This content was excerpted from the Sermon on the Mount Bible study chapter one.
What do all people at all times want? Is there anything that we can identify as universal and timeless that drives how all humans live? If so, what is it? That question is not new. It’s been asked and answered for as long as people have been wrestling with what it means to be human. In the Greco-Roman world, before and during the time of Jesus, this question was discussed often by the great philosophers. The answer they gave was consistent. Likewise, in the first eighteen hundred years of the church this question was asked by theologians and, maybe shockingly to us, they gave the same answer. All people want to be happy. Let’s listen to what the influential church leader Augustine had to say on the issue. In Book 10 of his massive tome The City of God, he begins this way: “It is the decided opinion of all who use their brains, that all men desire to be happy.”1 Happiness—a sense of peace, thriving, and contentment, not just a temporary pleasure—drives all that we do. It is fundamental to what it means to be human. We are creatures made in God’s image and we are designed for flourishing—what the Bible calls shalom. In this assessment, Augustine agrees with all the philosophers and theologians that came before him. We are no different today.
According to Jesus, the goal of cross-bearing and self-denial is so that we might find the flourishing life (true happiness) that we are made for.
Standing in line at my neighborhood Lowe’s to buy some deck-building materials, I spied a magazine entitled, The Happiness Formula: How to Find Joy & Live Your Best Life. It contained a glossy ninety-five pages of essays, pro tips, charts, and graphs about the “science of happiness.” In short, snappy articles, we are told how “modern science,” by which they mean positive psychology, teaches us what to do 10 and not do to be happy. Eat right. Avoid bad relationships. Ride bicycles more like the happy Swedish people do. Practice yoga. Even a home improvement store is offering help on the happiness question. But what about the Bible? And what about Jesus? Doesn’t He teach us to deny ourselves and take up our crosses? Yes. Isn’t this the opposite of our desire for happiness? No. Quite the contrary, Jesus’s call to become His disciples, which includes suffering and self-denial, is never an end in itself. Jesus’s call is an invitation to find true shalom. According to Jesus, the goal of cross-bearing and self-denial is so that we might find the flourishing life (true happiness) that we are made for. As Jesus says elsewhere, He came into the world not to condemn us or to give us a new set of duties, but so that we might find abundant life (John 10:10). This is the drive for ultimate happiness that Augustine was talking about, and it’s found all over the Bible. God is constantly appealing to us to turn to Him and live in His ways because He loves us as His children and creatures. He knows we will only find true life as we live according to His ways. There is no place where this is clearer than in the opening section of Jesus’s famous Sermon on the Mount. We call Jesus’s first teaching the Beatitudes because the Latin word beatus means "happy" or "flourishing." Jesus opened His most famous sermon with nine declarations or "macarisms" about where to find true happiness. We’ll see how He defined happiness is not what we expect. But like all philosophers and theologians, He’s addressing the same question—How do we find true happiness?
He knows we will only find true life as we live according to His ways. There is no place where this is clearer than in the opening section of Jesus’s famous Sermon on the Mount. We call Jesus’s first teaching the Beatitudes because the Latin word beatus means "happy" or "flourishing."
In every religion, mountains or “high places” are important because they are seen as places of revelation, of seeing—not only physically but spiritually. This was certainly true in Israel’s history as well, with many key moments occurring on mountains, such as at Mount Ararat, Mount Carmel, Mount Gilead, and others. Mountains will also play an important part in the rest of Matthew’s story about Jesus. But the most significant connection being made between Jesus and Israel’s history is the comparison with Moses on Mount Sinai. Throughout the preceding four chapters, Matthew made several allusions to connect Jesus with Moses. Israel’s great moment of deliverance from Egypt that led to God revealing His covenantal instructions (Torah, Law) to His people is being recalled and surpassed by Jesus. Jesus is presented as the fulfillment of all that God has done in the past— affirming, completing, and transforming God’s revelation for the final era of history. Even as the old covenant was given through Moses on Mount Sinai, now the new and better covenant is manifested on the Mount of the Beatitudes through the One greater than Moses. Matthew tells us that Jesus sat down. Once again, this is not merely a historical or physical reference, but communicates something deeper: Jesus is shown as authoritative. Teachers, philosophers, and judges in the ancient world often sat down while their hearers gathered around. This communicated respected authority, with the “chair” becoming a symbol of such teaching. Later in Matthew, Jesus will refer to the scribes and Pharisees as “seated in the chair of Moses”, which is itself a reference to Moses sitting as judge/interpreter in Exodus 18:13. In the Roman Catholic tradition, the same idea continues with authoritative religious and legal matters coming from the Pope described as ex cathedra (“from the chair”). This is how Jesus is presented—as seated with authority on a mountain. These introductory two verses set us up to listen carefully to the words of authoritative divine revelation about to flow out of Jesus’s mouth.
Sermon on the Mount
The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus's most well-known teaching, containing some of the best-loved verses in all of Scripture. In it, Jesus discloses what it means to take part in the good life—the kingdom of heaven that He has brought to the present with His incarnation that will extend into eternity. Through three chapters, Jesus challenges the assumptions of our earthly kingdom and shows how to strive for and participate in a better one.