The sermon is over. But before moving on to the next part of the story, Matthew adds a closing comment, an observation about how the crowd reacted to Jesus’ preaching. The people were amazed, because they saw something in Jesus’ demeanor and heard something in his words that their teachers refused to recognize: this was a man with the authority of God. 

Jesus’ first warning at the end of the sermon was that there are two roads from which to choose. Only one leads to life; the other leads to destruction. Similarly, his fourth and final warning—the closing words of the sermon—warn that there are two ways of building a house, one wise and one foolish, and the foolish way leads to destruction.

I imagine Jesus’ hearers being shocked by Jesus’ words in the third warning. How can people who do such amazing things as casting out demons and miraculous healings be rejected by him and called “evildoers”? Would we have reacted similarly? If so, we need to be reminded of what Jesus says in the rest of the sermon: faithfulness isn’t about showy demonstrations, but about obeying the teaching of Jesus in the way we relate to others.

Jesus’ third warning overlaps with the second. Whereas before he warned against false prophets, now he warns against false disciples, some of whom claim to have prophesied in his name. Indeed they claim more than that: they say they have done miraculous things in his name. People can do what seem on the surface to be amazing works of ministry, but not have a relationship with Jesus—and in the end, he will send them away.

What do we count as admirable or worthy of applause among Christians? What kinds of things win the approval of others? Jesus’ third warning, again, suggests that we may be looking at the wrong fruit, for not everyone who seems to have a “successful” ministry actually has a relationship to Jesus.

How can one tell between a sheep and a wolf? Jesus answers the question by shifting metaphors: you can tell what kind of a tree you’re looking at by the fruit it produces. His words help us understand one of the challenges of the church today. Why have there been such devastating, high-profile ministry failures? Because we were looking for the wrong fruit.

Jesus’ second warning is about false prophets, whom he likens to wolves disguised as sheep so they can infiltrate and devour the flock. False prophets claim to speak God’s truth, but spread lies, potentially leading the sheep astray. Be careful, Jesus warns. It’s not just about what people say they believe; it’s about how they live in relationship to others.

Sometimes, the gospel is presented as a choice between two destinies: heaven and hell. Choose Jesus and go to heaven, or refuse Jesus and go to hell. But the Christian life is more than just choosing where to spend eternity; it’s choosing to follow Jesus in all of our daily decisions and challenges. 

Psalm 1 portrays life as a continual choice of which path we will walk: the path of righteousness that leads to blessedness, or the path of wickedness that leads to destruction. That image permeates the whole collection of psalms—as well as the first warning of Jesus at the end of the Sermon on the Mount.

We expect to be encouraged and uplifted when we listen to sermons; we don’t hear someone preach “hellfire and damnation”—like the famous sermon by Jonathan Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." But Jesus ends the Sermon on the Mount with four dire warnings of doom and destruction for those who don’t listen to what he said.

We may not have enemies of the kind that crucified Jesus. But we do have people we don’t want to love. We know that Jesus commanded us to love our enemies. How might the Golden Rule give us a place to start?

The Old Testament contains 39 books, many of which are quite different from each other in style and content. Who would dare to distill all of that wondrous complexity down to a sentence or two? As we’ve seen, Rabbi Hillel would, and so would Jesus. With both the Golden Rule and what he elsewhere called the two greatest commandments, Jesus summarized the heart of God’s intent for his people. In this episode, I suggest that the Golden Rule needs to be kept together with the command to love our neighbor as ourselves.
 

One of the most famous lines from the sermon is what we know as the Golden Rule. Others before Jesus had taught similar principles, including the great Rabbi Hillel. But Jesus’ teaching was more demanding morally than Hillel’s. The teaching is simple and straightforward, but requires self-discipline to put into practice; are we willing to treat others the way we would want to be treated?

In the sermon, Jesus teaches his hearers to pray for what they need. And he insists that God, as our trustworthy and loving Father, gives only good gifts to his children. But again, that doesn’t mean that God will give us anything we pray for…

We sometimes come to Scripture looking for promises that God will give us whatever we ask. Virtually any Bible verse about God's care and compassion can be turned into a "promise" that obligates God to grant whatever we ask for, as long as our prayer is earnest and faithful. And indeed, it sounds like Jesus is saying something like this in the sermon. Is that what he means?

One of the oddest verses in the sermon refers to dogs and pigs—and not surprisingly, scholars have debated its meaning for centuries. The language seems harsh and off-putting, and it’s easy to imagine the Pharisees having a field day with it. Whatever we take Jesus to be saying, however, it shouldn’t contradict his command to love our enemies.

In teaching about hypocritical judgment, Jesus uses the humorous metaphor of someone with a plank in his eye trying to take a speck out of someone else’s eye. Indeed, there’s a well-established principle of psychology that’s reminiscent of what Jesus teaches. But it’s important to notice that Jesus doesn’t tell his hearers to stop trying to remove those specks...

Many if not most of us have been judged unfairly at one time or another. And we have done the same to others, though we may not have known it. At the beginning of Matthew 7, Jesus warns his hearers not to be judgmental of others. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no place for wise judgment. 

Jesus has told his hearers not to worry; it’s unnecessary and pointless. But that’s not to say that worrisome things won’t happen. Whether large or small, troubles will come our way. Can we still trust God in the midst of them? Can we still seek the kingdom?

Jesus’ instruction to seek God’s kingdom above all is one of the best-known lines of the sermon. But we have to read it rightly. It can sound like he’s saying, “Do a good job of seeking the kingdom, and God will reward you by giving you your basic needs.” But is that what he means?