It’s not by accident that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was delivered on a mountain. “On the Mount” isn’t in the title merely to distinguish it from another sermon given on a plain. What we have instead is an intentional connection being drawn between God’s people meeting with God on Mount Sinai and God’s people meeting with God on this mount. Here are a few reasons we can tell this is so.
1. In both instances, the message begins with affirmations of God’s graciousness, the former reminding God’s people of His rescue of them from Egypt, the latter reminded of God’s blessings in the beatitudes.
2. In both instances law is delivered. With the former the ten commandments are given. In the latter Jesus reminds us, “You have heard it said, but I say to you…” Given that the 10 commandments are a summation of the whole of God’s law, and that He doesn’t change, we shouldn’t be surprised the exposition of the law overlaps each other from these two events.
3. In both instances the law is given prior to the inauguration of a new era in the lives of God’s people. In the former God’s people are about to enter into the land God promised to Abraham and his seed. In the latter, as both John and Jesus preached, the kingdom of God was at hand.
This last point is often lost on us. It is absolutely true that all men everywhere have a duty to obey whatever God commands. God does not have one set of standards for His people and a different set for those outside. Yeah and amen.
That said, we’d be fools to not notice that in neither instance is the law-word delivered from the sky to all humanity. The 10 commandments were given to Moses, not Noah. The Sermon on the Mount was given to those who went to hear Jesus, not to everyone under the authority of the Roman empire. These are not laws given merely as a restraint againt the heathen, laws we as His people naturally have mastered.
No. Before Israel, carried on eagles’ wings, inherits the land, set apart as God’s bride, they are told, “Don’t start worshipping false gods.” They, God’s people, are warned, “Don’t steal from each other. Don’t kill your neighbor. Be faithful to your own wife.”
And as the kingdom is being inaugurated under Jesus, His people are being told much the same thing, with the warning that these laws also apply to what goes on in the privacy of our own hearts.
Which is one more reminder that what sets God’s people apart from the rest isn’t in the end how wonderfully we do in keeping His law, but how amazing His grace in forgiving us. What divides us isn’t that we obey and they don’t, but that we, by His grace, repent, and they do not. Our sins, past, present and future have been forgiven. Which must not lead us to forget that we still struggle with present and future sins. We, like everyone else, need His law, both to drive us to His grace, and to know how to live in it.