3 Thoughts on the Sermon on the Mount (& Why It Makes Me Nervous)

The Sermon on the Mount makes me nervous. Seriously.

A few months ago, a few teachers from our church decided to put on a Teaching Lab whereby any interns that wanted to exercise teaching the Bible could do so in a controlled environment and receive helpful feedback afterward. The exercise was thus: pick a passage from the Sermon on the Mount, teach it in 5 minutes, and hit every facet of learning (aka “head, heart, hands”). Not exactly the easiest task in the world, but alas, we gave it our best shot.

Intern after intern would go up, teach, and then stand bare before all while the rest of us would wince as our teachers would, ever so graciously, absolutely rip them to shreds. (Ok, that’s an exaggeration, but some of our lessons were pretty bad with “yours truly” being up there with the worst.)

As I sat and watched us try and fail at teaching three of the most marvelous chapters in the Bible, I noticed a trend: we weren’t actually teaching the Sermon on the Mount.

Here’s what I mean: we would take verses like “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Mt. 5:8) and say things like “Jesus tells us that unless we’re pure in heart then we won’t see God, but what he REALLY meant was…”

And this wasn’t an isolated case. Almost all of us would look at the text, read it aloud, and then proceed to explain how it didn’t mean what it actually said. The principle feedback given to all of us was usually “You said this, but what that text actually says is…”

This brought me to some thoughts on the Sermon on the Mount, and why, generally speaking, it makes me nervous.

1. The Sermon on the Mount is structured in such a way to reveal that you cannot live it perfectly.

The first utterance of Jesus lays the foundation for how the following statements ought to be rerceived: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” What does it mean to be “poor in spirit”? Having an “impoverished spirit” means looking at God and seeing glory and then looking at self and seeing spiritual bankruptcy. This is the essence of the Sermon on the Mount. It only compounds the guilt of a life that cannot be lived perfectly.

The fallacy of our lessons in the teaching lab wasn’t that we didn’t realize this. No, we certainly realized this. The central problem was that we ran to the “filling” aspect of the gospel before properly meditating on the “emptying” first. Martyn Lloyd-Jones says it best: “we cannot be filled until we are first empty… there are always these two sides to the gospel; there is a pulling down and a raising up.”

In as much as you are aware of the bad news will inform how good the good news actually is. The Sermon on the Mount reminds us that we can’t run to good news if we weren’t aware of the bad news first.

2. The Sermon on the Mount is meant to be lived.

After my first point, this may seem like a contradiction but it’s not. If you are in Christ, you are a “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17) with a “new heart” (Ezek. 36:26) and new desires (Gal. 5:24) which means that if you’re in Christ, you can actually live this. The Sermon on the Mount is not meant to be observed from afar, but to be lived, known and felt.

Lloyd-Jones:

Any one of us, every one of us, whatever we may be by birth and nature, is meant as a Christian to be like this. And not only are we meant to be like this: we can be like this. That is the central glory of the gospel. It can take the proudest man by nature and make him a man who is poor in spirit.

3. The Sermon on the Mount is meant to be both comforting AND discomforting to Christians.

The Sermon on the Mount looks you and I straight in the face with the perfect standard of God and reveals our deficiencies. It exposes the dark places and leaves no stone uncovered. No man can read the great Sermon and walk away with a grin on his face and a pat on his back. In many ways, the great Sermon reads you and I right down to our very bones. This is why the Sermon on the Mount makes me nervous.

But that discomfort is meant to hit you and I and turn us toward the One who lived the Sermon perfectly.

Realizing that I haven’t loved my enemies, or that the slight sign of traffic makes me angry, or that I have forsaken “saltiness” for the feigning sweetness of this world–all of these and more reveal my spiritual bankruptcy. In those moments, I am truly poor in spirit. And in those moments, Jesus says that I am blessed.

That is the good news of the gospel. You didn’t but Jesus did and now because of him, you actually can.

So the next time you approach the Sermon on the Mount, don’t try to spin it to mean something it doesn’t. Sit in the discomfort. Then maybe after being uncomfortable for a while you can arise and go to Jesus singing the words of “Come, Ye Sinners” with Joseph Hart:

Come, ye sinners, poor and needy,
Weak and wounded, sick and sore;
Jesus ready stands to save you,
Full of pity, love and power.

Come, ye thirsty, come, and welcome,
God’s free bounty glorify;
True belief and true repentance,
Every grace that brings you nigh.

Come, ye weary, heavy laden,
Lost and ruined by the fall;
If you tarry till you’re better,
You will never come at all.

View Him prostrate in the garden;
On the ground your Maker lies.
On the bloody tree behold Him;
Sinner, will this not suffice?

Lo! th’incarnate God ascended,
Pleads the merit of His blood:
Venture on Him, venture wholly,
Let no other trust intrude.

Let not conscience make you linger,
Not of fitness fondly dream;
All the fitness He requireth
Is to feel your need of Him.