In the previous post, I suggested the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7) as an example of a transparent text, meaning that although Jesus delivers the sermon to the other characters in the story, it’s actually intended primarily for the reader, so that we can see through the story to a message intended for us (or, originally, for Matthew’s first-century readers).

I’d like to propose here that the kind of Christian reader Matthew wrote for (i.e., having the appropriate cultural background, knowledge of the Jewish scriptures, etc.), if they started at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel and read through its first seven chapters, would most naturally experience the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount less as an historical account of Jesus’ words and more as teachings intended specifically for her and any other believer. I’ll do my best to show how the beginning of the Gospel sets up this expectation.

The beginning of Matthew leads the reader to expect Jesus to be, above all, a king. Jesus is introduced in 1:1 to be the Messiah (i.e., the anointed king; compare 2:2 with 2:4) and the Son of David (from a kingly line). The Magi come from afar to worship one who is born King of the Jews (2:2), and Herod (the king of the Jews at the time) views him as a threat (2:3). And then at Jesus’ baptism, a voice from heaven announces, “This is my Son,” a phrase quite similar to Psalm 2:7, where “You are my Son” is God’s way of designating the anointed king whom God will set up in Zion (= Jerusalem, Ps 2:6) to rule over all the nations (Ps 2:8).

Jesus also is presented in categories that are more reflective of Christian theology as most of us know it. Jesus, then, is one who will save his people from their sins (1:21), and he is one who will represent the presence of God with God’s people (1:23).

But there is still another side to Jesus’ character that Matthew presents in his opening chapters, and we must recognize it in order to understand the rhetoric of Matthew’s story––in particular, why the Sermon on the Mount is placed where it is, and what it’s supposed to mean for the reader.

When Herod starts killing children (2:16), an angel of the Lord tells Joseph to flee with his family to Egypt; after Herod dies, the family returns and settles in Nazareth (2:23). This might seem merely like a piece of the plot, but the passage quoted in explanation of the journey, “Out of Egypt I called my son,” is a reference to Hosea 11 that refers to Israel’s exodus from Egypt. Just as Israel (God’s son) left Canaan (in the days off Joseph) to go down to Egypt, and then later returned, so did Jesus.

When we soon find Jesus spending forty days in the wilderness being tempted/tested (4:2), the parallel between Jesus and Israel becomes unmistakeable. The point is not that Jesus’ story is exactly like that of Israel, but that these certain motifs keep coming up that give the sense that Jesus is being compared with Israel. In response to the devil’s temptations in the wilderness, Jesus quotes passages from Deuteronomy that were originally instructions to Israel regarding what God wanted them to learn during their own forty (years) in the wilderness. The upshot is that where Israel failed to remain faithful, Jesus succeeds.

Coming back into Galilee, Jesus resumes his role as expected king, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near” (4:17). The reader who has understood what came before knows that Jesus’ kingdom means far more than a new political arrangement. Not only has he come to fill the throne of his father David, but he has come to transform Israel’s relationship to its God, bringing about repentance, forgiveness, obedience, and the presence of God.

The story of Israel’s exodus is not the only literary connection Matthew creates, and here is where we arrive at the key point for understanding the Sermon. Jesus’ fast of forty days and forty nights exactly matches that of Moses when he received the Ten Commandments on Sinai (Ex 34:28). It seems that Jesus is serving not only as a new Israel, but also as a new Moses. And when Jesus walks up to a mountainside and begins to teach (similar to Moses, who ascended a mountain to receive the law), the connection is complete.

All this leads into the Sermon on the Mount, which the rhetoric of the narrative has prepared the reader to listen to, not as an historical account of something Jesus once said, but as the New Law given by a new Moses to a renewed Israel. Matthew is essentially retelling the story of the people of God for the new age, and Jesus’ teachings transcend the narrative in which they are located to address everyone who considers herself a disciple of Christ.

Jesus’ words are both related to and different than Moses’. Moses received tablets written upon by God, but Jesus is able simply to speak from his own mouth: “You have heard . . . but I say to you” (5:21f, 27f, 33f, 38f, 43f). Also, Jesus describes his own relationship to Moses by claiming to fulfill the law that Moses gave (5:17). Although Jesus isn’t replacing the law here (as some folks would claim), he is presenting an interpretation of the law that lays claim on its hearers and readers. Immediately after the Sermon we are told that Jesus spoke to the crowds as one with authority, and I am arguing that his words hold that same authority for any reader who would be a disciple.

If any doubt lingers for the reader as to the authority or application of Jesus’ words, Matthew closes the Sermon with three teachings to pound home his point: only a few will find the narrow road leading to life (7:14), the true disciples of Jesus are only the ones who do the will of the Father (7:21) and bear good fruit (7:17), and the wise person who hears the words of this sermon will put them into practice (7:24). Much as the law in Deuteronomy 28 included blessings and curses for those who obeyed or disobeyed, Matthew also includes blessings (5:3-12) and curses (7:13-27), the latter explicitly according to obedience.

The point of all this is, even though Jesus surely said many of the things that are in the Sermon on the Mount, the more important point for the church should be that God put them in Scripture for us. So if we want to understand the Sermon historically, it may be more worth our time to figure out what it meant for Matthew’s readers in roughly A.D. 85 than what it meant for Jesus’ hearers in A.D. 30.