Intro to Sermon on the Mount

Sermon Series: Sermon on the Mount
Sermon Title: Intro to Sermon on the Mount
Pastor Chris O’Brien

Intro to Sermon on the Mount

We’ll make reference to other places, but this will sort of get our feet wet with the Sermon on the Mount. The idea today is to give somewhat of an overview. Whenever I heard a teacher say that in college, I feared boredom, so I was hesitant to use that word, but so it goes.

Let’s hear now the word of God. Matthew 4:17 and following.

Matthew 4:17-25; 5:1-10, 17-18

From that time, Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” And Jesus said to the two, Peter and Andrew, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him.

And Jesus 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 he healed them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.

And seeing the crowds, Jesus went up on the mountain. And when He sat down, His disciples came to Him. And Jesus opened His mouth and taught them, saying:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Verse 17. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”

This is the word of God.

The First Time I Heard Al Martin Preach

About a month ago, maybe two, I didn’t look up the date. One of the foremost preachers of our day, who actually hailed from New Jersey, died. I believe the town is Essex, New Jersey, way up in that other country, North Jersey. Great Reformed Baptist preacher.

Sometimes when I say Reformed Baptist, people say, what, did they come out of reform school? No, no, we mean they’re basically Presbyterians. They’re basically Presbyterians. They just use more water in baptism than we do.

So, Al Martin, Albert N. Martin, was one of the great preachers of the day. He died, I believe he was 89 years old. He ministered in that same church most of his life and had really a worldwide ministry. I remember distinctly the first time I heard Al Martin preach.

A seminary student from Reformed Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi came to get me in Hattiesburg, an hour and a half away. I was a student at the college, and he basically said, you’re coming with me. And he took me to seminary, and he took me to the chapel. They were having special services. Al Martin was preaching.

And at Reformed Seminary, the chapel, it’s the old style where the pulpit is up very high and you’re looking your self-righteous preacher nose down at the congregation. And so I’m looking at Al Martin, and my friend Steve Justley, who’s also a PCA pastor, made sure that he had me as close as I could possibly be to him. And I have never ever in my life heard preaching like that.

He was preaching a series on the Christian life. You might say much like what the Sermon on the Mount is about. The chapel at RTS was for preacher wannabes like me, but it was also full of PCA pastors and other pastors from around the area. The chapel was full, and so Al Martin knew he was preaching to not just wannabe preachers, but to preachers. And he knew that the way of the world, as it’s always been, is to put pressure on the pastor to make him compromise.

This would be back around 1982, three, four, I don’t exactly remember. He starts to read Psalm 1, and he begins to talk about how David says, you know, the blessed man does not stand with the scoffer and sit with the wicked man and so forth. And then he begins to talk as if there’s somebody critiquing David. Now, David, now, David, you can’t go on being so negative. You know, this is 1980, we got to be real positive, we got to pat people on the back.

And then the Holy Spirit got a hold of this preacher in a way I’ve never seen. He pointed his finger at all of us. I think one of his eyes almost bulged completely out of his head. It seemed that way. And I’m not going to try to imitate him, although I do a pretty good imitation, but he basically said to the preachers, if you’ve lost your spiritual guts to tell people what they can’t do, then just get out of your pulpits. And you could hear a pin drop.

And then he said, get out and stay out. It’s really getting bad now. He’s telling preachers to get out of their pulpits. And then he says something like, until the Holy Spirit has made you man enough to tell people there are certain things they can’t do. And I’m just shaking. I probably had a couple of seizures. It was just unbelievable.

When God Uses a Sermon

10, 15 years later, completely different situation. I’m at a Ligonier conference. I think this is before Slavic is born. So, you know, Slavic has a photographic memory. He knows every place he’s been and who’s preached there. He knows the day. But anyway, this was Eric Alexander from, where is Eric from? Somewhere in Europe, Wales. I don’t remember. One of those European places.

And he’s preaching on the book of Isaiah, Isaiah 6. He’s preaching on the vision that Isaiah sees of God in all his glory and his holiness. And because of the way God took hold of the word of God and the preacher of the word, and so moved in his preaching, you had this sense you were in the temple. You had this sense that you could see the glory of God. And then when Isaiah cries out, woe is me, I’m ruined, you think you’re a goner too. Isn’t it wonderful when God uses a sermon?

Maybe you’ve heard a sermon of R.C. Sproul from years ago, and of course they’re all now on the Table Talk app. I’m not using the right term, but anyway. You always know when a sermon affects my friend Slavic, because he’ll not only send it to the Saturday Bible study group, that’s pretty impressive, but he sends it to you and then he says, you have to stop whatever you’re doing, listen now. He doesn’t usually threaten us, but anyway. And then he tells us, I translated it into Ukrainian.

My hope today is just by God’s grace, by the work of the Holy Spirit, that as we just survey, it’s like, you know, we’re flying over the Sermon on the Mount. We’re just gonna taste, we’re just gonna touch, but that you and I will go, yeah, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus preached this. Boy, shouldn’t I be paying more attention to this? Shouldn’t I go back time and time again?

Jesus Our Prophet, Priest, and King

Jesus is our prophet, priest, and king. We know him especially as our priest because he not only gave up an offering for sin for us, he gave himself up. He’s our great sin substitute. He’s our king. He’s sovereign over all things as God, but he’s sovereign in a special way because he was risen from the dead and ascended to the right hand of God. But he is our prophet, the great preacher, as well as our savior. And in God’s wisdom and in God’s kindness, he gives us this sermon of his.

Is it edited? Could be. You can probably read it in 15, 20 minutes. We don’t know, doesn’t matter. God in his wisdom preserved for us this sermon. It plays such an important, prominent role in Matthew’s gospel.

Chapters one and two of Matthew’s gospel tell us that Jesus, by genealogy, is the son of David, and that the king has been born. But now he’s got to escape because Herod’s trying to kill him. Chapter three begins with John’s ministry and leads to John baptizing Jesus. We call that the beginning of Jesus’s ministry. You recall, as Jesus approaches John, John says, you should be baptizing me. This is weird. And Jesus says to John, let it be so now to fulfill all righteousness.

Jesus is now at the beginning of his ministry, identifying with sinners like you and me, his people for whom he will die, his elect from every tongue, tribe, and nation from all the ages. He receives the baptism of John, which is for repentance for sin. Jesus receives that baptism not because he has sinned, but on behalf of us who have sinned.

He then goes into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Why was that so important? Because that’s where Adam failed. Adam failed to be obedient. Jesus would not fail. When Jesus would go to the cross, he would be the perfect, righteous, sinless sacrifice. As he says of himself to the Jewish leadership, I always do what pleases my heavenly father.

Follow Me

Then Jesus begins his ministry, and Matthew focuses on him calling Peter and Andrew and telling them to follow him. Jesus isn’t saying, hey, you guys, you know, you stand here and I’m gonna walk. And if I take a left, you guys take a left. If I gotta do the U-turn, you go around. He’s not talking about merely physically. He’s saying, commit your life to me. Follow me.

And then Matthew gives this description of Jesus. Now his fame is spreading because along with his preaching, he’s healing people of all kinds of diseases. In other words, just like when he healed the paralytic, his miracles are demonstrating that he’s the son of God. He’s the savior of sinners, and he has the authority to forgive sins.

And he goes up to this mountain, and this great crowd, as verse 25 says, followed him from Galilee. The Decapolis is a group of 10 cities. While predominantly pagan culturally, there’s still Jews coming from that area and all the surrounding area.

Who Is the Sermon on the Mount For?

Look at chapter 5, verse 1. There’s these great crowds that have been following Jesus. Now he’s going to do this great sermon. But who is his focus? Who is his audience? Matthew tells us clearly. Jesus, seeing the crowds, went up on the mountain. And when he sat down, his disciples came to him. Jesus’s focus in this sermon is his disciples, his followers, you and me.

I’m not saying that God can’t use this sermon, these three wonderful chapters, to convert somebody. That’s not my point. God can use any word of scripture he wants to convert somebody. But what I’m saying is the audience is the covenant people. And the theme or the priority of the message is the Christian life, not conversion.

Now again, we’ll see as we walk through it their implications to help us understand more about conversion. Back in August, we saw how Jesus talked to Nicodemus in John 3 about the necessity of new birth. You have to be born again because you’re spiritually dead. But having been given new birth in the context of the preaching of the gospel, what do people do? They turn from their sins and they put their trust in Christ.

This is not a revival sermon. This is not a sermon for unbelievers on how to come to Christ. No, this is a sermon for us, the disciples of Jesus, how to live the Christian life, how to live the Christian life. That is the focus here.

Now, this is where it gets tricky. This is where boredom could set in. So I’ve got to talk fast so you don’t fall asleep, because now I want to just do a quick overview of chapters five, six, and seven. Again, my rationale in doing this is like what an appetizer is supposed to be at a fancy meal. It’s not always that way. Usually the appetizer for me is there so I can scarf it down so that when I get to the meal, you know, I’ll sort of enjoy it and I won’t scarf it down. I mean an appetizer in the sense that, yeah, this is good, but I want more.

Chapter Five: Christian Character and Obedience

What does Jesus begin to do in chapter five? He teaches us about Christian character. Christian character. Those who are spiritually poor, who mourn over their sin, who hunger and thirst for righteousness, who are peacemakers. You might say there’s a parallel in Paul in Galatians 5. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, and so forth and so on. You can see these as complementary. Jesus teaches us what we are to be from the inside out.

And then Jesus teaches us, yes, it’s a radical concept in 2026, Jesus teaches us to be godly, to truly be in Christ. Then you will obey. You will obey God’s law.

How this has been misunderstood through the ages, how it’s been misunderstood through church history. You’ve had people in church history over and over again, even though great men have come along and clearly expounded the scripture so these people would please just shut up, but they rise again, they rise again, and they say, oh, you’re saved by grace, you do whatever you want. Yes, that’s why Jesus said, if you love me, you keep my commandments. Yeah, it makes no sense, but it shows that we’re always in a spiritual battle.

If you go nowhere else than the Sermon on the Mount, chapter five, you find the central importance of obedience as Christians. No, of course not, obedience doesn’t save us. We know that. We’re good Presbyterians. But obedience proves, and it’s necessary to prove, that you’re saved.

I didn’t quote it in this portion of verse 17, 18 and following, but in that section Jesus says to his followers, his disciples, if your righteousness, that is your personal obedience, not Christ’s righteousness on the cross.

Jesus says if your righteousness, my righteousness, does not exceed, go beyond the scribes and the Pharisees, who seem to be so meticulous about keeping the law. If ours doesn’t exceed theirs, we don’t enter heaven. Jesus said that. Our obedience, if we’re genuinely Christians, will be from the heart. The wicked scribes and Pharisees, it was all superficial.

Jesus then gives us these practical illustrations about how in his day, the teachers of his day, the Jewish leaders, had distorted the law of God, the Ten Commandments, and Jesus gives the right interpretation. But it’s not enough that he gives us the right interpretation. He applies it to us.

Chapter Six: Prayer

And then in chapter six, he teaches us about prayer. And oh, how familiar we are with the Lord’s Prayer, our Father who art in heaven. But are our prayers guided by this prayer we know so well? Jesus’s intent there isn’t to say that every time you pray, you pray this patterned prayer. That’s not the point. But surely it is a pattern. It is a guide to a habit of prayer for God’s people.

When the elders gather every Sunday morning, now at 9:15, we have different portions of scripture with different prayers, and we pray those. We can use the Lord’s Prayer, but we use the prayers of Paul, we use the Psalms. But this prayer is so important. It’s so crucial for us. And really, the prayer itself, in a real sense, not only touches on all the aspects of prayer, it really is a summary itself of the Christian life.

Chapter Seven: Judge Not

Chapter seven, like any good sermon, ends with judgment. Oh, my goodness, preacher. Don’t tell me you’re gonna start pulling an Al Martin on us. Eh, I don’t think so.

One of the most misunderstood phrases in the Bible, not by the pagans, okay, but by believers: judge not. How many times have you seen or heard of another believer doing something inconsistent with God’s word? It’s public, it’s out there, everybody knows. Either teaching something that’s not orthodox or living a lifestyle. And you say, that’s wrong. Oh, no, no, no. Don’t judge.

How that has paralyzed Christians. You are to judge. Oh, pastor, did you just contradict Jesus? No, no, no, I didn’t. You must read Jesus’s teaching on judge not in the context of the entire passage. First and foremost, Jesus is saying, do not condemn other people to hell. That’s his primary focus.

Again, just trying to get your feet wet, just trying to make you go back and read, maybe look at your study Bible notes. By the way, if you want a good commentary of sorts to read along with my preaching, get Sinclair Ferguson’s or John Stott’s. I’ll be plagiarizing them throughout the series. Good stuff, good stuff. John Stott, Sinclair Ferguson.

Jesus not only talks about judging properly. He talks about exposing false teachers. And then, not the very end of the sermon, but close, we have some of the most sobering words in all of Holy Scripture. Some of the most sobering words of our Savior.

Jesus pictures the day of judgment and people coming to Him that are professing Christians, but they’re false. And yet they’ve done miraculous things. They’ve healed people. Maybe they led a revival and had many people converted. And yet the words on judgment day to them, because their life was characterized by wickedness, oops, I gave too much away. Jesus says to them, get away from me, I never knew you.

And finally, Jesus tells us what wise Christians do. They listen to the word of God. Maybe they even write it down. Maybe they even memorize it. And then they walk around arrogantly and say, look what I know. Of course, that’s not what Jesus says. He says the wise man hears his word and does it. And does it. Can it be any plainer?

Be Perfect as Your Heavenly Father Is Perfect

But now finally, what is Jesus’s goal in this sermon? What’s his goal? Well, we gotta go back to chapter five. We gotta go back to the verses prior to verse 48, where some have taught, love your neighbor, hate your enemy. The Bible never said hate your enemy, but that’s what some Jewish teachers were teaching. Hate your enemy. Jesus says, love your enemy and pray for those that persecute you. And then Jesus says this: be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. Another way to say it, be holy as your heavenly father is holy.

Now, I think Kevin DeYoung is right in his book The Hole in Our Holiness, where he talks about how there can be such an overemphasis in good biblical teaching on where we fail in the Christian life that there can become sort of a paralysis. We just get morbidly introspective and we become overwhelmed. Well, I can’t do anything right. There’s never perfection. I ought to give up.

And I think Kevin DeYoung is right to have that emphasis that, yes, we can and do make progress in the Christian life. Yes, indeed. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that the goal of the Christian life is holiness, perfection, as Jesus says. What a bummer to end on. But of course, we won’t end there. Don’t you see?

As we strive to live the Christian life and take seriously the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, we will always be pulled up short by knowing we can’t do this. And so it points us right back to the cross.

So that even by God’s grace, the work of his Spirit through the word, I’m striving along with God’s people in my church family to move in the right direction, yet I fail every day, and yet it just keeps sending me back to the cross of Jesus. I never become proud as a biblical, consistent Christian. I’m always spiritually poor. You’ll have to stay tuned.

Come to the Table

And so we come to the table today. We don’t come to the table today as, you know, pretty good Christians. We’re pretty good. We know our theology and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We come as sons and daughters of a living God who’ve been adopted into God’s household, declared righteous in his sight through the cross of Jesus.

Why a meal? Why a token meal? We’ll all go home, I think, and eat after this. It won’t satisfy us in terms of a daily meal, but it’s a picture of the cross. How so? Well, in many ways. But it’s a reminder that we, as God’s people living the Christian life, continually feed on our savior and his death and his resurrection and our union with him by faith through his sovereign grace.

I hope I whet your appetite. Come to the table now, be fed.

Let’s pray together. Father, how we desire your word and this sermon in the upcoming weeks and months ahead to continue to transform our lives after the image of our Savior. May we never ever, in self-righteousness and foolishness, become self-righteous, but may we always be spiritually poor, realizing that any good that seems to come from living the Christian life is all attributed to your sovereign grace, and all the sin and inconsistencies are attributed to us. Father, help us now as your people, as we come to the Lord’s table, to come in faith, to come in expectation, to come looking forward to the day when we won’t have this little token meal, but along with God and the Lamb, we will celebrate the feast. For Jesus’ sake, amen.

Intro to Sermon on the Mount

Fairfield Church, PCA