Six years ago this September 8, here at New Life, we invested nearly half a year on Sunday mornings working our way through the Sermon on the Mount.  At that time the series was titled “Molding Disciples Jesus’ Way.”  “Molding.”  In introducing that series I said, “It isn’t Informing Disciples of Jesus’ Way, or Intending to be Disciples Jesus’ Way, but ‘Molding’ disciples Jesus’ way.”  The idea was that following Jesus is something we DO, not just something about which we inform ourselves, or intend to do.  So, not quite six years later here we are again investing 20 Sundays in a “Back to Basics” series titled simply:  The Sermon on the Mount.  Why?  Why focus on the Sermon on the Mount again?  The answer’s simple:  There’s nothing more basic for us as followers of Jesus than the Sermon on the Mount.  It’s Jesus’ best sermon ever.  In fact, it’s one of Jesus’ longest, single, recorded messages in the Gospels. 

     Many scholars claim Jesus didn’t actually do what we’re going to read about in a few minutes.  He didn’t actually climb up on a mountain and call His disciples to Himself and then “preach” the Sermon on the Mount as we have it in Matthew Chapters 5, 6, and 7.  They claim Matthew simply organized the material in this way for easy memorization.  The reality is we don’t know whether Jesus sat down and preached everything we find in Matthew 5, 6 and 7 at one time, but it’s certainly possible He did.  After all, the content of those three chapters is 111 verses, just a little more than 2500 words.  That’s about 17 minutes for someone who speaks at the rate I do.  Of course, I imagine Jesus paused for effect.  He may even have taken a few questions along the way. 

      Since we find some of the same material in the Gospel of Luke’s “Sermon on the Plain,” some scholars claim Matthew and Luke were both writing about the same event or events, but each gave a different setting.  A lot of scholars never preached.  As a preacher, I say perhaps Jesus preached similar messages at two different times.  After all, Jesus’ ministry was only three years long.  He wasn’t here to preach through the whole Old Testament.  He was here to call everyone to repentance, because the Kingdom of God was – and is – at hand.   If you have your Bibles with you, would you open them to Mark 1:14-15?  If you don’t have a Bible, and since we don’t have a screen this morning, listen as I read God’s word:  ¹⁴Later on, after John was arrested, Jesus went into Galilee, where He preached God’s Good News. ¹⁵“The time promised by God has come at last!” He announced. “The Kingdom of God is near! Repent of your sins and believe the Good News!”  Mark 1:14-15 NLT.  Jesus’ basic message never changed.  He came to bring salvation to the world.  He came to call us to repent or turn away from our sins, and receive the Good News that God’s Kingdom had come in and through Him.  As Jesus preached, He would have driven home the same themes over and over again, as we see He did by reading the four gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

    For the sake of this series, let’s assume that Jesus preached one message, at one time, in one place, with one purpose:  To call those followers who had already repented and received the Good News, to a deeper level of discipleship.  We’ll invest the next twenty weeks in taking brief “morsels” from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, “chewing” on them, “digesting” them, so that in the end they become part of us and we become more fully devoted and developed followers of Jesus.  If you’re here for the first time today, or if you’re new to Jesus, the Bible and the Church, you couldn’t have chosen a better time to be here.  We’re going to focus intently on Jesus’ plan for our lives in His own words from now through October 12^th!  Each message will be self-contained, and yet each message will build on the one before and after it.  That means you’ll gain the most benefit by being here for the next 20 Sundays in a row.  But even if you are only go to be here today, you’ll still benefit!  With vacations and missions trips, I’m sure most of us will miss a message or two.  In fact, I’m going to be in Florida next Sunday, getting ready to come home from Janel Dickson and Dan Papapanu’s wedding, so I’ll do what you can do if you miss a Sunday, catch it online at www.newlifexn.org. 

     What makes the Sermon on the Mount the best sermon ever?   So many things!  In fact, here are my top ten reasons why the Sermon on the Mount IS the best sermon ever!

            10:   No worries about technical difficulties or                                                       “feedback!”

              9:   No tent to assemble or take down.

              8:   No government ordinances to consider before                                               meeting.

              7:   The weather was guaranteed to be great!

              6:   Jesus’ didn’t just repeat what someone else                                                             said—He explained God’s intention!

              5:  The Sermon on the Mount covers every major                                                area of following Jesus in one message!

              4:   The location had to have provided an incredible                                             “backdrop” for the message!

              3:   Great, concrete illustrations.

              2:   Jesus was the preacher!

              1:   Jesus gave us a plan for living the heart of God                                             every day!

     Okay, let’s turn to God’s word as we find it in Matthew 5:1-2.  As you turn in your Bibles--and I would encourage you to bring your Bibles these next 20 weeks, even though we’re going to be indoors where we will have a screen most Sundays, since you may hear things you’ll want to write in the margins, or to highlight or underline, so you’ll remember to put them into practice--I want you to notice something different, that we’ll be doing each of the Sundays through this series.  Either on the screen (when we’re at the primary center) or in the weekly handout, we’ll have two translations of Jesus’ words.  One will be MOT (that stands for my own translation, from the original Greek,) and the other will be the NLT, which we typically use on the Screen at New Life.  The Scripture is brief this morning, so I’m not going to ask you to stand as we read, but let’s listen to God’s word: Matthew 5:1-2  MOT & NLT

¹And seeing the crowds He[Jesus] went up into the mountains, and after he sat down His disciples came to Him;

¹One day as the crowds were gathering; Jesus went up the mountainside with His disciples and sat down to teach them.

²And opening His mouth He taught them saying:

²This is what He taught them:

                        Let’s pray…………………  Amen.

     And seeing the crowds He[Jesus] went up into the mountains.   Did you catch that?  Jesus came to call the world to repentance and to believe the Good News that God’s Kingdom is coming.  Part of Jesus’ preaching and teaching was also to heal and cast out demons.  As we would imagine, crowds started gathering everywhere Jesus went.  They didn’t only want to hear the Good News.  They wanted to experience it.  So on the day that Jesus was going to preach the best sermon ever, as the crowds started filing in—Jesus took a hike--literally.  He started climbing a mountain.  Can you imagine it?  What if right now, I just started walking away?  What would you do?  Would you follow me?  Would you sit here for a while wondering where I went?  Would you say a closing prayer and start cooking the hot dogs?

     Why in the world, if Jesus’ goal was to attract huge crowds, would he leave the crowd, climb a mountain and sit down at the top?  Ahhh…..Jesus’ goal was NOT to attract huge crowds that day.  Jesus’ goal was to teach His disciples.  Jesus’ goal was to impart the most important message His followers would ever receive, but they had to WANT to hear it.  These days across America many churches make it as easy as possible for people to follow Jesus, but Jesus didn’t.  Why?  Why would Jesus make it hard to hear His message?  Why would Jesus climb a mountain and make anyone who wanted to hear what He had to say climb it, too?  You may be thinking, “There wasn’t any sound system, so maybe He climbed the mountain, so people could see and hear Him better.  If we had only read the New Living Translation, we might assume that was the case.  It tells us that Jesus went up on the mountainside with his disciples and sat down to teach them.  “Mountain side”—That might be half way up, a fourth of the way up—the crowd could have leaned in real hard and heard Him.  But the original text tells us that Jesus went up into the mountains and sat down.  Then His disciples came to Him.  Apparently, Jesus was in pretty good shape, because He had time to sit down before the disciples caught up to Him.  I would expect the Son of God to be in good shape, because He must have taken excellent care of Himself.  He knew who He was, and He knew His task, and He knew that at the end of His life He would endure pain that an ordinary human being wouldn’t even be able to endure.

     Anyway, Jesus was sitting in the mountains, and His disciples came to Him.  Some of the crowd probably followed as well.  But those who were marginally interested must have decided that Jesus expected too much and gone home.  How many times in our lives do we miss out on God’s greatest blessings, because we decide the cost is too high?  More than half a century ago, a pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a book titled, “The Cost of Discipleship.”  In that book Bonhoeffer challenged his readers to move beyond “cheap grace,” to “costly grace.”  In Jesus’ own life, He called men and women to costly grace.  What is “costly grace”?  It’s a recognition that Jesus died so we could live, so we could have a life of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, here and now, and with Him forever, and have it for free.  That’s grace—God’s unmerited favor.  Costly grace is the recognition that the price Jesus paid makes our lives HIS.  We don’t think, or talk or live for ourselves, but for Him.  We recognize that it’s in Him that we live and move and have our being.

     As we’ll see in the next 19 weeks, the Sermon on the Mount covers every important area of life.  Jesus will teach us about attitudes for living, about being “salt and light” for a dark and tasteless world.  He’ll teach us about what it means to truly live out the Ten Commandments.  He’ll teach us about giving back to God, about prayer, about fasting.  He’ll talk about making God the God of our lives instead of money.  He’ll remind us that when He’s in charge of our lives, when He’s first, He becomes responsible for everything else in our lives, so we don’t need to worry about a thing.  Jesus will teach us not to judge others, but to remember that a person’s words don’t define the person.  What defines us is our actions our fruit.  Jesus will make some brief, but pithy points along the way—such as doing unto others, as we’d have them do to us.  He’ll reminds us that He didn’t come to destroy the teachings of the Old Testament, but to fulfill them.  Jesus will conclude by telling us that if we listen to His words and DO them, we’ll be wise and our lives will withstand any test, but if we listen to the words and fail to do them, we’ll be like fools who build our lives on sand, and when the storms and wind come, they will fall.  The Sermon on the Mount isn’t for the faint of heart.  In fact, the Sermon on the Mount is for those who want to live their lives from their hearts and their heads, not merely one or the other.    If we had no other teaching from Jesus than this, and we lived this teaching, these 2500 words, the world would know it.  A lot of books are coming out these days that condemn the Church of Jesus Christ in America.  Books such us UnChristian, and They Like Jesus But Not the Church.  The books have a predictable pattern.  They tell us that “church people” are more judgmental than loving.  They tell us that “church people” are more known for what we’re against that what we’re for.  They tells us that “church people” are shallow, that we don’t concern ourselves with the complexities of life, and our answers are too simple to be valid.  There’s truth in much of this criticism.  As your pastor, my goal is to speak the truth in love not only on Sunday mornings, but on Tuesday afternoons, and Thursdays and everyday in between.  My goal is to equip you to love Jesus more and serve Him more faithfully.  I know that the keys to doing that are in this book (pick up the Bible), the Holy Spirit and your willingness to give up control to Him.  

     In the Sermon on the Mount, we’re going to face ideas, truths, realities from Jesus that will seem impossible.  Just take Matthew 5:48 for example:  “You are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.”  Who can do that?  I can’t.  Can any of you?  But in the power of the Holy Spirit we CAN do that.  Last Sunday, I said that too often the church has set the bar so low, that anyone can clear it, but that Jesus sets the bar so high that apart from the Holy Spirit it’s impossible for us to clear it.  The Sermon on the Mount is going to drive us to Jesus, to the Holy Spirit, because we will realize again, and again and again that we will never “get it” or “live it” apart from Him.

     The second verse we read this morning says, “He opened His mouth and taught them, saying….”   Of course He opened His mouth.  How do you speak if you don’t open your mouth?  In Jesus’ day, though, a rabbi paused after reading God’s word.  In fact, in Jesus’ day a rabbi stood to read God’s word, then sat down, paused, opened his mouth and then spoke.  Do you notice something missing in that order from what we read this morning?  Jesus climbed into the mountains and sat down.  He didn’t read God’s word, before He sat down.  Why? Because He IS God’s word!  Moses had to climb a mountain to receive God’s word. Jesus IS God’s word.  He climbed the mountain, inviting people to follow and receive God’s word directly.  It’s been said that we have done the impossible in our day. In Jesus’ day people would walk all day and miss dinner to hear Jesus.  In our day people would walk all day and miss dinner not to have to hear about Jesus.

     You may be thinking, “I’ve never heard a sermon based on two verses that don’t even teach anything.”  But they do.  The first two verses of the Sermon on the Mount, aren’t part of the sermon.  They teach us that Jesus-Himself is God’s word, and that when He speaks we must listen.  Here’s the challenge for this week:  TODAY’S CHALLENGE:  I will go wherever Jesus leads, so that I may hear His voice and do His will.  Today is the tenth day of the 60/60 experiment for me.  For those of you who weren’t here this past Sunday, I introduced the 60/60 experiment then.  It’s simple for sixty days every sixty minutes you set your watch or cell phone alarm to go off, and when it does you ask something like, “Am I living in the power of the Holy Spirit, or Am I doing what Jesus would have me do?”  The idea is that the reminder every hour on the hour will keep us in God’s will more than if we just go through life without any reminders.  The results have been amazing to me.  A number of times the “beep” has come at just a moment when I was about to move far from God’s will, and has pulled me back.  At other times the “beep” has come at times that have affirmed that I’ve been in His will.  The “beeps” have become a reality check for me, and have helped me live the costly grace of Jesus more effectively.  The Sermon on the Mount offers us a reality check in a different kind of way.  It helps us to hear from the mouth of God, God’s way of living.  It allows us to live out the challenge:  TODAY’S CHALLENGE:  I will go wherever Jesus leads, so that I may hear His voice and do His will.  Because we can only do Jesus’ will, once we know it.  My prayer for each of us over these next twenty weeks is that we will not only go “through” the Sermon on the Mount, but that the Sermon on the Mount will go through Us, that if we don’t know Jesus as Savior and Lord right now, we will before we’ve completed this series.  And, if we do know Jesus as Savior and Lord right now, that 20 weeks from now, His ways will be our ways every time the watch beeps, and every moment in between.  Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up into the mountains and sat down.  Are we willing to follow? Because only if we are, will we hear the best sermon ever, and by His grace be equipped to live it.   Let’s pray… Amen.