdom for Abraham’s family is called the Torah, which in Hebrew, means “teaching” or “instruction.” Beginning with Moses on Mount Sinai, God enters into a sacred covenant with them (Exodus 19-20). God chooses this one family to be transformed by God’s wisdom so that they can represent God’s Kingdom before all the nations (Exodus 19:3-6).

But in Jesus’ day, God’s Kingdom is nowhere to be seen. In fact, Israel in the first century is suffering under the thumb of Roman oppressors. So why hadn’t God’s Kingdom come? Many religious leaders, like the scribes and the Pharisees, thought it wasn’t coming because Israel wasn’t being faithful enough to the Torah. Other leaders, called the Sadducees, thought it would be best if Israel found a way to cooperate with Rome, and so they became the power brokers of Jesus’ day. Some known as “the zealots” ran for the hills to become freedom fighters against Rome. And still others withdrew to the desert, waiting for God to use them to start a new Israel.

But if you were to walk around the hill country of Israel like Jesus did, you would have mostly found normal people figuring out their lives as best they could. Most were barely hanging on—lots of poor and sick people. Many had lost their land to the Roman occupiers and were struggling to pay the heavy taxes. They are largely feeling powerless and hopeless.

So Jesus went to these people, healing the sick and announcing that God’s Kingdom was arriving.

People gathered from all over to hear his teachings. And one day, Jesus went up to a hill and said the arrival of God’s Kingdom was starting, here and now with them — the powerless and the weak. This is why the very first line of the Sermon on the Mount is:

In other words, where can you go and see God’s presence and blessing springing to life? Among the rich? Among the powerful? “No!” Jesus says. Look where people are poor, where they feel crushed and defeated. God’s Kingdom is beginning with those very people.

Watch our first Sermon on the Mount video and its related visual commentary.

• Intro to the Sermon on the Mount
• Visual Commentary: Matthew 5-7: Overview

Listen to these introductory episodes of our Sermon on the Mount Series.

• Kicking Off a Year with Sermon on the Mount
• The Hebrew Bible’s Connection to the Sermon on the Mount
• The Sermon on the Mount's Place in the Gospel of Matthew

Find BibleProject articles as well as books recommended by our scholar team.

Articles

• What Is the Sermon on the Mount?
  
  

Books